--Candace Carlisle (ccarlisle@mindspring.com), NASA Science Data and Information System Project
Representatives from software developers and vendors, EOS Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs), Instrument Teams, and the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) attended an HDF-EOS workshop September 8-10. The workshop provided a forum for interaction between these communities, and encouragement for software developers and vendors to develop tools that support the HDF-EOS data format. Presenters described the large and growing community of EOSDIS users among the public sector, scientific researchers, commercial users, the education community, and international partners. Discussions identified the need for tools for browsing, viewing, subsetting, image analysis and enhancement, mathematical and statistical analysis, processing, graphics, and animation for EOSDIS data.
Approximately 150 people attended the workshop, which was held at Goddard Space Flight Center. NASA, the EOSDIS Core System team, Hughes STX, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) sponsored the workshop. HDF-EOS is the primary data format standard for EOSDIS data distribution, production, and archiving. It provides self-definition of data content, flexibility, support for a broad set of data types, and extensibility, allowing EOSDIS to achieve the goals of high levels of data service, access, and interchange. HDF-EOS adds EOS data features to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications' Hierarchical Data Format (HDF). HDF was chosen as the best of the alternatives after a study of available data format standards and EOS science data needs. EOSDIS does accept data and provide conversion for other formats, but full EOSDIS services are supported only for HDF-EOS.
During the workshop, EOSDIS and NCSA speakers provided an introduction to EOS and EOSDIS, overviews of HDF, HDF-EOS, EOS metadata, available tools, and an overview of needs. DAAC representatives described the scientific focus and user community of the DAACs, current and future data holdings, available tools, and tool needs. Goddard DAAC (George Serafino), Langley DAAC (Linda Hunt), EROS Data Center (John Boyd), Jet Propulsion Laboratory Physical Oceanography DAAC (Carol Hsu), and Alaska Synthetic Aperture Radar Facility (Chris Wyatt) representatives presented information about their DAACs. A science panel discussed their scientific areas of interest, how EOS data contribute to scientific investigations in their areas of interest, what kinds of tools are needed in order to productively use EOS data, and specific capabilities needed in these tools. The EOSDIS Project Scientist (Carl Reber) led the discussion, with representatives from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (Cheryl Craig), Jet Propulsion Laboratory ASTER team (Moshe Pniel), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Mike Caruso), and Simpson Weather Associates (G. David Emmitt). An ñAsk the Expertsî panel, composed of representatives from the Earth Science Data and Information System Project, the EOSDIS Core System team, Hughes STX, and NCSA answered questions about EOSDIS and HDF-EOS.
Many software developers and vendors were represented at the workshop. Several of these organizations expressed commitments to supporting the HDF-EOS format with their commercial products. The following software developers and vendors made presentations about their work: University of Alabama at Huntsville, NCSA, Hughes STX, Ames Research Center, University of Wisconsin, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Ecologic, Fortner Software, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Pegasus Imaging, Flashback Imaging, Research Systems Incorporated, Simpson Weather Associates, and IBM.
The workshop ended with a wrap-up session. Participants discussed action items, HDF-EOS resources, and ideas for the future.
HDF-EOS frequently asked questions, HDF-EOS documentation, HDF-EOS source code, links to useful sites such as NCSA and DAACs, and further information about the workshop, including most of the presentations and workshop notes, are available at: http://ulabhp.gsfc.nasa.gov/~workshop/workshop.html. This web site will be updated with additional presentations, action item responses, and links to related sites.
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