HR: 09:45h
AN: IN31C-08    [Abstracts]
TI: A Consistent, Standards-Based Format for NPOESS Data Products
AU: * Goldberg, A M
EM: agoldber@mitre.org
AF: The MITRE Corporation, 7515 Colshire Drive, McLean, VA 22102 United States
AU: Thomas, W M
EM: bthomas@mitre.org
AF: The MITRE Corporation, 7515 Colshire Drive, McLean, VA 22102 United States
AB: The NPOESS program will deliver over a hundred different product combinations to its operational, scientific, and archival users. These products will originate from nine sensors on three platforms, and will include raw, sensor, and environment products. Operational users will receive products via the four existing US operational weather Centrals. Scientific, commercial, and other public users will generally receive products via the NESDIS CLASS archives. Software provided for direct readout terminals will format products in a similar manner. Early on, the program decided to use community standards to the greatest possible extent. Some common standards (e.g., GRIB and BUFR) were determined to be inadequate. Over the past year, the program has refined its proposed data delivery formats. All products will be delivered in HDF5, with included metadata guided by the FGDC Remote Sensing Extensions. Individual product profiles will be described in associated XML files. HDF5 offers the requisite flexibility to represent the wide range of products to be produced, and has a strong and growing user base in the community which uses large, complex data sets. Granules form the basic unit of processing and storage, but multiple granules can be aggregated to create larger delivery files. Balancing the competing goals of consistency, completeness, suitability for each product, storage efficiency, cost, and simplicity has been a daunting challenge. The data delivery formats are near final definition for the NPOESS Preparatory Program: NASA will launch a joint IPO-NASA risk reduction spacecraft in 2008 to prepare for the later operational NPOESS constellation. Sample data sets have been developed for internal evaluation. Experience with sample data will help users understand the tools and procedures which will be needed to best exploit NPOESS data when it becomes available.
UR: http://www,ipo.noaa.gov
DE: 0525 Data management
DE: 1640 Remote sensing (1855)
DE: 1694 Instruments and techniques
DE: 6339 System design
DE: 9820 Techniques applicable in three or more fields
SC: Earth and Space Science Informatics [IN]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005