HR: 1340h
AN: IN53B-1200 [Abstracts]
TI: The GFZ ISDC - Part of Earth Science Infrastructure
AU: * Ritschel, B
EM: rit@gfz-potsdam.de
AF: GFZ Potsdam, Data Center
Telegrafenberg A3, Potsdam, 14473, Germany
AB:
The GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (GFZ) Information System and Data Center (ISDC) as part of the GFZ
information technology infrastructure is managing almost 300 very different geoscientific product types containing
more than 15 million data sets and approximately 10 TByte data volume, processed by different national and
international scientific groups. Most of the data are coming from the German CHAMP satellite as well as from the
American-German GRACE satellite mission and appropriate projects. The scientific results are covering
geodesy, geophysics and atmospheric research. More than 1500 registered users and user groups all over the
world have access to the data using the project and product integrating ISDC portal (http://isdc.gfz-potsdam.de)
which is providing different graphical user interfaces (GUI) and non-GUI batch processing interfaces.
This presentation is reflecting the ideas, the concepts and the realisation process in order to integrate the ISDC
in a global Earth science Infrastructure. All scientific data sets managed by the ISDC are described by
corresponding metadata using the Directory Interchange Format (DIF) standard. Extending this DIF standard
(http://gcmd.gsfc.nasa.gov/User/difguide/difman.html), product types are described by substantial parent DIF
documents whereas the scientific products consisting of the actual data sets and the appropriate child DIF
documents containing the data set specific information only. Recently all metadata corresponding to new
products types are using the DIF version 9 XML schema instead of the DIF "ASCII text only" standard. Still almost
all metadata are stored in project specific relational database structures. In future, at least the parent DIF XML
metadata documents will be managed by XML database mechanisms. Existing XML metadata documents easily
can be transferred from the ISDC/DIF XML schema to international standardized XML schema using Extensible
Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT)-based processes. This approach could be helpful in order to
integrate a standard web-based Catalog Service (WCS) interface into the ISDC portal realized by the Open GIS
Consortium (OGC)/ISO (http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/cat) standard conform "degree" framework
(http://deegree.sourceforge.net/index.html). Providing such a standard WCAS interface would open the gate to
real interoperability and networking other geoscientific information systems constructing the global Earth science
cyberinfrastructure.
UR: http://isdc.gfz-potsdam.de
DE: 0300 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE
DE: 0525 Data management
DE: 0530 Data presentation and visualization
DE: 1200 GEODESY AND GRAVITY
DE: 1500 GEOMAGNETISM AND PALEOMAGNETISM
SC: Earth and Space Science Informatics [IN]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting