June 7, 2011

Participants

• Gregory Leptoukh (NASA GSFC)
• Greg Stensaas (USGS)
• Oleg Aulov (UMBC)
• Carol Meyer (ESIP)
• Erin Robinson (ESIP)
• Gary Foley (EPA)
• Tyler Stevens (NASA GSFC)
• Ed Armstrong (JPL)
• Joanne Nightingale (NASA GSFC)
• Phil Jones (NOAA NCDC)
• Karen Moe (NASA GSFC)
• Barry Weiss (JPL)
• Fritz VanWijngaarden (Northrop Grumman)
• W. Han (?)

Agenda

• Greg Stensaas (Chair of the CEOS Cal/Val WG): "International Earth Observation Quality Assurance Efforts".
• Preparation for the Summer EIP Meeting in Santa Fe: ESIP Summer 2011 Meeting
  • Speakers
  • Identify reps of various research and application communities for:
    • their understanding and requirements for quality
    • methodology they use to assess and quantify data quality
    • Communities: SST, Ocean color, Precipitation, Atm Chemistry, Land, Modeling, Applications (e.g., Air Quality),...

Old Action Items

• Hook and Greg: setup a page for collecting and aliasing quality-related terms

Notes

Upload community-specific presentations/papers either to the Community portion of the web site

• Greg Leptoukh noted that the agenda for the summer meeting breakout session is still fluid.

• Ocean color community not able to attend
• Invitations to NASA data quality PIs will be issued
• AQ and Energy communities will be represented

• Greg Stensaas, USGS & Chair of CEOS Calibration/Validation WG

• Landsat program repsonsibilities shifting

• continually trying to improve data accuracy
• need to improve time series terrestrial data
• integration of Landsat data with other data and sensors to support climate change research

• Need calibration to improve accuracy across systems

• requires better documentation
• improves consistency across data sets
• GCOS - improved definitions for Accuracy & Stability
• better definitions for standards, processes and establish quality indicators

• Need coordination among MANY players in the quality space
• CEOS

• GEO SBA linkages (CEOS is the space arm of GEO) - (http://earthobservations.org)
• WG on Calibration/Validation (WGCV) - has 6 subgroups
• Cal/Val portal (http://calvalportal.ceos.org)
• test site (http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov)
• CEOS Visualization Environment (COVE)

• GEOSS support for quality information for SBAs (timely, quality, long-term & global)

• Quality Assurance Framework for Earth Observations (QA4EO) http://qa4eo.org
• Reference standards can be test sites or a reference to a standard ("fit for purpose")
• Definition has to be relevant to the whole suite of observations
• October 18-20, 2011 QA4EO Workshop in Oxford, England (4th meeting) - "QA4EO Workshop on Providing Harmonised Quality Information in Earth Observation Data by 2015"
• Joint Agency Commercial Imagery Evaluation (JACIE) - annual
• Joint Agency Commercial Imagery Evaluation (JACIE) Workshop Boulder, Colorado, March 29-31, 2011 - an anual workshop that had 10 successful meetings already. Does a lot of work related to quality of data.
• ESA GMES quality assurance requirements

• Preceding provides an overview of many of the quality assurance efforts going on globally

• important to work collaboratively across the many players

• Q&A for Greg Stensaas

• With multiple approaches for calibration & validation, how is th (Note: Greg L. - what was your question?)

• calibration of instruments must be documented to international standards; still learning how to do this with, especially for user definitions of quality
• validation

• ISO standard use of "Geographic" language, why?

• can relate it to both a spatial or temporal extent (either or both) - don't worry about the word
• ISO/NP TS 19159 Geographic information - Calibration and validation of remote sensing imagery sensors and data
• For the Workshop looking for support - strategic implementation team for GEO
• ISO/CD 19157 Geographic information -- Data quality

• With regard to QA4EO effort, how can ESIP support the task?

• Need to show value of the development of quality indicators (e.g. Air Quality)
• UK workshop will feature showcases
• ISO Data Quality - processes

• From the point of view of users, knowing total quality assurance from instrument to data product is essential (Foley)

• Decision makers need some certainty that they data they're using is of high enough "quality" in order to be able to use it

• Actions for Follow Up:

• Link to Air Quality Working Group (Meyer/Robinson) - done
• Obtain EPA Data Quality Documentation (Foley/Stensaas)
• Invitations to CEOS Cal/Val WG subgroups (Meyer/Leptoukh/Stensaas/Nightingale)
• Get slides from Greg Stensaas (Leptoukh/staff)

Action Items

• All: continue looking for speakers and community reps