Documenting the Big Earth Data Initiative

The purpose of the Big Earth Data Initiative (BEDI) is to improve the discoverability, accessibility, and usability of Federal data and information products derived from civil Earth observations. This activity is an OSTP initiative which will be coordinated through the US Group on Earth Observations (USGEO) Subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Committee on Environment Natural Resources and Sustainability (CENRS).

Overview

A critical component of the BEDI is metadata. Metadata is essential for facilitating data discovery, access, useability and understanding. The purpose of this page is to provide data producer's with the guidance necessary to create high quality metadata. This page will identify criteria for what constitutes high quality metadata and explore the suitability of multiple earth science documentation dialects.

Documentation Purpose

Metadata is essential for facilitating data discovery, accessibility, useability and understanding. This project will identify quality assessment criteria for each of these data use categories. Thus providing a structure from which metadata quality can be assessed and evaluated.

Documentation Dialects

Numerous documentation dialects exist within the Earth Science Community. This project will review the suitability of these dialects for each of the documentation purpose categories listed above. The dialects being considered include: Data Interchange Format (DIF), Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT), DRYAD, ECHO, ECS, Ecology Markup Language (EML), FGDC Content Standard for Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM), HDF5 Original XML, ISO 19110 Metadata for Services, ISO 19115, ISO 19115-1, NASA Unified Metadata Model (UMM), OGC Sensor Observation Service (SOS), THREDDS, netCDF.

Concepts & Spirals

Spirals provide criteria for evaluating the documentation content for different types of metadata (discovery, usage, understanding) and metadata topics such as citations, people or identifiers. The elements that comprise a spiral are called concepts. Some concepts may be reused in multiple spirals. See the Concepts Glossary to view a reference list of metadata concepts.