IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - December 2013 - 20

can be of great benefit in this
task. Standards are also useful
in applying and documenting
Design & Plan
the outcomes of quality assurData Management Plan
ance steps.
Reference Architecture
The ability to apply tools
and algorithms in the Analyze
Data phase is enhanced by
the use of standards, such as
Collect Data
Discover & Reuse
for encoding, geospatial refCal/Val
Linked Data
Document
Sensor
Web
erencing and portrayal. The
Semantics
Data
reuse of software and procedures is also facilitated by the
Preserve
QC Data
use of standards.
Data
It is coming to be recognized that it is important to
Transfer to Stage Data
preserve all the outputs of the
Archive
for Access
research process, not just pubProcess Data
Publish Results
lications. Reproducibility and
QA/QC
Data Archiving
traceability demand that the
Integrate Other Data
Data Citation
data behind the publication
be documented, preserved
and made available. Placing
Analyze Data
data into a trusted repository,
Visualization
assigning persistent identifiers
Interpretation
to data and referring to those
PIDs in the publications is now
considered an essential part of
FIGURE 1. The Research Knowledge Generation Lifecycle. The inner cycle is the foundational data
the Publish Results phase.
lifecycle, which is an integral aspect of the outer knowledge generation lifecycle. Example categories
Finally, data must be disof standards that apply in each phase of the knowledge management lifecycle are shown.
coverable and accessible so
that future research can build
upon
those
results.
The
traditional
approach to Discovery
In the Design and Plan phase of the lifecycle it is imporand Reuse, i.e. placing the data in an archive and populattant to consider how data will be acquired, evaluated,
ing a metadata catalog, is being extended through linked
transferred, stored and documented. These activities are
data and semantic technologies. Of particular importance is
best captured in a data management plan, which is now a
the ability for data to be used by disciplines and in contexts
requirement of awards made by many agencies. While variother than those in which the data were generated. Mediaous agencies and organizations have developed guidelines
tion and brokering technologies are beginning to be applied
and templates for writing data management plans, there
to meet this challenge [4].
has yet to be developed an international standard for this.
A reference architecture can be helpful in designing the
IV. STANDARDS DEVELOPMENT AND USAGE
systems that will realize project goals in a way that makes the
One of key elements of the ESI TC mission is to help develop
components and interfaces of that system more reusable and
and employ standards and best practices that are needed to
interoperable with other systems. Reference architectures repmake both data and data systems usable and interoperable.
resent abstract solutions implementing the concepts and relaThe GRSS ESI TC is pursuing this objective through particitionships identified in a reference model, for which there are
pation in, and collaboration with the Open Geospatial Conseveral standards such as OSI [1], OAIS [2] and RM-ODP [3].
sortium, OGC [5], Technical Committee 211 of the InterResearch projects often Collect Data from a suite of
national Organization for Standardization, ISO TC211 [6],
sensors which must be controlled, calibrated and moniand the IEEE Standards Association, IEEE-SA [7].
tored. Traceability to reference standards is a fundamental
The Open Geospatial Consortium develops geospatial
requirement for producing accurate and reliable data. There
standards that are in widespread use within the geoscience
are also information standards specifying how to calibrate
community. Among the more commonly known standards
and document instrument performance.
and specification that the OGC has developed are:
The Process Data phase of the lifecycle includes the many
steps needed to harmonize and integrate data streams and
◗ CSW-Catalog Service for the Web
otherwise prepare it for analysis. Conformance to standards
◗ GML-Geography Markup Language
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December 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - December 2013