IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - September 2017 - 54

TABLE 1. COMMON FRAMEWORKS THAT KNIT NASA'S DATA AND SERVICES TOGETHER AND SO CAN BE USED TO RAISE
THE VISIBILITY OF LOW-LATENCY DATA WITHIN AND OUTSIDE NASA.
ROLE

FRAMEWORK

DESCRIPTION

Data inventory

CMR*

The CMR combines several existing metadata systems, such as the EOS Clearing House,
into a single unified metadata model that will be able to support the growing needs of
EOSDIS in the future.

Image repository

GIBS†

GIBS continually acquires imagery from NASA data providers, creates a global mosaic of
the data, and then partitions it into an image tile pyramid. This enables GIBS to rapidly
serve low-latency and standard imagery products. GIBS enables users to interactively
explore data to support a wide range of applications, including scientific research, applied
sciences, natural hazard monitoring, and outreach. Data visualizations provided through
GIBS can also be viewed using the EOSDIS Worldview.‡

Data access

Open-Source Project for
a Network Data Access
Protocol (OPeNDAP)

OPeNDAP provides remote access to individual variables within data sets in a form usable
by many tools. NASA provides a subset of all data through OPeNDAP.**

*https://earthdata.nasa.gov/cmr; †https://earthdata.nasa.gov/gibs; ‡https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/; **https://www.opendap.org/.

TABLE 2. APPLICATIONS AND LOW-LATENCY DATA PRESENTATIONS AT THE WORKSHOP.
PRESENTATION

SPEAKER AND AFFILIATION

"Hazards Data Distribution System/NRT Landsat Data"

Brenda Jones, U.S. Geological Survey

"NRT Data for Committee on Earth Observation Satellites and
Group on Earth Observations"

Stuart Frye, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)

"Advances in Technology: Improving Delivery and Accessibility
of NASA's NRT Data"

Mike Little, NASA headquarters

"Agricultural and Drought Monitoring Through the Global
Agricultural Monitoring System"

Bob Tetrault, U.S. FAS; Chris Justice, University
of Maryland (UMD), College Park

"Use of Satellite Data Within Weather Decision-Support
Systems"

Brad Zavodsky, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC); Short-Term
Prediction Research and Transition Center

"Fire Data and Users"

Wilfrid Schroeder, UMD; Karyn Tabor, Conservation International

"Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP)Derived NRT Aerosols Applied in Naval Research Laboratory
(NRL) NRT Data Products"

Dave Winker, LaRC; Kim Richardson, NRL

"Low-Latency Data Sets for Time-Sensitive Applications under
the U.S. EPA AirNow Program: Regional-to-Global Air Quality"

Jim Szykman, NASA LaRC

"NASA Satellite Imagery-Based Cloud Property and Clear-Sky
Temperature Retrieval Data Sets"

Patrick Minnis, NASA LaRC

importance of NRT for time-sensitive applications and the disasters community.
LOW-LATENCY DATA FOR
TIME-SENSITIVE APPLICATIONS
Low-latency data from NASA's current missions have been incorporated into applications that support operational agencies,
including the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS) [4], the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) [5], and the U.S. Forest Service fire monitoring [6].
Presentations at the workshop (see Table 2) highlighted
the importance of low-latency data for a range of applications and concluded that ongoing investment in the development of low-latency data and products will enable
increased societal benefits, particularly if data discoverability is improved.
54

The tolerance for data latency is often explicit to a given application [7]. Many future NASA missions have data
products that may be extremely valuable for operational
and decision-making purposes if they can reach the applied
communities quickly after collection.
SOURCES OF LOW-LATENCY DATA
NASA low-latency data can be obtained from several sources,
including the Land, Atmosphere Near-Real-Time Capability for EOS (LANCE; https://earthdata.nasa.gov/lance) (see
"Land, Atmosphere Near-Real-Time Capability for EOS");
NASA's Precipitation Processing System (https://pps.gsfc.nasa.
gov/); The Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAAC), such as
the Ocean Biology DAAC (https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov)
and the Physical Oceanography DAAC (https://podaac.jpl.
nasa.gov); the Alaska Satellite Data Facility (https://www.asf
IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING MAGAZINE

SEPTEMBER 2017

https://earthdata.nasa.gov/cmr https://earthdata.nasa.gov/gibs https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/ https://www.opendap.org/ https://earthdata.nasa.gov/lance https://pps.gsfc.nasa https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov https://www.podaac.jpl http://www.nasa.gov https://www.asf

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - September 2017