Review of NASA's Distributed Active Archive Centers (1999)
Chapter: Afterword
Afterword
This report describes EOSDIS as it was configured between January 1997 and August 1998. Since that time, NASA has sponsored two important meetings that directly affect the DAACs: (1) a workshop on plans for the long-term archive of EOS data in particular, and earth science data in general; and (2) a meeting on data management strategies for the Earth Science Enterprise beyond the year 2000. The archive workshop, held in November, was organized by the U.S. Global Change Program Office, NASA, and NOAA. It resulted in a set of draft recommendations on functional specifications for a long-term archive, including topics such as metadata and assuring data quality. These specifications will form the basis for determining the cost of the archive project and are expected to be incorporated into a proposal within NOAA for an FY 2001 initiative to archive DAAC and other large data sets. This was perhaps the first interagency workshop ever held on this topic, and the Committee is gratified that U.S. science agencies are taking steps to resolve these issues.
NASA's first meeting on post-2000 data management strategies (dubbed the ''new DISS'' initiative) was held in October. The DIS initiative builds on the federation concept and PI-led data management. It was driven by delays in the ECS, the recognition that smaller, more flexible systems can manage data more efficiently now, and the need to inject more science into data management. NASA's current plans are to retain the DAAC-ECS-ESDIS system for managing data from the AM-1 and Landsat 7 missions, although backup systems, rather than the ECS, will be used to process much of the data. (The ECS contractor will focus on delivering hardware and software to support users). When the new DISS model is adopted, the data will be managed by DAACs and/or data management
