SPASE 2.0: a standard data model for space physics

SPASE—for Space Physics Archive Search and Extract—is a group with a charter to promote collaboration and sharing of data for the Space Plasma Physics community. A major activity is the definition of the SPASE Data Model which defines the metadata necessary to describe resources in the broader heliophysics data environment. The SPASE Data Model is primarily a controlled vocabulary with hierarchical relationships and with the ability to form associations between described resources. It is the result of many years of effort by an international collaboration (see http://www.spase-group.org) to unify and improve on existing Space and Solar Physics data models. The genesis of the SPASE group can be traced to 1998 when a small group of individuals saw a need for a data model. Today SPASE has a large international participation from many of the major space research organizations. The design of the data model is based on a set of principles derived from evaluation of the existing heliophysics data environment. The development guidelines for the data model are consistent with ISO-2788 (expanded in ANSI/NISO Z39.19) and the administration for the data model is comparable to that described in the ISO standards ISO-11179 and ISO-20943. Since the release of version 1.0 of the data model in 2005, the model has undergone a series of evolutions. SPASE released version 2.0 of its data model in April 2009. This version presents a significant change from the previous release. It includes the capability to describe a wider range of data products and to describe expert annotations which can be associated with a resource. Additional improvements include an enhanced capability to describe resource associations and a more unified approach to describing data products. Version 2.0 of the SPASE Data Model provides a solid foundation for continued integration of worldwide research activities and the open sharing of data.     

Organizing earth observation data inside a spatial data infrastructure

Scientists as well public institutions dealing with geospatial data often work with a large amount of heterogeneous data deriving from different sources. Without a well-defined, organized structure they face problems in finding and reusing existing data, and as consequence this may cause data inconsistency and storage problems. A catalog system based on the metadata of spatial data facilitates the management of large amount of data and offers service to retrieve, discover and exchange geographic data in an quick and easy fashion. Currently, most online catalogs are more focusing on the geographic data and there has been only few interests in catalogizing Earth observation data, in which in addition the acquisition information matters. This article presents an automatic metadata extraction approach that creates from different optical data deriving from various satellite missions of scientific interest (i.e. MODIS, LANDSAT, RapidEye, Suomi-NPP VIIRS, Sentinel-1A, Sentinel-2A) metadata information, based on an extended model of the standard ISO 19115. The XML schema ISO 19139-2 with the support of gridded and imagery information defined in ISO 19115-2 was examined, and based on the requirements of experts working in the research field of Earth observation the schema was extended. The XML schema ISO 19139-2 and its extension has been deployed as a new schema plugin in the spatial catalog Geonetwork Open Source in order to store all relevant metadata information about satellite data and the appropriate acquisition and processing information in an online catalog. A real-world scenario that is productively used in the EURAC research group institute for Applied Remote Sensing illustrates a workflow management for Earth observation data including data processing, metadata extraction, generation and distribution.     

VxOware: software for managing virtual observatory metadata

The recent Heliophysics Virtual Observatory (VxO) effort involves the development of separate observatories with a low overlap in physical domain or area of scientific specialization and a high degree of overlap in metadata management needs. VxOware is a content and metadata management system. While it is intended for use by a VxO specifically, it can also be used by any entity that manages structured metadata. VxOware has many features of a content management system and extensively uses the W3C recommendations for XML (Extensible Markup Language), XQuery (XML Query), and XSLT (Extensible Style Sheet Language Transformations). VxOware has features such as system and user administration, search, user-editable content, version tracking, and a wiki. Besides virtual observatories, the intended user-base of VxOware includes a group or an instrument team that has developed a directory structure of data files and would like to make this data, and its associated metadata, available in the virtual observatory network. One of the most powerful features of VxOware is the ability to link any type of object in the observatory to other objects and the ability for every object to be tagged.     

The Russian Virtual Observatory project

We describe the Russian Virtual Observatory (RVO), a prestigious international project sponsored by the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). In 2001, the RAS Scientific Council on Astronomy included this project in a list of the most important international projects of the RAS. Its main goal to create and develop the RVO, intended to provide Russian astronomers with direct and effective access to worldwide astronomical data resources. The RVO is one component of the International Virtual Observatory (IVO), a system in which vast astronomical archives and databases around the world, together with analysis tools and computational services, are linked together into an integrated facility. The IVO unites all important national and international projects to create virtual observatories, coordinated by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance. The RVO is one of the organizers and an important participant of the IVO Alliance.     

基于XML的岩芯信息元数据标准研究与实践

目前岩芯信息表述尚没有统一的格式,严重阻碍了岩芯信息资源的利用,造成了资源浪费。为提高岩芯信息利用率,方便用户和其他软件共享岩芯信息,必须规范其组织、存储和交换数据格式,并提供相应的技术实现手段通过软件自动保存、解析岩芯信息。文章参照国内外相关资料及技术标准,创建了岩芯信息元数据标准,应用XML技术生成与元数据标准对应的XSD文件,并在应用程序中成功使用,当用户交互岩芯信息时,生成符合XSD格式要求的XML数据文件传送信息,不同用户可以正确解析岩芯信息。通过应用岩芯信息元数据标准,规范了数字化岩芯信息组织、存储和交换,采用XML技术由软件自动实现,大大提高了用户工作效率,方便了岩芯信息的共享,充分发挥了岩芯信息的价值。     

西北地下水资源数据库及其网上发布

西北地下水资源数据库包括地下水资源属性数据库和地下水资源空间数据库，属性数据库采用AC－CESS97存储格式，空间数据库采用ARCVIEW3．1存储格式，文中介绍了西北地下水资源数据库的基本内容，组织结构及其元数据，阐述了其在网上发布的动态网页设计思路及基于WEB GIS的数据浏览，查询的设计思路。     

Mercury: reusable metadata management, data discovery and access system

Mercury is a federated metadata harvesting, search and retrieval tool based on both open source packages and custom software developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). It was originally developed for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the consortium now includes funding from NASA, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Mercury is itself a reusable software application which uses a service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach to capturing and managing metadata in support of twelve Earth science projects. Mercury also supports the reuse of metadata by enabling searches across a range of metadata specification and standards including XML, Z39.50, FGDC, Dublin-Core, Darwin-Core, EML, and ISO-19115. It collects metadata and key data from contributing project servers distributed around the world and builds a centralized index. The Mercury search interfaces allows the users to perform simple, fielded, spatial, temporal and other hierarchical searches across these metadata sources. This centralized repository of metadata with distributed data sources provides extremely fast search results (Table 1) to the user, while allowing data providers to advertise the availability of their data and yet maintain complete control and ownership of that data.     

Developing a SPASE Query Language

The advent of the Virtual Observatory has begun an evolution in the space physics data environment. A number of nascent and discipline specific Virtual Observatories have started to emerge with an emphasis on data search and retrieval. As this new data environment takes shape an emphasis will be placed on interdisciplinary communication in attempts to address large scale and global problems. To this end we formulate the development of a query language to facilitate Virtual Observatory to Virtual Observatory communication. Furthermore, we outline the goals of such a language, how it would work and how existing community efforts can be leveraged to speed the development of this query language.

HydroCube: an entity-relationship hydrogeological data model

Managing, handling and accessing hydrogeological information depends heavily on the applied hydrogeological data models, which differ between institutions and countries. The effective dissemination of hydrogeological information requires the convergence of such models to make hydrogeological information accessible to multiple users such as universities, water suppliers, and administration and research organisations. Furthermore, because hydrogeological studies are complex, they require a wide variety of high-quality hydrogeological data with appropriate metadata in clearly designed and coherent structures. A need exists, therefore, to develop and implement hydrogeological data models that cover, as much as possible, the full hydrogeological domain. A new data model, called HydroCube, was developed for the Walloon Region in Belgium in 2005. The HydroCube model presents an innovative holistic project-based approach which covers a full set of hydrogeological concepts and features, allowing for effective hydrogeological project management. The model stores data relating to the project locality, hydrogeological equipment, and related observations and measurements. In particular, it focuses on specialized hydrogeological field experiments such as pumping and tracer tests. This logical data model uses entity-relationship diagrams and it has been implemented in the Microsoft Access environment. It has been enriched with a fully functional user interface.     

数据中心:GIS功能仓库的关键技术

许多组织和部门需要地理信息功能的协同与合作来完成一项工作.其关键问题在于解决地理信息系统(geographic information system,GIS)领域的构件复用和协同.采用支持黑盒复用的基于构件软件框架,探讨了支持多粒度、异构GIS构件的功能仓库的关键技术.提出原子粒度、功能组件、功能插件、功能流程等多粒度构件组织;定义了统一的功能协议对异构功能资源统一管理和发布,以统一的方式进行配置和系统搭建,使运行时服务能够通过功能协议动态的发现和调用功能资源,并实现功能资源的定位与参数传递.功能仓库能够集成各种类型异构、来源异构的功能资源,实现这些功能资源在数据中心的统一管理和调用,最终基于工作流引擎与可视化建模工具实现地理信息功能的协同工作.      

元数据标准及其在古生物数据库中的应用

元数据(Metadata)是关于数据的数据,元数据标准在数据共享中有重要的作用。目前,元数据已越来越为人们所重视,许多国家已经发布实施元数据内容标准,并开发了许多元数据操作工具。通过对国内外一些元数据标准的研究分析,阐述元数据的定义、作用、意义和标准化问题,并介绍各相关领域的元数据标准的主要内容,从而为制定古生物学元数据标准提供参考。     

Navigating through SPASE to heliospheric and magnetospheric data

Virtual observatories have been introduced by the astrophysics community as an environment connecting distributed data sources with a unified interface. The heliophysics community soon recognized that they faced a similar problem of many distributed data sets with varying amount of information about them and several discipline specific virtual observatories have been established. Two of them, the virtual heliospheric observatory (VHO) and the virtual magnetospheric observatory (VMO), share a common architecture design with development efforts oriented towards a structured data search. This paper describes the VHO/VMO middleware and its components from metadata preparation and processing to the user interface.     

Karst database development in Minnesota: design and data assembly

The Karst Feature Database (KFD) of Minnesota is a relational GIS-based Database Management System (DBMS). Previous karst feature datasets used inconsistent attributes to describe karst features in different areas of Minnesota. Existing metadata were modified and standardized to represent a comprehensive metadata for all the karst features in Minnesota. Microsoft Access 2000 and ArcView 3.2 were used to develop this working database. Existing county and sub-county karst feature datasets have been assembled into the KFD, which is capable of visualizing and analyzing the entire data set. By November 17 2002, 11,682 karst features were stored in the KFD of Minnesota. Data tables are stored in a Microsoft Access 2000 DBMS and linked to corresponding ArcView applications. The current KFD of Minnesota has been moved from a Windows NT server to a Windows 2000 Citrix server accessible to researchers and planners through networked interfaces.     

基于元数据的信息共享机制研究

元数据作为关于数据的数据,是目前信息共享的关键技术,也是当前研究的热点。在对比国际、国内元数据标准的基础上,采用元数据管理的三个层次:元数据子集、元数据实体和元数据元素,建立了“数字成都”元数据标准模板。它主要包括:标识信息、数据质量信息、空间参考信息、数据集的内容信息、分发信息、元数据参考信息。讨论了“数字成都”中基于元数据信息共享系统的结构、模块和特点,实现了分布式数据组织与管理、分布式数据共享、分布式数据快速索引机制以及跨平台数据访问。     

地质矿产预测信息化相关问题的探讨

在矿产资源决策分析领域,GIS不仅提供了在计算机辅助下对多源地学信息进行集成管理的能力、灵活的查询检索能力,而且可在经验与模型的指导下,通过各种空间分析方法对与成矿有关的各种空间信息进行综合分析解释,确定成矿的有利地区.文章探讨了有关地质矿产预测信息化若干问题,包括元数据概念及其重要性、地质科学的数字化、定量化、模型化,地质科学领域的数据特点,综合信息矿产资源预测中的数据分析方法.     

中国西部环境与生态科学数据中心在线共享平台的设计与实现

国家自然科学基金委员会的"中国西部环境与生态科学数据中心"致力于中国西部环境与生态科学数据的共享.在介绍西部数据中心整体结构的基础上,对西部数据中心的在线数据共享平台的技术实现方案、开发模式和数据库结构,元数据标准、数据知识关联、分类和导航等关键技术实现进行了介绍.西部数据中心共享平台本着方便查询、详细数据说明、易于管理、着眼未来和突出服务等原则,充分利用最新的Web和GIS技术在政策许可范围内实现数据共享.最后,讨论了数据中心之间集成、模型服务等问题.     

防震减灾空间信息资源改造方案设计

本文简要介绍“数字福建”项目中防震减灾空间信息资源改造的设计方案     

Earth system curator: metadata infrastructure for climate modeling

The Earth System Curator is a National Science Foundation sponsored project developing a metadata formalism for describing the digital resources used in climate simulations. The primary motivating observation of the project is that a simulation/model’s source code plus the configuration parameters required for a model run are a compact representation of the dataset generated when the model is executed. The end goal of the project is a convergence of models and data where both resources are accessed uniformly from a single registry. In this paper we review the current metadata landscape of the climate modeling community, present our work on developing a metadata formalism for describing climate models, and reflect on technical challenges we have faced that require new research in the area of Earth Science Informatics.     

中国地质调查信息网格平台构建和地质图 数据服务的实现

对组成中国地质调查信息网格平台的结点计算池的构架、机制和组成结点计算池的资源聚合器、元服务、智能服务引擎的概念进行了阐述,提出了结点自治的方案;基于资源共享、虚拟化、Web服务等创建了基于元数据服务、栅格流服务、矢量地图服务、三维可视化服务等多模式的地质图数据服务。目前已初步构建了中国地质调查信息网格,连通10个结点 ,为地质图空间信息共享和应用提供一种全新的技术解决方案,取得了良好的实际运行效果。