Skip to main content

National and International Organization Partnerships

NASA's Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) Program strategically partners with national and international organizations to optimize access to NASA Earth science data.

International Science Council (ISC) World Data System (WDS)

The World Data System (WDS) is an Interdisciplinary Body of the International Science Council (ISC). As a WDS member, NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) Project helps support these WDS goals:

  • Enable universal and equitable access to quality-assured scientific data, data services, products, and information
  • Ensure long-term data stewardship
  • Foster compliance to agreed-upon data standards and conventions
  • Provide mechanisms to facilitate and improve access to data and data products

WDS strives to become a worldwide community of excellence for scientific data, with searchable common data directories and catalogs, to ensure the long-term stewardship and provision of quality-assessed data and data services to the international science community.

ESDIS has been a Network Member of the WDS since January 2013. As a Network Member, ESDIS is an umbrella body representing EOSDIS Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs), all of which are Regular Members of the WDS.

Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS)

NASA’s Data System Program, supported by ESDIS, seeks to leverage and augment investments made in international coordination bodies that help to improve science access to key observation data sets. One of the primary organizations is the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS). Established in 1984, CEOS coordinates civil space-borne observations of Earth. There are over 50 participating space agencies, national, and international organizations that strive to enhance international coordination and data exchange and to optimize societal benefit. ESDIS supports several team members as active participants within the CEOS Working Group on Information Systems and Services (WGISS). WGISS activities focus on the data system mechanisms and practices to improve data sharing and access, and ESDIS is involved in several WGISS activities including the Technology Exploration Interest Group, the International Directory Network (IDN), the Atmospheric Composition Interest Group (ACIG), and the CEOS WGISS Integrated Catalog (CWIC) Project.

CEOS WGISS Integrated Catalog (CWIC)

CWIC has been developed by WGISS to provide a framework that allows for easier search and access of Earth observation data via partnering with CEOS agency data systems. For these partnering agencies, CWIC provides a single point of search and access. CWIC is a virtual clearinghouse of spatial, temporal, and science keyword metadata that brokers access to Earth observation data by interoperating with data archives of other agencies and countries. CWIC is a community catalog for satellite data that provides search and access to satellite data within an integrated view of multiple providers of satellite data holdings.
 
ESDIS’s middleware system, the Common Metadata Repository (CMR), is a key data provider for CWIC and will offer search and access to all of NASA’s unrestricted Earth observation data. Other partners include NOAA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation, the Indian Space Research Organisation, INPE – National Institute for Space Research, USGS, the Academy of Opto-Electronics, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing-1, the National Satellite Meteorological Center/FENGYUNCast, the China Centre for Resources Satellite Data and Application). The IDN is part of NASA's contribution to CEOS and other international Earth science efforts. It extends the IDN capabilities for use by interagency and international collaborators. The IDN offers directory-level search functionality for CWIC and provides federation to individual agencies at the file/granule level.
 
ESDIS has augmented Earthdata Search to allow the discovery and access of cross-discipline data from all of the CWIC data partners. Several operational clients (e.g. the Land Surface Imaging Portal, the Canadian Center for Remote Sensing CEOCat3, and the Group on Earth Observation Data Access Broker) are able to provide search and access to satellite data via CWIC. The CWIC team has worked with the ESA (European Space Agency) Federated Earth Observation missions access team to develop a common interface protocol (Open Search) that enables interoperable access to their respective collections. The CWIC team is currently in the process of updating their architecture to leverage the STAC standard that we hope will further increase the volume of data available to our CWIC clients.
 
The CWIC webpage contains information about the current CWIC data partners and client partners, and details of the technical information needed to access CWIC. ESDIS produced a 6-minute Youtube video demonstrating how a user can search and access satellite data via a CWIC-enabled client portal.

Group on Earth Observations (GEO)

The federal government includes NASA as a participant in the Group on Earth Observations (GEO). GEO is a voluntary partnership of governments and international organizations initiated in 2002 that provides a framework within which governments can develop new projects and coordinate their strategies and investments for environmental societal benefit. ESDIS staff support the development of data system interfaces and other services from NASA systems to those being developed with GEO including the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). ESDIS participation is intended to further leverage our in-house capabilities and data access tools providing an efficient means for data access from our non-US partners and increased data access for our NASA and US science communities.

Quality Assurance Framework for Earth Observation (QA4EO)

ESDIS also participates with the Quality Assurance Framework for Earth Observation (QA4EO) initiative that was endorsed by CEOS as a contribution to facilitate the GEO vision for a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). QA4EO was established to facilitate interoperability of GEO systems, and is based on the adoption of guiding principles, which are implemented through a set of key operational guidelines derived from best practices, for implementation by the GEO community.

United States Group on Earth Observations (USGEO)

Improving the interoperability and access to environmental data and related services across US government agencies is an ongoing ESDIS Project goal. To this end, ESDIS has active membership in the United States Group on Earth Observations (USGEO) Architecture and Data Management (ADM) committee. USGEO was established in 2005 under the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy's Committee on Environment and Natural Resources to lead federal efforts to achieve a national Integrated Earth Observation Systems.

Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP)

The Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) is a broad-based community comprised of researchers and associated groups of more than 110 organizations that produce, interpret, and develop applications for Earth and environmental science data. Although conceived and begun under the auspices of NASA, ESIP now includes sponsorship from other federal agencies. This venue provides ESDIS with a diverse forum for exploring and collaboration on data system activities.

ESDIS also participates in and helps advise on the use of data standards including data formats, data transport, metadata standards, and content standards for archive and preservation. This effort involves work with three key organizations:

Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC)

ESDIS is a member of the US Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC), a U.S. government committee that promotes the coordinated development, use, sharing, and dissemination of geospatial data on a national basis. ESDIS actively interacts and participates in the development of remote sensing data standards through the FGDC in order to foster more efficient use, management, and production of geospatial data.

International Organization for Standardization (ISO)

ESDIS has always fostered the evolution and adoption of data systems standards in support of the long-term preservation of digital information obtained from Earth observations. As a member of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), a voluntary international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations, ESDIS periodically assembles teams of data systems and metadata experts to analyze requirements and recommend best approaches for adopting various ISO series of standards for describing the data and services offered by NASA's Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) Program. NASA has recognized the advantages of adopting ISO metadata standards for future Earth observing missions, and the EOSDIS Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) have also recognized these advantages.

Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

ESDIS is a member of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), an international voluntary consensus standards organization. In 1994 (when OGC was then called the OpenGIS Consortium), NASA initiated a cooperative agreement, the goal of which was to to model interoperable visual environments and demonstrate the OpenGIS principles. NASA's funding allowed OGC to grow and develop a robust technical governance process. NASA has continued to fund and participate in OGC testbed activities and technical steering, including the OGC Web Services (OWC) testbeds (where participating technology providers conduct standards development that is aligned with their product development programs) and collaboration with other standards and technical committees. ESDIS helps to review and suggest modifications to existing standards so that our users can benefit from the adoption and use of agreed to standards and protocols related to environmental data and services.

ESDIS recognizes the following interagency members:

Public/Private Partnerships

NASA’s Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) Program depends on strategic partnerships with public and private companies to help further its data management and data development efforts. The most common means for creating these partnerships is through Space Act Agreements (SAAs), which NASA has relied on to further agency research since the agency’s establishment. NASA uses the term partnership to describe a wide variety of relationships with various external entities (e.g., contractors, academia, the public, other stakeholders). These partnerships are a distinct type of non-procurement business relationship and do not involve the acquisition of goods and services for the direct benefit of the agency; they are non-reimbursable, and no funds are exchanged.

New and existing partnerships are helping ESDS address several current needs:

  • Support fast and parallel data access and utilize cost-effective storage structures
  • Minimize data wrangling and preprocessing
  • Help NASA assess gaps or capabilities for maximizing the use of the Earthdata Cloud platform
  • Demonstrate the potential of cloud computing by bringing algorithms to the data to enable efficient processing and large-scale science analysis
  • Infuse commercial Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques and expertise to address existing data discovery, access, and use challenges

Ongoing SAAs are enabling ESDS to develop a robust cloud infrastructure for NASA Earth science data and improve the discovery of NASA data and resources for using these data through commercial search engines.

Four ESDS SAAs are either in effect or being finalized:

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Through an ongoing SAA, NASA and AWS are collaborating on cloud-based discovery, access, and use of high-value science datasets in NASA’s Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) collection. The AWS partnership features two primary activities: a design and development sandbox through the AWS Open Data Program to serve as a technology showcase and demonstrate ESDS data storage, archive, and use efforts using the AWS Commercial Cloud; and support for How to Cloud workshops, Advancing Collaborative Connections for Earth System Science (ACCESS) Program principal investigator (PI) training, and similar efforts.

The AWS Open Data Sponsorship Program supports the storage of publicly available high-value cloud-optimized datasets. Several EOSDIS datasets are available through the Registry of Open Data on AWS.

In addition, AWS provided hosting for several datasets to support the Agency-sponsored COVID-19 Space Apps Challenge that took place in May 2020. These datasets were made available in Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COG) format to participants.

As NASA looks more towards cloud-based archives, there’s an increased need to ensure that end-users can fully leverage these new capabilities. Along with the design and development sandbox, the second SAA AWS partnership provides AWS credits for workshops that will advance access and use of NASA data on AWS. Workshops considered for support will focus on enabling NASA science using NASA data hosted on AWS. Interested NASA-funded PIs and research teams can request storage allocations and cloud compute resources.

Google Cloud Platform

Through an ongoing SAA, NASA and Google are collaborating on the discovery, access, and use of high-value NASA science datasets. The overall goals of this collaboration include:

  • Investigate the transfer, storage, and value of making large volumes of NASA EOSDIS datasets available on the Google cloud and Google Earth Engine;
  • Make NASA EOSDIS data discoverable to users via the Google Cloud Public Datasets search engine and Earth Engine Catalog; and
  • Demonstrate and evolve ESDS AI capacity by joining forces with NASA’s Frontier Development Lab (FDL) Challenges.

More than 95 NASA EOSDIS datasets from 10 EOSDIS DAACs are available through Google Earth Engine.

NASA’s Frontier Development Lab (FDL) is an applied AI research partnership with Google focusing on developing future AI applications in data-intensive challenges related to space science, planetary science, and Earth science. Members of NASA’s Interagency Implementation and Advanced Concepts Team (IMPACT) hosted and participated in the FDL 2020 Challenges, which is part of the executed Google SAA. IMPACT challenged Earth science FDL researchers to design a Knowledge Discovery Framework (KDF) using AI and machine learning (ML) techniques. The objective of the KDF is to discover unusual patterns and events in NASA Earth observation data by enabling users to provide an example image for which the KDF would search for similar images in the NASA data repository.

IMPACT also is working with FDL on the SpaceML initiative, which is finding ways to apply AI and ML to scientific data. A recent success story in this effort is development of the Worldview Imagery Search Pipeline, which applies ML to imagery in NASA’s Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS) to enable rapid searches for specific imagery in NASA Worldview.

IBM and Microsoft

ESDS is completing SAAs with IBM Research and Microsoft to jointly work on common research problems to accelerate the development, delivery, and adoption of AI to further NASA’s science research and applications and explore new opportunities in cloud technologies that enable and accelerate open science.

The Planetary Computer was recently launched by Microsoft as their newest platform. Using open-source tools and supporting open standards, the platform allows users to leverage the cloud for accelerating environmental sustainability and Earth science. NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Harmonized Landsat Sentinel (HLS) collections are already part of the Planetary Computer Data Catalog.

The Planetary Computer computing environment—the Hub—is a development environment that makes data and APIs accessible through familiar, open-source tools. The Hub builds on the work done by the Pangeo project to put open-source tools of data science to work for the Earth science community. Pangeo is supported through ACCESS.

The Microsoft SAA partnership with ESDS also highlights Microsoft’s commitment to make it easier for NASA to adopt tools on Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service, as well as guide and communicate best practices for Planetary Computer users. Other collaborations include work with the Earth Science Information Partners Lab to advise new potential users on how to work with Earth science data on Azure.