Metadata Development for the Integration of CEOP Satellite-Observation Data

Abstract

CEOP (Coordinated Enhanced Observing Period) is currently establishing an integrated global observation system for the water and energy cycles to meet both scientific and social needs. To integrate various CEOP data such as satellite products, reference site data, and model output such as Model Output Location Time Series (MOLTS), it is necessary to exactly represent or reconstruct the geometric conditions involved in observing or acquiring the data via space-borne sensors etc. Information that contains a description or reconstruction of the observation conditions is usually represented by metadata. The standardization of metadata and imagery metadata is being undertaken by several international organizations, including ISO/TC 211. This paper reviews the present status of documents that contain metadata specifications and proposes the CEOP/ISO metadata model for the development of standardized metadata to fulfill the requirements of integrating CEOP data and to conform to metadata standards. The results are developed and presented in terms of satellite metadata, reference-site metadata, and MOLTS metadata. We also present the metadata application architecture that describes how to use these metadata to establish a data service and data discovery on a local or wide-area network for the integration of satellite observation data.