Review of NASA's Distributed Active Archive Centers (1999) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
C CGED Interview with ESDIS (September 1997)
C CGED Interview with ESDIS (September 1997)
Pages 195-214
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From page 195... ...
Science advisory groups have been established to ensure that the data and information services provided by the DAACs meet the needs of the science community (Plan, section 2.44. How well are the DAAC advisory groups working ?
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From page 196... ...
The coordination between these groups is mainly via NASA, with additional informal coordination by way of dual participation in the meetings of these advisory groups. Several of the DAAC UWG members are also members of the EOSDIS Data Panel which is responsible for advising the ESDIS Project in overall direction and priorities in serving the science community.
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From page 197... ...
The August demo version of ECS will be installed at the GSFC DAAC in late October to support early operator training and science software testing in single thread scenarios. A test version of the system will be deployed at GSFC and EDC in January 1998 and at LaRC and NSIDC in February 1998 to support science software integration and testing in the production environment and to support critical interface testing.
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From page 198... ...
and product generation requirements. The LaRC and GSFC systems are being augmented to support CERES processing for TRMM, but a major development would be required to provide an automated production environment sufficient to support MODIS and to provide the production on demand functions required for ASTER.
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From page 199... ...
NSIDC's work with EASE-Grid has been highly praised by the user community. The DAACs are working with the Instrument Teams in the integration and testing of science software into the ECS environment.
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From page 200... ...
The DAACs have worked closely with the ESDIS Project in developing operations staffing and transition plans whereby a significant portion of the budget originally assigned to ECS has been transitioned to the DAACs for operation of the ECS-delivered system at the DAACs. The DAACs have opportunity to provide input to ESDIS's evaluations of the ECS Contractor' s performance, and a DAAC representative sits on the ECS Contractor's Performance Evaluation Board (for fee determination)
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From page 201... ...
We recognize there is a learning process involved here and the Instrument Teams are expected to provide some initial help in getting the DAAC personnel educated about the specifics of their products. The ITs are also responsible to provide the appropriate documents (ATBDs [Algorithm Theoretical Basis Documentsi, Guides, etc.)
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From page 202... ...
To what extent has the DAAC experience with user interests and satisfaction affected NASA's planning for future product generation and product support services! The DAAC experience has led NASA to fund the DAACs to perform venous services, including a CD-ROM sampler which can be useful to a large segment of the user community and prepackaged data sets which save users effort.
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From page 203... ...
Members of the DSWG include representatives from the ITs, DAACs and the ESDIS Project. Representatives from the "pull" user community have been included in the meetings as well when relevant.
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From page 204... ...
How can the DAACs test a system for which there is no complete picture and which changes constantly? A Test Methodology Working Group, which includes ESDIS Project personnel from the DAAC and Science Operations addresses this issue.
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From page 205... ...
The pertinent requirement here is: The EOSDIS shall provide Earth science data and information services to the EOS investigator community, the broader Earth science community, policy makers, the education community and the general public in that order, commensurate with resources. However, it is expected that under the current budget DAACs can support the general public.
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From page 206... ...
How do you respond ? Technology selection is based on, among other things, buying hardware as late as possible to take advantage of price/performance improvements, maximizing processing power and storage capacity to meet requirements, facilitating porting of instrument team software from science computing facilities, and supporting software compatibility from version to version within ECS.
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From page 207... ...
(The JPL and NSIDC plans were approved by the ESDIS Project a couple of months ago; the LaRC plan was approved over a year ago.) EDC (except for user services)
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From page 208... ...
of new versions of algorithms. Decisions to reprocess data on a large scale will be made by the Data Processing Resources Board chaired by the EOSDIS Project Scientist (Skip Reber)
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From page 209... ...
When the ECS development is completed, it will provide a scaleable, adaptable, and evolvable architecture that is easily extended to support new missions and data products. It will be highly automated, support user access to information without requiring knowledge of data center holdings, and permit DAAC-unique extensions to support individual science discipline needs.
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From page 210... ...
It was left to the ITs to determine the best teaming arrangements in each case. The following is the set of teaming arrangements that has resulted: ASTER: Data processing at JPL SCF; Archival and storage at EDC DAAC [L1 processing occurs in Japan, data are shipped to and archived at EDC; EDC sends small subset of L1 data to JPL SCF per JPL IT's request; JPL SCF produces higher level products and transfers to EDC DAAC for archival and distribution CERES: Data processing, archival and distribution occurs at Langley DAAC using the "Langley TRMM Information System (LaTIS)
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From page 211... ...
Similarly, UWGs include EOS investigators, and in general the UWGs are very happy with their DAACs, as evidenced by various letters of recommendation received by the ESDIS Project and MTPE. The investigators' willingness to continue to be associated with the UWG,
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From page 212... ...
What lessons learnedfrom the NASA Pathfinder program have been incorporated into EOSDIS? The Pathfinder program resulted in two categories of products: Software and science algorithms developed to reprocess satellite instrument data to higher level products, and the resulting long term global datasets.
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From page 213... ...
The ability to use toolkit functions in a parallel symmetric multiprocessing environment was also investigated using an SGI CHALLENGE XL with 8 processors. Pathfinder data production systems were developed to be robust and operable for specifically known, finite datasets.
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From page 214... ...
chaired by the EOSDIS Project Scientist. The instrument teams and interdisciplinary teams have their own computing facilities where they produce new innovative products (research or special products)
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