1. Amanda Leon ESIP Summer 2017
Virtual Collections
Amanda Leon
ESIP Summer 2017

2. What is a “virtual collection”?
Virtual: refers to the idea that the data sets are not all in a single location or repository
Collection: implies a curation of specific datasets and products relevant to a theme or application

3. What is a “virtual collection”?
ESDSWG 2015: collected use cases and types of resources that could be curated into a collection
Community Use Cases
NSIDC DAAC User Working Group
Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Science Team and Applications Working Group

4. Enabling Virtual Collections
Creating components for curating VCs
Reformat
Reproject
Variable
Spatial
Temporal
Granule Metadata
UMM-G
Collection Metadata UMM-C
Data Transformation Services
Subsetting Services

5. Enabling Virtual Collections
What components are still needed?
Subsetting Services
File Metadata UMM-G
Collection Metadata
UMM-C
Data Transformation Services
Variable Metadata UMM-V
Service Metadata UMM-S

6. Data stewards are creating them
Around missions
ORNL DAAC
NSIDC DAAC
GES DAAC
Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Satellite Mission
AirMOSS: Soil Moisture Visualizer Airborne Microwave Observatory of Subcanopy and Surface
NSIDC DAAC
ASF DAAC
NSIDC DAAC
ORNL DAAC

7. Data stewards are creating them
Around Earth science domains
NSIDC DAAC
University of Maryland
NASA GMAO
Satellite Observations of Arctic Change (SOAC)
Sea Level Change Portal
PO.DAAC
NSIDC DAAC
NSIDC DAAC
JPL

8. Data stewards are creating them, but…
We know where to find data
And harmonize different data access protocols, formats, projections, girds, etc.
And can only manually curate for a limited set of use case

9. Researchers are creating them
Around research and applied science
GES DAAC
NSIDC DAAC
OB.DAAC
PO.DAAC
EarthData Search: discover and customize data
Flood in Texas on May 2015
6 variables from
5 sensors for
3 months
More harmonizing

10. Researchers are creating them, but…
There are still barriers to finding and harmonizing data
And their VCs typically are not captured or shareable

11. Moving forward How do we make curating VCs scalable and interoperable?
How do we define a standardized service to capture, disseminate, and share VCs?
Protyped a VC with CMR tagging
How might we enable VCs so the user community to easily create and share them?

12. Thank you!