CEOS Development Environment

Preservation and Stewardship

Earth Observation data are unique snapshots of the condition of the Earth at a specific point in time. As such they constitute a humankind asset, which needs to be preserved, i.e. safeguarded against loss and kept accessible and usable for current and future generations. This task becomes more important in the view of over 40 years’ worth of data available in Earth Observation archives around the world – and the increasing demand for monitoring long-term variations environmental parameters, such as sea surface temperature or global ozone distributions, which require long time series of data. Moreover, with the advent of new, high resolution Earth Observation missions and programs, data volumes are expected to grow significantly over the next years.

Background

WGISS accomplishes its Data Preservation and Curation efforts through the Data Stewardship Interest Group (DSIG) (formerly known as the WGISS Archive Task Team). The DSIG was formed due to renewed interest at the WGISS-27 meeting and its mandate extended to cover, in addition to data archiving, also data and associated knowledge consolidation and valorization aspects.

Purpose

Activities in the Data Preservation and Curation context have the purpose to:
Enable the sharing of agency investigations, developments, experiences and lessons learned relating to EO data stewardship.
    Draft common cross-agency best practices or guidelines of data stewardship for possible adoption by WGISS.
    Sponsor technical exchanges and the conduction of Joint Activities and/or Pilot Projects on specific data stewardship topics.
    Establish and maintain a CEOS “Data Purge Alert” service.
    Contribute to GEO and Standardization activities.

Scope

Activities focus on EO Data, Metadata, and Associated Knowledge:
Long-term archiving approaches, systems and media
Formats and Standards
Lifecycle concepts
Valorization and Curation

Results:

White Papers and Reports

Best Practices and Recommendations

Contact Us

Please feel free to contact the Data Stewardship Interest Group point of contact, Mirko Albani, with any comments or questions about the group and its activities.