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The NOAA National Geophysical Data Center And Collocated World Data

Service for Geophysics

Dan KowalData Administrator, Information Services Division

NOAA / NESDIS / NGDCdan.kowal@noaa.gov

GeoData Workshop 2014

Failure to Connect?

Technical issues of connecting geodata in and between governmental agencies.

Challenges and Accomplishments

• Metadata Publication• Software Development• Data Citation

Metadata Tools

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/docucomp/

Measurement of Completeness

Records Rubric Scores

Valid Invalid Count ≥ 20 Count ≥ 25 Mean Min Max

3314 218 3157 2512 22.9 6 41

Count of Broken URLS

Components Other Xlinks Broken URLs Broken Xlinks

Count Reuse Count Reuse Count Reuse Count Reuse

277 70570 3 133 34 202 22 226

Metadata Publication - Local• NGDC Metadata H

omepage– Immediately

available

• NGDC Geoportal – synchronized

weekly or upon request

Software Challenges

● Wide variety of data types● Diversity of data providers● Decreasing staff and funds● Increasing number of data sets ~ 600 to

date● Legacy code bases● Lack of communication

Engineering Objectives● Common framework

o standardize on common technologies, shared knowledge, centralization supporting tracking / reporting

● Isolate dataset specific componentso share things like file handling, messaging across

disparate datasets● Modular and extensible

o ease maintenance and facilitate testing, phasing in new capabilities (incremental improvements), reduce likelihood of system-wide impacts to errors or malfunctions

Engineering Objectives - cont’d

● Industry-standard and best practices and patternso develop in teams, automated builds, test

coverage, leverage industry tools● Resilient

o eliminate single points of failure, be able to restart processes following errors without data loss, secure

● Minimize custom codeo reduce software maintenance

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New Access Interfaces at NGDC

DOI Landing Page

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DOI Landing Page

DOI Readiness Assessment

Data Citation Summary• Data Linkage to Publications:

– Data Citation Index in Thomson-Reuters’ Web of Knowledge– Elsevier ScienceDirect – Ongoing discussions.

• Procedural Directive for Data Citation in the works. – Leverage ESIP Guidance– NCAR’s Data Citation White Paper

• DataCite – ~ 50 Datasets minted through EZID.

In Summary…

• Need to fix the catalog publishing disconnect.• Enterprise approach to development paying dividends.– Creating opportunities for reuse.– Generic functionality shared across data sets.– Going to take more resources to transition legacy data sets.

• Collaboration in Data Citation practices across Data Centers bodes well for future consolidation.

• Begin “Interoperability” discussion early when initiating a new Archive Project.