Abstract
At the Goddard Memorial Symposium, 2017, Greenbelt, MD, Dr. St. Germain, NOAA NESDIS Lead Engineer, agreed that the evolving systems of Small Satellites may offer significant benefits in terms of cost, schedule, incorporation of technical improvements and risk management for NOAA meteorological applications. But Small Satellite systems do not offer similar benefits for simple incorporation of these data sets for operational forecast models. Many developers of small satellite systems have broad and innovative engineering experience but do not have a broad understanding of what data users expect as background to the data set. [We could consider this information as metadata to the observations data set.] The users consider specific information on how the data is acquired to be essential to understand the details and nuances of the actual data sets. We usually look for detailed information on sensor design, how the sensor was tested, how the test equipment was verified, how the long-term stability of the sensor is established, and how will the data product be validated. Our initial thinking on this matter will be presented, and will be verified with Goddard Ocean Color Biology experience with ingest of the Ocean Color Monitor data from the OCEANSAT-1 Mission.
Additional conversation and discussion on the topic is being carried over to a poster in this Conference. The intent is to provide one potential framework for what users of meteorological data or other data regimes may expect when agencies look to use (purchase?) data from small satellite systems. This information always is easier to organize and provide when developers understand these expectations during the development stage and “bake” their approaches to meeting these expectations into early mission planning. Some institutions that are planning the development of space hardware intended to deliver “data buy” hardware are mature and experienced in these matters and will not need this guidance. Other institutions are not mature and likely do not realize the full expectations of the user community for these metadata.
Self-Assessed Data Quality Standards (SAQS)
At the Goddard Memorial Symposium, 2017, Greenbelt, MD, Dr. St. Germain, NOAA NESDIS Lead Engineer, agreed that the evolving systems of Small Satellites may offer significant benefits in terms of cost, schedule, incorporation of technical improvements and risk management for NOAA meteorological applications. But Small Satellite systems do not offer similar benefits for simple incorporation of these data sets for operational forecast models. Many developers of small satellite systems have broad and innovative engineering experience but do not have a broad understanding of what data users expect as background to the data set. [We could consider this information as metadata to the observations data set.] The users consider specific information on how the data is acquired to be essential to understand the details and nuances of the actual data sets. We usually look for detailed information on sensor design, how the sensor was tested, how the test equipment was verified, how the long-term stability of the sensor is established, and how will the data product be validated. Our initial thinking on this matter will be presented, and will be verified with Goddard Ocean Color Biology experience with ingest of the Ocean Color Monitor data from the OCEANSAT-1 Mission.
Additional conversation and discussion on the topic is being carried over to a poster in this Conference. The intent is to provide one potential framework for what users of meteorological data or other data regimes may expect when agencies look to use (purchase?) data from small satellite systems. This information always is easier to organize and provide when developers understand these expectations during the development stage and “bake” their approaches to meeting these expectations into early mission planning. Some institutions that are planning the development of space hardware intended to deliver “data buy” hardware are mature and experienced in these matters and will not need this guidance. Other institutions are not mature and likely do not realize the full expectations of the user community for these metadata.