An Intelligent Archive Testbed Incorporating Data Mining

Many significant advances have occurred during the last two decades in remote sensing instrumentation, computation, storage, and communication technology. A series of Earth observing satellites have been launched by US and international agencies and have been operating and collecting global data on a regular basis. These advances have created a data rich environment for scientific research and applications. NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) Data and Information System (EOSDIS) has been operational since August 1994 with support for pre-EOS data. Currently, EOSDIS supports all the EOS missions including Terra (1999), Aqua (2002), ICESat (2002) and Aura (2004). EOSDIS has been effectively capturing, processing and archiving several terabytes of standard data products each day. It has also been distributing these data products at a rate of several terabytes per day to a diverse and globally distributed user community (Ramapriyan et al. 2009). There are other NASA-sponsored data system activities including measurement-based systems such as the Ocean Data Processing System and the Precipitation Processing system, and several projects under the Research, Education and Applications Solutions Network (REASoN), Making Earth Science Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs), and the Advancing Collaborative Connections for Earth-Sun System Science (ACCESS) programs. Together, these activities provide a rich set of resources constituting a “value chain” for users to obtain data at various levels ranging from raw radiances to interdisciplinary model outputs. The result has been a significant leap in our understanding of the Earth systems that all humans depend on for their enjoyment, livelihood, and survival.