1. WGISS ATT Data Format Documents, Processes, and Examples Stuart Doescher, USGS WGISS-18 September 2004 Beijing, China

2. Background The Guidelines on Standard Formats and Data Description Languages Version 1.0; 18 May 1998 document has served as a description of formats as they existed in the mid and late 1990s. The guideline recognized that data formats vary, but there is a real need to exchange data between archive facilities and agencies. The original guideline addressed the dominant formats at that time. It has been helpful to new systems and archive migration projects, but is now becoming dated.

3. The 1998 Guideline Table of Contents Introduction Concepts Standard Generic Formats (of the time) Data Descriptions Additional Information Other Aspects Conclusions (http://wgiss.ceos.org/tssg/archive.doc/formguid.doc)

4. The 1998 Guideline Formats included netCDF (http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cdf/cdf_home.html) HDF (http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/) SDTS (http://mcmcweb.er.usgs.gov/sdts/) FITS (http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/heasarc/fits.htm) GIF (http://www.webstyleguide.com/graphics/gifs.html) ISO/IEC 12087 (http://164.214.2.51/ntb/baseline/docs/biif_5/) SFDU (http://ssdoo.gsfc.nasa.gov/nost/sfdu_office.html) GeoTIFF (http://www.remotesensing.org/geotiff/spec/geotiffhome.html)

5. There are additional formats CEOS ICF (Base-band Archive Inter-Change Format) - 2001 GERALD (Generic Exchange Raw Archive Level Data) HRVIR (High Resolution Visible Infra-Red) ERS-SAR (Earth Resource System Synthetic Aperture Radar) VEXCEL (proprietary) SPOT MPDS (Mobile Packet Data Service) FRED (Framed Raw Expanded Data) LTWG (Landsat Technical Working Group) EAF (Existing Archive Format) CCF (Computer Compatible Format) AND OTHERS ………

6. The basic question seems to be: What does the next version of the WGISS ATT Guideline on Formats contain and how is it presented? To get to these questions lets look at an example.

7. Consider a sampling of product formats used by the USGS NDF (NLAPS Data Format) GEOTIFF DTED Level 1b HDF (Hierachical Data Format)

8. As an example the ATT Format List could include Agency Data Format URL =================================================================== USGSLandsat 7 NDFhttp://landsat7.usgs.gov/documents/NLAPSII.pdfhttp://landsat7.usgs.gov/documents/NLAPSII.pdf USGSLandsat 7 GEOTIFF http://www.remotesensing.org/geotiff/spec/http://www.remotesensing.org/geotiff/spec/ USGSSRTM DTEDhttp://www.rivix.com/DTED.cfmhttp://www.rivix.com/DTED.cfm NOAAAVHRR Level 1Bhttp://noaasis.noaa.gov/NOAASIS/ml/avhrr.htmlhttp://noaasis.noaa.gov/NOAASIS/ml/avhrr.html NASAMODIS HDFhttp://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ NOAANomads Gribhttp://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/docs/on388/http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/docs/on388/

9. Comments?? ATT will need this type of list of formats as a starter no matter what ever else we do. As a minimum will publish list at WGISS web

10. Action ?? Agencies submit their list of formats with (agency, data type, format, URL or Document) by Feb 1, 2005 to archive@wgiss.ceos.org archive@wgiss.ceos.org ATT will publish the list on the Web at http://wgiss.ceos.org/tssg/archive.html http://wgiss.ceos.org/tssg/archive.html ATT will present results of action at WGISS – 19 and recommend next steps.