As shown in the Identifying Requirements section, we expect some of the NASA requirements to be addressed by current ISO Standards. Once known, requirements can be separated into groups depending on whether or not they are addressed by the current ISO Standards. Once identified these two groups are treated in different ways.

Requirements Already Addressed

NASA requirements that are addressed by the ISO Standards need to be allocated to the consensus locations in the standards and guidance needs to be created describing those allocations. If those requirements come from existing metadata systems, the guidance should include tools that transform content from those existing systems into ISO and back. These transforms and examples of the translations will be important tools in increasing understanding of the ISO Standards across the ESDIS community and integrating ISO metadata into existing systems.

A second important aspect of addressed requirements involves feedback from the ISO Standards into the NASA requirements that occurs if the ISO Standards offer improved implementation of shared concepts. In these cases, the community standards used in existing NASA systems might be evolved towards increased compliance with the ISO Standards to take advantage of those capabilities.

Requirements Not Addressed

Requirements that are identified but not addressed by the ISO Standards are candidates for extensions to the ISO Standards (and incorporation into the NASA Best Practices). These requirements need to be evaluated and integrated as extensions into the ISO conceptual models. These models include a standard mechanism for accomplishing this integration. Once the conceptual fit has been determined, an XML representation of the new content must be developed using the ISO encoding rules (ISO 19139).

NASA requirements that are not addressed by current ISO Standards are important candidates for inclusion in revisions of these Standards. Systematic revisions of ISO Standards can occur every five years at the request of a member. ISO 19115, is just finishing the first systematic review and ISO 19115-1, the revision, includes many improvements motivated by NASA and other members of the U.S. Environmental Data Community. The standard for documenting data acquisition and images (ISO 19115-2) will be eligible for revision during 2014. New metadata elements developed as part of the NASA Best Practices for ISO will be proposed for inclusion in that revision.

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