The focus of this Case Study is to identify and compare the usage of metadata elements and attributes in CMR metadata collections as well as to identify and compare the completeness of UMM-Profile concepts in CMR metadata collections. The metadata usage studies include a comparison of NASA metadata with IDN and SciOps metadata as well as an evaluation of Commonly Used Documentation Objects (CUDOs).This work updates our prior analysis of CMR metadata in several important ways:
1) We retrieved new metadata records for all collections in the CMR during March 2017. This increased the size of our sample from ~4000 records from the NASA DAACs to over 32,000 records from the DAACs, SciOps, and the International Directory Network (IDN).
2) We added a new metric to our calculations that reports the percent of records in a metadata group (e.g. DAAC) that include a concept or item. This provides important information for the collection managers as well as providing information on the usage of various metadata elements. For example, we can distinguish items that occur once in every record from those that occur multiple times in some records.
3) We developed new visualizations for comparing metadata collections and used these visualizations to compare:
The CMR includes metadata from many sources inside and outside of NASA. These are the sources collections we analyzed, the collection acronyms, and the number of records in the samples:
NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers | Acronym | Count |
| Alaska Satellite Facility | ASF | 161 |
| Crustal Dynamics Data Information System | CDDIS | 38 |
| Global Hydrology Resource Center | GHRC | 1044 |
| Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Center | GES_DISC | 361 |
| Level 1 and Atmosphere Archive and Distribution System | LAADS | 130 |
| Land, Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS | LANCEMODIS | 6 |
| Land, Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS | LANCEAMSR2 | 154 |
| Langley Research Center | LARC | 406 |
| Langley Research Center | LARC_ASDC Atmospheric Science Data Center | 606 |
| Land Process DAAC - EOS Core System | LPDAAC_ECS | 285 |
| National Snow and Ice Data Center Version 0 | NSIDCV0 | 223 |
| National Snow and Ice Data Center EOS Core System | NSIDC_ECS | 784 |
| Ocean Biology Processing Group | OBPG | 132 |
Oak Ridge National Laboratory | ORNL | 1216 |
| Ozone Monitoring Instrument Near Real Time | OMINRT | 5 |
| Physical Oceanography DAAC | PODAAC | 603 |
| Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center | SEDAC | 202 |
| U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation Systems | USGS_EROS | 11 |
| International Directory Network | IDN | |
| Australian Antarctic Data Centre | AU_AADC | 2559 |
| European Space Agency | ESA | 103 |
| European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites | EUMETSAT | 23 |
| Indian Space Research Organisation | ISRO | 19 |
| Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency | JAXA | 340 |
| Fire Information for Resource Management System | LM_FIRMS | 1 |
| NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information | NCEI | 5448 |
| U.S. Geological Survey Long Term Archive | USGS_LTA | 130 |
| SciOps Collections | SciOps | |
| Advanced Cooperative Arctic Data and Information Service | ACADIS | 393 |
| Centro de Datos Antarticos, Argentina | AR | 142 |
| Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office | BCO-DMO | 136 |
| National Antarctic and Arctic Data Center, China | CN | 134 |
| Columbia University | COLUMBIA | 214 |
| Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U. S. Department of Energy | DOE | 202 |
| Geologic Division, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior | DOIUSGSGD | 128 |
| Open File Services Section, Publications Warehouse, Eastern Region, Publications, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior | DOIUSGSPUBS | 105 |
| SOUTHEAST ECOLOGICAL SCIENCE CENTER, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR | DOIUSGSSESC | 207 |
| Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research, Data and Information System | IAI-DIS | 116 |
| Marine Biodiversity Information Network, Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, International Council for Science | ICSU | 112 |
| International Ocean Biogeographic Information System | IOBIS | 295 |
| National Institute of Polar Research, Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, Japan | JP | 112 |
| Korea Polar Research Institute, Republic of Korea | KR | 329 |
| Georgia Coastal Ecosystems, Long-Term Ecological Research Network Office | LTER | 177 |
| National Snow and Ice Data Center | NSIDC | 187 |
| Antarctica New Zealand, New Zealand Antarctic Institute, New Zealand | NZ | 857 |
| Research Data Archive, Computational and Information Systems Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research | UCAR | 437 |
| Surface Ocean Lower Atmosphere Study, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, UK | UEA | 104 |
| British Oceanographic Data Centre, Natural Environment Research Council, United Kingdom | UK | 33 |
| Global Land Cover Facility, University of Maryland | UMD | 169 |
| Global Resource Information Database - Geneva, Division of Early Warning and Assessment, United Nations Environment Programme | UNEPDEWA | 373 |
| UNEP Regional Office for Asia Pacific, United Nations Environment Programme | UNEPROAP | 162 |
| United States Antarctic Program Data Center | USAP | 190 |
| North Inlet-Winyah Bay Reserve, Baruch Marine Field Laboratory, Belle W. Baruch Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences, University of South Carolina | USC | 151 |
We examined completeness of the NASA and IDN metadata groups with respect to the UMM-Collection recommendation. Nine of the fifteen required elements are complete in all these metadata collections (see Table 1).
Table 1 - UMM Concept Percent Completeness in NASA Collections
Required Concept | % Complete | Required Concept | % Complete | Required Concept | % Complete | Required Concept | % Complete |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Metadata Dates | 100% | Abstract | 100% | Keyword | 100% | Platform Short Name | 97% |
| Resource Identifier | 100% | Data Dates | 100% | Related URL | 94% | Instrument Short Name | 93% |
| Resource Title | 100% | Processing Level | 99% | Temporal Extent | 100% | Project Name | 73% |
| Resource Version | 100% | Responsibility | 100% | Spatial Extent | 95% |
Summary Tables include concept names (with links to information describing the concepts in the ISO Explorer), ISO paths used to search for the concepts, summary guidance relevant to the specific concepts, histograms that show the number of records in each collection that are missing the concept as well as links to table that shows the specific records that are missing various elements.
All scientific documentation includes contact information for people and organizations, identifiers, references to external resources (online and offline), spatial and temporal extents, keywords, and other items that occur multiple times. ISO metadata includes standard representations for these objects (and others) and it is helpful to use these standard representations as templates throughout a metadata collection.
We examined usage of these Commonly Used Documentation Objects (CUDOs) across NASA and IDN Collections and identified a number of differences across collections. We also identify collections with more complete information that can be used as examples for guiding improvement of others.
Contact Information: Most contact information in the CMR is limited to organization names and roles and contact information as part of the resource citation is rare. The email element of the contact information is important across all contact information but it is absent from many collections and contact sections.
Identifiers: Identifiers are complete across NASA and IDN for metadata records and for resource citations but are not consistently used for other items, e.g. platforms, instruments, missions.
Citations: Resource citations are complete in all collections. The ISO standard includes mechanisms for over thirty types of external documentation sources, e.g. algorithm descriptions, quality reports, scientific papers, etc. These capabilities are generally unused in CMR metadata because they generally do not exist in the primary source dialects (DIF, ECHO).
Online Resources: Most collections contain online resources for data distribution and many of those URL have associated names. Fewer have descriptions that might help users understand the function of the URL.
Spatial Extents: Minimum bounding rectangles are the most commonly used spatial extent and they are complete in 50% of the NASA and IDN collections.
Temporal Extents: Temporal extents are generally more common than spatial extents in NASA and IDN collections.
This report updates the metadata evaluation that we did during 2016 and provides an opportunity to identify how the CMR metadata have evolved over the year. The total number of records increased by over 50% during this time. We introduced a new visualization to summarize this comparison. Table 2 summarizes the results and provides links to Tables that show the elements that changed:
Table 2. Counts of completeness changes in
NASA DAAC Collections - 2016-2017
The largest change identified is forty-eight elements that were introduced to the metadata during 2017. These forty-eight elements existed in Some 2017 collections, and did not exist in any (None) 2016 collections. The second largest change is the deletion of twenty-one elements that existed in some 2016 collections and in no 2017 collections (None). This change was primarily due to an improvement in the translation from the CMR into ISO.
The CMR includes three groups of metadata records with separate and distinct histories and processing paths, see Table 1. The first, referred to as the NASA Collection, is made up of metadata records originally created at DAACS using the ECHO dialect. The second, referred to as the IDN Collection, includes records from major International data providers that are ingested into the CMR by SciOps. The third collection, referred to as SciOps, includes metadata records more than 1500 sources that originated in the Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) and the DIF dialect. Each of these collections includes sources that are analyzed separately with the expectation that they may have homogeneous characteristics. Of course, the validity of this assumption may vary with collection and source.
Table 1. Metadata Groups in the Common Metadata Repository (CMR)
Group Title | # Records | Group History | Major components - # Records |
NASA | 6367 | Traditional DAAC Metadata – ECHO Dialect | GES-DISC – 1044 ORNL – 1216 18 DAAC Collections |
IDN | 8702 | Non-NASA Collections – Managed by SciOps – Typically, DIF dialect | NOAA_NCEI – 5488 AU_AADC – 2559 8 Miscellaneous Collections Collections |
SciOps (formerly GCMD) | 5465 | Miscellaneous, mostly non-NASA – DIF Dialect | NZ – 857 UCAR – 437 ACADIS – 393 Korea Polar - 329 |
Comparisons between these metadata groups are influenced by the fact that the collections that originate in ECHO contain much more content (406 items) than the collections that originate in DIF (175 items). Much of this content is related to additional attribute information and detailed contact information that exists in ECHO but not DIF.
A clear pattern that emerges from these comparisons is that items tend to exist or be complete in all or none of the collections that originate in DIF (IDN and SciOps). This reflects the homogeneity of content in these collections that may result from management by one group (SciOps) and marked differences between the content of these collections and those that originate in ECHO from various NASA DAACs.
The IDN group includes metadata collections from many large international data producers and providers. We had anticipated that these collections might provide insight into metadata practices and priorities of these organizations. In fact, these metadata are collected and shepherded into the CMR by SciOps and it appears that they reflect SciOps metadata management practices more than they reflect the metadata practices of the originating organizations. See NASA vs. IDN for the comparison.
The SciOps group includes more than 13,000 metadata records that originated in the GCMD and were provided by nearly 2000 data providers, all non-IDN members. These providers are diverse and more than 1700 of them each have fewer than ten records in CMR. We selected twenty-five providers with more than 100 records for the comparison of NASA vs. SciOps.