Provide Unified Metadata Model (UMM)-compliant product metadata

[lewismc]

Metadata can be represented in a number of standards and formats. Many discipline-specific or community-specific metadata standards have been developed to support data management and data discovery systems and to capture and convey information to users. Examples include Directory Interchange Format (DIF), Ecological Metadata Language (EML), Sensor Model Language (SensorML), Climate Science Modeling Language (CSML), and NetCDF Markup Language (NcML). One commonly used metadata standard, the Federal Geographic Data Committee's (FGDC) Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM) was developed in support of the coordinated development, use, sharing, and dissemination of geospatial data on a national basis.

Additionally, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) developed a series of standards to describe geographic information. Specifically, ISO 19115* is widely used to provide metadata which accompany scientific data products. We should provide such metadata when we write COAL products. This would probably take the form of a separate XML file which accompanies each data product. The generation of ISO metadata is by no means a trivial process. Some of the standards we may wish to implement are

1. ISO 19115-1:2014, Geographic information – Metadata Fundamentals; Technical Committee : ISO/TC 211 Geographic information/Geomatics
2. ISO 19157:2013, Geographic information – Data Quality; Technical Committee: ISO/TC 211 Geographic information/Geomatics
3. ISO 19130:2010, Imagery Sensor Models; Technical Committee: ISO/TC 211 Geographic information/Geomatics
4. ISO 19115-2:2009 Geographic information - Metadata - Part 2: Extensions for imagery and gridded data

In addition, I’ve found the following resources which provide excellent coverage albeit maybe even a little heavy.

1. https://wiki.earthdata.nasa.gov/display/NASAISO/NASA+ISO+for+EOSDIS, there is a wealth of information here and digesting it all will be a pretty cumbersome task. Also see child page https://wiki.earthdata.nasa.gov/display/NASAISO/ISO+191**+Metadata+Family and related children pages… again there is loads of content here. I am going through it gradually. Also see the link to the Webinar Barry Weiss’ gave.
2. NOAA has produced a series of workbooks which provide us with a guide to implementing the ISO 191** metadata standards. You can check them out at https://www.ncddc.noaa.gov/metadata-standards/ (scroll to the bottom for access to the PDF’s). There is loads of material here.

[lewismc]

The above is superseded by availability of the NASA Unified Metadata Model (UMM) standard. We should use UMM to model all of the product metadata.