Data and Metadata Standards

Depending on the type of your data, you will should to specify the standards for both the data and metadata you will maintain. In many cases, listing the existing standards for your data type should adequately meet this requirement. Existing standards for many types of data can be found at the following resources.

• Time Series and synoptic data: CUAHSI HIS has established standards for data and metadata, can incorporate metadata into the HIS catalog, and can ingest data into Observations Data Model (ODM).

  The ODM is standard database schema for use in the storage of point observations in a relational database; full data and metadata specifications are available at his.cuahsi.org/publications.html#design.

  PIs may cite that they will use ODM and follow HIS data and metadata standards.

  Horsburgh, J. S., D. G. Tarboton, D. R. Maidment, and I. Zaslavsky (2008), A relational model for environmental and water resources data, Water Resour. Res., 44, W05406, doi:10.1029/2007WR006392

• GIS coverages and spatial data: The Federal Geographic Data Commission (FGDC) has established a US Federal Metadata standard, The Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM),Ver.2.

  A workbook with user friendly information and full documentation of the standards is available at www.fgdc.gov/metadata/documents/workbook_0501_bmk.pdf

• Regular Gridded data and imagery: NASA has been working with the FGDC to establish data and metadata standards for imagery and gridded data sets.

  PIs may wish to look at NASA's report on standards for Earth Remote Sensing Data: www.isprs.org/proceedings/XXXIII/congress/part2/147_XXXIII-part2.pdf

• Other Resources on data and metadata standards:
  • ESRI's Arc Hydro Groundwater Model: resources.arcgis.com/content/groundwater-data-model
  • ESRI's Arc Hydro Model: resources.arcgis.com/content/hydro-data-model
  • LIDAR data management: www.opentopography.org

Example Language

If your project generates standard time series data, your data standards and metadata section might include:

This project will use an existing standard for time series data, Observations Data Model (ODM) (Horsburgh et al., 2008) and follow HIS data and metadata standards available in the same reference.