Advancing the Geosciences through Open Standards

Data is the lifeblood of the geosciences. Furthermore, the acquisition, processing and interpretation of data all depend on established specifications describing the systems and procedures that were used in producing, describing and distributing that data. It can be said that technical standards underpin the entire scientific endeavour. This is becoming ever truer in the era of Big Data and Open, Transdisciplinary Science. It takes the dedicated efforts of many individuals to create a viable standard. This presentation will describe the experiences and status of standards development activities related to geoscience remote sensing technologies which are being carried out under the auspices of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS).

A Standards Development Organization (SDO) exists to provide the environment, rules and governance necessary to facilitate the fair and equitable development of standards, and to assist in the distribution and maintenance of the resulting standards. The GRSS sponsors projects with the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA), which, like other SDOs such as ISO and OGC, has well-defined policies and procedures that help ensure the openness and integrity of the standards development process. Each participant in a standards working group typically brings specific interests as a producer, consumer or regulator of a product, process or service. Creating an environment that makes it possible to find consensus among competing interests is a primary role of an SDO. I will share some of the insights gained from the six standards projects that the GRSS has initiated which involve hyperspectral imagers, the spectroscopy of soils, synthetic aperture radar, microwave radiometers, GNSS reflectometry, and radio frequency interference in protected geoscience bands.