The Origins of NASA’s Visualization, Exploration and Data Analytics (VEDA) Platform: A platform for biomass research, NASA’s Earth Information System and the COVID-19 Dashboard

NASA's Visualization, Exploration, and Data Analysis (VEDA) project is an open-source science cyberinfrastructure for data processing, visualization, exploration, and geographic information systems (GIS) capabilities (https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/esds/veda). VEDA was an ambitious platform and one that was only made possible in the past year by building upon existing NASA projects. The extensive technology community at NASA continues to come together to design, build and use VEDA’s interoperable APIs and datasets.

This presentation will demo the current capabilities of VEDA and discuss how these capabilities were designed and architected with the central goals of science delivery, reproducible science, and interoperability to support re-use of data and APIs across NASA’s Earth Science ecosystem of tools. The presentation will close with VEDA’s future plans. In 2023, VEDA will support NASA’s Transform to Open Science (TOPS) program and open-source science initiatives through data, APIs and analytics platforms. In 2023 and beyond, VEDA will advance the state of the art in cloud-based Earth science as well as strengthening the ties of technology within NASA.

The projects behind VEDA’s current features are:

• The Multi-Mission Algorithm and Analysis Platform (https://maap-project.org/, presented at EGU 2019): Recognizing the numerous advantages of open, reproducible science, NASA and ESA are working together to create the Joint ESA-NASA MAAP. The MAAP brings together relevant data and algorithms in a common virtual environment in order to support the global aboveground terrestrial carbon dynamics research community. 
• The COVID-19 Earth Observation Dashboard (https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/covid19/): Following the interest in this dashboard, NASA invested in the design and development of a new dashboard infrastructure. This infrastructure is highly configurable to support easily adding new datasets and discoveries. UI and config layers are built upon the VEDA STAC catalog and Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFFs.
• The Earthdata Information Systems (EIS) pilots (https://eis.smce.nasa.gov/): Scientists at NASA worked together on open science tools to develop new research projects using Earth Observation data across the domains of fire, freshwater, greenhouse gasses, and sea level rise.
• ArcGIS Enterprise in the Cloud (gis.earthdata.nasa.gov) provides GIS capabilities.

The projects listed above have all made VEDA a reality in a year. The scientists from EIS are using the new dashboard infrastructure to tell their stories and the analytics backend from MAAP to scale their science.

In 2023, VEDA plans many initiatives in the work to extend its reach within and beyond NASA. 

There are many advanced technologies at NASA and we see an opportunity for VEDA to support closing the information gaps across groups. For example, VEDA will support driving standards for using, publishing and visualizing NASA’s Earthdata Zarr archives and also deliver interoperable APIs for its data stores to support dynamic data visualization and storytelling.

VEDA will also extend its reach beyond NASA by providing a JupyterHub for any user to explore the data behind NASA Earth Science, specifically the discoveries presented in the Earthdata Dashboard.