Innovations in response to floods of data

The good news is that the Earth science community will not be data-starved in the Earth Observing System (EOS) era. The bad news is that techniques to cope with enormous volumes of Earth science data have not yet met the challenge. Coping with data involves processes such as becoming familiar with a data center's inventory, searching for appropriate data, and retrieving only the data that are needed. The Center for Earth Observations and Space Research (CEOSR) of George Mason University, in partnership with the NASA Goddard Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC), have developed some innovations to reduce barriers that users may experience in accessing Earth science data. The techniques are extensions of two fundamental concepts: Data distribution must become responsive to data users' needs, and statistical summaries of data stored as metadata can provide a basis for content-based data selection.