Erddap: Providing Easy Access to Remote Sensing Data for Scientists and Students

ERDDAP, an open source data platform developed at NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center (SWFSC), improves the usability of remote sensing data by overcoming difficulties in data access, including dealing with differing file formats, download protocols, and machine-to-machine access capabilities. ERDDAP aggregates gridded and tabular datasets, from diverse local and remote sources, and provides a uniform way to subset datasets and download data in common file formats. Environmental events can be identified using an easy-to-use web interface and customizable maps and graphs. Machine-to-machine data access is provided via RESTful web services. These features of ERDDAP reduce the barriers to data access, and can lead to increased use of remote sensing data across disciplines, including use in education by students and by educators. In this paper we describe the basic functionality of ERDDAP, including examples of its visualization capabilities.