Improving Data Access through Standards-based Metadata and Web-Maps

Susan McLean, Director
World Data Center for Solid Earth Geophysics - Boulder, Boulder, USA

With such a large proportion of the global population now living in coastal areas subject to natural disasters, the need for integrated, global data as a basis for informed decision-making is greater than ever.  There are several efforts supporting global data integration and access, perhaps the best known of these being the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), which seeks to meet the need for timely, quality long-term global information as a basis for sound decision making by building on national and regional systems.  A key element to integration and proper use of data is the metadata or data about the data.  Metadata contains information about use constraints, datums, attribute accuracies, and original sources of data.  A second key element to ease of integration is supporting data and metadata standards.  This paper examines the methodology used at the World Data Center for Solid Earth Geophysics, Boulder to deliver data and metadata in a manner supporting the goals of GEOSS.  Examples are drawn from the integrated global tsunami database where time-series, event, and map data are delivered in a web-map environment with standards-based metadata.

Keywords: metadata, World Data Center, GEOSS, tsunami