4. ESPAS interoperability
Anna Belehaki, Natalia Manola, Mike A. Hapgood · 2017
Through the ESPAS portal, the user can have access to a large number of repositories with heterogeneous data from ground and space, in situ and remote sensors.The user can perform searches for observations using specific criteria (e.g.time, instrument) and then download data files or data values.From its inception, ESPAS was designed to meet the following requirements: Integrate heterogeneous data from multiple providers, ranging from groundbased observations acquired with multiple instruments to data from spaceborne sensors.To do so, specific policies were established on identification, access, availability, quality, sharing and re-use of the data (or metadata) of the participating content providers. Enable metadata/data search and access across multiple data sources through a central platform.This was made possible through the establishment of a variety of workflows (data flows) initiated on the ESPAS platform. Provide value-added services to explore metadata, visualize or manipulate the integrated data, and eventually mine metadata. Serve as a test-bed for proposed methodologies and standards for validation and optimization of metadata of a specific data collection. Allow for extensive testing through several test and use cases, designed to serve the needs of the wide and interdisciplinary user and provider communities for computationally intense science carried out in a highly distributed data environment. Integrate into the wider European scientific infrastructures.To do so, it carries on and extends the policies and procedures issued at its participating data providers on data openness, quality, identification, etc.