Automated cataloging and characterization of space-derived data

One of the most significant technical issues that NASA must address and resolve is the problem of managing the enormous amounts of scientific and engineering data that will be generated by the next generation of remote sensing systems such as the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the Earth Observing System (EOS). The amount of data these sensors are expected to produce will be orders of magnitude greater than NASA has ever experienced. Consequently new solutions must be developed for managing, accessing, and automatically inputting the data into a database in some expressive fashion that will provide a meaningful understanding and effective utilization of this data in a multidisciplinary environment. Presently, scientific data provided by satellites and other sources are processed, cataloged, and archived according to narrow mission or project-specific requirements with little regard to the semantics of the overall research. Scientists therefore lack knowledge of or access to potentially valuable data outside their own field. What is needed is an innovative approach that will allow collected data to be automatically cataloged, characterized, and managed in a domain-community. A concept and design approach that employs expert system-based knowledge controllers combined with advanced spatial database systems and graphical data structures is discussed.