Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) and FAIR

The Earth Observation System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) has been operation since 1994 supporting NASA’s open and free data and information policy. This policy is commensurate with the more recently defined set of Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability (FAIR) principles (Wilkinson, et al. 2016). In 2020, NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) Project supported a self-assessment of EOSDIS and its Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) to determine how well they complied with the FAIR principles. The assessment was performed and presented by Hampapuram Ramapriyan and Jeanne Behnke at the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) 2020 Fall Meeting. Subjective scores were assigned to each of the FAIR principles documenting detailed rationale for the scores. The overall conclusions were that EOSDIS supports the FAIR principles quite robustly, especially from the point of view human actionability, and some improvements are needed in machine actionability. In 2023, a working group was formed as one of NASA’s Earth Science Data System Working Groups (ESDSWG) to develop guidance for implementing FAIR principles in EOSDIS to make it more compliant. This group, called the Open, Free and FAIR data Working Group (O’FAIR WG) has published an implementation guide (Peng, et al. 2024). This presentation includes summaries of the 2020 self-assessment mentioned above and the key points from the implementation guide. The points from the implementation guide include: A mapping of SPD-41A (NASA SMD, 2022) requirements to FAIR principles, samples of FAIR-derived requirements, sample recommendations and sample assessments.