NOAA's NPOESS data exploitation project: re-usable tools and services (invited)

The NPOESS Data Exploitation (NDE) Project is building a near-real time data processing and distribution system to provide operational civilian users with observations from the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) and its risk-reduction forerunner, NASA's NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP). The NDE Project has diverse user requirements for atmospheric, oceanographic, and land surface data products with strict operational timeliness. The NDE system design meets these user requirements by employing a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in which data ingest, product generation and tailoring tools, and distribution functions are presented as internal service components. This approach reduces redundancy and provides scalability and high availability for mission critical operations, while maintaining flexibility to meet future requirements for products, data processing, and distribution. In addition, the NDE Project worked with stakeholders to promote and adopt widely used scientific data formats consistent with the interoperability objectives for the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). This paper reviews the design of the NDE system and the progress made toward its implementation.