Metadata management for integration and analysis of earth observation data

Earth observation technologies have developed rapidly during the last decades. Substantial amounts of earth observation data have been acquired and stored among the literature and databases of various research fields such as climatology, oceanography, agriculture, and ecology. Analysis and integration of such data might produce valuable data products to promote understanding of the global environment, and to solve global environmental issues. However, most institutions store and manage their Earth observation data in their own manner, with little metadata. Scientists have to struggle hard to search for valuable data from data out of their research domain and seek their usage. In this paper we introduce a conceptual model for earth observation data. Utilizing a model to express earth observation item associated with ontologies, The model is an simple quintuple with information extracted from conventional data models, and is used to uniquely determine portions of earth observation data, which enables flexible annotation of earth observation data. We also introduce our systems for metadata management and user interfaces for encouraging user annotations of earth observation data that can help scientists discover and understand useful data that can support their research.