The NASA Earth Science Knowledge Base (ESKB)

O'Hara C., Katragadda, S., Anderson, D., Dabbiru, L., Kim, S., Mita, D., & Johnson, E. (2007). The NASA Earth Science Knowledge Base (ESKB). AGU Fall 2007 Conference. San Francisco, CA.

Through the Mississippi Research Consortium, NASA has sponsored a Solutions Network project to develop and deliver knowledge base tools and technologies for compiling NASA Earth Science research results. The primary objectives of the knowledge base tools are to enable 1) compiling the results of NASA Earth Science research, 2) associating the research and results with NASA resources that include observing systems, sensors, data products, models, and decision support tools, and 3) stratifying the research and results by relevance to applications of national significance and science focus areas. This integrated set of tools and technologies has been named the Earth Science Knowledge Base (ESKB). The ESKB is designed as a user-friendly database application with client-server database functionalities for populating information about NASA research and results. The ESKB provides enhanced exploration capabilities for users to readily identify NASA projects of interest and search for desired research results. The ESKB design has incorporated database tables that contain information about NASA partners and projects, NASA observing systems, sensors, and data products, as well as models and decision support tools. The ESKB will provide an extensible basis for NASA and NASA-funded researchers to provide vital information about the results of past and existing NASA research. This information will deliver enhanced understanding about critical earth science questions as well as insight to potential research directions and NASA assets that may be brought to bear on the research questions of the present and future.