Catalog of Archived Suborbital Earth Science Investigations

The Catalog of Archived Suborbital Earth Science Investigations (CASEI), is a centralized airborne and field data inventory that streamlines discovery of non-satellite NASA Earth Science data by providing contextual information on events, motivations, and potential data caveats. With CASEI, users can search and browse NASA’s airborne and field data archives, regardless of which data repository (or DAAC) is responsible for their stewardship.

CASEI’s backend architecture contains multiple components. Developers built the Maintenance Interface (MI) using a Django project. Thus utilizing Django’s rest framework, models, and relational databases. Next the CASEI system uses APIs (serializers) to collect Common Metadata Repository (CMR) metadata and Airborne Science Program’s (ASP) information. Then returns the database information back to CMR and ASP.

The MI is where all database content is entered and updated. All inventory content entered into the MI goes through a curation process. This informations follows a common data model through a careful curation process along with multiple quality reviews to support the diverse data formats. First a curator compiles suborbital observation metadata for NASA Earth Science products by efficiently categorizing it into campaigns, platforms, and instruments. They follow a structured hierarchy, set of definitions, and decision tree to properly organize this data then submit it for a first and final admin review. All of this effort is conducted through the MI and once it is finally published it’s streamlined into the UI for user access.

Finally CASEI has a public user data discovery portal or user interface (UI) for submitting queries with search terms, reviewing information, and accessing data product links

To access the CASEI User Interface, visit the following link: : https://impact.earthdata.nasa.gov/casei/