Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
appropriate long term solution for the designated user community as it contains
FORTRAN notation and is written in a way that would be difficult to reinter-
pret. The description was written in a more verbose format and validated by the
archive manager at STFC.
•
1.4 The parameter code definitions were prepared via community consulta-
tion by the international scientific organisation known as The International
Union of Radio Science (URSI
http://ursi-test.intec.ugent.be/
). URSI is a non-
governmental and non-profit organisation under the International Council for
Science, it has responsibility for stimulating and co-ordinating, on an interna-
tional basis, studies, research, applications, scientific exchange, and communica-
tion in the fields of radio science to represent radio science to the general public,
and to public and private organisations.
•
1.4.1 The DEDSL standard is a CCSDS blue topic recommendation
•
1.4.1.1 & 1.4.2.1 PDF description is an ISO standard
•
1.4.2 XML specification is a W3C and ISO standard
•
1.5 The URSI handbooks have been developed by URSI. The quality of content
has been validated by members of the atmospheric science team at STFC. One
of the team is a technician who has had over 25 years experience of manually
scaling ionograms at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory having been initially
trained in the task using these resources. Another is trained physicist and part of
the Ionospheric Monitoring Group at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
•
1.5.1 PDF description is an ISO standard
Now the scope and complexity of the network has been identified and validated
by scientists who understand the data. Risk and cost benefit analysis can now be
carried out to further determine if implementing this solution is realistically possi-
ble. Without undertaking this analysis stage for the IIWG data set any subsequent
preservation analysis and strategy would be difficult.
14.11.5.2 Preservation of Raw Ionosonde (MMM Formatted) Data Files
The second preservation scenario for the World Data Centres Ionosonde data
files can only be carried out for 7 European stations but would allow a consis-
tent Ionogram record for the Chilton site which dates back to the 1920 s. The
preservation objective is for
a user of a future designated community to be able reproduce an Ionogram from
the raw MMM formatted data files.
To do this they will also need to have access to the Ionospheric Monitoring
group's website, the URSI handbooks of interpretation and Lowell technical docu-
mentation, all containing vital semantic and structural representation information for
this preservation objective. Being able to preserve the Ionogram record is significant
as it is a very rich source of information, able to covey the state of the atmosphere
when correctly interpreted. The network model for this solution is shown below in
Fig.
14.17
.
