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Planetary SDI
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Producers, Providers, and Users

Who are data producers?

Data producers are any persons or teams that are involved in the creation of spatial data. This includes:

  • mission teams that operate sensors and collect data that is processed for delivery to archive like the Planetary Data System (PDS)
  • individuals or teams that take archived data and derive new products
  • individuals or teams that combine archived products to derive new products

Who are data providers?

Data providers are any persons or teams that make standards compliant data available the broader community. Providers run and maintain the data portals, search APIs, and technical infrastructure that allows end-users to discover data and use it for their work. Within a given SDI, data providers will:

  • Accept data from one or more data producers
  • Reformat data from producers as necessary to be compliant with the standards adopted by their particular PSDI (e.g., lunar data are compliant with Lunar SDI standards, etc.)
  • Work with the producer to ensure that metadata exist that describe the qualitiative and quantitative aspects of the data
  • Provide a unique DOI and a remote (URL) as a means to access the data
  • Integrat the provided data into a search API (either maintained by the same provider or by coordinating with a provider that maintains a standalone search API)

Who are data users?

Data users are any persons that are searching for, discovering, and using planetary data. The users are the customers of the search APIs and the consumers of the data repositories.