Roadmap

DRAFT

Several performance indicators will be measured over the time period from 2022 to 2025 to gauge the effectiveness of the implementation of the Lunar SDI Strategic Plan, as well as the effectiveness of the Lunar SDI itself. These efforts will be measured, assessed, and tracked annually over the 2022 to 2025 timeframe with regular reports publicly available.

Performance indicators will include qualitative or quantitative metrics on:

• Relevance of Lunar SDI reference and thematic data to users
• The use of the Lunar SDI Geoportal, web services, and metadata
• User satisfaction of reference and thematic data and services
• Known applications based on the Lunar SDI and their relevance
• Lunar SDI policies and standards influence on the development of other NASA SDIs and other relevant management policies

This plan contains information regarding how the strategic objectives will be implemented within the Lunar SDI by the working group including the anticipated outcomes, approach, and a table of actions including a general timeline.

Publish and steward the policy infrastructure necessary to maintain the Lunar SDI working group, including a charter, governance documentation, user and contributor agreements to support data release and sharing agreements, and a roadmap of future development.

Publicly accessible policy infrastructure served through a Lunar SDI web portal.

The primary approach includes writing documentation that describes:

1. the Lunar SDI working group charter;
2. governance policy documentation;
3. strategic direction and a 4-year roadmap;
4. user and contributor agreements.

These documents will be drafted by Lunar SDI working group members and reviewed collectively. We will seek group consensus regarding all governance and strategy decisions. These documents will also be posted on a publicly available website so that members of the Lunar community can also comment and provide feedback.

Engage with the user community, funding sources, and other stakeholders to ensure the efforts of this body maximally align with targeted user community needs.

Alignment between the policies published by the Lunar SDI for data publication and the needs of members of the lunar exploration community.

We will initially engage traditional US stakeholders, including NASA, MAPSIT, and LEAG, and then expand to the wider community including international and commercial partners. A priority will be to engage active mission teams to seek collaborative engagement and ensure that our efforts are supportive and not redundant to mission team efforts. We will also engage the international planetary science and lunar exploration communities at annual meetings to obtain feedback on our efforts and collaborate with other interested groups. This approach helps us to initially understand the needs of scientists, engineers, mission teams, and software and tool developers. We will then build on this understanding to inform future work to serve the larger community of users and stakeholders, which in addition to the above groups include (but are not limited to) media relation activities, public engagement and education groups, and members of the general public. By engaging the Lunar data community through many different avenues, we aim to intersect and meet the data use needs of the broadest group possible.

Publish an initial set of standards that will define this SDI including standardized vertical and horizontal datums (i.e., the coordinate system), accepted map projections, interoperable data formats, and metadata formats.

A defined set of standards published by the Lunar SDI describing projections, data formats, and descriptive documentation in metadata. These standards will lead to greater interoperability between components in this SDI and will frequently result in data products that are immediately analysis ready by removing the need for additional data processing.

Standards will be defined by considering current standards in use for the moon and those most often used by the Lunar community. We will consider existing IAU standards, and we seek to be consistent with standards defined by authoritative sources. When multiple or conflicting standards are in common use, we will determine the standard we believe best meets the needs of our user community through discussion within the Lunar SDI working group. We will publish these standards on a public website.

Maintain, in conjunction with members of the lunar exploration community, a living inventory of foundational and framework data products including quantitative (e.g., positional accuracy, resolution, data producer) and qualitative (e.g., fitness-for-use) metadata. This includes setting a standard for metadata to be reported for all data products managed under the Lunar SDI organization.

A publicly accessible living inventory of foundational and framework data products that simplifies the search and discovery process.

Our primary approach is to build on the efforts of ( Citation: Laura & Beyer, 2021 Laura, J. & Beyer, R. (2021). Knowledge Inventory of Foundational Data Products in Planetary Science. The Planetary Science Journal, 2(1). 18. https://doi.org/10.3847/psj/abcb94 ) and findings from the Lunar Critical Data Products Specific Action Team (2021) use this information as an initial assessment of the publicly available foundational and framework data products for the moon. We will also engage data producers to determine interest in contributing to this SDI and determine the process to contribute additional data products. As additional data products are published in the literature or through community data portals/catalogs (e.g., the Planetary Data System), we will include them in our inventory, link to the publicly available products, and assess including them in this SDI.

Provide a mechanism to bring users together, such as data producers (who make the data products), providers (who manage the data products lifecycle), and data integrators (who provide the data to end users) to create an interconnected user group.

A location where members of the lunar exploration community, including data producers, data providers, and data users can connect to ensure that lunar data are accessible, discoverable, and highly usable.

Our primary approach is to first lay the groundwork to incorporate data contributions from data creators in a transparent manner where the expectations of the data creators, custodians, and data integrators are clearly identified and documented. Planned initial steps include developing clear documentation of standards and formats that are expected for all data products in the Lunar SDI, ensuring such documentation is publicly available, and engaging Lunar data producers. Once this initial foundation is established, we will identify institutions that are willing and able to serve as data stewards and engage the broader data community in these efforts.

Support (through policies and standards) the development of data discovery and access portals making use of Lunar SDI managed data and associated Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

A published clearing house identifying the Lunar SDI stanards compliant data portals that data users know are well documented and highly interoperable.

Our approach to supporting data discovery and access is to develop policies and standards that are consistent with community leading practices. We will identify and implement practices that have demonstrated success in terrestrial and other communities and are relevant to the Lunar community. We will also engage the Lunar community user groups to educate potential users on the availability of this SDI and solicit feedback on its usability. Finally, we will enable metrics on our websites and data portals to allow us to measure and evaluate how the community is interacting with our services and what data products and services are most impactful. These metrics will inform future efforts to modify our approaches and better support the Lunar data community.

Promote and publicize the release of data products that conform to the standards and policies enumerated within the Lunar SDI.

A published clearing house identifying the Lunar SDI standards compliant data portals that data users know are well documented and highly interoperable. Data producers can reasonably assume that their data products will interoperate with all other data products promoted within the Lunar SDI.

The Lunar SDI working group will promote data made available under FAIR data principles and the spatial standards defined by the Lunar SDI. Our approach to data product and API release follows the guidelines described in the NASA Scientific Information policy for the Science Mission Directorate (SPD-41a). Specifically, data formats will be machine readable to allow for automated processing and will include robust, standards-compliant metadata. All data, APIs, and software will be released under an open license, and will be indexed as part of the appropriate NASA catalog (i.e., either data or software). Lunar SDI working group promoted repositories will also adhere to standards for accessibility of all electronic and information technology for people with disabilities and with a principle of non-discriminatory data access so that all users will be treated equally.

Engage with tool developers to ensure support for data and standards included in the Lunar SDI.

An ecosystem of tools consuming data portals and APIs that are publicized by working group members and the Lunar SDI web portal.

We will identify groups developing tools or data portals targeted for use by the Lunar community and initiate communication with these groups. We will engage in informal collaborations with interested teams, seeking to develop mutually beneficial partnerships. Our collaboration focus will be educating others about the availability of data, supporting others in the use of Lunar SDI-provided services, identifying points of friction for using the Lunar SDI, and using this feedback to help develop future efforts.