Providing rapid access to EOS data via Data Pools

As the EOSDIS archives grow, it could easily become more difficult for users to find and retrieve the data they need and to quickly get that data into a form they can use. NASA has been developing capabilities to address this concern over the past year and recently deployed an initial set of capabilities to its major Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs). The solution, called Data Pools, makes a significant portion of the data in the EOSDIS archives available on-line for immediate access, and provides several innovative data navigation, tailoring and rapid access services to help users quickly find just the data they need, get it into a form they can use, and then quickly retrieve the data. This paper describes the Data Pool architecture, and its approach to addressing data location, tailoring and retrieval difficulties that could have eventually plagued EOSDIS users. The paper also discusses how the Data Pools architecture could be expanded to provide a cost-effective evolutionary architecture for EOSDIS.