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At least 325 records · Page 18

ICARTT File Format Enhancements: Supporting FAIRness and Data Discovery of Suborbital Campaign Data

Suborbital campaigns aim to accomplish a wide variety of goals and can include a variety of platforms, instruments, and parameters measured. In 2004, the ICARTT (International Consortium for Atmospheric Research on Transport and Transformation) standards were developed to fulfill data management needs for the ICARTT campaign. The ICARTT file format is text-based and composed of a header with important data description information and the data section. Built on the NASA Ames and GTE data formats, the ICARTT format was created to facilitate data exchange and promote collaborations among the science teams for achieving the ICARTT campaign goals. Due to its success and adaptation for use in many other field campaigns, the ICARTT file format became a NASA standard in 2010 and was amended in January 2017. These changes provided many enhancements, including the requirement for variable standard names. Primarily designed for airborne field studies, ICARTT has been further utilized for ground-based studies. NASA has made a commitment to build an inclusive open science community over the next decade. Open-source science strives to make publicly funded scientific research transparent, inclusive, accessible, and reproducible. The ICARTT format can host metadata that is critical for proper use of the data, particularly for in-situ measurements, and can enhance data discovery and accessibility. However, the required fields are often free text, meaning that the information is human readable, but not machine interpretable. Furthermore, the amount and type of information provided can vary significantly between principal investigators and campaigns. To support FAIR principles and interoperability, enhancements to the ICARTT standards are recommended. Possible recommendations include potential use of controlled and consistent vocabulary for variable standard name and certain common metadata elements; standardizing timestamps for easier data comparisons and analysis; and providing guidance on variable measurement units and how they are reported. Enhancing ICARTT metadata can further streamline the process to make suborbital data more readily available to the data user and improve variable-level metadata. Providing more variable-level metadata can enhance data searching and discovery, supporting NASA’s Open-Source Science Initiative (OSSI).

Megan Buzanowicz↗

mzPeak: Designing a Scalable, Interoperable, and Future-Ready Mass Spectrometry Data Format

Advances in mass spectrometry (MS) instrumentation, such as higher resolution, faster scan speeds, and improved sensitivity, have significantly increased the volume and complexity of data. The growing adoption of imaging and ion mobility further amplifies these challenges across MS-based omics fields, including proteomics, metabolomics, and lipidomics. While these technologies unlock new possibilities, they also present significant challenges in data management, storage, and accessibility. Existing open formats, such as the XML-based community standards mzML and imzML, struggle to meet the demands of modern MS workflows due to their large file sizes, slow data access, and limited metadata support. Vendor-specific formats, while optimized for proprietary instruments, lack interoperability, comprehensive metadata support and long-term archival reliability. This white paper lays the groundwork for mzPeak, a next-generation community data format designed to address these challenges and support high-throughput, multi-dimensional MS workflows. By adopting a hybrid model that combines efficient binary storage for numerical data and both human and machine-readable metadata storage, mzPeak will reduce file sizes, accelerate data access, and offer a scalable, adaptable solution for evolving MS technologies. For researchers, mzPeak will enable enhanced interoperability across platforms, seamless support for complex workflows including ion mobility and MS imaging, and faster data access compared to existing community formats such as mzML. Its design will ensure data is managed in compliance with regulatory standards, essential for applications such as precision medicine and chemical safety, where long-term data integrity and accessibility are critical. For vendors, mzPeak provides a streamlined, open alternative to proprietary formats, reducing the burden of regulatory compliance while aligning with the industry's push for transparency and standardization. By offering a high-performance, interoperable solution, mzPeak positions vendors to meet customer demands for sustainable data management tools which will be able to handle emerging and future data types and workflows. mzPeak aspires to become the cornerstone of MS data management, empowering researchers, vendors, and developers to innovate and collaborate more effectively.

data formats↗

Equitable Energy Metrics for Integration into Building Performance Standard Tracking Platforms: Preprint

Building Performance Standards (BPS) are being adopted globally and in the United States of America, where 14 different states and jurisdictions have a policy in place and many others are under development (Department of Energy (DOE) 2023). Accurate and equitable data sources are essential to make informed decisions about focusing investment on upgrading buildings to meet jurisdictional goals. There have been multiple new tools developed related to Energy Equity and Environmental Justice (EEEJ) and the resulting datasets need to be integrated into large building port-folios for quick access and better scalability. Integrating EEEJ data in a user-friendly format can help decision makers more quickly assess impacts and analyze the multitude of potentially significant metrics for which there is not yet consensus. In the U.S. and Canada, many BPS ordinances rely primarily on ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager (ESPM) to capture building characteristics and energy and water consumption data. These datasets can then be imported into city-specific building tracking tools like the Standard Energy Efficiency Data Platform (SEED). Crucially, BPS decision makers require an efficient means of identifying buildings in priority communities to effectively allocate resources and funding. This process must integrate seamlessly with existing jurisdictional toolsets for optimal utility. This paper will demonstrate, for the case of Washington D.C.'s (the District) data, a workflow that provides actionable data for building upgrade investment prioritization in disadvantaged communities.

BPS↗

Sensor Management for Applied Research Technologies (SMART)-On Demand Modeling (ODM) Project

NASA requires timely on-demand data and analysis capabilities to enable practical benefits of Earth science observations. However, a significant challenge exists in accessing and integrating data from multiple sensors or platforms to address Earth science problems because of the large data volumes, varying sensor scan characteristics, unique orbital coverage, and the steep learning curve associated with each sensor and data type. The development of sensor web capabilities to autonomously process these data streams (whether real-time or archived) provides an opportunity to overcome these obstacles and facilitate the integration and synthesis of Earth science data and weather model output. A three year project, entitled Sensor Management for Applied Research Technologies (SMART) - On Demand Modeling (ODM), will develop and demonstrate the readiness of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) capabilities that integrate both Earth observations and forecast model output into new data acquisition and assimilation strategies. The advancement of SWE-enabled systems (i.e., use of SensorML, sensor planning services - SPS, sensor observation services - SOS, sensor alert services - SAS and common observation model protocols) will have practical and efficient uses in the Earth science community for enhanced data set generation, real-time data assimilation with operational applications, and for autonomous sensor tasking for unique data collection.

Goodman, M.↗

A Data Driven Pre-cooling Framework for Energy Cost Optimization in Commercial Buildings

Commercial buildings consume significant amount of energy. Facility managers are increasingly grappling with the problem of reducing their buildings’ peak power, overall energy consumption and energy bills. In this paper, we first develop an optimization framework – based on a gray box model for zone thermal dynamics – to determine a pre-cooling strategy that simultaneously shifts the peak power to low energy tariff regimes, and reduces both the peak power and overall energy consumption by exploiting the flexibility in a building’s thermal comfort range. We then evaluate the efficacy of the pre-cooling optimization framework by applying it to building management system data, spanning several days, obtained from a large commercial building located in a tropical region of the world. The results from simulations show that optimal pre-cooling reduces peak power by over 50%, energy consumption by up to 30% and energy bills by up to 37%. Next, to enable ease of use of our framework, we also propose a shortest path based heuristic algorithmfor solving the optimization problemand show that it has comparable erformance with the optimal solution. Finally, we describe an application of the proposed optimization framework for developing countries to reduce the dependency on expensive fossil fuels, which are often used as a source for energy backup.We conclude by highlighting our real world deployment of the optimal pre-cooling framework via a software service on the cloud platform of a major provider. Our pre-cooling methodology, based on the gray box optimization framework, incurs no capital expense and relies on data readily available from a building management system, thus enabling facility managers to take informed decisions for improving the energy and cost footprints of their buildings

Vishwanath, Arun↗

Geodata Modeling and Query in Geographic Information Systems

Geographic information systems (GIS) deal with collecting, modeling, man- aging, analyzing, and integrating spatial (locational) and non-spatial (attribute) data required for geographic applications. Examples of spatial data are digital maps, administrative boundaries, road networks, and those of non-spatial data are census counts, land elevations and soil characteristics. GIS shares common areas with a number of other disciplines such as computer- aided design, computer cartography, database management, and remote sensing. None of these disciplines however, can by themselves fully meet the requirements of a GIS application. Examples of such requirements include: the ability to use locational data to produce high quality plots, perform complex operations such as network analysis, enable spatial searching and overlay operations, support spatial analysis and modeling, and provide data management functions such as efficient storage, retrieval, and modification of large datasets; independence, integrity, and security of data; and concurrent access to multiple users. It is on the data management issues that we devote our discussions in this monograph. Traditionally, database management technology have been developed for business applications. Such applications require, among other things, capturing the data requirements of high-level business functions and developing machine- level implementations; supporting multiple views of data and yet providing integration that would minimize redundancy and maintain data integrity and security; providing a high-level language for data definition and manipulation; allowing concurrent access to multiple users; and processing user transactions in an efficient manner. The demands on database management systems have been for speed, reliability, efficiency, cost effectiveness, and user-friendliness. Significant progress have been made in all of these areas over the last two decades to the point that many generalized database platforms are now available for developing data intensive applications that run in real-time. While continuous improvement is still being made at a very fast-paced and competitive rate, new application areas such as computer aided design, image processing, VLSI design, and GIS have been identified by many as the next generation of database applications. These new application areas pose serious challenges to the currently available database technology. At the core of these challenges is the nature of data that is manipulated. In traditional database applications, the database objects do not have any spatial dimension, and as such, can be thought of as point data in a multi-dimensional space. For example, each instance of an entity EMPLOYEE will have a unique value corresponding to every attribute such as employee id, employee name, employee address and so on. Thus, every Employee instance can be thought of as a point in a multi-dimensional space where each dimension is represented by an attribute. Furthermore, all operations on such data are one-dimensional. Thus, users may retrieve all entities satisfying one or more constraints. Examples of such constraints include employees with addresses in a certain area code, or salaries within a certain range. Even though constraints can be specified on multiple attributes (dimensions), the search for such data is essentially orthogonal across these dimensions.

Adam, Nabil↗

Application of industry-standard guidelines for the validation of avionics software

The application of industry standards to the development of avionics software is discussed, focusing on verification and validation activities. It is pointed out that the procedures that guide the avionics software development and testing process are under increased scrutiny. The DO-178A guidelines, Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification, are used by the FAA for certifying avionics software. To investigate the effectiveness of the DO-178A guidelines for improving the quality of avionics software, guidance and control software (GCS) is being developed according to the DO-178A development method. It is noted that, due to the extent of the data collection and configuration management procedures, any phase in the life cycle of a GCS implementation can be reconstructed. Hence, a fundamental development and testing platform has been established that is suitable for investigating the adequacy of various software development processes. In particular, the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the development method recommended by the DO-178A guidelines are being closely examined.

Hayhurst, Kelly J.↗

Managing Content in a Matter of Minutes

NASA software created to help scientists expeditiously search and organize their research documents is now aiding compliance personnel, law enforcement investigators, and the general public in their efforts to search, store, manage, and retrieve documents more efficiently. Developed at Ames Research Center, NETMARK software was designed to manipulate vast amounts of unstructured and semi-structured NASA documents. NETMARK is both a relational and object-oriented technology built on an Oracle enterprise-wide database. To ensure easy user access, Ames constructed NETMARK as a Web-enabled platform utilizing the latest in Internet technology. One of the significant benefits of the program was its ability to store and manage mission-critical data.

Source record↗

The TASAR Project: Launching Aviation on an Optimized Route Toward Aircraft Autonomy

The Traffic Aware Strategic Aircrew Request (TASAR) concept applies onboard automation for the purpose of advising the pilot of route modifications that would be beneficial to the flight. Leveraging onboard computing platforms with connectivity to avionics and diverse data sources on and off the aircraft, TASAR introduces a new, powerful capability for in-flight trajectory management to the cockpit and its flight crew that is anticipated to induce a significant culture change in airspace operations. Flight crews empowered by TASAR and its derivative technologies could transform from today’s flight plan followers to proactive trajectory managers, taking an initial critical step towards increasing autonomy in the airspace system. TASAR was developed as a catalyst for operational autonomy, a future vision where the responsibilities and authorities of trajectory management reside with the aircraft operator and are distributed among participating aircraft, thus fulfilling a vision dating back decades and enabling a fully scalable airspace system. This NASA Technical Paper maps TASAR to its foundational vision and traces its research and development from initial concept generation to an operational evaluation by a U.S. airline in revenue service, the final stage before technology transfer and commercialization.

Wing, David J.↗

NASA Small Spacecraft and Distributed Systems Program - Recent and Upcoming Technology Demonstrations and Development Efforts

NASA’s Small Spacecraft & Distributed Systems (SSDS) program strengthens U.S. ability to conduct unique missions by rapidly developing and demonstrating capabilities for SmallSat exploration, science, and commercial space. In collaboration with NASA Centers, other government agencies, commercial industry, and academia, SSDS advances next generation SmallSat technologies like power, processing, propulsion, communications, autonomous navigation, architectures (swarms), and applications (AI/ML/Edge Computing)—to extend missions beyond LEO into cislunar and planetary space. Various investment mechanisms exist for SSDS to select and fund projects that will ultimately advance NASA’s Moon to Mars Architecture. Presented here are the latest achievements and findings from recently completed SSDS projects, along with updates from ongoing efforts and planned future work. Successful missions like Starling and CAPSTONE continue to demonstrate their capability after several years on-orbit. Advancements in next generation swarm configurations are being implemented by Starling for space traffic monitoring and management applications. Findings from recent SSDS flight projects are discussed: DiskSat, a unique SmallSat platform alternative to canisterized nanosatellites, launched December 2025 and is gathering data; the PTD series of missions concluded in December 2025. Current SSDS efforts are focused on addressing NASA Shortfalls relating to rendezvous and proximity operations, neuromorphic computing, and space situational awareness.

Roger C Hunter↗

NASA Small Spacecraft and Distributed Systems: Recent and Upcoming Technology Demonstrations and Development Efforts

NASA’s Small Spacecraft & Distributed Systems (SSDS) program strengthens U.S. ability to conduct unique missions by rapidly developing and demonstrating capabilities for SmallSat exploration, science, and commercial space. In collaboration with NASA Centers, other government agencies, commercial industry, and academia, SSDS advances next generation SmallSat technologies like power, processing, propulsion, communications, autonomous navigation, architectures (swarms), and applications (AI/ML/Edge Computing)—to extend missions beyond LEO into cislunar and planetary space. Various investment mechanisms exist for SSDS to select and fund projects that will ultimately advance NASA’s Moon to Mars Architecture. Presented here are the latest achievements and findings from recently completed SSDS projects, along with updates from ongoing efforts and planned future work. Successful missions like Starling and CAPSTONE continue to demonstrate their capability after several years on-orbit. Advancements in next generation swarm configurations are being implemented by Starling for space traffic monitoring and management applications. Findings from recent SSDS flight projects are discussed: DiskSat, a unique SmallSat platform alternative to canisterized nanosatellites, launched December 2025 and is gathering data; the PTD series of missions concluded in December 2025. Current SSDS efforts are focused on addressing NASA Shortfalls relating to rendezvous and proximity operations, neuromorphic computing, and space situational awareness.

Roger Hunter↗

Putting Data to Work: Using Building Energy Performance Data to Expand the Market for Energy Efficiency in Buildings

An increasing number of state and local jurisdictions are implementing building performance reporting laws, which generate large quantities of useful data on the characteristics and resource consumption of the building stock. Yet, to realize the potential of these policies, the data must not only be disclosed, but put to work to drive energy savings. Under a three-year pilot, Washington DC (DC), New York City (NYC) and their partners are pioneering the use of data from building performance reporting in energy efficiency programs. To minimize the administrative burden of managing, combining, and sharing these data sets, the cities are utilizing the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) open-source Standard Energy Efficiency Data (SEED) Platform. The Putting Data to Work project team is working with efficiency program administrators to develop and implement new and innovative ways in which the data collected through benchmarking, energy audits, and related policies can be used to improve energy policies and planning, unlock data directly for market use, scale-up the market for energy efficiency services, drive competition, better target utility incentive programs, and inform measurement and verification. This paper details achievements and key findings in DC and NYC to date, including the importance of high compliance, data quality, and data cleansing in using the information collected; methods that the cities are using to apply data to drive maximum energy efficiency; and the importance of inter- and intra-agency collaboration in program success. We also outline the path forward and detail expected outcomes and scalability of project activities.

Beddingfield, Erin↗

Demonstrating Acquisition of Real-Time Thermal Data over Fires Utilizing UAVs

NASA-Ames Research Center, in collaboration with General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. has been developing real-time data acquisition and information delivery systems employing uninhabited aerial vehicle (UAV) technology for disaster mitigation and assessment demonstrations. Working in conjunction with the US Forest Service, a disaster community agency responsible for wildfire management and mitigation, we developed a large-scale wildfire demonstration called the First Response Experiment (FIRE). During that experiment in late summer 2001, the participants demonstrated the melding of innovative technologies such as UAV platforms, real-time data processing, and data telemetry for quick analysis of a disaster event. The General Atomics ALTUS UAV, the Airborne Infrared Disaster Assessment System (AIRDAS) and Over-The-Horizon (OTH) satellite data telemetry equipment were employed over a controlled burn to test the feasibility of a disaster monitoring and mitigation platform for hazardous duty. The ALTUS UAV was employed to demonstrate the long duration, altitude, and payload capability of unmanned platforms for acquiring disaster related data. The ALTUS has an operational altitude to 45,000 feet (13,700 in), with a flight duration of twenty-four hours and a payload capacity of over 300 lbs. (148.5 kg). This allows the platform to operate under the conditions that would be necessary for monitoring and mitigating disaster events throughout the Unites States. The four channel AIRDAS data (calibrated thermal infrared digital imagery of the fire event) was sent from the ALTUS UAV via a satellite communications system (NERA transponder and INMARSAT satellite) to a data archive server and an image processing work station at NASA-Ames Research Center, 400 miles away.

Wegener, Steven S.↗

Flexible Data Fusion for Air Quality Estimation and Forecasting in Google Earth Engine to support Global Health Management Needs

The assessment and forecasting of air quality around the world at high spatial and temporal resolution can be enhanced by integrating data from multiple sources including models, satellites, regulatory monitors, and low-cost sensors. Such integration is subject to numerous technical challenges, however, including heterogeneous data resolution and formatting, different levels of data availability and reliability, and computational and capacity challenges to developing data fusion tools and platforms. This presentation will provide an overview of a NASA-funded effort to develop a data fusion system within the Google Earth Engine platform which integrates these air quality data sources to produce comprehensive assessments and forecasts of key air pollutants at sub-daily and sub-city scales. The system is being developed in collaboration with city- and regional-level air quality managers, and will provide them with information to the assess and anticipate the health impacts of poor air quality, track local changes in air quality due to ongoing transportation and land use changes, and identify potential gaps in their current air quality monitoring strategies. The presentation will report advances achieved through the project, including bringing local air quality monitoring data into Google Earth Engine, quantifying uncertainties in air quality estimates and forecasts, and tailored communications tools providing integration into end-user processes to meet their needs.

Carl Malings↗

Flexible Data Fusion for Air Quality Estimation and Forecasting in Google Earth Engine to support Global Health Management Needs

The assessment and forecasting of air quality around the world at high spatial and temporal resolution can be enhanced by integrating data from multiple sources including models, satellites, regulatory monitors, and low-cost sensors. Such integration is subject to numerous technical challenges, however, including heterogeneous data resolution and formatting, different levels of data availability and reliability, and computational and capacity challenges to developing data fusion tools and platforms. This presentation will provide an overview of a NASA-funded effort to develop a data fusion system within the Google Earth Engine platform which integrates these air quality data sources to produce comprehensive assessments and forecasts of key air pollutants at sub-daily and sub-city scales. The system is being developed in collaboration with city- and regional-level air quality managers and will provide them with information to the assess and anticipate the health impacts of poor air quality, track local changes in air quality due to ongoing transportation and land use changes, and identify potential gaps in their current air quality monitoring strategies. The presentation will report advances achieved through the project, including bringing local air quality monitoring data into Google Earth Engine, quantifying uncertainties in air quality estimates and forecasts, and tailored communications tools providing integration into end-user processes to meet their needs.

Nathan R. Pavlovic↗

INTEGRATED WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT FOR PARTICLE ACCELERATOR SIMULATION

Supercomputing systems are used for a wide range of computationally demanding tasks in many fields of science and engineering. They play a key role in numerical simulation, in which mathematical models are computed in order to simulate the behavior of physical systems. Scientists and engineers that use supercomputers for numerical simulation often have their productivity limited by the need to manually organize and manage extremely large amounts of data that are often produced and consumed by the software programs run on these systems. Recognizing these limitations, Kitware Inc. (Clifton Park, NY) and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (Menlo Park, CA) are developing an advanced software platform that can reduce the cognitive overhead required by knowledge workers when using supercomputers for numerical simulation. Phase I of the project is complete and includes the development of new capabilities for organizing simulation project files, improvements to the user interface and overall usability, and deployment of a “middle tier” server to sit between user desktop machines and supercomputers to offload much of the data management workload. The project also developed prototype software for executing sequences of numerical simulations, and a prototype for migrating supercomputing software to cloud-based computing systems to provide a potential alternative to supercomputers with different logistical and price-to-performance tradeoffs.

Tourtellott, John↗

eMosaic: Electrification Mosaic Platform for Grid Informed Smart Charging Management (Final Scientific/Technical Report)

ABB (Prime Contractor), in collaboration with its partners at the Utah State University (USU), Idaho National Laboratory, Rocky Mountain Power (RMP), and Electric Power Engineers (EPE), have performed research, development, and wide scale demonstration of a scalable and resilient Electrification Mosaic (eMosaic) platform for Smart Charge Management (SCM) for Electric Vehicle Infrastructure. Work was completed under DE EE0009194, titled “eMosaic Electrification Mosaic Platform for Grid Informed Smart Charging Management”, funded by the US Department of Energy. The project members developed algorithms that provide localized and bulk grid services and that reduce and stabilize costs all the way down the supply chain to the PEV owner through SCM. This platform aggregates telemetry from multiple data sources as pieces of the larger picture including personal, private fleet or transportation EVs, fast chargers and other supply equipment, weather service information, and geographically distributed charging sites such as public lots, garage and retail, and private or shared usage depots. ABB and the project team designed, tested, and improved a charging management system at local/edge and cloud levels. The ultimate objective of the project was to convincingly demonstrate that the developed secure eMosaic plat-form can be readily and favorably adopted by diverse utilities and site owners at scale. This was achieved through a demonstration plan with field deployment at several physical sites across 4 states and additional scalable simulation from high fidelity charging models.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Automatic cataloguing and characterization of Earth science data using SE-trees

In the future, NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) platforms will produce enormous amounts of remote sensing image data that will be stored in the EOS Data Information System. For the past several years, the Intelligent Data Management group at Goddard's Information Science and Technology Office has been researching techniques for automatically cataloguing and characterizing image data (ADCC) from EOS into a distributed database. At the core of the approach, scientists will be able to retrieve data based upon the contents of the imagery. The ability to automatically classify imagery is key to the success of contents-based search. We report results from experiments applying a novel machine learning framework, based on Set-Enumeration (SE) trees, to the ADCC domain. We experiment with two images: one taken from the Blackhills region in South Dakota; and the other from the Washington DC area. In a classical machine learning experimentation approach, an image's pixels are randomly partitioned into training (i.e. including ground truth or survey data) and testing sets. The prediction model is built using the pixels in the training set, and its performance is estimated using the testing set. With the first Blackhills image, we perform various experiments achieving an accuracy level of 83.2 percent, compared to 72.7 percent using a Back Propagation Neural Network (BPNN) and 65.3 percent using a Gaussain Maximum Likelihood Classifier (GMLC). However, with the Washington DC image, we were only able to achieve 71.4 percent, compared with 67.7 percent reported for the BPNN model and 62.3 percent for the GMLC.

Rymon, Ron↗