THREDDS Second Generation (THematic Real-time Environmental Distributed Data Services): Engaging the GIS Community and Tools

The central mission of the THREDDS (THematic Real-time Environmental Distributed Data Services) project is to make it possible for educators and researchers to publish, locate, analyze, and visualize data in a wide variety educational settings. In the initial phase THREDDS established a solid, working prototype of services and tools to enable data providers to create inventory catalogs of the data holdings at their site and educational module builders to author compound documents with embedded pointers to environmental datasets and analysis tools. These catalogs and data-interactive documents can then be harvested into digital libraries using standard protocols. THREDDS Second Generation (THREDDS2G) will further enhance collaborations among data providers, toolbuilders, researchers and educators. It will do so by expanding the team of contributors and the breadth of data in the collections, taking advantage of recent technological advancements, and integrating THREDDS technologies with emerging standards and related environmental data systems. Since much of this expansion will involve Geographic Information Systems (GIS), THREDDS will actively engage the GIS community with the disciplines and tools that make the end products more useful at all educational levels, for decision makers and for the general public.