European Facility For Airborne Research April 19, 2024, 21:29
The Airborne Science Mission Metadata (ASMM) Creator is developed by EUFAR using Eclipse, Google Web Toolkit and Java. XML files generated by this version conform to the ASMM XML standard. The opensource reporting library used for PDF report generation is provided and owned by JasperSoft. For more information, or to report a bug, please contact olivier.henry.at.meteo.fr. The latest offline version and source code of the ASMM Creator can be found here. The latest online version and source code of the ASMM Creator can be found here.
The Airborne Science Mission Metadata (ASMM) tool has been developed to create, modify and view XML files that will contain standardized metadata to describe the scientific objectives and other scientific descriptors of research flights.
Within airborne atmospheric science, mission reports and log sheets written by scientists on board the aircraft provide valuable supporting details about research flights that are not evident from the instrument data itself. These reports can include environmental details such as types of clouds encountered, surfaces overflown and synoptic features, or mission details such as overall scientific aims, flight manoeuvres undertaken and supporting surface based observations, among many other things. Currently, mission reports take the form of handwritten or electronic notes, thus the quality and content varies greatly between authors, making the reports less useful for filtering or searching of specific flight details in the months and years after the flight.
This project - Airborne Science Mission Metadata (ASMM) - was motivated by the need to create a standard set of mission reports, aiding in the classification and searchings of data sets and archives based on flight phenomena, mission parameters or other criteria. To meet this goal, an XML format has been developed to store the mission report data in a standard manner, and an easy-to-use graphical user interface has been developed to facilitate creation and display of the standard XML files. This project contains the source code and executables for the ASMM creator as well as documentation describing the ASMM XML schema.
With ASMM, you have a tool to create an xml file containing a standard set of metadata dedicated to airborne research and a function to generate a flight report based on user inputs. The tool is divided into several sections. Within each of these are a number of check-boxes to select features. In addition, each section has a free-text entry box in which the user can enter supporting details and information.
The resulting information can be saved as an XML file that can subsequently by used by data archives for classification and data discovery. In addition it can be printed to a PDF file that may be saved with other written flight logs. There is an option to upload up to 10 image files such as satellite images or quick-look plots of the data for inclusion in the PDF output. These images are not saved with the XML.
Since ASMM is intended for as wide a use as possible, each section is extensible with an option to create additional check-boxes. If you use this option, you should ensure that you provide consistent naming of extensions that you add. The easiest way to do this is by opening an XML file with these extensions that you have created for a previous flight and then modifying it.
ASMM can be used both online (asmm.eufar.net), or offline if you already downloaded the stand-alone/Python version.
ASMM is a small GWT program which uses user inputs to create a small xml file and/or a pdf report. The main part of the program is executed in the internet browser of the user. The read/write parts of the program are handled by the EUFAR server. Any xml files and images uploaded to ASMM are not stored on the server and so will not be available for the next ASMM session.
Just launch ASMM and follow the flow. It's up to you to select the metadata you want, or to create new ones. Only the first tab, dedicated to information about the user, is mandatory if you decide to use ASMM for your own purpose.
In the EUFAR community, ASMM is linked to each flight, that is to say each time an aircraft/drone flies an ASMM xml file have to be created. Then it has to be send to the EUFAR database manager with the data acquired during that flight. The xml file will be stored in the database with the flight dataset. Each metadata will help future user in their search queries.