ESIP and NDS sign Memorandum of Understanding

In recognition of Earth Science Information Partners' (ESIP) and the National Data Service's (NDS) mutual goals and interests, a memorandum of understanding is now in place that agrees to principles of pathways for impact, our roles as learning organizations, and a commitment to collaborate. In the near term, ESIP and NDS will pursue joint pilots and training efforts.

The National Data Service (NDS) is a U.S. consortium focused on helping scientists and researchers find, reuse, and publish data. The NDS Consortium includes research computing centers, agencies, libraries, publishers and universities focused on developing an open environment of data services. These services are federated, interoperable, and integrated at a national-scale with guidance from the group's stakeholders: researchers, scholars, and policy makers.

The NDS Consortium builds on data archiving and sharing efforts by connecting them together with a common set of tools to better facilitate data search, publication, linking, and reuse. NDS development efforts are led by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications  (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , with contributions from the San Diego Supercomputer Center  (SDSC) at UC San Diego , and other partners around the country.

About ESIP

ESIP is a community of Earth science data and information technology practitioners who facilitate the distribution of Earth science data, and provide products and services to decision makers and researchers in public and private settings. ESIP's strength comes from its depth of partner organizations, which now number 110. Among these are all NOAA, NASA and USGS Earth observing data centers, as well as government research laboratories, research universities, modelers, education resource providers, technology developers, nonprofits and commercial enterprises.