**<div align="right"><font size="25">WGISS Connected Data Assets</font></div>**
**<div align="right"><font size="25">Guidance to Enable Discoverability of CEOS-ARD Datasets</font></div>**
<div align="right">Publication Date: 2026-XX-XX</div>
<div align="right">Editors: WGISS DAIG</div>

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# Introduction

## Purpose of the document

This document describes Best Practices for the encoding of metadata for CEOS-ARD Collections to facilitate their discovery through the CEOS Connected Data Assets.

The proposed Best Practices are based on proven approaches used by other communities for expressing conformance with data specifications as part of Quality metadata:

- INSPIRE: to express partial or conformance with respect to the `INSPIRE Data Specifications` {cite}`inspire_dataspecifications`, e.g. "Land cover", "Orthoimagery" etc. 
- DGIWG: to express partial or conformance with respect to its `Data Product Specifications` {cite}`dgiwg_standards` (DPS), e.g. "Defence Gridded Elevation Data Product" (DGED), "Defence Orthoimagery Product" (DOP) or "Elevation Surface Mode" (ESM).

The document does not impose a particular metadata standard, but aims to provide guidance on how to apply the best practices to a number of widely used metadata standards.

The Best Practices are currently limited to `Collection` metadata and do not cover the encoding of metadata for CEOS-ARD `Granules` or `Items`.

## Terms, definitions and abbreviated terms

### Terms and definitions

The following acronyms are used in addition to the acronyms defined in the [CEOS EO Glossary](https://github.com/ceos-org/eo-glossary).

```{glossary}
CEOS-ARD self-assessment
	Product assessed as meeting CEOS-ARD requirements by the organisation responsible for production and distribution of the product.
CEOS-ARD peer review
	Peer review by the CEOS Working Group on Calibration and Validation of the organisation's product self-assessment.
```

### Acronyms

The following acronyms are used in addition to the acronyms defined in the [CEOS EO Glossary](https://github.com/ceos-org/eo-glossary).

|  Acronym  |  Definition |
|  -------- |  ----------  |
|  ARD |  Analysis Ready Data  |
|  CDA |  Connected Data Assets  |
|  DGIWG |  Defence Geospatial Information Working Group  |
|  DPS |  (DGIWG) Data Product Specifications  |
|  INSPIRE |  Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe  |
|  PFS |  Product Family Specification  |