Metadata

Metadata

Station and Channel metadata 

Station and channel metadata are provided by the FDSN station webservice as:

  • StationXML files (a modern expression of metadata defined by the FDSN);
  • Text (using the text symbol ‘|’ as separator.

Response metadata

Full response metadata is available as

  • StationXML files , delivered by the FDSN station webservice; 
  • RESP files (Seed Manual, Standard for Earthquake Exchange Data), delivered by the Epos-France resp webservice;
  • SACPZ files (SAC manual), delivered by the Epos-France sacpz webservice;
  • plots,  delivered by the Epos-France evalresp webservice.

Epos-France seismological metadata are entirely constructed by data producers, who submit them to the data center; the latter does not modify them. They are checked at the time of their submission in order to meet quality criteria defined within Epos-France. In particular, all metadata is checked and validated station-validator (list of rules).

StationXML versus SEEDdataless

As of 2015, the FDSN no longer supports the SEED dataless metadata format (previously used for metadata exchange), which is replaced by the StationXML format. Conversion tools exist to ensure the continuity of applications that would need metadata in the SEED dataless metadata format. In addition, the webservice resp allows you to obtain metadata in RESP SEED format.

It is possible to convert a StationXML volume  into a SEED dataless volume by using the IRIS (java) conversion tool.

FULLSEED format versus miniSEED and StationXML

The notion of a complete SEED volume, which guaranteed the user a complete description of the data with associated metadata in a single volume, no longer exists. The recovery of data and metadata is done separately, through different web services. By construction, Epos-France seismological data center (SDC) does not deliver any data for which the corresponding metadata is not available, but data and metadata must be obtained separately. See our section on  webservices.

Data availability information

Data availability information: segments, gaps, overlaps, quality flags, is delivered by the FDSN availability webservice

  • text (using the symbol ‘|’  as separator);
  • json
  • geocsv

See our webservices pages for examples.

Data quality and metrics

Detailed information on the contents of waveform data including quality control parameters, sample metrics, record header flags, and timing quality is available as json file, using the EIDA  WFCatalog webservice.

Extended network metadata

They are provided by Networks DOI (Digital Object Identifier; the format is is Datacite xml or json file

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