ESIP Summer Session?

[dblodgett-usgs]

Hi All -- Ethan Davis from Unidata and I are convening this session at ESIP Summer 2026.

The NetCDF-CF based Unidata Common Data Model — first as netCDF-Java, and largely adopted by xarray's internal model — has become the de facto abstract data model for interchange of cell-based spatiotemporal data. The conventions related to it, though, are being renegotiated substantially. Zarr v3 was released in early 2025 with sharding and a formal extension mechanism. At the October 2025 Zarr Summit, the Zarr community prototyped a modular ""Zarr Conventions"" framework that decouples CRS, spatial transforms, and multiscales support. STAC became an OGC Community Standard the same month, with active work on aligning the datacube extension with the core bands construct. OGC API-EDR, which offers an API pattern for data cube data, is developing rapidly. GDAL's multidimensional raster functionality is gaining support for Zarr v3. These efforts are progressing quickly and not always in a coordinated way.

This session brings together community members working across these and related projects to discuss the state of the field. We are interested in where the conventions are converging in practice, where they diverge in ways that might cause problems, and where coordination effort is justified. Short framing presentations may (depending on panel members) cover recent work in Zarr v3 conventions and GeoZarr, NetCDF / HDF and the underlying CDM, GDAL's role moving data between formats, CF evolution toward Zarr-support, OGC API-EDR as a query interface over cube-shaped data, and the STAC datacube extension as a discovery layer. The session will be more than a survey — it will be a working session aiming to identify specific follow up actions to raise awareness and fill gaps.

Following the framing presentations, we will open the floor and shift to co-work. Participants will help identify the topics worth a deeper seminar, sketch the goals for each, and identify who would lead them. The output will be a public seminar series proposal and set of specific actions to that will help bridge efforts in this space. Bring your unresolved questions, your half-finished proposals, and your strong opinions about where the conventions should go next.

I wonder if someone working on geozarr and any other zarr conventions are planning to attend and would like to take part in the session?