Assignment 3 - Radhika Arora - SPIF

The group I am choosing to discuss is the people I work with at the Space Planetary Image Facility (SPIF) consisting of myself, my immediate boss (the data manager) and his boss, the facility manager.

The basic goal, or purpose of SPIF and therefore this group is to provide scientists, faculty, students and the general public access to a library of lunar and planetary images collected by various NASA missions. More specifically, it is the goal of my group to properly catalog images brought in by NASA missions, as well as display them in a format that is pleasing to those who may need them.
The image cataloging system in place for SPIF is very specific. Each image is first separated by mission, and then within each mission, each image is separated by geographical location. Within the same geographical location, images are arranged according to date the image was taken. There are actually several more categories, but that would be too specific for this assignment. External representations used to carry out the specific goal stated above are the following: (1) Mission Name, (2) Geographical Location of Image, and (3) Date of Image. These representations allow us to not have to double check each image to see what mission it belongs with and what geographical location it shows. Each image is not only cataloged in binders, but also scanned and uploaded onto a server. This allows us to track when images are moves, reclassified or reformatted. Internal representations are used when we use knowledge gained by the group and individual memory banks.

Both types of representations are transformed. We reformat the scanned images to ensure that the image can be seen properly (brightness and contrast), and that there are no visible marks (movement of camera sometimes allows black lines to appear on the images). Internal representations are used to recognize when an image is incorrectly labeled and also to check and double check to make sure the images are cataloged properly (according to NASA guidelines) both on the server and in the facility.

This task is loosely coupled. Since the cataloging guidelines are specific, no group member needs to depend on another for information. Each member of the group can work on their own and identify what they have cataloged and what is left but there is no need for immediate clarification or agreement. If a conflict arises, it does so only if a group member feels like checking the recently cataloged items.