Adaptable Seismic Data Format

The Adaptable Seismic Data Format (ASDF, not to be confused with the Advanced Scientific Data Format) is a format for storing seismic data as a replacement for SEED, although the authors claim that in a limited area of application SEED will continue to be useful, section 3.1. It is based on HDF5, and has 4 main sections (implemented as HDF5 groups, except for the first, which is a single binary record):
 * Non-time series data about seismic events, specified using an embedded QuakeML document
 * Time series waveform data . Metadata about the station that produced the data is optionally stored in an embedded StationXML file
 * "Auxiliary data", which holds anything miscellaneous
 * Provenance of waveform or auxiliary data, specified with SEIS-PROV (a spun-off format)

Specification

 * The "Definition"

Software

 * ASDF Library: Official implementation
 * ASDF Format Validator
 * ASDF Sextant: A graphical explorer
 * Pyasdf: A Python implementation

Links

 * Official website
 * Published description