Story Maps as an Effective Social Medium for Data Synthesis, Communication, and Dissemination

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wright, D. J.; Verrill, A.; Artz, M.; Deming, R.

2014-12-01

The story map is a new medium for sharing not only data, but also photos, videos, sounds, and maps, as a way to tell a specific and compelling story by way of that content. It is emerging as a popular and effective social media too. The user may employ some fairly sophisticated cartographic functionality without advanced training in cartography or GIS. Story maps are essentially web map applications built from web maps, which in turn are built from web-accessible data (including OGC WMS, WFS). This paper will emphasize the approaches and technologies of web-based GIS to tell "stories" about important connections among scientists, resource managers, and policy makers focused on oceans and coasts within the US; and how combining the new medium of "intelligent Web maps" with text, multimedia content, and intuitive user experiences has a great potential to synthesize the data, and it primary interpretative message in order to inform, educate, and inspire about a wide variety of ocean science and policy issues.

Modelling noise propagation using Grid Resources. Progress within GDI-Grid

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kiehle, Christian; Mayer, Christian; Padberg, Alexander; Stapelfeld, Hartmut

2010-05-01

Modelling noise propagation using Grid Resources. Progress within GDI-Grid. GDI-Grid (english: SDI-Grid) is a research project funded by the German Ministry for Science and Education (BMBF). It aims at bridging the gaps between OGC Web Services (OWS) and Grid infrastructures and identifying the potential of utilizing the superior storage capacities and computational power of grid infrastructures for geospatial applications while keeping the well-known service interfaces specified by the OGC. The project considers all major OGC webservice interfaces for Web Mapping (WMS), Feature access (Web Feature Service), Coverage access (Web Coverage Service) and processing (Web Processing Service). The major challenge within GDI-Grid is the harmonization of diverging standards as defined by standardization bodies for Grid computing and spatial information exchange. The project started in 2007 and will continue until June 2010. The concept for the gridification of OWS developed by lat/lon GmbH and the Department of Geography of the University of Bonn is applied to three real-world scenarios in order to check its practicability: a flood simulation, a scenario for emergency routing and a noise propagation simulation. The latter scenario is addressed by the Stapelfeldt Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH located in Dortmund adapting their LimA software to utilize grid resources. Noise mapping of e.g. traffic noise in urban agglomerates and along major trunk roads is a reoccurring demand of the EU Noise Directive. Input data requires road net and traffic, terrain, buildings and noise protection screens as well as population distribution. Noise impact levels are generally calculated in 10 m grid and along relevant building facades. For each receiver position sources within a typical range of 2000 m are split down into small segments, depending on local geometry. For each of the segments propagation analysis includes diffraction effects caused by all obstacles on the path of sound propagation. This immense intensive calculation needs to be performed for a major part of European landscape. A LINUX version of the commercial LimA software for noise mapping analysis has been implemented on a test cluster within the German D-GRID computer network. Results and performance indicators will be presented. The presentation is an extension to last-years presentation "Spatial Data Infrastructures and Grid Computing: the GDI-Grid project" that described the gridification concept developed in the GDI-Grid project and provided an overview of the conceptual gaps between Grid Computing and Spatial Data Infrastructures. Results from the GDI-Grid project are incorporated in the OGC-OGF (Open Grid Forum) collaboration efforts as well as the OGC WPS 2.0 standards working group developing the next major version of the WPS specification.

Interoperability And Value Added To Earth Observation Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gasperi, J.

2012-04-01

Geospatial web services technology has provided a new means for geospatial data interoperability. Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services such as Web Map Service (WMS) to request maps on the Internet, Web Feature Service (WFS) to exchange vectors or Catalog Service for the Web (CSW) to search for geospatialized data have been widely adopted in the Geosciences community in general and in the remote sensing community in particular. These services make Earth Observation data available to a wider range of public users than ever before. The mapshup web client offers an innovative and efficient user interface that takes advantage of the power of interoperability. This presentation will demonstrate how mapshup can be effectively used in the context of natural disasters management.

OGC and Grid Interoperability in enviroGRIDS Project

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gorgan, Dorian; Rodila, Denisa; Bacu, Victor; Giuliani, Gregory; Ray, Nicolas

2010-05-01

EnviroGRIDS (Black Sea Catchment Observation and Assessment System supporting Sustainable Development) [1] is a 4-years FP7 Project aiming to address the subjects of ecologically unsustainable development and inadequate resource management. The project develops a Spatial Data Infrastructure of the Black Sea Catchment region. The geospatial technologies offer very specialized functionality for Earth Science oriented applications as well as the Grid oriented technology that is able to support distributed and parallel processing. One challenge of the enviroGRIDS project is the interoperability between geospatial and Grid infrastructures by providing the basic and the extended features of the both technologies. The geospatial interoperability technology has been promoted as a way of dealing with large volumes of geospatial data in distributed environments through the development of interoperable Web service specifications proposed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), with applications spread across multiple fields but especially in Earth observation research. Due to the huge volumes of data available in the geospatial domain and the additional introduced issues (data management, secure data transfer, data distribution and data computation), the need for an infrastructure capable to manage all those problems becomes an important aspect. The Grid promotes and facilitates the secure interoperations of geospatial heterogeneous distributed data within a distributed environment, the creation and management of large distributed computational jobs and assures a security level for communication and transfer of messages based on certificates. This presentation analysis and discusses the most significant use cases for enabling the OGC Web services interoperability with the Grid environment and focuses on the description and implementation of the most promising one. In these use cases we give a special attention to issues such as: the relations between computational grid and the OGC Web service protocols, the advantages offered by the Grid technology - such as providing a secure interoperability between the distributed geospatial resource -and the issues introduced by the integration of distributed geospatial data in a secure environment: data and service discovery, management, access and computation. enviroGRIDS project proposes a new architecture which allows a flexible and scalable approach for integrating the geospatial domain represented by the OGC Web services with the Grid domain represented by the gLite middleware. The parallelism offered by the Grid technology is discussed and explored at the data level, management level and computation level. The analysis is carried out for OGC Web service interoperability in general but specific details are emphasized for Web Map Service (WMS), Web Feature Service (WFS), Web Coverage Service (WCS), Web Processing Service (WPS) and Catalog Service for Web (CSW). Issues regarding the mapping and the interoperability between the OGC and the Grid standards and protocols are analyzed as they are the base in solving the communication problems between the two environments: grid and geospatial. The presetation mainly highlights how the Grid environment and Grid applications capabilities can be extended and utilized in geospatial interoperability. Interoperability between geospatial and Grid infrastructures provides features such as the specific geospatial complex functionality and the high power computation and security of the Grid, high spatial model resolution and geographical area covering, flexible combination and interoperability of the geographical models. According with the Service Oriented Architecture concepts and requirements of interoperability between geospatial and Grid infrastructures each of the main functionality is visible from enviroGRIDS Portal and consequently, by the end user applications such as Decision Maker/Citizen oriented Applications. The enviroGRIDS portal is the single way of the user to get into the system and the portal faces a unique style of the graphical user interface. Main reference for further information: [1] enviroGRIDS Project, http://www.envirogrids.net/

Automated Data Quality Assurance using OGC Sensor Web Enablement Frameworks for Marine Observatories

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Toma, Daniel; Bghiel, Ikram; del Rio, Joaquin; Hidalgo, Alberto; Carreras, Normandino; Manuel, Antoni

2014-05-01

Over the past years, environmental sensors have continuously improved by becoming smaller, cheaper, and more intelligent. Therefore, many sensor networks are increasingly deployed to monitor our environment. But due to the large number of sensor manufacturers, accompanying protocols and data encoding, automated integration and data quality assurance of diverse sensors in an observing systems is not straightforward, requiring development of data management code and manual tedious configuration. However, over the past few years it has been demonstrated that Open-Geospatial Consortium (OGC) frameworks can enable web services with fully-described sensor systems, including data processing, sensor characteristics and quality control tests and results. So far, the SWE framework does not describe how to integrate sensors on-the-fly with minimal human intervention. The data management software which enables access to sensors, data processing and quality control tests has to be implemented and the results have to be manually mapped to the SWE models. In this contribution, we describe a Sensor Plug & Play infrastructure for the Sensor Web by combining (1) OGC PUCK protocol - a simple standard embedded instrument protocol to store and retrieve directly from the devices the declarative description of sensor characteristics and quality control tests, (2) an automatic mechanism for data processing and quality control tests underlying the Sensor Web - the Sensor Interface Descriptor (SID) concept, as well as (3) a model for the declarative description of sensor which serves as a generic data management mechanism - designed as a profile and extension of OGC SWE's SensorML standard. We implement and evaluate our approach by applying it to the OBSEA Observatory, and can be used to demonstrate the ability to assess data quality for temperature, salinity, air pressure and wind speed and direction observations off the coast of Garraf, in the north-eastern Spain.

First Prototype of a Web Map Interface for ESA's Planetary Science Archive (PSA)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Manaud, N.; Gonzalez, J.

2014-04-01

We present a first prototype of a Web Map Interface that will serve as a proof of concept and design for ESA's future fully web-based Planetary Science Archive (PSA) User Interface. The PSA is ESA's planetary science archiving authority and central repository for all scientific and engineering data returned by ESA's Solar System missions [1]. All data are compliant with NASA's Planetary Data System (PDS) Standards and are accessible through several interfaces [2]: in addition to serving all public data via FTP and the Planetary Data Access Protocol (PDAP), a Java-based User Interface provides advanced search, preview, download, notification and delivery-basket functionality. It allows the user to query and visualise instrument observations footprints using a map-based interface (currently only available for Mars Express HRSC and OMEGA instruments). During the last decade, the planetary mapping science community has increasingly been adopting Geographic Information System (GIS) tools and standards, originally developed for and used in Earth science. There is an ongoing effort to produce and share cartographic products through Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Services, or as standalone data sets, so that they can be readily used in existing GIS applications [3,4,5]. Previous studies conducted at ESAC [6,7] have helped identify the needs of Planetary GIS users, and define key areas of improvement for the future Web PSA User Interface. Its web map interface shall will provide access to the full geospatial content of the PSA, including (1) observation geometry footprints of all remote sensing instruments, and (2) all georeferenced cartographic products, such as HRSC map-projected data or OMEGA global maps from Mars Express. It shall aim to provide a rich user experience for search and visualisation of this content using modern and interactive web mapping technology. A comprehensive set of built-in context maps from external sources, such as MOLA topography, TES infrared maps or planetary surface nomenclature, provided in both simple cylindrical and polar stereographic projections, shall enhance this user experience. In addition, users should be able to import and export data in commonly used open- GIS formats. It is also intended to serve all PSA geospatial data through OGC-compliant Web Services so that they can be captured, visualised and analysed directly from GIS software, along with data from other sources. The following figure illustrates how the PSA web map interface and services shall fit in a typical Planetary GIS user working environment.

Cross-Dataset Analysis and Visualization Driven by Expressive Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Alexandru Dumitru, Mircea; Catalin Merticariu, Vlad

2015-04-01

The deluge of data that is hitting us every day from satellite and airborne sensors is changing the workflow of environmental data analysts and modelers. Web geo-services play now a fundamental role, and are no longer needed to preliminary download and store the data, but rather they interact in real-time with GIS applications. Due to the very large amount of data that is curated and made available by web services, it is crucial to deploy smart solutions for optimizing network bandwidth, reducing duplication of data and moving the processing closer to the data. In this context we have created a visualization application for analysis and cross-comparison of aerosol optical thickness datasets. The application aims to help researchers identify and visualize discrepancies between datasets coming from various sources, having different spatial and time resolutions. It also acts as a proof of concept for integration of OGC Web Services under a user-friendly interface that provides beautiful visualizations of the explored data. The tool was built on top of the World Wind engine, a Java based virtual globe built by NASA and the open source community. For data retrieval and processing we exploited the OGC Web Coverage Service potential: the most exciting aspect being its processing extension, a.k.a. the OGC Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS) standard. A WCPS-compliant service allows a client to execute a processing query on any coverage offered by the server. By exploiting a full grammar, several different kinds of information can be retrieved from one or more datasets together: scalar condensers, cross-sectional profiles, comparison maps and plots, etc. This combination of technology made the application versatile and portable. As the processing is done on the server-side, we ensured that the minimal amount of data is transferred and that the processing is done on a fully-capable server, leaving the client hardware resources to be used for rendering the visualization. The application offers a set of features to visualize and cross-compare the datasets. Users can select a region of interest in space and time on which an aerosol map layer is plotted. Hovmoeller time-latitude and time-longitude profiles can be displayed by selecting orthogonal cross-sections on the globe. Statistics about the selected dataset are also displayed in different text and plot formats. The datasets can also be cross-compared either by using the delta map tool or the merged map tool. For more advanced users, a WCPS query console is also offered allowing users to process their data with ad-hoc queries and then choose how to display the results. Overall, the user has a rich set of tools that can be used to visualize and cross-compare the aerosol datasets. With our application we have shown how the NASA WorldWind framework can be used to display results processed efficiently - and entirely - on the server side using the expressiveness of the OGC WCPS web-service. The application serves not only as a proof of concept of a new paradigm in working with large geospatial data but also as an useful tool for environmental data analysts.

Improving data discoverability, accessibility, and interoperability with the Esri ArcGIS Platform at the NASA Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC).

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tisdale, M.

2017-12-01

NASA's Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) is operationally using the Esri ArcGIS Platform to improve data discoverability, accessibility and interoperability to meet the diversifying user requirements from government, private, public and academic communities. The ASDC is actively working to provide their mission essential datasets as ArcGIS Image Services, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Mapping Services (WMS), and OGC Web Coverage Services (WCS) while leveraging the ArcGIS multidimensional mosaic dataset structure. Science teams at ASDC are utilizing these services through the development of applications using the Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS and the ArcGIS API for Javascript. These services provide greater exposure of ASDC data holdings to the GIS community and allow for broader sharing and distribution to various end users. These capabilities provide interactive visualization tools and improved geospatial analytical tools for a mission critical understanding in the areas of the earth's radiation budget, clouds, aerosols, and tropospheric chemistry. The presentation will cover how the ASDC is developing geospatial web services and applications to improve data discoverability, accessibility, and interoperability.

Exchanging the Context between OGC Geospatial Web clients and GIS applications using Atom

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Maso, Joan; Díaz, Paula; Riverola, Anna; Pons, Xavier

2013-04-01

Currently, the discovery and sharing of geospatial information over the web still presents difficulties. News distribution through website content was simplified by the use of Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and Atom syndication formats. This communication exposes an extension of Atom to redistribute references to geospatial information in a Spatial Data Infrastructure distributed environment. A geospatial client can save the status of an application that involves several OGC services of different kind and direct data and share this status with other users that need the same information and use different client vendor products in an interoperable way. The extensibility of the Atom format was essential to define a format that could be used in RSS enabled web browser, Mass Market map viewers and emerging geospatial enable integrated clients that support Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services. Since OWS Context has been designed as an Atom extension, it is possible to see the document in common places where Atom documents are valid. Internet web browsers are able to present the document as a list of items with title, abstract, time, description and downloading features. OWS Context uses GeoRSS so that, the document can be to be interpreted by both Google maps and Bing Maps as items that have the extent represented in a dynamic map. Another way to explode a OWS Context is to develop an XSLT to transform the Atom feed into an HTML5 document that shows the exact status of the client view window that saved the context document. To accomplish so, we use the width and height of the client window, and the extent of the view in world (geographic) coordinates in order to calculate the scale of the map. Then, we can mix elements in world coordinates (such as CF-NetCDF files or GML) with elements in pixel coordinates (such as WMS maps, WMTS tiles and direct SVG content). A smarter map browser application called MiraMon Map Browser is able to write a context document and read it again to recover the context of the previous view or load a context generated by another application. The possibility to store direct links to direct files in OWS Context is particularly interesting for GIS desktop solutions. This communication also presents the development made in the MiraMon desktop GIS solution to include OWS Context. MiraMon software is able to deal either with local files, web services and database connections. As in any other GIS solution, MiraMon team designed its own file (MiraMon Map MMM) for storing and sharing the status of a GIS session. The new OWS Context format is now adopted as an interoperable substitution of the MMM. The extensibility of the format makes it possible to map concepts in the MMM to current OWS Context elements (such as titles, data links, extent, etc) and to generate new elements that are able to include all extra metadata not currently covered by OWS Context. These developments were done in the nine edition of the OpenGIS Web Services Interoperability Experiment (OWS-9) and are demonstrated in this communication.

OpenSearch technology for geospatial resources discovery

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Papeschi, Fabrizio; Enrico, Boldrini; Mazzetti, Paolo

2010-05-01

In 2005, the term Web 2.0 has been coined by Tim O'Reilly to describe a quickly growing set of Web-based applications that share a common philosophy of "mutually maximizing collective intelligence and added value for each participant by formalized and dynamic information sharing". Around this same period, OpenSearch a new Web 2.0 technology, was developed. More properly, OpenSearch is a collection of technologies that allow publishing of search results in a format suitable for syndication and aggregation. It is a way for websites and search engines to publish search results in a standard and accessible format. Due to its strong impact on the way the Web is perceived by users and also due its relevance for businesses, Web 2.0 has attracted the attention of both mass media and the scientific community. This explosive growth in popularity of Web 2.0 technologies like OpenSearch, and practical applications of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) resulted in an increased interest in similarities, convergence, and a potential synergy of these two concepts. SOA is considered as the philosophy of encapsulating application logic in services with a uniformly defined interface and making these publicly available via discovery mechanisms. Service consumers may then retrieve these services, compose and use them according to their current needs. A great degree of similarity between SOA and Web 2.0 may be leading to a convergence between the two paradigms. They also expose divergent elements, such as the Web 2.0 support to the human interaction in opposition to the typical SOA machine-to-machine interaction. According to these considerations, the Geospatial Information (GI) domain, is also moving first steps towards a new approach of data publishing and discovering, in particular taking advantage of the OpenSearch technology. A specific GI niche is represented by the OGC Catalog Service for Web (CSW) that is part of the OGC Web Services (OWS) specifications suite, which provides a set of services for discovery, access, and processing of geospatial resources in a SOA framework. GI-cat is a distributed CSW framework implementation developed by the ESSI Lab of the Italian National Research Council (CNR-IMAA) and the University of Florence. It provides brokering and mediation functionalities towards heterogeneous resources and inventories, exposing several standard interfaces for query distribution. This work focuses on a new GI-cat interface which allows the catalog to be queried according to the OpenSearch syntax specification, thus filling the gap between the SOA architectural design of the CSW and the Web 2.0. At the moment, there is no OGC standard specification about this topic, but an official change request has been proposed in order to enable the OGC catalogues to support OpenSearch queries. In this change request, an OpenSearch extension is proposed providing a standard mechanism to query a resource based on temporal and geographic extents. Two new catalog operations are also proposed, in order to publish a suitable OpenSearch interface. This extended interface is implemented by the modular GI-cat architecture adding a new profiling module called "OpenSearch profiler". Since GI-cat also acts as a clearinghouse catalog, another component called "OpenSearch accessor" is added in order to access OpenSearch compliant services. An important role in the GI-cat extension, is played by the adopted mapping strategy. Two different kind of mappings are required: query, and response elements mapping. Query mapping is provided in order to fit the simple OpenSearch query syntax to the complex CSW query expressed by the OGC Filter syntax. GI-cat internal data model is based on the ISO-19115 profile, that is more complex than the simple XML syndication formats, such as RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0, suggested by OpenSearch. Once response elements are available, in order to be presented, they need to be translated from the GI-cat internal data model, to the above mentioned syndication formats; the mapping processing, is bidirectional. When GI-cat is used to access OpenSearch compliant services, the CSW query must be mapped to the OpenSearch query, and the response elements, must be translated according to the GI-cat internal data model. As results of such extensions, GI-cat provides a user friendly facade to the complex CSW interface, thus enabling it to be queried, for example, using a browser toolbar.

Emerging Geospatial Sharing Technologies in Earth and Space Science Informatics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Singh, R.; Bermudez, L. E.

2013-12-01

Emerging Geospatial Sharing Technologies in Earth and Space Science Informatics The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) mission is to serve as a global forum for the collaboration of developers and users of spatial data products and services, and to advance the development of international standards for geospatial interoperability. The OGC coordinates with over 400 institutions in the development of geospatial standards. In the last years two main trends are making disruptions in geospatial applications: mobile and context sharing. People now have more and more mobile devices to support their work and personal life. Mobile devices are intermittently connected to the internet and have smaller computing capacity than a desktop computer. Based on this trend a new OGC file format standard called GeoPackage will enable greater geospatial data sharing on mobile devices. GeoPackage is perhaps best understood as the natural evolution of Shapefiles, which have been the predominant lightweight geodata sharing format for two decades. However the format is extremely limited. Four major shortcomings are that only vector points, lines, and polygons are supported; property names are constrained by the dBASE format; multiple files are required to encode a single data set; and multiple Shapefiles are required to encode multiple data sets. A more modern lingua franca for geospatial data is long overdue. GeoPackage fills this need with support for vector data, image tile matrices, and raster data. And it builds upon a database container - SQLite - that's self-contained, single-file, cross-platform, serverless, transactional, and open source. A GeoPackage, in essence, is a set of SQLite database tables whose content and layout is described in the candidate GeoPackage Implementation Specification available at https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=54838&version=1. The second trend is sharing client 'contexts'. When a user is looking into an article or a product on the web, they can easily share this information with colleagues or friends via an email that includes URLs (links to web resources) and attachments (inline data). In the case of geospatial information, a user would like to share a map created from different OGC sources, which may include for example, WMS and WFS links, and GML and KML annotations. The emerging OGC file format is called the OGC Web Services Context Document (OWS Context), which allows clients to reproduce a map previously created by someone else. Context sharing is important in a variety of domains, from emergency response, where fire, police and emergency medical personnel need to work off a common map, to multi-national military operations, where coalition forces need to share common data sources, but have cartographic displays in different languages and symbology sets. OWS Contexts can be written in XML (building upon the Atom Syndication Format) or JSON. This presentation will provide an introduction of GeoPackage and OWS Context and how they can be used to advance sharing of Earth and Space Science information.

Design and Development of a Framework Based on Ogc Web Services for the Visualization of Three Dimensional Large-Scale Geospatial Data Over the Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Roccatello, E.; Nozzi, A.; Rumor, M.

2013-05-01

This paper illustrates the key concepts behind the design and the development of a framework, based on OGC services, capable to visualize 3D large scale geospatial data streamed over the web. WebGISes are traditionally bounded to a bi-dimensional simplified representation of the reality and though they are successfully addressing the lack of flexibility and simplicity of traditional desktop clients, a lot of effort is still needed to reach desktop GIS features, like 3D visualization. The motivations behind this work lay in the widespread availability of OGC Web Services inside government organizations and in the technology support to HTML 5 and WebGL standard of the web browsers. This delivers an improved user experience, similar to desktop applications, therefore allowing to augment traditional WebGIS features with a 3D visualization framework. This work could be seen as an extension of the Cityvu project, started in 2008 with the aim of a plug-in free OGC CityGML viewer. The resulting framework has also been integrated in existing 3DGIS software products and will be made available in the next months.

How NASA's Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) is operationally using the Esri ArcGIS Platform to improve data discoverability, accessibility and interoperability to meet the diversifying government, private, public and academic communities' driven requirements.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tisdale, M.

2016-12-01

NASA's Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) is operationally using the Esri ArcGIS Platform to improve data discoverability, accessibility and interoperability to meet the diversifying government, private, public and academic communities' driven requirements. The ASDC is actively working to provide their mission essential datasets as ArcGIS Image Services, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Mapping Services (WMS), OGC Web Coverage Services (WCS) and leveraging the ArcGIS multidimensional mosaic dataset structure. Science teams and ASDC are utilizing these services, developing applications using the Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS and ArcGIS API for Javascript, and evaluating restructuring their data production and access scripts within the ArcGIS Python Toolbox framework and Geoprocessing service environment. These capabilities yield a greater usage and exposure of ASDC data holdings and provide improved geospatial analytical tools for a mission critical understanding in the areas of the earth's radiation budget, clouds, aerosols, and tropospheric chemistry.

The deegree framework - Spatial Data Infrastructure solution for end-users and developers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kiehle, Christian; Poth, Andreas

2010-05-01

The open source software framework deegree is a comprehensive implementa­tion of standards as defined by ISO and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). It has been developed with two goals in mind: provide a uniform framework for implementing Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) and adhering to standards as strictly as possible. Although being open source software (Lesser GNU Public Li­cense, LGPL), deegree has been developed with a business model in mind: providing the general building blocks of SDIs without license fees and offer cus­tomization, consulting and tailoring by specialized companies. The core of deegree is a comprehensive Java Application Programming Inter­face (API) offering access to spatial features, analysis, metadata and coordinate reference systems. As a library, deegree can and has been integrated as a core module inside spatial information systems. It is reference implementation for several OGC standards and based on an ISO 19107 geometry model. For end users, deegree is shipped as a web application providing easy-to-set-up components for web mapping and spatial analysis. Since 2000, deegree has been the backbone of many productive SDIs, first and foremost for governmental stakeholders (e.g. Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy in Germany, the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the En­vironment in the Netherlands, etc.) as well as for research and development projects as an early adoption of standards, drafts and discussion papers. Be­sides mature standards like Web Map Service, Web Feature Service and Cata­logue Services, deegree also implements rather new standards like the Sensor Observation Service, the Web Processing Service and the Web Coordinate Transformation Service (WCTS). While a robust background in standardization (knowledge and implementation) is a must for consultancy, standard-compliant services and encodings alone do not provide solutions for customers. The added value is comprised by a sophistic­ated set of client software, desktop and web environments. A focus lies on different client solutions for specific standards like the Web Pro­cessing Service and the Web Coordinate Transformation Service. On the other hand, complex geoportal solutions comprised of multiple standards and en­hanced by components for user management, security and map client function­ality show the demanding requirements of real world solutions. The XPlan-GML-standard as defined by the German spatial planing authorities is a good ex­ample of how complex real-world requirements can get. XPlan-GML is intended to provide a framework for digital spatial planning documents and requires complex Geography Markup Language (GML) features along with Symbology Encoding (SE), Filter Encoding (FE), Web Map Services (WMS), Web Feature Services (WFS). This complex in­frastructure should be used by urban and spatial planners and therefore re­quires a user-friendly graphical interface hiding the complexity of the underly­ing infrastructure. Based on challenges faced within customer projects, the importance of easy to use software components is focused. SDI solution should be build upon ISO/OGC-standards, but more important, should be user-friendly and support the users in spatial data management and analysis.

Towards Semantic Web Services on Large, Multi-Dimensional Coverages

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baumann, P.

2009-04-01

Observed and simulated data in the Earth Sciences often come as coverages, the general term for space-time varying phenomena as set forth by standardization bodies like the Open GeoSpatial Consortium (OGC) and ISO. Among such data are 1-d time series, 2-D surface data, 3-D surface data time series as well as x/y/z geophysical and oceanographic data, and 4-D metocean simulation results. With increasing dimensionality the data sizes grow exponentially, up to Petabyte object sizes. Open standards for exploiting coverage archives over the Web are available to a varying extent. The OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS) standard defines basic extraction operations: spatio-temporal and band subsetting, scaling, reprojection, and data format encoding of the result - a simple interoperable interface for coverage access. More processing functionality is available with products like Matlab, Grid-type interfaces, and the OGC Web Processing Service (WPS). However, these often lack properties known as advantageous from databases: declarativeness (describe results rather than the algorithms), safe in evaluation (no request can keep a server busy infinitely), and optimizable (enable the server to rearrange the request so as to produce the same result faster). WPS defines a geo-enabled SOAP interface for remote procedure calls. This allows to webify any program, but does not allow for semantic interoperability: a function is identified only by its function name and parameters while the semantics is encoded in the (only human readable) title and abstract. Hence, another desirable property is missing, namely an explicit semantics which allows for machine-machine communication and reasoning a la Semantic Web. The OGC Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS) language, which has been adopted as an international standard by OGC in December 2008, defines a flexible interface for the navigation, extraction, and ad-hoc analysis of large, multi-dimensional raster coverages. It is abstract in that it does not anticipate any particular protocol. One such protocol is given by the OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS) Processing Extension standard which ties WCPS into WCS. Another protocol which makes WCPS an OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) Profile is under preparation. Thereby, WCPS bridges WCS and WPS. The conceptual model of WCPS relies on the coverage model of WCS, which in turn is based on ISO 19123. WCS currently addresses raster-type coverages where a coverage is seen as a function mapping points from a spatio-temporal extent (its domain) into values of some cell type (its range). A retrievable coverage has an identifier associated, further the CRSs supported and, for each range field (aka band, channel), the interpolation methods applicable. The WCPS language offers access to one or several such coverages via a functional, side-effect free language. The following example, which derives the NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) from given coverages C1, C2, and C3 within the regions identified by the binary mask R, illustrates the language concept: for c in ( C1, C2, C3 ), r in ( R ) return encode( (char) (c.nir - c.red) / (c.nir + c.red), H˜DF-EOS\\~ ) The result is a list of three HDF-EOS encoded images containing masked NDVI values. Note that the same request can operate on coverages of any dimensionality. The expressive power of WCPS includes statistics, image, and signal processing up to recursion, to maintain safe evaluation. As both syntax and semantics of any WCPS expression is well known the language is Semantic Web ready: clients can construct WCPS requests on the fly, servers can optimize such requests (this has been investigated extensively with the rasdaman raster database system) and automatically distribute them for processing in a WCPS-enabled computing cloud. The WCPS Reference Implementation is being finalized now that the standard is stable; it will be released in open source once ready. Among the future tasks is to extend WCPS to general meshes, in synchronization with the WCS standard. In this talk WCPS is presented in the context of OGC standardization. The author is co-chair of OGC's WCS Working Group (WG) and Coverages WG.

A Story of a Crashed Plane in US-Mexican border

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bermudez, Luis; Hobona, Gobe; Vretanos, Peter; Peterson, Perry

2013-04-01

A plane has crashed on the US-Mexican border. The search and rescue command center planner needs to find information about the crash site, a mountain, nearby mountains for the establishment of a communications tower, as well as ranches for setting up a local incident center. Events like this one occur all over the world and exchanging information seamlessly is key to save lives and prevent further disasters. This abstract describes an interoperability testbed that applied this scenario using technologies based on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards. The OGC, which has about 500 members, serves as a global forum for the collaboration of developers and users of spatial data products and services, and to advance the development of international standards for geospatial interoperability. The OGC Interoperability Program conducts international interoperability testbeds, such as the OGC Web Services Phase 9 (OWS-9), that encourages rapid development, testing, validation, demonstration and adoption of open, consensus based standards and best practices. The Cross-Community Interoperability (CCI) thread in OWS-9 advanced the Web Feature Service for Gazetteers (WFS-G) by providing a Single Point of Entry Global Gazetteer (SPEGG), where a user can submit a single query and access global geographic names data across multiple Federal names databases. Currently users must make two queries with differing input parameters against two separate databases to obtain authoritative cross border geographic names data. The gazetteers in this scenario included: GNIS and GNS. GNIS or Geographic Names Information System is managed by USGS. It was first developed in 1964 and contains information about domestic and Antarctic names. GNS or GeoNET Names Server provides the Geographic Names Data Base (GNDB) and it is managed by National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA). GNS has been in service since 1994, and serves names for areas outside the United States and its dependent areas, as well as names for undersea features. The following challenges were advanced: Cascaded WFS-G servers (allowing to query multiple WFSs with a "parent" WFS), implemented query names filters (e.g. fuzzy search, text search), implemented dealing with multilingualism and diacritics, implemented advanced spatial constraints (e.g. search by radial search and nearest neighbor) and semantically mediated feature types (e.g. mountain vs. hill). To enable semantic mediation, a series of semantic mappings were defined between the NGA GNS, USGS GNIS and the Alexandria Digital Library (ADL) Gazetteer. The mappings were encoded in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) to enable them to be used by semantic web technologies. The semantic mappings were then published for ingestion into a semantic mediator that used the mappings to associate location types from one gazetteer with location types in another. The semantic mediator was then able to transform requests on the fly, providing a single point of entry WFS-G to multiple gazetteers. The presentation will provide a live presentation of the work performed, highlight main developments, and discuss future development.

SWE-based Observation Data Delivery from the Instrument to the User - Sensor Web Technology in the NeXOS Project

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jirka, Simon; del Rio, Joaquin; Toma, Daniel; Martinez, Enoc; Delory, Eric; Pearlman, Jay; Rieke, Matthes; Stasch, Christoph

2017-04-01

The rapidly evolving technology for building Web-based (spatial) information infrastructures and Sensor Webs, there are new opportunities to improve the process how ocean data is collected and managed. A central element in this development is the suite of Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards specified by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). This framework of standards comprises on the one hand data models as well as formats for measurement data (ISO/OGC Observations and Measurement, O&M) and metadata describing measurement processes and sensors (OGC Sensor Model Language, SensorML). On the other hand the SWE standards comprise (Web service) interface specifications for pull-based access to observation data (OGC Sensor Observation Service, SOS) and for controlling or configuring sensors (OGC Sensor Planning Service, SPS). Also within the European INSPIRE framework the SWE standards play an important role as the SOS is the recommended download service interface for O&M-encoded observation data sets. In the context of the EU-funded Oceans of Tomorrow initiative the NeXOS (Next generation, Cost-effective, Compact, Multifunctional Web Enabled Ocean Sensor Systems Empowering Marine, Maritime and Fisheries Management) project is developing a new generation of in-situ sensors that make use of the SWE standards to facilitate the data publication process and the integration into Web based information infrastructures. This includes the development of a dedicated firmware for instruments and sensor platforms (SEISI, Smart Electronic Interface for Sensors and Instruments) maintained by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). Among other features, SEISI makes use of OGC SWE standards such OGC-PUCK, to enable a plug-and-play mechanism for sensors based on SensorML encoded metadata. Thus, if a new instrument is attached to a SEISI-based platform, it automatically configures the connection to these instruments, automatically generated data files compliant with the ISO/OGC Observations and Measurements standard and initiates the data transmission into the NeXOS Sensor Web infrastructure. Besides these platform-related developments, NeXOS has realised the full path of data transmission from the sensor to the end user application. The conceptual architecture design is implemented by a series of open source SWE software packages provided by 52°North. This comprises especially different SWE server components (i.e. OGC Sensor Observation Service), tools for data visualisation (e.g. the 52°North Helgoland SOS viewer), and an editor for providing SensorML-based metadata (52°North smle). As a result, NeXOS has demonstrated how the SWE standards help to improve marine observation data collection. Within this presentation, we will present the experiences and findings of the NeXOS project and will provide recommendation for future work directions.

Providing Internet Access to High-Resolution Lunar Images

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Plesea, Lucian

2008-01-01

The OnMoon server is a computer program that provides Internet access to high-resolution Lunar images, maps, and elevation data, all suitable for use in geographical information system (GIS) software for generating images, maps, and computational models of the Moon. The OnMoon server implements the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS) server protocol and supports Moon-specific extensions. Unlike other Internet map servers that provide Lunar data using an Earth coordinate system, the OnMoon server supports encoding of data in Moon-specific coordinate systems. The OnMoon server offers access to most of the available high-resolution Lunar image and elevation data. This server can generate image and map files in the tagged image file format (TIFF) or the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG), 8- or 16-bit Portable Network Graphics (PNG), or Keyhole Markup Language (KML) format. Image control is provided by use of the OGC Style Layer Descriptor (SLD) protocol. Full-precision spectral arithmetic processing is also available, by use of a custom SLD extension. This server can dynamically add shaded relief based on the Lunar elevation to any image layer. This server also implements tiled WMS protocol and super-overlay KML for high-performance client application programs.

Providing Internet Access to High-Resolution Mars Images

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Plesea, Lucian

2008-01-01

The OnMars server is a computer program that provides Internet access to high-resolution Mars images, maps, and elevation data, all suitable for use in geographical information system (GIS) software for generating images, maps, and computational models of Mars. The OnMars server is an implementation of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS) server. Unlike other Mars Internet map servers that provide Martian data using an Earth coordinate system, the OnMars WMS server supports encoding of data in Mars-specific coordinate systems. The OnMars server offers access to most of the available high-resolution Martian image and elevation data, including an 8-meter-per-pixel uncontrolled mosaic of most of the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Observer Camera Narrow Angle (MOCNA) image collection, which is not available elsewhere. This server can generate image and map files in the tagged image file format (TIFF), Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG), 8- or 16-bit Portable Network Graphics (PNG), or Keyhole Markup Language (KML) format. Image control is provided by use of the OGC Style Layer Descriptor (SLD) protocol. The OnMars server also implements tiled WMS protocol and super-overlay KML for high-performance client application programs.

Connecting long-tail scientists with big data centers using SaaS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Percivall, G. S.; Bermudez, L. E.

2012-12-01

Big data centers and long tail scientists represent two extremes in the geoscience research community. Interoperability and inter-use based on software-as-a-service (SaaS) increases access to big data holdings by this underserved community of scientists. Large, institutional data centers have long been recognized as vital resources in the geoscience community. Permanent data archiving and dissemination centers provide "access to the data and (are) a critical source of people who have experience in the use of the data and can provide advice and counsel for new applications." [NRC] The "long-tail of science" is the geoscience researchers that work separate from institutional data centers [Heidorn]. Long-tail scientists need to be efficient consumers of data from large, institutional data centers. Discussions in NSF EarthCube capture the challenges: "Like the vast majority of NSF-funded researchers, Alice (a long-tail scientist) works with limited resources. In the absence of suitable expertise and infrastructure, the apparently simple task that she assigns to her graduate student becomes an information discovery and management nightmare. Downloading and transforming datasets takes weeks." [Foster, et.al.] The long-tail metaphor points to methods to bridge the gap, i.e., the Web. A decade ago, OGC began building a geospatial information space using open, web standards for geoprocessing [ORM]. Recently, [Foster, et.al.] accurately observed that "by adopting, adapting, and applying semantic web and SaaS technologies, we can make the use of geoscience data as easy and convenient as consumption of online media." SaaS places web services into Cloud Computing. SaaS for geospatial is emerging rapidly building on the first-generation geospatial web, e.g., OGC Web Coverage Service [WCS] and the Data Access Protocol [DAP]. Several recent examples show progress in applying SaaS to geosciences: - NASA's Earth Data Coherent Web has a goal to improve science user experience using Web Services (e.g. W*S, SOAP, RESTful) to reduce barriers to using EOSDIS data [ECW]. - NASA's LANCE provides direct access to vast amounts of satellite data using the OGC Web Map Tile Service (WMTS). - NOAA's Unified Access Framework for Gridded Data (UAF Grid) is a web service based capability for direct access to a variety of datasets using netCDF, OPeNDAP, THREDDS, WMS and WCS. [UAF] Tools to access SaaS's are many and varied: some proprietary, others open source; some run in browsers, others are stand-alone applications. What's required is interoperability using web interfaces offered by the data centers. NOAA's UAF service stack supports Matlab, ArcGIS, Ferret, GrADS, Google Earth, IDV, LAS. Any SaaS that offers OGC Web Services (WMS, WFS, WCS) can be accessed by scores of clients [OGC]. While there has been much progress in the recent year toward offering web services for the long-tail of scientists, more needs to be done. Web services offer data access but more than access is needed for inter-use of data, e.g. defining data schemas that allow for data fusion, addressing coordinate systems, spatial geometry, and semantics for observations. Connecting long-tail scientists with large, data centers using SaaS and, in the future, semantic web, will address this large and currently underserved user community.

The OGC Sensor Web Enablement framework

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cox, S. J.; Botts, M.

2006-12-01

Sensor observations are at the core of natural sciences. Improvements in data-sharing technologies offer the promise of much greater utilisation of observational data. A key to this is interoperable data standards. The Open Geospatial Consortium's (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement initiative (SWE) is developing open standards for web interfaces for the discovery, exchange and processing of sensor observations, and tasking of sensor systems. The goal is to support the construction of complex sensor applications through real-time composition of service chains from standard components. The framework is based around a suite of standard interfaces, and standard encodings for the message transferred between services. The SWE interfaces include: Sensor Observation Service (SOS)-parameterized observation requests (by observation time, feature of interest, property, sensor); Sensor Planning Service (SPS)-tasking a sensor- system to undertake future observations; Sensor Alert Service (SAS)-subscription to an alert, usually triggered by a sensor result exceeding some value. The interface design generally follows the pattern established in the OGC Web Map Service (WMS) and Web Feature Service (WFS) interfaces, where the interaction between a client and service follows a standard sequence of requests and responses. The first obtains a general description of the service capabilities, followed by obtaining detail required to formulate a data request, and finally a request for a data instance or stream. These may be implemented in a stateless "REST" idiom, or using conventional "web-services" (SOAP) messaging. In a deployed system, the SWE interfaces are supplemented by Catalogue, data (WFS) and portrayal (WMS) services, as well as authentication and rights management. The standard SWE data formats are Observations and Measurements (O&M) which encodes observation metadata and results, Sensor Model Language (SensorML) which describes sensor-systems, Transducer Model Language (TML) which covers low-level data streams, and domain-specific GML Application Schemas for definitions of the target feature types. The SWE framework has been demonstrated in several interoperability testbeds. These were based around emergency management, security, contamination and environmental monitoring scenarios.

An Open Source Tool to Test Interoperability

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bermudez, L. E.

2012-12-01

Scientists interact with information at various levels from gathering of the raw observed data to accessing portrayed processed quality control data. Geoinformatics tools help scientist on the acquisition, storage, processing, dissemination and presentation of geospatial information. Most of the interactions occur in a distributed environment between software components that take the role of either client or server. The communication between components includes protocols, encodings of messages and managing of errors. Testing of these communication components is important to guarantee proper implementation of standards. The communication between clients and servers can be adhoc or follow standards. By following standards interoperability between components increase while reducing the time of developing new software. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), not only coordinates the development of standards but also, within the Compliance Testing Program (CITE), provides a testing infrastructure to test clients and servers. The OGC Web-based Test Engine Facility, based on TEAM Engine, allows developers to test Web services and clients for correct implementation of OGC standards. TEAM Engine is a JAVA open source facility, available at Sourceforge that can be run via command line, deployed in a web servlet container or integrated in developer's environment via MAVEN. The TEAM Engine uses the Compliance Test Language (CTL) and TestNG to test HTTP requests, SOAP services and XML instances against Schemas and Schematron based assertions of any type of web service, not only OGC services. For example, the OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) 1.0.0 test has more than 400 test assertions. Some of these assertions includes conformance of HTTP responses, conformance of GML-encoded data; proper values for elements and attributes in the XML; and, correct error responses. This presentation will provide an overview of TEAM Engine, introduction of how to test via the OGC Testing web site and description of performing local tests. It will also provide information about how to participate in the open source code development of TEAM Engine.

Business logic for geoprocessing of distributed geodata

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kiehle, Christian

2006-12-01

This paper describes the development of a business-logic component for the geoprocessing of distributed geodata. The business logic acts as a mediator between the data and the user, therefore playing a central role in any spatial information system. The component is used in service-oriented architectures to foster the reuse of existing geodata inventories. Based on a geoscientific case study of groundwater vulnerability assessment and mapping, the demands for such architectures are identified with special regard to software engineering tasks. Methods are derived from the field of applied Geosciences (Hydrogeology), Geoinformatics, and Software Engineering. In addition to the development of a business logic component, a forthcoming Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) specification is introduced: the OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) specification. A sample application is introduced to demonstrate the potential of WPS for future information systems. The sample application Geoservice Groundwater Vulnerability is described in detail to provide insight into the business logic component, and demonstrate how information can be generated out of distributed geodata. This has the potential to significantly accelerate the assessment and mapping of groundwater vulnerability. The presented concept is easily transferable to other geoscientific use cases dealing with distributed data inventories. Potential application fields include web-based geoinformation systems operating on distributed data (e.g. environmental planning systems, cadastral information systems, and others).

Availability of the OGC geoprocessing standard: March 2011 reality check

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lopez-Pellicer, Francisco J.; Rentería-Agualimpia, Walter; Béjar, Rubén; Muro-Medrano, Pedro R.; Zarazaga-Soria, F. Javier

2012-10-01

This paper presents an investigation about the servers available in March 2011 conforming to the Web Processing Service interface specification published by the geospatial standards organization Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) in 2007. This interface specification gives support to standard Web-based geoprocessing. The data used in this research were collected using a focused crawler configured for finding OGC Web services. The research goals are (i) to provide a reality check of the availability of Web Processing Service servers, (ii) to provide quantitative data about the use of different features defined in the standard that are relevant for a scalable Geoprocessing Web (e.g. long-running processes, Web-accessible data outputs), and (iii) to test if the advances in the use of search engines and focused crawlers for finding Web services can be applied for finding geoscience processing systems. Research results show the feasibility of the discovery approach and provide data about the implementation of the Web Processing Service specification. These results also show extensive use of features related to scalability, except for those related to technical and semantic interoperability.

GIS Services, Visualization Products, and Interoperability at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center (NCDC)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baldwin, R.; Ansari, S.; Reid, G.; Lott, N.; Del Greco, S.

2007-12-01

The main goal in developing and deploying Geographic Information System (GIS) services at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) is to provide users with simple access to data archives while integrating new and informative climate products. Several systems at NCDC provide a variety of climatic data in GIS formats and/or map viewers. The Online GIS Map Services provide users with data discovery options which flow into detailed product selection maps, which may be queried using standard "region finder" tools or gazetteer (geographical dictionary search) functions. Each tabbed selection offers steps to help users progress through the systems. A series of additional base map layers or data types have been added to provide companion information. New map services include: Severe Weather Data Inventory, Local Climatological Data, Divisional Data, Global Summary of the Day, and Normals/Extremes products. THREDDS Data Server technology is utilized to provide access to gridded multidimensional datasets such as Model, Satellite and Radar. This access allows users to download data as a gridded NetCDF file, which is readable by ArcGIS. In addition, users may subset the data for a specific geographic region, time period, height range or variable prior to download. The NCDC Weather Radar Toolkit (WRT) is a client tool which accesses Weather Surveillance Radar 1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) data locally or remotely from the NCDC archive, NOAA FTP server or any URL or THREDDS Data Server. The WRT Viewer provides tools for custom data overlays, Web Map Service backgrounds, animations and basic filtering. The export of images and movies is provided in multiple formats. The WRT Data Exporter allows for data export in both vector polygon (Shapefile, Well-Known Text) and raster (GeoTIFF, ESRI Grid, VTK, NetCDF, GrADS) formats. As more users become accustom to GIS, questions of better, cheaper, faster access soon follow. Expanding use and availability can best be accomplished through standards which promote interoperability. Our GIS related products provide Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) compliant Web Map Services (WMS), Web Feature Services (WFS), Web Coverage Services (WCS) and Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) metadata as a complement to the map viewers. KML/KMZ data files (soon to be compliant OGC specifications) also provide access.

Applying Sensor Web Technology to Marine Sensor Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jirka, Simon; del Rio, Joaquin; Mihai Toma, Daniel; Nüst, Daniel; Stasch, Christoph; Delory, Eric

2015-04-01

In this contribution we present two activities illustrating how Sensor Web technology helps to enable a flexible and interoperable sharing of marine observation data based on standards. An important foundation is the Sensor Web Architecture developed by the European FP7 project NeXOS (Next generation Low-Cost Multifunctional Web Enabled Ocean Sensor Systems Empowering Marine, Maritime and Fisheries Management). This architecture relies on the Open Geospatial Consortium's (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) framework. It is an exemplary solution for facilitating the interoperable exchange of marine observation data within and between (research) organisations. The architecture addresses a series of functional and non-functional requirements which are fulfilled through different types of OGC SWE components. The diverse functionalities offered by the NeXOS Sensor Web architecture are shown in the following overview: - Pull-based observation data download: This is achieved through the OGC Sensor Observation Service (SOS) 2.0 interface standard. - Push-based delivery of observation data to allow users the subscription to new measurements that are relevant for them: For this purpose there are currently several specification activities under evaluation (e.g. OGC Sensor Event Service, OGC Publish/Subscribe Standards Working Group). - (Web-based) visualisation of marine observation data: Implemented through SOS client applications. - Configuration and controlling of sensor devices: This is ensured through the OGC Sensor Planning Service 2.0 interface. - Bridging between sensors/data loggers and Sensor Web components: For this purpose several components such as the "Smart Electronic Interface for Sensor Interoperability" (SEISI) concept are developed; this is complemented by a more lightweight SOS extension (e.g. based on the W3C Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) format). To further advance this architecture, there is on-going work to develop dedicated profiles of selected OGC SWE specifications that provide stricter guidance how these standards shall be applied to marine data (e.g. SensorML 2.0 profiles stating which metadata elements are mandatory building upon the ESONET Sensor Registry developments, etc.). Within the NeXOS project the presented architecture is implemented as a set of open source components. These implementations can be re-used by all interested scientists and data providers needing tools for publishing or consuming oceanographic sensor data. In further projects such as the European project FixO3 (Fixed-point Open Ocean Observatories), these software development activities are complemented with additional efforts to provide guidance how Sensor Web technology can be applied in an efficient manner. This way, not only software components are made available but also documentation and information resources that help to understand which types of Sensor Web deployments are best suited to fulfil different types of user requirements.

Web mapping system for complex processing and visualization of environmental geospatial datasets

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Titov, Alexander; Gordov, Evgeny; Okladnikov, Igor

2016-04-01

Environmental geospatial datasets (meteorological observations, modeling and reanalysis results, etc.) are used in numerous research applications. Due to a number of objective reasons such as inherent heterogeneity of environmental datasets, big dataset volume, complexity of data models used, syntactic and semantic differences that complicate creation and use of unified terminology, the development of environmental geodata access, processing and visualization services as well as client applications turns out to be quite a sophisticated task. According to general INSPIRE requirements to data visualization geoportal web applications have to provide such standard functionality as data overview, image navigation, scrolling, scaling and graphical overlay, displaying map legends and corresponding metadata information. It should be noted that modern web mapping systems as integrated geoportal applications are developed based on the SOA and might be considered as complexes of interconnected software tools for working with geospatial data. In the report a complex web mapping system including GIS web client and corresponding OGC services for working with geospatial (NetCDF, PostGIS) dataset archive is presented. There are three basic tiers of the GIS web client in it: 1. Tier of geospatial metadata retrieved from central MySQL repository and represented in JSON format 2. Tier of JavaScript objects implementing methods handling: --- NetCDF metadata --- Task XML object for configuring user calculations, input and output formats --- OGC WMS/WFS cartographical services 3. Graphical user interface (GUI) tier representing JavaScript objects realizing web application business logic Metadata tier consists of a number of JSON objects containing technical information describing geospatial datasets (such as spatio-temporal resolution, meteorological parameters, valid processing methods, etc). The middleware tier of JavaScript objects implementing methods for handling geospatial metadata, task XML object, and WMS/WFS cartographical services interconnects metadata and GUI tiers. The methods include such procedures as JSON metadata downloading and update, launching and tracking of the calculation task running on the remote servers as well as working with WMS/WFS cartographical services including: obtaining the list of available layers, visualizing layers on the map, exporting layers in graphical (PNG, JPG, GeoTIFF), vector (KML, GML, Shape) and digital (NetCDF) formats. Graphical user interface tier is based on the bundle of JavaScript libraries (OpenLayers, GeoExt and ExtJS) and represents a set of software components implementing web mapping application business logic (complex menus, toolbars, wizards, event handlers, etc.). GUI provides two basic capabilities for the end user: configuring the task XML object functionality and cartographical information visualizing. The web interface developed is similar to the interface of such popular desktop GIS applications, as uDIG, QuantumGIS etc. Web mapping system developed has shown its effectiveness in the process of solving real climate change research problems and disseminating investigation results in cartographical form. The work is supported by SB RAS Basic Program Projects VIII.80.2.1 and IV.38.1.7.

GIS Technologies For The New Planetary Science Archive (PSA)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Docasal, R.; Barbarisi, I.; Rios, C.; Macfarlane, A. J.; Gonzalez, J.; Arviset, C.; De Marchi, G.; Martinez, S.; Grotheer, E.; Lim, T.; Besse, S.; Heather, D.; Fraga, D.; Barthelemy, M.

2015-12-01

Geographical information system (GIS) is becoming increasingly used for planetary science. GIS are computerised systems for the storage, retrieval, manipulation, analysis, and display of geographically referenced data. Some data stored in the Planetary Science Archive (PSA), for instance, a set of Mars Express/Venus Express data, have spatial metadata associated to them. To facilitate users in handling and visualising spatial data in GIS applications, the new PSA should support interoperability with interfaces implementing the standards approved by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). These standards are followed in order to develop open interfaces and encodings that allow data to be exchanged with GIS Client Applications, well-known examples of which are Google Earth and NASA World Wind as well as open source tools such as Openlayers. The technology already exists within PostgreSQL databases to store searchable geometrical data in the form of the PostGIS extension. An existing open source maps server is GeoServer, an instance of which has been deployed for the new PSA, uses the OGC standards to allow, among others, the sharing, processing and editing of data and spatial data through the Web Feature Service (WFS) standard as well as serving georeferenced map images through the Web Map Service (WMS). The final goal of the new PSA, being developed by the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) Science Data Centre (ESDC), is to create an archive which enables science exploitation of ESA's planetary missions datasets. This can be facilitated through the GIS framework, offering interfaces (both web GUI and scriptable APIs) that can be used more easily and scientifically by the community, and that will also enable the community to build added value services on top of the PSA.

A Reference Implementation of the OGC CSW EO Standard for the ESA HMA-T project

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bigagli, Lorenzo; Boldrini, Enrico; Papeschi, Fabrizio; Vitale, Fabrizio

2010-05-01

This work was developed in the context of the ESA Heterogeneous Missions Accessibility (HMA) project, whose main objective is to involve the stakeholders, namely National space agencies, satellite or mission owners and operators, in an harmonization and standardization process of their ground segment services and related interfaces. Among HMA objectives was the specification, conformance testing, and experimentation of two Extension Packages (EPs) of the ebRIM Application Profile (AP) of the OGC Catalog Service for the Web (CSW) specification: the Earth Observation Products (EO) EP (OGC 06-131) and the Cataloguing of ISO Metadata (CIM) EP (OGC 07-038). Our contributions have included the development and deployment of Reference Implementations (RIs) for both the above specifications, and their integration with the ESA Service Support Environment (SSE). The RIs are based on the GI-cat framework, an implementation of a distributed catalog service, able to query disparate Earth and Space Science data sources (e.g. OGC Web Services, Unidata THREDDS) and to expose several standard interfaces for data discovery (e.g. OGC CSW ISO AP). Following our initial planning, the GI-cat framework has been extended in order to expose the CSW.ebRIM-CIM and CSW.ebRIM-EO interfaces, and to distribute queries to CSW.ebRIM-CIM and CSW.ebRIM-EO data sources. We expected that a mapping strategy would suffice for accommodating CIM, but this proved to be unpractical during implementation. Hence, a model extension strategy was eventually implemented for both the CIM and EO EPs, and the GI-cat federal model was enhanced in order to support the underlying ebRIM AP. This work has provided us with new insights into the different data models for geospatial data, and the technologies for their implementation. The extension is used by suitable CIM and EO profilers (front-end mediator components) and accessors (back-end mediator components), that relate ISO 19115 concepts to EO and CIM ones. Moreover, a mapping to GI-cat federal model was developed for each EP (quite limited for EO; complete for CIM), in order to enable the discovery of resources through any of GI-cat profilers. The query manager was also improved. GI-cat-EO and -CIM installation packages were made available for distribution, and two RI instances were deployed on the Amazon EC2 facility (plus an ad-hoc instance returning incorrect control data). Integration activities of the EO RI with the ESA SSE Portal for Earth Observation Products were also successfully carried on. During our work, we have contributed feedback and comments to the CIM and EO EP specification working groups. Our contributions resulted in version 0.2.5 of the EO EP, recently approved as an OGC standard, and were useful to consolidate version 0.1.11 of the CIM EP (still being developed).

Database Organisation in a Web-Enabled Free and Open-Source Software (foss) Environment for Spatio-Temporal Landslide Modelling

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Das, I.; Oberai, K.; Sarathi Roy, P.

2012-07-01

Landslides exhibit themselves in different mass movement processes and are considered among the most complex natural hazards occurring on the earth surface. Making landslide database available online via WWW (World Wide Web) promotes the spreading and reaching out of the landslide information to all the stakeholders. The aim of this research is to present a comprehensive database for generating landslide hazard scenario with the help of available historic records of landslides and geo-environmental factors and make them available over the Web using geospatial Free & Open Source Software (FOSS). FOSS reduces the cost of the project drastically as proprietary software's are very costly. Landslide data generated for the period 1982 to 2009 were compiled along the national highway road corridor in Indian Himalayas. All the geo-environmental datasets along with the landslide susceptibility map were served through WEBGIS client interface. Open source University of Minnesota (UMN) mapserver was used as GIS server software for developing web enabled landslide geospatial database. PHP/Mapscript server-side application serve as a front-end application and PostgreSQL with PostGIS extension serve as a backend application for the web enabled landslide spatio-temporal databases. This dynamic virtual visualization process through a web platform brings an insight into the understanding of the landslides and the resulting damage closer to the affected people and user community. The landslide susceptibility dataset is also made available as an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Feature Service (WFS) which can be accessed through any OGC compliant open source or proprietary GIS Software.

A System to Provide Real-Time Collaborative Situational Awareness by Web Enabling a Distributed Sensor Network

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Panangadan, Anand; Monacos, Steve; Burleigh, Scott; Joswig, Joseph; James, Mark; Chow, Edward

2012-01-01

In this paper, we describe the architecture of both the PATS and SAP systems and how these two systems interoperate with each other forming a unified capability for deploying intelligence in hostile environments with the objective of providing actionable situational awareness of individuals. The SAP system works in concert with the UICDS information sharing middleware to provide data fusion from multiple sources. UICDS can then publish the sensor data using the OGC's Web Mapping Service, Web Feature Service, and Sensor Observation Service standards. The system described in the paper is able to integrate a spatially distributed sensor system, operating without the benefit of the Web infrastructure, with a remote monitoring and control system that is equipped to take advantage of SWE.

Advances on Sensor Web for Internet of Things

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liang, S.; Bermudez, L. E.; Huang, C.; Jazayeri, M.; Khalafbeigi, T.

2013-12-01

'In much the same way that HTML and HTTP enabled WWW, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE), envisioned in 2001 [1] will allow sensor webs to become a reality.'. Due to the large number of sensor manufacturers and differing accompanying protocols, integrating diverse sensors into observation systems is not a simple task. A coherent infrastructure is needed to treat sensors in an interoperable, platform-independent and uniform way. SWE standardizes web service interfaces, sensor descriptions and data encodings as building blocks for a Sensor Web. SWE standards are now mature specifications (version 2.0) with approved OGC compliance test suites and tens of independent implementations. Many earth and space science organizations and government agencies are using the SWE standards to publish and share their sensors and observations. While SWE has been demonstrated very effective for scientific sensors, its complexity and the computational overhead may not be suitable for resource-constrained tiny sensors. In June 2012, a new OGC Standards Working Group (SWG) was formed called the Sensor Web Interface for Internet of Things (SWE-IoT) SWG. This SWG focuses on developing one or more OGC standards for resource-constrained sensors and actuators (e.g., Internet of Things devices) while leveraging the existing OGC SWE standards. In the near future, billions to trillions of small sensors and actuators will be embedded in real- world objects and connected to the Internet facilitating a concept called the Internet of Things (IoT). By populating our environment with real-world sensor-based devices, the IoT is opening the door to exciting possibilities for a variety of application domains, such as environmental monitoring, transportation and logistics, urban informatics, smart cities, as well as personal and social applications. The current SWE-IoT development aims on modeling the IoT components and defining a standard web service that makes the observations captured by IoT devices easily accessible and allows users to task the actuators on the IoT devices. The SWE IoT model links things with sensors and reuses the OGC Observation and Model (O&M) to link sensors with features of interest and observed properties Unlike most SWE standards, the SWE-IoT defines a RESTful web interface for users to perform CRUD (i.e., create, read, update, and delete) functions on resources, including Things, Sensors, Actuators, Observations, Tasks, etc. Inspired by the OASIS Open Data Protocol (OData), the SWE-IoT web service provides the multi-faceted query, which means that users can query from different entity collections and link from one entity to other related entities. This presentation will introduce the latest development of the OGC SWE-IoT standards. Potential applications and implications in Earth and Space science will also be discussed. [1] Mike Botts, Sensor Web Enablement White Paper, Open GIS Consortium, Inc. 2002

Born semantic: linking data from sensors to users and balancing hardware limitations with data standards

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Buck, Justin; Leadbetter, Adam

2015-04-01

New users for the growing volume of ocean data for purposes such as 'big data' data products and operational data assimilation/ingestion require data to be readily ingestible. This can be achieved via the application of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Linked Data and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards to data management. As part of several Horizons 2020 European projects (SenseOCEAN, ODIP, AtlantOS) the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) are working on combining existing data centre architecture and SWE software such as Sensor Observation Services with a Linked Data front end. The standards to enable data delivery are proven and well documented1,2 There are practical difficulties when SWE standards are applied to real time data because of internal hardware bandwidth restrictions and a requirement to constrain data transmission costs. A pragmatic approach is proposed where sensor metadata and data output in OGC standards are implemented "shore-side" with sensors and instruments transmitting unique resolvable web linkages to persistent OGC SensorML records published at the BODC. References: 1. World Wide Web Consortium. (2013). Linked Data. Available: http://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/data. Last accessed 8th October 2014. 2. Open Geospatial Consortium. (2014). Sensor Web Enablement (SWE). Available: http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/markets-technologies/swe. Last accessed 8th October 2014.

River Basin Standards Interoperability Pilot

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pesquer, Lluís; Masó, Joan; Stasch, Christoph

2016-04-01

There is a lot of water information and tools in Europe to be applied in the river basin management but fragmentation and a lack of coordination between countries still exists. The European Commission and the member states have financed several research and innovation projects in support of the Water Framework Directive. Only a few of them are using the recently emerging hydrological standards, such as the OGC WaterML 2.0. WaterInnEU is a Horizon 2020 project focused on creating a marketplace to enhance the exploitation of EU funded ICT models, tools, protocols and policy briefs related to water and to establish suitable conditions for new market opportunities based on these offerings. One of WaterInnEU's main goals is to assess the level of standardization and interoperability of these outcomes as a mechanism to integrate ICT-based tools, incorporate open data platforms and generate a palette of interchangeable components that are able to use the water data emerging from the recently proposed open data sharing processes and data models stimulated by initiatives such as the INSPIRE directive. As part of the standardization and interoperability activities in the project, the authors are designing an experiment (RIBASE, the present work) to demonstrate how current ICT-based tools and water data can work in combination with geospatial web services in the Scheldt river basin. The main structure of this experiment, that is the core of the present work, is composed by the following steps: - Extraction of information from river gauges data in OGC WaterML 2.0 format using SOS services (preferably compliant to the OGC SOS 2.0 Hydrology Profile Best Practice). - Model floods using a WPS 2.0, WaterML 2.0 data and weather forecast models as input. - Evaluation of the applicability of Sensor Notification Services in water emergencies. - Open distribution of the input and output data as OGC web services WaterML, / WCS / WFS and with visualization utilities: WMS. The architecture tests the combination of Gauge data in a WPS that is triggered by a meteorological alert. The data is translated into OGC WaterML 2.0 time series data format and will be ingested in a SOS 2.0. SOS data is visualized in a SOS Client that is able to handle time series. The meteorological forecast data (with the supervision of an operator manipulating the WPS user interface) ingests with WaterML 2.0 time series and terrain data is input for a flooding modelling algorithm. The WPS is able to produce flooding datasets in the form of coverages that is offered to clients via a WCS 2.0 service or a WMS 1.3 service, and downloaded and visualized by the respective clients. The WPS triggers a notification or an alert that will be monitored from an emergency control response service. Acronyms AS: Alert Service ES: Event Service ICT: Information and Communication Technology NS: Notification Service OGC: Open Geospatial Consortium RIBASE: River Basin Standards Interoperability Pilot SOS: Sensor Observation Service WaterML: Water Markup Language WCS: Web Coverage Service WMS: Web Map Service WPS: Web Processing Service

Borderless Geospatial Web (bolegweb)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cetl, V.; Kliment, T.; Kliment, M.

2016-06-01

The effective access and use of geospatial information (GI) resources acquires a critical value of importance in modern knowledge based society. Standard web services defined by Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) are frequently used within the implementations of spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) to facilitate discovery and use of geospatial data. This data is stored in databases located in a layer, called the invisible web, thus are ignored by search engines. SDI uses a catalogue (discovery) service for the web as a gateway to the GI world through the metadata defined by ISO standards, which are structurally diverse to OGC metadata. Therefore, a crosswalk needs to be implemented to bridge the OGC resources discovered on mainstream web with those documented by metadata in an SDI to enrich its information extent. A public global wide and user friendly portal of OGC resources available on the web ensures and enhances the use of GI within a multidisciplinary context and bridges the geospatial web from the end-user perspective, thus opens its borders to everybody. Project "Crosswalking the layers of geospatial information resources to enable a borderless geospatial web" with the acronym BOLEGWEB is ongoing as a postdoctoral research project at the Faculty of Geodesy, University of Zagreb in Croatia (http://bolegweb.geof.unizg.hr/). The research leading to the results of the project has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7 2007-2013) under Marie Curie FP7-PEOPLE-2011-COFUND. The project started in the November 2014 and is planned to be finished by the end of 2016. This paper provides an overview of the project, research questions and methodology, so far achieved results and future steps.

Advancements in Open Geospatial Standards for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing from Ogc

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Percivall, George; Simonis, Ingo

2016-06-01

The necessity of open standards for effective sharing and use of remote sensing continues to receive increasing emphasis in policies of agencies and projects around the world. Coordination on the development of open standards for geospatial information is a vital step to insure that the technical standards are ready to support the policy objectives. The mission of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is to advance development and use of international standards and supporting services that promote geospatial interoperability. To accomplish this mission, OGC serves as the global forum for the collaboration of geospatial data / solution providers and users. Photogrammetry and remote sensing are sources of the largest and most complex geospatial information. Some of the most mature OGC standards for remote sensing include the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards, the Web Coverage Service (WCS) suite of standards, encodings such as NetCDF, GMLJP2 and GeoPackage, and the soon to be approved Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS) standard. In collaboration with ISPRS, OGC working with government, research and industrial organizations continue to advance the state of geospatial standards for full use of photogrammetry and remote sensing.

NASA SensorWeb and OGC Standards for Disaster Management

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mandl, Dan

2010-01-01

I. Goal: Enable user to cost-effectively find and create customized data products to help manage disasters; a) On-demand; b) Low cost and non-specialized tools such as Google Earth and browsers; c) Access via open network but with sufficient security. II. Use standards to interface various sensors and resultant data: a) Wrap sensors in Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards; b) Wrap data processing algorithms and servers with OGC standards c) Use standardized workflows to orchestrate and script the creation of these data; products. III. Target Web 2.0 mass market: a) Make it simple and easy to use; b) Leverage new capabilities and tools that are emerging; c) Improve speed and responsiveness.

WMS and WFS Standards Implementation of Weather Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Armstrong, M.

2005-12-01

CustomWeather is private weather company that delivers global weather data products. CustomWeather has built a mapping platform according to OGC standards. Currently, both a Web Mapping Service (WMS) and Web Feature Service (WFS) are supported by CustomWeather. Supporting open geospatial standards has lead to number of positive changes internally to the processes of CustomWeather, along with those of the clients accessing the data. Quite a number of challenges surfaced during this process, particularly with respect to combining a wide variety of raw modeling and sensor data into a single delivery platform. Open standards have, however, made the delivery of very different data products rather seamless. The discussion will address the issues faced in building an OGC-based mapping platform along with the limitations encountered. While the availability of these data products through open standards is still very young, there have already been many adopters in the utility and navigation industries. The discussion will take a closer look at the different approach taken by these two industries as they utilize interoperability standards with existing data. Insight will be given in regards to applications already taking advantage of this new technology and how this is affecting decision-making processes. CustomWeather has observed considerable interest and potential benefit in this technology from developing countries. Weather data is a key element in disaster management. Interoperability is literally opening up a world of data and has the potential to quickly enable functionality that would otherwise take considerable time to implement. The discussion will briefly touch on our experience.

Serving Satellite Remote Sensing Data to User Community through the OGC Interoperability Protocols

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

di, L.; Yang, W.; Bai, Y.

2005-12-01

Remote sensing is one of the major methods for collecting geospatial data. Hugh amount of remote sensing data has been collected by space agencies and private companies around the world. For example, NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) is generating more than 3 Tb of remote sensing data per day. The data collected by EOS are processed, distributed, archived, and managed by the EOS Data and Information System (EOSDIS). Currently, EOSDIS is managing several petabytes of data. All of those data are not only valuable for global change research, but also useful for local and regional application and decision makings. How to make the data easily accessible to and usable by the user community is one of key issues for realizing the full potential of these valuable datasets. In the past several years, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has developed several interoperability protocols aiming at making geospatial data easily accessible to and usable by the user community through Internet. The protocols particularly relevant to the discovery, access, and integration of multi-source satellite remote sensing data are the Catalog Service for Web (CS/W) and Web Coverage Services (WCS) Specifications. The OGC CS/W specifies the interfaces, HTTP protocol bindings, and a framework for defining application profiles required to publish and access digital catalogues of metadata for geographic data, services, and related resource information. The OGC WCS specification defines the interfaces between web-based clients and servers for accessing on-line multi-dimensional, multi-temporal geospatial coverage in an interoperable way. Based on definitions by OGC and ISO 19123, coverage data include all remote sensing images as well as gridded model outputs. The Laboratory for Advanced Information Technology and Standards (LAITS), George Mason University, has been working on developing and implementing OGC specifications for better serving NASA Earth science data to the user community for many years. We have developed the NWGISS software package that implements multiple OGC specifications, including OGC WMS, WCS, CS/W, and WFS. As a part of NASA REASON GeoBrain project, the NWGISS WCS and CS/W servers have been extended to provide operational access to NASA EOS data at data pools through OGC protocols and to make both services chainable in the web-service chaining. The extensions in the WCS server include the implementation of WCS 1.0.0 and WCS 1.0.2, and the development of WSDL description of the WCS services. In order to find the on-line EOS data resources, the CS/W server is extended at the backend to search metadata in NASA ECHO. This presentation reports those extensions and discuss lessons-learned on the implementation. It also discusses the advantage, disadvantages, and future improvement of OGC specifications, particularly the WCS.

Proposal for a Web Encoding Service (wes) for Spatial Data Transactio

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Siew, C. B.; Peters, S.; Rahman, A. A.

2015-10-01

Web services utilizations in Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) have been well established and standardized by Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). Similar web services for 3D SDI are also being established in recent years, with extended capabilities to handle 3D spatial data. The increasing popularity of using City Geographic Markup Language (CityGML) for 3D city modelling applications leads to the needs for large spatial data handling for data delivery. This paper revisits the available web services in OGC Web Services (OWS), and propose the background concepts and requirements for encoding spatial data via Web Encoding Service (WES). Furthermore, the paper discusses the data flow of the encoder within web service, e.g. possible integration with Web Processing Service (WPS) or Web 3D Services (W3DS). The integration with available web service could be extended to other available web services for efficient handling of spatial data, especially 3D spatial data.

GeoNetwork powered GI-cat: a geoportal hybrid solution

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baldini, Alessio; Boldrini, Enrico; Santoro, Mattia; Mazzetti, Paolo

2010-05-01

To the aim of setting up a Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) the creation of a system for the metadata management and discovery plays a fundamental role. An effective solution is the use of a geoportal (e.g. FAO/ESA geoportal), that has the important benefit of being accessible from a web browser. With this work we present a solution based integrating two of the available frameworks: GeoNetwork and GI-cat. GeoNetwork is an opensource software designed to improve accessibility of a wide variety of data together with the associated ancillary information (metadata), at different scale and from multidisciplinary sources; data are organized and documented in a standard and consistent way. GeoNetwork implements both the Portal and Catalog components of a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) defined in the OGC Reference Architecture. It provides tools for managing and publishing metadata on spatial data and related services. GeoNetwork allows harvesting of various types of web data sources e.g. OGC Web Services (e.g. CSW, WCS, WMS). GI-cat is a distributed catalog based on a service-oriented framework of modular components and can be customized and tailored to support different deployment scenarios. It can federate a multiplicity of catalogs services, as well as inventory and access services in order to discover and access heterogeneous ESS resources. The federated resources are exposed by GI-cat through several standard catalog interfaces (e.g. OGC CSW AP ISO, OpenSearch, etc.) and by the GI-cat extended interface. Specific components implement mediation services for interfacing heterogeneous service providers, each of which exposes a specific standard specification; such components are called Accessors. These mediating components solve providers data modelmultiplicity by mapping them onto the GI-cat internal data model which implements the ISO 19115 Core profile. Accessors also implement the query protocol mapping; first they translate the query requests expressed according to the interface protocols exposed by GI-cat into the multiple query dialects spoken by the resource service providers. Currently, a number of well-accepted catalog and inventory services are supported, including several OGC Web Services, THREDDS Data Server, SeaDataNet Common Data Index, GBIF and OpenSearch engines. A GeoNetwork powered GI-cat has been developed in order to exploit the best of the two frameworks. The new system uses a modified version of GeoNetwork web interface in order to add the capability of querying also the specified GI-cat catalog and not only the GeoNetwork internal database. The resulting system consists in a geoportal in which GI-cat plays the role of the search engine. This new system allows to distribute the query on the different types of data sources linked to a GI-cat. The metadata results of the query are then visualized by the Geonetwork web interface. This configuration was experimented in the framework of GIIDA, a project of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) focused on data accessibility and interoperability. A second advantage of this solution is achieved setting up a GeoNetwork catalog amongst the accessors of the GI-cat instance. Such a configuration will allow in turn GI-cat to run the query against the internal GeoNetwork database. This allows to have both the harvesting and the metadata editor functionalities provided by GeoNetwork and the distributed search functionality of GI-cat available in a consistent way through the same web interface.

OneGeology-Europe: architecture, portal and web services to provide a European geological map

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tellez-Arenas, Agnès.; Serrano, Jean-Jacques; Tertre, François; Laxton, John

2010-05-01

OneGeology-Europe is a large ambitious project to make geological spatial data further known and accessible. The OneGeology-Europe project develops an integrated system of data to create and make accessible for the first time through the internet the geological map of the whole of Europe. The architecture implemented by the project is web services oriented, based on the OGC standards: the geological map is not a centralized database but is composed by several web services, each of them hosted by a European country involved in the project. Since geological data are elaborated differently from country to country, they are difficult to share. OneGeology-Europe, while providing more detailed and complete information, will foster even beyond the geological community an easier exchange of data within Europe and globally. This implies an important work regarding the harmonization of the data, both model and the content. OneGeology-Europe is characterised by the high technological capacity of the EU Member States, and has the final goal to achieve the harmonisation of European geological survey data according to common standards. As a direct consequence Europe will make a further step in terms of innovation and information dissemination, continuing to play a world leading role in the development of geosciences information. The scope of the common harmonized data model was defined primarily by the requirements of the geological map of Europe, but in addition users were consulted and the requirements of both INSPIRE and ‘high-resolution' geological maps were considered. The data model is based on GeoSciML, developed since 2006 by a group of Geological Surveys. The data providers involved in the project implemented a new component that allows the web services to deliver the geological map expressed into GeoSciML. In order to capture the information describing the geological units of the map of Europe the scope of the data model needs to include lithology; age; genesis and metamorphic character. For high resolution maps physical properties, bedding characteristics and weathering also need to be added. Furthermore, Geological data held by national geological surveys is generally described in national language of the country. The project has to deal with the multilingual issue, an important requirement of the INSPIRE directive. The project provides a list of harmonized vocabularies, a set of web services to deal with them, and a web site for helping the geoscientists while mapping the terms used into the national datasets into these vocabularies. The web services provided by each data provider, with the particular component that allows them to deliver the harmonised data model and to handle the multilingualism, are the first part of the architecture. The project also implements a web portal that provides several functionalities. Thanks to the common data model implemented by each web service delivering a part of the geological map, and using OGC SLD standards, the client offers the following option. A user can request for a sub-selection of the map, for instance searching on a particular attribute such as "age is quaternary", and display only the parts of the map according to the filter. Using the web services on the common vocabularies, the data displayed are translated. The project started September 2008 for two years, with 29 partners from 20 countries (20 partners are Geological Surveys). The budget is 3.25 M€, with a European Commission contribution of 2.6 M€. The paper will describe the technical solutions to implement OneGeology-Europe components: the profile of the common data model to exchange geological data, the web services to view and access geological data; and a geoportal to provide the user with a user-friendly way to discover, view and access geological data.

Interoperability In The New Planetary Science Archive (PSA)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rios, C.; Barbarisi, I.; Docasal, R.; Macfarlane, A. J.; Gonzalez, J.; Arviset, C.; Grotheer, E.; Besse, S.; Martinez, S.; Heather, D.; De Marchi, G.; Lim, T.; Fraga, D.; Barthelemy, M.

2015-12-01

As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, there is a greater need to provide interoperability with software and applications that are commonly being used globally. For this purpose, the development of the new Planetary Science Archive (PSA), by the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) Science Data Centre (ESDC), is focused on building a modern science archive that takes into account internationally recognised standards in order to provide access to the archive through tools from third parties, for example by the NASA Planetary Data System (PDS), the VESPA project from the Virtual Observatory of Paris as well as other international institutions. The protocols and standards currently being supported by the new Planetary Science Archive at this time are the Planetary Data Access Protocol (PDAP), the EuroPlanet-Table Access Protocol (EPN-TAP) and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards. The architecture of the PSA consists of a Geoserver (an open-source map server), the goal of which is to support use cases such as the distribution of search results, sharing and processing data through a OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) and a Web Map Service (WMS). This server also allows the retrieval of requested information in several standard output formats like Keyhole Markup Language (KML), Geography Markup Language (GML), shapefile, JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and Comma Separated Values (CSV), among others. The provision of these various output formats enables end-users to be able to transfer retrieved data into popular applications such as Google Mars and NASA World Wind.

Adapting the CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System to OGC standards

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Valentine, D. W.; Whitenack, T.; Zaslavsky, I.

2010-12-01

The CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System (HIS) provides web and desktop client access to hydrologic observations via water data web services using an XML schema called “WaterML”. The WaterML 1.x specification and the corresponding Water Data Services have been the backbone of the HIS service-oriented architecture (SOA) and have been adopted for serving hydrologic data by several federal agencies and many academic groups. The central discovery service, HIS Central, is based on an metadata catalog that references 4.7 billion observations, organized as 23 million data series from 1.5 million sites from 51 organizations. Observations data are published using HydroServer nodes that have been deployed at 18 organizations. Usage of HIS has increased by 8x from 2008 to 2010, and doubled in usage from 1600 data series a day in 2009 to 3600 data series a day in the first half of 2010. The HIS central metadata catalog currently harvests information from 56 Water Data Services. We collaborate on the catalog updates with two federal partners, USGS and US EPA: their data series are periodically reloaded into the HIS metadata catalog. We are pursuing two main development directions in the HIS project: Cloud-based computing, and further compliance with Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards. The goal of moving to cloud-computing is to provide a scalable collaborative system with a simpler deployment and less dependence of hardware maintenance and staff. This move requires re-architecting the information models underlying the metadata catalog, and Water Data Services to be independent of the underlying relational database model, allowing for implementation on both relational databases, and cloud-based processing systems. Cloud-based HIS central resources can be managed collaboratively; partners share responsibility for their metadata by publishing data series information into the centralized catalog. Publishing data series will use REST-based service interfaces, like OData, as the basis for ingesting data series information into a cloud-hosted catalog. The future HIS services involve providing information via OGC Standards that will allow for observational data access from commercial GIS applications. Use of standards will allow for tools to access observational data from other projects using standards, such as the Ocean Observatories Initiative, and for tools from such projects to be integrated into the HIS toolset. With international collaborators, we have been developing a water information exchange language called “WaterML 2.0” which will be used to deliver observations data over OGC Sensor Observation Services (SOS). A software stack of OGC standard services will provide access to HIS information. In addition to SOS, Web Mapping and Feature Services (WMS, and WFS) will provide access to location information. Catalog Services for the Web (CSW) will provide a catalog for water information that is both centralized, and distributed. We intend the OGC standards supplement the existing HIS service interfaces, rather than replace the present service interfaces. The ultimate goal of this development is expand access to hydrologic observations data, and create an environment where these data can be seamlessly integrated with standards-compliant data resources.

Leveraging Open Standard Interfaces in Accessing and Processing NASA Data Model Outputs

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Falke, S. R.; Alameh, N. S.; Hoijarvi, K.; de La Beaujardiere, J.; Bambacus, M. J.

2006-12-01

An objective of NASA's Earth Science Division is to develop advanced information technologies for processing, archiving, accessing, visualizing, and communicating Earth Science data. To this end, NASA and other federal agencies have collaborated with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to research, develop, and test interoperability specifications within projects and testbeds benefiting the government, industry, and the public. This paper summarizes the results of a recent effort under the auspices of the OGC Web Services testbed phase 4 (OWS-4) to explore standardization approaches for accessing and processing the outputs of NASA models of physical phenomena. Within the OWS-4 context, experiments were designed to leverage the emerging OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS) specifications to access, filter and manipulate the outputs of the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) and Goddard Chemistry Aerosol Radiation and Transport (GOCART) forecast models. In OWS-4, the intent is to provide the users with more control over the subsets of data that they can extract from the model results as well as over the final portrayal of that data. To meet that goal, experiments have been designed to test the suitability of use of OGC's Web Processing Service (WPS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS) for filtering, processing and portraying the model results (including slices by height or by time), and to identify any enhancements to the specs to meet the desired objectives. This paper summarizes the findings of the experiments highlighting the value of the Web Processing Service in providing standard interfaces for accessing and manipulating model data within spatial and temporal frameworks. The paper also points out the key shortcomings of the WPS especially in terms in comparison with a SOAP/WSDL approach towards solving the same problem.

Accessing near real-time Antarctic meteorological data through an OGC Sensor Observation Service (SOS)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kirsch, Peter; Breen, Paul

2013-04-01

We wish to highlight outputs of a project conceived from a science requirement to improve discovery and access to Antarctic meteorological data in near real-time. Given that the data was distributed in both spatial and temporal domains and is to be accessed across several science disciplines, the creation of an interoperable, OGC compliant web service was deemed the most appropriate approach. We will demonstrate an implementation of the OGC SOS Interface Standard to discover, browse, and access Antarctic meteorological data-sets. A selection of programmatic (R, Perl) and web client interfaces utilizing open technologies ( e.g. jQuery, Flot, openLayers ) will be demonstrated. In addition we will show how high level abstractions can be constructed to allow the users flexible and straightforward access to SOS retrieved data.

Use of Open Standards and Technologies at the Lunar Mapping and Modeling Project

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Law, E.; Malhotra, S.; Bui, B.; Chang, G.; Goodale, C. E.; Ramirez, P.; Kim, R. M.; Sadaqathulla, S.; Rodriguez, L.

2011-12-01

The Lunar Mapping and Modeling Project (LMMP), led by the Marshall Space Flight center (MSFC), is tasked by NASA. The project is responsible for the development of an information system to support lunar exploration activities. It provides lunar explorers a set of tools and lunar map and model products that are predominantly derived from present lunar missions (e.g., the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)) and from historical missions (e.g., Apollo). At Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), we have built the LMMP interoperable geospatial information system's underlying infrastructure and a single point of entry - the LMMP Portal by employing a number of open standards and technologies. The Portal exposes a set of services to users to allow search, visualization, subset, and download of lunar data managed by the system. Users also have access to a set of tools that visualize, analyze and annotate the data. The infrastructure and Portal are based on web service oriented architecture. We designed the system to support solar system bodies in general including asteroids, earth and planets. We employed a combination of custom software, commercial and open-source components, off-the-shelf hardware and pay-by-use cloud computing services. The use of open standards and web service interfaces facilitate platform and application independent access to the services and data, offering for instances, iPad and Android mobile applications and large screen multi-touch with 3-D terrain viewing functions, for a rich browsing and analysis experience from a variety of platforms. The web services made use of open standards including: Representational State Transfer (REST); and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)'s Web Map Service (WMS), Web Coverage Service (WCS), Web Feature Service (WFS). Its data management services have been built on top of a set of open technologies including: Object Oriented Data Technology (OODT) - open source data catalog, archive, file management, data grid framework; openSSO - open source access management and federation platform; solr - open source enterprise search platform; redmine - open source project collaboration and management framework; GDAL - open source geospatial data abstraction library; and others. Its data products are compliant with Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) metadata standard. This standardization allows users to access the data products via custom written applications or off-the-shelf applications such as GoogleEarth. We will demonstrate this ready-to-use system for data discovery and visualization by walking through the data services provided through the portal such as browse, search, and other tools. We will further demonstrate image viewing and layering of lunar map images from the Internet, via mobile devices such as Apple's iPad.

Data visualization in interactive maps and time series

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Maigne, Vanessa; Evano, Pascal; Brockmann, Patrick; Peylin, Philippe; Ciais, Philippe

2014-05-01

State-of-the-art data visualization has nothing to do with plots and maps we used few years ago. Many opensource tools are now available to provide access to scientific data and implement accessible, interactive, and flexible web applications. Here we will present a web site opened November 2013 to create custom global and regional maps and time series from research models and datasets. For maps, we explore and get access to data sources from a THREDDS Data Server (TDS) with the OGC WMS protocol (using the ncWMS implementation) then create interactive maps with the OpenLayers javascript library and extra information layers from a GeoServer. Maps become dynamic, zoomable, synchroneaously connected to each other, and exportable to Google Earth. For time series, we extract data from a TDS with the Netcdf Subset Service (NCSS) then display interactive graphs with a custom library based on the Data Driven Documents javascript library (D3.js). This time series application provides dynamic functionalities such as interpolation, interactive zoom on different axes, display of point values, and export to different formats. These tools were implemented for the Global Carbon Atlas (http://www.globalcarbonatlas.org): a web portal to explore, visualize, and interpret global and regional carbon fluxes from various model simulations arising from both human activities and natural processes, a work led by the Global Carbon Project.

WMS Server 2.0

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Plesea, Lucian; Wood, James F.

2012-01-01

This software is a simple, yet flexible server of raster map products, compliant with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS) 1.1.1 protocol. The server is a full implementation of the OGC WMS 1.1.1 as a fastCGI client and using Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) for data access. The server can operate in a proxy mode, where all or part of the WMS requests are done on a back server. The server has explicit support for a colocated tiled WMS, including rapid response of black (no-data) requests. It generates JPEG and PNG images, including 16-bit PNG. The GDAL back-end support allows great flexibility on the data access. The server is a port to a Linux/GDAL platform from the original IRIX/IL platform. It is simpler to configure and use, and depending on the storage format used, it has better performance than other available implementations. The WMS server 2.0 is a high-performance WMS implementation due to the fastCGI architecture. The use of GDAL data back end allows for great flexibility. The configuration is relatively simple, based on a single XML file. It provides scaling and cropping, as well as blending of multiple layers based on layer transparency.

Crowdsourcing, citizen sensing and sensor web technologies for public and environmental health surveillance and crisis management: trends, OGC standards and application examples

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

'Wikification of GIS by the masses' is a phrase-term first coined by Kamel Boulos in 2005, two years earlier than Goodchild's term 'Volunteered Geographic Information'. Six years later (2005-2011), OpenStreetMap and Google Earth (GE) are now full-fledged, crowdsourced 'Wikipedias of the Earth' par excellence, with millions of users contributing their own layers to GE, attaching photos, videos, notes and even 3-D (three dimensional) models to locations in GE. From using Twitter in participatory sensing and bicycle-mounted sensors in pervasive environmental sensing, to creating a 100,000-sensor geo-mashup using Semantic Web technology, to the 3-D visualisation of indoor and outdoor surveillance data in real-time and the development of next-generation, collaborative natural user interfaces that will power the spatially-enabled public health and emergency situation rooms of the future, where sensor data and citizen reports can be triaged and acted upon in real-time by distributed teams of professionals, this paper offers a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of the overlapping domains of the Sensor Web, citizen sensing and 'human-in-the-loop sensing' in the era of the Mobile and Social Web, and the roles these domains can play in environmental and public health surveillance and crisis/disaster informatics. We provide an in-depth review of the key issues and trends in these areas, the challenges faced when reasoning and making decisions with real-time crowdsourced data (such as issues of information overload, "noise", misinformation, bias and trust), the core technologies and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards involved (Sensor Web Enablement and Open GeoSMS), as well as a few outstanding project implementation examples from around the world. PMID:22188675

Crowdsourcing, citizen sensing and sensor web technologies for public and environmental health surveillance and crisis management: trends, OGC standards and application examples.

PubMed

Kamel Boulos, Maged N; Resch, Bernd; Crowley, David N; Breslin, John G; Sohn, Gunho; Burtner, Russ; Pike, William A; Jezierski, Eduardo; Chuang, Kuo-Yu Slayer

2011-12-21

'Wikification of GIS by the masses' is a phrase-term first coined by Kamel Boulos in 2005, two years earlier than Goodchild's term 'Volunteered Geographic Information'. Six years later (2005-2011), OpenStreetMap and Google Earth (GE) are now full-fledged, crowdsourced 'Wikipedias of the Earth' par excellence, with millions of users contributing their own layers to GE, attaching photos, videos, notes and even 3-D (three dimensional) models to locations in GE. From using Twitter in participatory sensing and bicycle-mounted sensors in pervasive environmental sensing, to creating a 100,000-sensor geo-mashup using Semantic Web technology, to the 3-D visualisation of indoor and outdoor surveillance data in real-time and the development of next-generation, collaborative natural user interfaces that will power the spatially-enabled public health and emergency situation rooms of the future, where sensor data and citizen reports can be triaged and acted upon in real-time by distributed teams of professionals, this paper offers a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of the overlapping domains of the Sensor Web, citizen sensing and 'human-in-the-loop sensing' in the era of the Mobile and Social Web, and the roles these domains can play in environmental and public health surveillance and crisis/disaster informatics. We provide an in-depth review of the key issues and trends in these areas, the challenges faced when reasoning and making decisions with real-time crowdsourced data (such as issues of information overload, "noise", misinformation, bias and trust), the core technologies and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards involved (Sensor Web Enablement and Open GeoSMS), as well as a few outstanding project implementation examples from around the world.

The SOOS Data Portal, providing access to Southern Oceans data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Proctor, Roger; Finney, Kim; Blain, Peter; Taylor, Fiona; Newman, Louise; Meredith, Mike; Schofield, Oscar

2013-04-01

The Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS) is an international initiative to enhance, coordinate and expand the strategic observations of the Southern Oceans that are required to address key scientific and societal challenges. A key component of SOOS will be the creation and maintenance of a Southern Ocean Data Portal to provide improved access to historical and ongoing data (Schofield et al., 2012, Eos, Vol. 93, No. 26, pp 241-243). The scale of this effort will require strong leveraging of existing data centres, new cyberinfrastructure development efforts, and defined data collection, quality control, and archiving procedures across the international community. The task of assembling the SOOS data portal is assigned to the SOOS Data Management Sub-Committee. The information infrastructure chosen for the SOOS data portal is based on the Australian Ocean Data Network (AODN, http://portal.aodn.org.au). The AODN infrastructure is built on open-source tools and the use of international standards ensures efficiency of data exchange and interoperability between contributing systems. OGC standard web services protocols are used for serving of data via the internet. These include Web Map Service (WMS) for visualisation, Web Feature Service (WFS) for data download, and Catalogue Service for Web (CSW) for catalogue exchange. The portal offers a number of tools to access and visualize data: - a Search link to the metadata catalogue enables search and discovery by simple text search, by geographic area, temporal extent, keyword, parameter, organisation, or by any combination of these, allowing users to gain access to further information and/or the data for download. Also, searches can be restricted to items which have either data to download, or attached map layers, or both - a Map interface for discovery and display of data, with the ability to change the style and opacity of layers, add additional data layers via OGC Web Map Services, view animated timeseries datastreams - data can be easily accessed and downloaded including directly from OPeNDAP/THREDDS servers. The SOOS data portal (http://soos.aodn.org.au/soos) aims to make access to Southern Ocean data a simple process and the initial layout classifies data into six themes - Heat and Freshwater; Circulation; Ice-sheets and Sea level; Carbon; Sea-ice; and Ecosystems, with the ability to integrate layers between themes. The portal is in its infancy (pilot launched January 2013) with a limited number of datasets available; however, the number of datasets is expected to grow rapidly as the international community becomes fully engaged.

Developing an Online Framework for Publication of Uncertainty Information in Hydrological Modeling

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Etienne, E.; Piasecki, M.

2012-12-01

Inaccuracies in data collection and parameters estimation, and imperfection of models structures imply uncertain predictions of the hydrological models. Finding a way to communicate the uncertainty information in a model output is important in decision-making. This work aims to publish uncertainty information (computed by project partner at Penn State) associated with hydrological predictions on catchments. To this end we have developed a DB schema (derived from the CUAHSI ODM design) which is focused on storing uncertainty information and its associated metadata. The technologies used to build the system are: OGC's Sensor Observation Service (SOS) for publication, the uncertML markup language (also developed by the OGC) to describe uncertainty information, and use of the Interoperability and Automated Mapping (INTAMAP) Web Processing Service (WPS) that handles part of the statistics computations. We develop a service to provide users with the capability to exploit all the functionality of the system (based on DRUPAL). Users will be able to request and visualize uncertainty data, and also publish their data in the system.

Brandenburg 3D - a comprehensive 3D Subsurface Model, Conception of an Infrastructure Node and a Web Application

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kerschke, Dorit; Schilling, Maik; Simon, Andreas; Wächter, Joachim

2014-05-01

The Energiewende and the increasing scarcity of raw materials will lead to an intensified utilization of the subsurface in Germany. Within this context, geological 3D modeling is a fundamental approach for integrated decision and planning processes. Initiated by the development of the European Geospatial Infrastructure INSPIRE, the German State Geological Offices started digitizing their predominantly analog archive inventory. Until now, a comprehensive 3D subsurface model of Brandenburg did not exist. Therefore the project B3D strived to develop a new 3D model as well as a subsequent infrastructure node to integrate all geological and spatial data within the Geodaten-Infrastruktur Brandenburg (Geospatial Infrastructure, GDI-BB) and provide it to the public through an interactive 2D/3D web application. The functionality of the web application is based on a client-server architecture. Server-sided, all available spatial data is published through GeoServer. GeoServer is designed for interoperability and acts as the reference implementation of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Feature Service (WFS) standard that provides the interface that allows requests for geographical features. In addition, GeoServer implements, among others, the high performance certified compliant Web Map Service (WMS) that serves geo-referenced map images. For publishing 3D data, the OGC Web 3D Service (W3DS), a portrayal service for three-dimensional geo-data, is used. The W3DS displays elements representing the geometry, appearance, and behavior of geographic objects. On the client side, the web application is solely based on Free and Open Source Software and leans on the JavaScript API WebGL that allows the interactive rendering of 2D and 3D graphics by means of GPU accelerated usage of physics and image processing as part of the web page canvas without the use of plug-ins. WebGL is supported by most web browsers (e.g., Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and Opera). The web application enables an intuitive navigation through all available information and allows the visualization of geological maps (2D), seismic transects (2D/3D), wells (2D/3D), and the 3D-model. These achievements will alleviate spatial and geological data management within the German State Geological Offices and foster the interoperability of heterogeneous systems. It will provide guidance to a systematic subsurface management across system, domain and administrative boundaries on the basis of a federated spatial data infrastructure, and include the public in the decision processes (e-Governance). Yet, the interoperability of the systems has to be strongly propelled forward through agreements on standards that need to be decided upon in responsible committees. The project B3D is funded with resources from the European Fund for Regional Development (EFRE).

SCHeMA web-based observation data information system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Novellino, Antonio; Benedetti, Giacomo; D'Angelo, Paolo; Confalonieri, Fabio; Massa, Francesco; Povero, Paolo; Tercier-Waeber, Marie-Louise

2016-04-01

It is well recognized that the need of sharing ocean data among non-specialized users is constantly increasing. Initiatives that are built upon international standards will contribute to simplify data processing and dissemination, improve user-accessibility also through web browsers, facilitate the sharing of information across the integrated network of ocean observing systems; and ultimately provide a better understanding of the ocean functioning. The SCHeMA (Integrated in Situ Chemical MApping probe) Project is developing an open and modular sensing solution for autonomous in situ high resolution mapping of a wide range of anthropogenic and natural chemical compounds coupled to master bio-physicochemical parameters (www.schema-ocean.eu). The SCHeMA web system is designed to ensure user-friendly data discovery, access and download as well as interoperability with other projects through a dedicated interface that implements the Global Earth Observation System of Systems - Common Infrastructure (GCI) recommendations and the international Open Geospatial Consortium - Sensor Web Enablement (OGC-SWE) standards. This approach will insure data accessibility in compliance with major European Directives and recommendations. Being modular, the system allows the plug-and-play of commercially available probes as well as new sensor probess under development within the project. The access to the network of monitoring probes is provided via a web-based system interface that, being implemented as a SOS (Sensor Observation Service), is providing standard interoperability and access tosensor observations systems through O&M standard - as well as sensor descriptions - encoded in Sensor Model Language (SensorML). The use of common vocabularies in all metadatabases and data formats, to describe data in an already harmonized and common standard is a prerequisite towards consistency and interoperability. Therefore, the SCHeMA SOS has adopted the SeaVox common vocabularies populated by SeaDataNet network of National Oceanographic Data Centres. The SCHeMA presentation layer, a fundamental part of the software architecture, offers to the user a bidirectional interaction with the integrated system allowing to manage and configure the sensor probes; view the stored observations and metadata, and handle alarms. The overall structure of the web portal developed within the SCHeMA initiative (Sensor Configuration, development of Core Profile interface for data access via OGC standard, external services such as web services, WMS, WFS; and Data download and query manager) will be presented and illustrated with examples of ongoing tests in costal and open sea.

Urban Climate Resilience - Connecting climate models with decision support cyberinfrastructure using open standards

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bermudez, L. E.; Percivall, G.; Idol, T. A.

2015-12-01

Experts in climate modeling, remote sensing of the Earth, and cyber infrastructure must work together in order to make climate predictions available to decision makers. Such experts and decision makers worked together in the Open Geospatial Consortium's (OGC) Testbed 11 to address a scenario of population displacement by coastal inundation due to the predicted sea level rise. In a Policy Fact Sheet "Harnessing Climate Data to Boost Ecosystem & Water Resilience", issued by White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) in December 2014, OGC committed to increase access to climate change information using open standards. In July 2015, the OGC Testbed 11 Urban Climate Resilience activity delivered on that commitment with open standards based support for climate-change preparedness. Using open standards such as the OGC Web Coverage Service and Web Processing Service and the NetCDF and GMLJP2 encoding standards, Testbed 11 deployed an interoperable high-resolution flood model to bring climate model outputs together with global change assessment models and other remote sensing data for decision support. Methods to confirm model predictions and to allow "what-if-scenarios" included in-situ sensor webs and crowdsourcing. A scenario was in two locations: San Francisco Bay Area and Mozambique. The scenarios demonstrated interoperation and capabilities of open geospatial specifications in supporting data services and processing services. The resultant High Resolution Flood Information System addressed access and control of simulation models and high-resolution data in an open, worldwide, collaborative Web environment. The scenarios examined the feasibility and capability of existing OGC geospatial Web service specifications in supporting the on-demand, dynamic serving of flood information from models with forecasting capacity. Results of this testbed included identification of standards and best practices that help researchers and cities deal with climate-related issues. Results of the testbeds will now be deployed in pilot applications. The testbed also identified areas of additional development needed to help identify scientific investments and cyberinfrastructure approaches needed to improve the application of climate science research results to urban climate resilence.

Exploring NASA Satellite Data with High Resolution Visualization

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wei, J. C.; Yang, W.; Johnson, J. E.; Shen, S.; Zhao, P.; Gerasimov, I. V.; Vollmer, B.; Vicente, G. A.; Pham, L.

2013-12-01

Satellite data products are important for a wide variety of applications that can bring far-reaching benefits to the science community and the broader society. These benefits can best be achieved if the satellite data are well utilized and interpreted, such as model inputs from satellite, or extreme event (such as volcano eruption, dust storm, ...etc) interpretation from satellite. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, despite the abundance and relative maturity of numerous satellite data products provided by NASA and other organizations. Such obstacles may be avoided by providing satellite data as ';Images' with accurate pixel-level (Level 2) information, including pixel coverage area delineation and science team recommended quality screening for individual geophysical parameters. We will present a prototype service from the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) supporting various visualization and data accessing capabilities from satellite Level 2 data (non-aggregated and un-gridded) at high spatial resolution. Functionality will include selecting data sources (e.g., multiple parameters under the same measurement, like NO2 and SO2 from Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), or same parameter with different methods of aggregation, like NO2 in OMNO2G and OMNO2D products), defining area-of-interest and temporal extents, zooming, panning, overlaying, sliding, and data subsetting and reformatting. The portal interface will connect to the backend services with OGC standard-compliant Web Mapping Service (WMS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS) calls. The interface will also be able to connect to other OGC WMS and WCS servers, which will greatly enhance its expandability to integrate additional outside data/map sources.

Web-based spatial analysis with the ILWIS open source GIS software and satellite images from GEONETCast

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lemmens, R.; Maathuis, B.; Mannaerts, C.; Foerster, T.; Schaeffer, B.; Wytzisk, A.

2009-12-01

This paper involves easy accessible integrated web-based analysis of satellite images with a plug-in based open source software. The paper is targeted to both users and developers of geospatial software. Guided by a use case scenario, we describe the ILWIS software and its toolbox to access satellite images through the GEONETCast broadcasting system. The last two decades have shown a major shift from stand-alone software systems to networked ones, often client/server applications using distributed geo-(web-)services. This allows organisations to combine without much effort their own data with remotely available data and processing functionality. Key to this integrated spatial data analysis is a low-cost access to data from within a user-friendly and flexible software. Web-based open source software solutions are more often a powerful option for developing countries. The Integrated Land and Water Information System (ILWIS) is a PC-based GIS & Remote Sensing software, comprising a complete package of image processing, spatial analysis and digital mapping and was developed as commercial software from the early nineties onwards. Recent project efforts have migrated ILWIS into a modular, plug-in-based open source software, and provide web-service support for OGC-based web mapping and processing. The core objective of the ILWIS Open source project is to provide a maintainable framework for researchers and software developers to implement training components, scientific toolboxes and (web-) services. The latest plug-ins have been developed for multi-criteria decision making, water resources analysis and spatial statistics analysis. The development of this framework is done since 2007 in the context of 52°North, which is an open initiative that advances the development of cutting edge open source geospatial software, using the GPL license. GEONETCast, as part of the emerging Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), puts essential environmental data at the fingertips of users around the globe. This user-friendly and low-cost information dissemination provides global information as a basis for decision-making in a number of critical areas, including public health, energy, agriculture, weather, water, climate, natural disasters and ecosystems. GEONETCast makes available satellite images via Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) technology. An OGC WMS interface and plug-ins which convert GEONETCast data streams allow an ILWIS user to integrate various distributed data sources with data locally stored on his machine. Our paper describes a use case in which ILWIS is used with GEONETCast satellite imagery for decision making processes in Ghana. We also explain how the ILWIS software can be extended with additional functionality by means of building plug-ins and unfold our plans to implement other OGC standards, such as WCS and WPS in the same context. Especially, the latter one can be seen as a major step forward in terms of moving well-proven desktop based processing functionality to the web. This enables the embedding of ILWIS functionality in Spatial Data Infrastructures or even the execution in scalable and on-demand cloud computing environments.

Architecture of the local spatial data infrastructure for regional climate change research

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Titov, Alexander; Gordov, Evgeny

2013-04-01

Georeferenced datasets (meteorological databases, modeling and reanalysis results, etc.) are actively used in modeling and analysis of climate change for various spatial and temporal scales. Due to inherent heterogeneity of environmental datasets as well as their size which might constitute up to tens terabytes for a single dataset studies in the area of climate and environmental change require a special software support based on SDI approach. A dedicated architecture of the local spatial data infrastructure aiming at regional climate change analysis using modern web mapping technologies is presented. Geoportal is a key element of any SDI, allowing searching of geoinformation resources (datasets and services) using metadata catalogs, producing geospatial data selections by their parameters (data access functionality) as well as managing services and applications of cartographical visualization. It should be noted that due to objective reasons such as big dataset volume, complexity of data models used, syntactic and semantic differences of various datasets, the development of environmental geodata access, processing and visualization services turns out to be quite a complex task. Those circumstances were taken into account while developing architecture of the local spatial data infrastructure as a universal framework providing geodata services. So that, the architecture presented includes: 1. Effective in terms of search, access, retrieval and subsequent statistical processing, model of storing big sets of regional georeferenced data, allowing in particular to store frequently used values (like monthly and annual climate change indices, etc.), thus providing different temporal views of the datasets 2. General architecture of the corresponding software components handling geospatial datasets within the storage model 3. Metadata catalog describing in detail using ISO 19115 and CF-convention standards datasets used in climate researches as a basic element of the spatial data infrastructure as well as its publication according to OGC CSW (Catalog Service Web) specification 4. Computational and mapping web services to work with geospatial datasets based on OWS (OGC Web Services) standards: WMS, WFS, WPS 5. Geoportal as a key element of thematic regional spatial data infrastructure providing also software framework for dedicated web applications development To realize web mapping services Geoserver software is used since it provides natural WPS implementation as a separate software module. To provide geospatial metadata services GeoNetwork Opensource (http://geonetwork-opensource.org) product is planned to be used for it supports ISO 19115/ISO 19119/ISO 19139 metadata standards as well as ISO CSW 2.0 profile for both client and server. To implement thematic applications based on geospatial web services within the framework of local SDI geoportal the following open source software have been selected: 1. OpenLayers JavaScript library, providing basic web mapping functionality for the thin client such as web browser 2. GeoExt/ExtJS JavaScript libraries for building client-side web applications working with geodata services. The web interface developed will be similar to the interface of such popular desktop GIS applications, as uDIG, QuantumGIS etc. The work is partially supported by RF Ministry of Education and Science grant 8345, SB RAS Program VIII.80.2.1 and IP 131.

Design, Implementation and Applications of 3d Web-Services in DB4GEO

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Breunig, M.; Kuper, P. V.; Dittrich, A.; Wild, P.; Butwilowski, E.; Al-Doori, M.

2013-09-01

The object-oriented database architecture DB4GeO was originally designed to support sub-surface applications in the geo-sciences. This is reflected in DB4GeO's geometric data model as well as in its import and export functions. Initially, these functions were designed for communication with 3D geological modeling and visualization tools such as GOCAD or MeshLab. However, it soon became clear that DB4GeO was suitable for a much wider range of applications. Therefore it is natural to move away from a standalone solution and to open the access to DB4GeO data by standardized OGC web-services. Though REST and OGC services seem incompatible at first sight, the implementation in DB4GeO shows that OGC-based implementation of web-services may use parts of the DB4GeO-REST implementation. Starting with initial solutions in the history of DB4GeO, this paper will introduce the design, adaptation (i.e. model transformation), and first steps in the implementation of OGC Web Feature (WFS) and Web Processing Services (WPS), as new interfaces to DB4GeO data and operations. Among its capabilities, DB4GeO can provide data in different data formats like GML, GOCAD, or DB3D XML through a WFS, as well as its ability to run operations like a 3D-to-2D service, or mesh-simplification (Progressive Meshes) through a WPS. We then demonstrate, an Android-based mobile 3D augmented reality viewer for DB4GeO that uses the Web Feature Service to visualize 3D geo-database query results. Finally, we explore future research work considering DB4GeO in the framework of the research group "Computer-Aided Collaborative Subway Track Planning in Multi-Scale 3D City and Building Models".

The Earth Observation Monitor - Automated monitoring and alerting for spatial time-series data based on OGC web services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Eberle, J.; Hüttich, C.; Schmullius, C.

2014-12-01

Spatial time series data are freely available around the globe from earth observation satellites and meteorological stations for many years until now. They provide useful and important information to detect ongoing changes of the environment; but for end-users it is often too complex to extract this information out of the original time series datasets. This issue led to the development of the Earth Observation Monitor (EOM), an operational framework and research project to provide simple access, analysis and monitoring tools for global spatial time series data. A multi-source data processing middleware in the backend is linked to MODIS data from Land Processes Distributed Archive Center (LP DAAC) and Google Earth Engine as well as daily climate station data from NOAA National Climatic Data Center. OGC Web Processing Services are used to integrate datasets from linked data providers or external OGC-compliant interfaces to the EOM. Users can either use the web portal (webEOM) or the mobile application (mobileEOM) to execute these processing services and to retrieve the requested data for a given point or polygon in userfriendly file formats (CSV, GeoTiff). Beside providing just data access tools, users can also do further time series analyses like trend calculations, breakpoint detections or the derivation of phenological parameters from vegetation time series data. Furthermore data from climate stations can be aggregated over a given time interval. Calculated results can be visualized in the client and downloaded for offline usage. Automated monitoring and alerting of the time series data integrated by the user is provided by an OGC Sensor Observation Service with a coupled OGC Web Notification Service. Users can decide which datasets and parameters are monitored with a given filter expression (e.g., precipitation value higher than x millimeter per day, occurrence of a MODIS Fire point, detection of a time series anomaly). Datasets integrated in the SOS service are updated in near-realtime based on the linked data providers mentioned above. An alert is automatically pushed to the user if the new data meets the conditions of the registered filter expression. This monitoring service is available on the web portal with alerting by email and within the mobile app with alerting by email and push notification.

The GLIMS Glacier Database

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Raup, B. H.; Khalsa, S. S.; Armstrong, R.

2007-12-01

The Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) project has built a geospatial and temporal database of glacier data, composed of glacier outlines and various scalar attributes. These data are being derived primarily from satellite imagery, such as from ASTER and Landsat. Each "snapshot" of a glacier is from a specific time, and the database is designed to store multiple snapshots representative of different times. We have implemented two web-based interfaces to the database; one enables exploration of the data via interactive maps (web map server), while the other allows searches based on text-field constraints. The web map server is an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) compliant Web Map Server (WMS) and Web Feature Server (WFS). This means that other web sites can display glacier layers from our site over the Internet, or retrieve glacier features in vector format. All components of the system are implemented using Open Source software: Linux, PostgreSQL, PostGIS (geospatial extensions to the database), MapServer (WMS and WFS), and several supporting components such as Proj.4 (a geographic projection library) and PHP. These tools are robust and provide a flexible and powerful framework for web mapping applications. As a service to the GLIMS community, the database contains metadata on all ASTER imagery acquired over glacierized terrain. Reduced-resolution of the images (browse imagery) can be viewed either as a layer in the MapServer application, or overlaid on the virtual globe within Google Earth. The interactive map application allows the user to constrain by time what data appear on the map. For example, ASTER or glacier outlines from 2002 only, or from Autumn in any year, can be displayed. The system allows users to download their selected glacier data in a choice of formats. The results of a query based on spatial selection (using a mouse) or text-field constraints can be downloaded in any of these formats: ESRI shapefiles, KML (Google Earth), MapInfo, GML (Geography Markup Language) and GMT (Generic Mapping Tools). This "clip-and-ship" function allows users to download only the data they are interested in. Our flexible web interfaces to the database, which includes various support layers (e.g. a layer to help collaborators identify satellite imagery over their region of expertise) will facilitate enhanced analysis to be undertaken on glacier systems, their distribution, and their impacts on other Earth systems.

A flexible geospatial sensor observation service for diverse sensor data based on Web service

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Nengcheng; Di, Liping; Yu, Genong; Min, Min

Achieving a flexible and efficient geospatial Sensor Observation Service (SOS) is difficult, given the diversity of sensor networks, the heterogeneity of sensor data storage, and the differing requirements of users. This paper describes development of a service-oriented multi-purpose SOS framework. The goal is to create a single method of access to the data by integrating the sensor observation service with other Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services — Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW), Transactional Web Feature Service (WFS-T) and Transactional Web Coverage Service (WCS-T). The framework includes an extensible sensor data adapter, an OGC-compliant geospatial SOS, a geospatial catalogue service, a WFS-T, and a WCS-T for the SOS, and a geospatial sensor client. The extensible sensor data adapter finds, stores, and manages sensor data from live sensors, sensor models, and simulation systems. Abstract factory design patterns are used during design and implementation. A sensor observation service compatible with the SWE is designed, following the OGC "core" and "transaction" specifications. It is implemented using Java servlet technology. It can be easily deployed in any Java servlet container and automatically exposed for discovery using Web Service Description Language (WSDL). Interaction sequences between a Sensor Web data consumer and an SOS, between a producer and an SOS, and between an SOS and a CSW are described in detail. The framework has been successfully demonstrated in application scenarios for EO-1 observations, weather observations, and water height gauge observations.

A Security Architecture for Grid-enabling OGC Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Angelini, Valerio; Petronzio, Luca

2010-05-01

In the proposed presentation we describe an architectural solution for enabling a secure access to Grids and possibly other large scale on-demand processing infrastructures through OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) Web Services (OWS). This work has been carried out in the context of the security thread of the G-OWS Working Group. G-OWS (gLite enablement of OGC Web Services) is an international open initiative started in 2008 by the European CYCLOPS , GENESI-DR, and DORII Project Consortia in order to collect/coordinate experiences in the enablement of OWS's on top of the gLite Grid middleware. G-OWS investigates the problem of the development of Spatial Data and Information Infrastructures (SDI and SII) based on the Grid/Cloud capacity in order to enable Earth Science applications and tools. Concerning security issues, the integration of OWS compliant infrastructures and gLite Grids needs to address relevant challenges, due to their respective design principles. In fact OWS's are part of a Web based architecture that demands security aspects to other specifications, whereas the gLite middleware implements the Grid paradigm with a strong security model (the gLite Grid Security Infrastructure: GSI). In our work we propose a Security Architectural Framework allowing the seamless use of Grid-enabled OGC Web Services through the federation of existing security systems (mostly web based) with the gLite GSI. This is made possible mediating between different security realms, whose mutual trust is established in advance during the deployment of the system itself. Our architecture is composed of three different security tiers: the user's security system, a specific G-OWS security system, and the gLite Grid Security Infrastructure. Applying the separation-of-concerns principle, each of these tiers is responsible for controlling the access to a well-defined resource set, respectively: the user's organization resources, the geospatial resources and services, and the Grid resources. While the gLite middleware is tied to a consolidated security approach based on X.509 certificates, our system is able to support different kinds of user's security infrastructures. Our central component, the G-OWS Security Framework, is based on the OASIS WS-Trust specifications and on the OGC GeoRM architectural framework. This allows to satisfy advanced requirements such as the enforcement of specific geospatial policies and complex secure web service chained requests. The typical use case is represented by a scientist belonging to a given organization who issues a request to a G-OWS Grid-enabled Web Service. The system initially asks the user to authenticate to his/her organization's security system and, after verification of the user's security credentials, it translates the user's digital identity into a G-OWS identity. This identity is linked to a set of attributes describing the user's access rights to the G-OWS services and resources. Inside the G-OWS Security system, access restrictions are applied making use of the enhanced Geospatial capabilities specified by the OGC GeoXACML. If the required action needs to make use of the Grid environment the system checks if the user is entitled to access a Grid infrastructure. In that case his/her identity is translated to a temporary Grid security token using the Short Lived Credential Services (IGTF Standard). In our case, for the specific gLite Grid infrastructure, some information (VOMS Attributes) is plugged into the Grid Security Token to grant the access to the user's Virtual Organization Grid resources. The resulting token is used to submit the request to the Grid and also by the various gLite middleware elements to verify the user's grants. Basing on the presented framework, the G-OWS Security Working Group developed a prototype, enabling the execution of OGC Web Services on the EGEE Production Grid through the federation with a Shibboleth based security infrastructure. Future plans aim to integrate other Web authentication services such as OpenID, Kerberos and WS-Federation.

Pragmatic service development and customisation with the CEDA OGC Web Services framework

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pascoe, Stephen; Stephens, Ag; Lowe, Dominic

2010-05-01

The CEDA OGC Web Services framework (COWS) emphasises rapid service development by providing a lightweight layer of OGC web service logic on top of Pylons, a mature web application framework for the Python language. This approach gives developers a flexible web service development environment without compromising access to the full range of web application tools and patterns: Model-View-Controller paradigm, XML templating, Object-Relational-Mapper integration and authentication/authorization. We have found this approach useful for exploring evolving standards and implementing protocol extensions to meet the requirements of operational deployments. This paper outlines how COWS is being used to implement customised WMS, WCS, WFS and WPS services in a variety of web applications from experimental prototypes to load-balanced cluster deployments serving 10-100 simultaneous users. In particular we will cover 1) The use of Climate Science Modeling Language (CSML) in complex-feature aware WMS, WCS and WFS services, 2) Extending WMS to support applications with features specific to earth system science and 3) A cluster-enabled Web Processing Service (WPS) supporting asynchronous data processing. The COWS WPS underpins all backend services in the UK Climate Projections User Interface where users can extract, plot and further process outputs from a multi-dimensional probabilistic climate model dataset. The COWS WPS supports cluster job execution, result caching, execution time estimation and user management. The COWS WMS and WCS components drive the project-specific NCEO and QESDI portals developed by the British Atmospheric Data Centre. These portals use CSML as a backend description format and implement features such as multiple WMS layer dimensions and climatology axes that are beyond the scope of general purpose GIS tools and yet vital for atmospheric science applications.

Communicating data quality through Web Map Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Blower, Jon; Roberts, Charles; Griffiths, Guy; Lewis, Jane; Yang, Kevin

2013-04-01

The sharing and visualization of environmental data through spatial data infrastructures is becoming increasingly common. However, information about the quality of data is frequently unavailable or presented in an inconsistent fashion. ("Data quality" is a phrase with many possible meanings but here we define it as "fitness for purpose" - therefore different users have different notions of what constitutes a "high quality" dataset.) The GeoViQua project (www.geoviqua.org) is developing means for eliciting, formatting, discovering and visualizing quality information using ISO and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards. Here we describe one aspect of the innovations of the GeoViQua project. In this presentation, we shall demonstrate new developments in using Web Map Services to communicate data quality at the level of datasets, variables and individual samples. We shall outline a new draft set of conventions (known as "WMS-Q"), which describe a set of rules for using WMS to convey quality information (OGC draft Engineering Report 12-160). We shall demonstrate these conventions through new prototype software, based upon the widely-used ncWMS software, that applies these rules to enable the visualization of uncertainties in raster data such as satellite products and the results of numerical simulations. Many conceptual and practical issues have arisen from these experiments. How can source data be formatted so that a WMS implementation can detect the semantic links between variables (e.g. the links between a mean field and its variance)? The visualization of uncertainty can be a complex task - how can we provide users with the power and flexibility to choose an optimal strategy? How can we maintain compatibility (as far as possible) with existing WMS clients? We explore these questions with reference to existing standards and approaches, including UncertML, NetCDF-U and Styled Layer Descriptors.

Exploiting Aura OMI Level 2 Data with High Resolution Visualization

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wei, J. C.; Yang, W.; Johnson, J. E.; Zhao, P.; Gerasimov, I. V.; Pham, L.; Vicente, G. A.; Shen, S.

2014-12-01

Satellite data products are important for a wide variety of applications that can bring far-reaching benefits to the science community and the broader society. These benefits can best be achieved if the satellite data are well utilized and interpreted, such as model inputs from satellite, or extreme event (such as volcano eruption, dust storm, …etc) interpretation from satellite. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, despite the abundance and relative maturity of numerous satellite data products provided by NASA and other organizations. One way to help users better understand the satellite data is to provide data along with 'Images', including accurate pixel-level (Level 2) information, pixel coverage area delineation, and science team recommended quality screening for individual geophysical parameters. Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) always strives to best support (i.e., Software-as-a-service, SaaS) the user-community for NASA Earth Science Data. In this case, we will present a new visualization tool that helps users exploiting Aura Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) Level 2 data. This new visualization service utilizes Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard-compliant Web Mapping Service (WMS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS) calls in the backend infrastructure. The functionality of the service allows users to select data sources (e.g., multiple parameters under the same measurement, like NO2 and SO2 from OMI Level 2 or same parameter with different methods of aggregation, like NO2 in OMNO2G and OMNO2D products), defining area-of-interest and temporal extents, zooming, panning, overlaying, sliding, and data subsetting and reformatting. The interface will also be able to connect to other OGC WMS and WCS servers, which will greatly enhance its expandability to integrate additional outside data/map sources (such as Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS)).

Interoperability Between Coastal Web Atlases Using Semantic Mediation: A Case Study of the International Coastal Atlas Network (ICAN)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wright, D. J.; Lassoued, Y.; Dwyer, N.; Haddad, T.; Bermudez, L. E.; Dunne, D.

2009-12-01

Coastal mapping plays an important role in informing marine spatial planning, resource management, maritime safety, hazard assessment and even national sovereignty. As such, there is now a plethora of data/metadata catalogs, pre-made maps, tabular and text information on resource availability and exploitation, and decision-making tools. A recent trend has been to encapsulate these in a special class of web-enabled geographic information systems called a coastal web atlas (CWA). While multiple benefits are derived from tailor-made atlases, there is great value added from the integration of disparate CWAs. CWAs linked to one another can query more successfully to optimize planning and decision-making. If a dataset is missing in one atlas, it may be immediately located in another. Similar datasets in two atlases may be combined to enhance study in either region. *But how best to achieve semantic interoperability to mitigate vague data queries, concepts or natural language semantics when retrieving and integrating data and information?* We report on the development of a new prototype seeking to interoperate between two initial CWAs: the Marine Irish Digital Atlas (MIDA) and the Oregon Coastal Atlas (OCA). These two mature atlases are used as a testbed for more regional connections, with the intent for the OCA to use lessons learned to develop a regional network of CWAs along the west coast, and for MIDA to do the same in building and strengthening atlas networks with the UK, Belgium, and other parts of Europe. Our prototype uses semantic interoperability via services harmonization and ontology mediation, allowing local atlases to use their own data structures, and vocabularies (ontologies). We use standard technologies such as OGC Web Map Services (WMS) for delivering maps, and OGC Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW) for delivering and querying ISO-19139 metadata. The metadata records of a given CWA use a given ontology of terms called local ontology. Human or machine users formulate their requests using a common ontology of metadata terms, called global ontology. A CSW mediator rewrites the user’s request into CSW requests over local CSWs using their own (local) ontologies, collects the results and sends them back to the user. To extend the system, we have recently added global maritime boundaries and are also considering nearshore ocean observing system data. Ongoing work includes adding WFS, error management, and exception handling, enabling Smart Searches, and writing full documentation. This prototype is a central research project of the new International Coastal Atlas Network (ICAN), a group of 30+ organizations from 14 nations (and growing) dedicated to seeking interoperability approaches to CWAs in support of coastal zone management and the translation of coastal science to coastal decision-making.

Datacube Services in Action, Using Open Source and Open Standards

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baumann, P.; Misev, D.

2016-12-01

Array Databases comprise novel, promising technology for massive spatio-temporal datacubes, extending the SQL paradigm of "any query, anytime" to n-D arrays. On server side, such queries can be optimized, parallelized, and distributed based on partitioned array storage. The rasdaman ("raster data manager") system, which has pioneered Array Databases, is available in open source on www.rasdaman.org. Its declarative query language extends SQL with array operators which are optimized and parallelized on server side. The rasdaman engine, which is part of OSGeo Live, is mature and in operational use databases individually holding dozens of Terabytes. Further, the rasdaman concepts have strongly impacted international Big Data standards in the field, including the forthcoming MDA ("Multi-Dimensional Array") extension to ISO SQL, the OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS) and Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS) standards, and the forthcoming INSPIRE WCS/WCPS; in both OGC and INSPIRE, OGC is WCS Core Reference Implementation. In our talk we present concepts, architecture, operational services, and standardization impact of open-source rasdaman, as well as experiences made.

Sensor Webs and Virtual Globes: Enabling Understanding of Changes in a partially Glaciated Watershed

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Heavner, M.; Fatland, D. R.; Habermann, M.; Berner, L.; Hood, E.; Connor, C.; Galbraith, J.; Knuth, E.; O'Brien, W.

2008-12-01

The University of Alaska Southeast is currently implementing a sensor web identified as the SouthEast Alaska MOnitoring Network for Science, Telecommunications, Education, and Research (SEAMONSTER). SEAMONSTER is operating in the partially glaciated Mendenhall and Lemon Creek Watersheds, in the Juneau area, on the margins of the Juneau Icefield. These watersheds are studied for both 1. long term monitoring of changes, and 2. detection and analysis of transient events (such as glacier lake outburst floods). The heterogeneous sensors (meteorologic, dual frequency GPS, water quality, lake level, etc), power and bandwidth constraints, and competing time scales of interest require autonomous reactivity of the sensor web. They also present challenges for operational management of the sensor web. The harsh conditions on the glaciers provide additional operating constraints. The tight integration of the sensor web and virtual global enabling technology enhance the project in multiple ways. We are utilizing virtual globe infrastructures to enhance both sensor web management and data access. SEAMONSTER utilizes virtual globes for education and public outreach, sensor web management, data dissemination, and enabling collaboration. Using a PosgreSQL with GIS extensions database coupled to the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Geoserver, we generate near-real-time auto-updating geobrowser files of the data in multiple OGC standard formats (e.g KML, WCS). Additionally, embedding wiki pages in this database allows the development of a geospatially aware wiki describing the projects for better public outreach and education. In this presentation we will describe how we have implemented these technologies to date, the lessons learned, and our efforts towards greater OGC standard implementation. A major focus will be on demonstrating how geobrowsers and virtual globes have made this project possible.

HELI-DEM portal for geo-processing services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cannata, Massimiliano; Antonovic, Milan; Molinari, Monia

2014-05-01

HELI-DEM (Helvetia-Italy Digital Elevation Model) is a project developed in the framework of Italy/Switzerland Operational Programme for Trans-frontier Cooperation 2007-2013 whose major aim is to create a unified digital terrain model that includes the alpine and sub-alpine areas between Italy and Switzerland. The partners of the project are: Lombardy Region, Piedmont Region, Polytechnic of Milan, Polytechnic of Turin and Fondazione Politecnico from Italy; Institute of Earth Sciences (SUPSI) from Switzerland. The digital terrain model has been produced by integrating and validating the different elevation data available for the areas of interest, characterized by different reference frame, resolutions and accuracies: DHM at 25 m resolution from Swisstopo, DTM at 20 m resolution from Lombardy Region, DTM at 5 m resolution from Piedmont Region and DTM LiDAR PST-A at about 1 m resolution, that covers the main river bed areas and is produced by the Italian Ministry of the Environment. Further results of the project are: the generation of a unique Italian Swiss geoid with an accuracy of few centimeters (Gilardoni et al. 2012); the establishment of a GNSS permanent network, prototype of a transnational positioning service; the development of a geo-portal, entirely based on open source technologies and open standards, which provides the cross-border DTM and offers some capabilities of analysis and processing through the Internet. With this talk, the authors want to present the main steps of the project with a focus on the HELI-DEM geo-portal development carried out by the Institute of Earth Sciences, which is the access point to the DTM outputted from the project. The portal, accessible at http://geoservice.ist.supsi.ch/helidem, is a demonstration of open source technologies combined for providing access to geospatial functionalities to wide non GIS expert public. In fact, the system is entirely developed using only Open Standards and Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) both on the server side (services) and on the client side (interface). In addition to self developed code the system relies mainly on teh software GRASS 7 [1], ZOO-project [2], Geoserver [3] and OpenLayers [4] and the standards WMS [5], WCS [6] and WPS [7]. At the time of writing, the portal offers features like profiling, contour extraction, watershed delineation and analysis, derivatives calculation, data extraction, coordinate conversion but it is evolving and it is planned to extend to a series of environmental modeling that the IST developed in the past like dam break simulation, landslide run-out estimation and floods due to landslide impact in artificial basins. [1] Neteler M., Mitasova H., Open Source GIS: A GRASS GIS Approach. 3rd Ed. 406 pp, Springer, New York, 2008. [2] Fenoy G., Bozon N., Raghavan V., ZOO Project: The Open Wps Platform. Proceeding of 1st International Workshop on Pervasive Web Mapping, Geoprocessing and Services (WebMGS). Como, http://www.isprs.org/proceedings/XXXVIII/4-W13/ID_32.pdf, 26-27 agosto 2010. [3] Giannecchini S., Aime A., GeoServer, il server open source per la gestione interoperabile dei dati geospaziali. Atti 15a Conferenza Nazionale ASITA. Reggia di Colorno, 15-18 novembre 2011. [4] Perez A.S., OpenLayers Cookbook. Packt Publishing, 2012. ISBN 1849517843. [5] OGC, OpenGIS Web Map Server Implementation Specification, http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wms, 2006. [6] OGC, OGC WCS 2.0 Interface Standard - Core, http://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=41437, 2010b. [7] OGC, OpenGIS Web Processing Service, http://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=24151, 2007.

Interacting With A Near Real-Time Urban Digital Watershed Using Emerging Geospatial Web Technologies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Y.; Fazio, D. J.; Abdelzaher, T.; Minsker, B.

2007-12-01

The value of real-time hydrologic data dissemination including river stage, streamflow, and precipitation for operational stormwater management efforts is particularly high for communities where flash flooding is common and costly. Ideally, such data would be presented within a watershed-scale geospatial context to portray a holistic view of the watershed. Local hydrologic sensor networks usually lack comprehensive integration with sensor networks managed by other agencies sharing the same watershed due to administrative, political, but mostly technical barriers. Recent efforts on providing unified access to hydrological data have concentrated on creating new SOAP-based web services and common data format (e.g. WaterML and Observation Data Model) for users to access the data (e.g. HIS and HydroSeek). Geospatial Web technology including OGC sensor web enablement (SWE), GeoRSS, Geo tags, Geospatial browsers such as Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth and other location-based service tools provides possibilities for us to interact with a digital watershed in near-real-time. OGC SWE proposes a revolutionary concept towards a web-connected/controllable sensor networks. However, these efforts have not provided the capability to allow dynamic data integration/fusion among heterogeneous sources, data filtering and support for workflows or domain specific applications where both push and pull mode of retrieving data may be needed. We propose a light weight integration framework by extending SWE with open source Enterprise Service Bus (e.g., mule) as a backbone component to dynamically transform, transport, and integrate both heterogeneous sensor data sources and simulation model outputs. We will report our progress on building such framework where multi-agencies" sensor data and hydro-model outputs (with map layers) will be integrated and disseminated in a geospatial browser (e.g. Microsoft Virtual Earth). This is a collaborative project among NCSA, USGS Illinois Water Science Center, Computer Science Department at UIUC funded by the Adaptive Environmental Infrastructure Sensing and Information Systems initiative at UIUC.

Decentralized Orchestration of Composite Ogc Web Processing Services in the Cloud

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xiao, F.; Shea, G. Y. K.; Cao, J.

2016-09-01

Current web-based GIS or RS applications generally rely on centralized structure, which has inherent drawbacks such as single points of failure, network congestion, and data inconsistency, etc. The inherent disadvantages of traditional GISs need to be solved for new applications on Internet or Web. Decentralized orchestration offers performance improvements in terms of increased throughput and scalability and lower response time. This paper investigates build time and runtime issues related to decentralized orchestration of composite geospatial processing services based on OGC WPS standard specification. A case study of dust storm detection was demonstrated to evaluate the proposed method and the experimental results indicate that the method proposed in this study is effective for its ability to produce the high quality solution at a low cost of communications for geospatial processing service composition problem.

Towards a framework for geospatial tangible user interfaces in collaborative urban planning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Maquil, Valérie; Leopold, Ulrich; De Sousa, Luís Moreira; Schwartz, Lou; Tobias, Eric

2018-04-01

The increasing complexity of urban planning projects today requires new approaches to better integrate stakeholders with different professional backgrounds throughout a city. Traditional tools used in urban planning are designed for experts and offer little opportunity for participation and collaborative design. This paper introduces the concept of geospatial tangible user interfaces (GTUI) and reports on the design and implementation as well as the usability of such a GTUI to support stakeholder participation in collaborative urban planning. The proposed system uses physical objects to interact with large digital maps and geospatial data projected onto a tabletop. It is implemented using a PostGIS database, a web map server providing OGC web services, the computer vision framework reacTIVision, a Java-based TUIO client, and GeoTools. We describe how a GTUI has be instantiated and evaluated within the scope of two case studies related to real world collaborative urban planning scenarios. Our results confirm the feasibility of our proposed GTUI solutions to (a) instantiate different urban planning scenarios, (b) support collaboration, and (c) ensure an acceptable usability.

Towards a framework for geospatial tangible user interfaces in collaborative urban planning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Maquil, Valérie; Leopold, Ulrich; De Sousa, Luís Moreira; Schwartz, Lou; Tobias, Eric

2018-03-01

The increasing complexity of urban planning projects today requires new approaches to better integrate stakeholders with different professional backgrounds throughout a city. Traditional tools used in urban planning are designed for experts and offer little opportunity for participation and collaborative design. This paper introduces the concept of geospatial tangible user interfaces (GTUI) and reports on the design and implementation as well as the usability of such a GTUI to support stakeholder participation in collaborative urban planning. The proposed system uses physical objects to interact with large digital maps and geospatial data projected onto a tabletop. It is implemented using a PostGIS database, a web map server providing OGC web services, the computer vision framework reacTIVision, a Java-based TUIO client, and GeoTools. We describe how a GTUI has be instantiated and evaluated within the scope of two case studies related to real world collaborative urban planning scenarios. Our results confirm the feasibility of our proposed GTUI solutions to (a) instantiate different urban planning scenarios, (b) support collaboration, and (c) ensure an acceptable usability.

GeoSciML and EarthResourceML Update, 2012

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Richard, S. M.; Commissionthe Management; Application Inte, I.

2012-12-01

CGI Interoperability Working Group activities during 2012 include deployment of services using the GeoSciML-Portrayal schema, addition of new vocabularies to support properties added in version 3.0, improvements to server software for deploying services, introduction of EarthResourceML v.2 for mineral resources, and collaboration with the IUSS on a markup language for soils information. GeoSciML and EarthResourceML have been used as the basis for the INSPIRE Geology and Mineral Resources specifications respectively. GeoSciML-Portrayal is an OGC GML simple-feature application schema for presentation of geologic map unit, contact, and shear displacement structure (fault and ductile shear zone) descriptions in web map services. Use of standard vocabularies for geologic age and lithology enables map services using shared legends to achieve visual harmonization of maps provided by different services. New vocabularies have been added to the collection of CGI vocabularies provided to support interoperable GeoSciML services, and can be accessed through http://resource.geosciml.org. Concept URIs can be dereferenced to obtain SKOS rdf or html representations using the SISSVoc vocabulary service. New releases of the FOSS GeoServer application greatly improve support for complex XML feature schemas like GeoSciML, and the ArcGIS for INSPIRE extension implements similar complex feature support for ArcGIS Server. These improved server implementations greatly facilitate deploying GeoSciML services. EarthResourceML v2 adds features for information related to mining activities. SoilML provides an interchange format for soil material, soil profile, and terrain information. Work is underway to add GeoSciML to the portfolio of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) specifications.

A GeoNode-Based Multiscale Platform For Management, Visualization And Integration Of DInSAR Data With Different Geospatial Information Sources

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Buonanno, Sabatino; Fusco, Adele; Zeni, Giovanni; Manunta, Michele; Lanari, Riccardo

2017-04-01

This work describes the implementation of an efficient system for managing, viewing, analyzing and updating remotely sensed data, with special reference to Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR) data. The DInSAR products measure Earth surface deformation both in space and time, producing deformation maps and time series[1,2]. The use of these data in research or operational contexts requires tools that have to handle temporal and spatial variability with high efficiency. For this aim we present an implementation based on Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) for data integration, management and interchange, by using standard protocols[3]. SDI tools provide access to static datasets that operate only with spatial variability . In this paper we use the open source project GeoNode as framework to extend SDI infrastructure functionalities to ingest very efficiently DInSAR deformation maps and deformation time series. GeoNode allows to realize comprehensive and distributed infrastructure, following the standards of the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. - OGC, for remote sensing data management, analysis and integration [4,5]. In the current paper we explain the methodology used for manage the data complexity and data integration using the opens source project GeoNode. The solution presented in this work for the ingestion of DinSAR products is a very promising starting point for future developments of the OGC compliant implementation of a semi-automatic remote sensing data processing chain . [1] Berardino, P., Fornaro, G., Lanari, R., & Sansosti, E. (2002). A new Algorithm for Surface Deformation Monitoring based on Small Baseline Differential SAR Interferograms. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 40, 11, pp. 2375-2383. [2] Lanari R., F. Casu, M. Manzo, G. Zeni,, P. Berardino, M. Manunta and A. Pepe (2007), An overview of the Small Baseline Subset Algorithm: a DInSAR Technique for Surface Deformation Analysis, P. Appl. Geophys., 164, doi: 10.1007/s00024-007-0192-9. [3] Nebert, D.D. (ed). 2000. Developing Spatial data Infrastructures: The SDI Cookbook. [4] Geonode (www.geonode.org) [5] Kolodziej, k. (ed). 2004. OGC OpenGIS Web Map Server Cookbook. Open Geospatial Consortium, 1.0.2 edition.

Gmz: a Gml Compression Model for Webgis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Khandelwal, A.; Rajan, K. S.

2017-09-01

Geography markup language (GML) is an XML specification for expressing geographical features. Defined by Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), it is widely used for storage and transmission of maps over the Internet. XML schemas provide the convenience to define custom features profiles in GML for specific needs as seen in widely popular cityGML, simple features profile, coverage, etc. Simple features profile (SFP) is a simpler subset of GML profile with support for point, line and polygon geometries. SFP has been constructed to make sure it covers most commonly used GML geometries. Web Feature Service (WFS) serves query results in SFP by default. But it falls short of being an ideal choice due to its high verbosity and size-heavy nature, which provides immense scope for compression. GMZ is a lossless compression model developed to work for SFP compliant GML files. Our experiments indicate GMZ achieves reasonably good compression ratios and can be useful in WebGIS based applications.

Semantically-enabled sensor plug & play for the sensor web.

PubMed

Bröring, Arne; Maúe, Patrick; Janowicz, Krzysztof; Nüst, Daniel; Malewski, Christian

2011-01-01

Environmental sensors have continuously improved by becoming smaller, cheaper, and more intelligent over the past years. As consequence of these technological advancements, sensors are increasingly deployed to monitor our environment. The large variety of available sensor types with often incompatible protocols complicates the integration of sensors into observing systems. The standardized Web service interfaces and data encodings defined within OGC's Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) framework make sensors available over the Web and hide the heterogeneous sensor protocols from applications. So far, the SWE framework does not describe how to integrate sensors on-the-fly with minimal human intervention. The driver software which enables access to sensors has to be implemented and the measured sensor data has to be manually mapped to the SWE models. In this article we introduce a Sensor Plug & Play infrastructure for the Sensor Web by combining (1) semantic matchmaking functionality, (2) a publish/subscribe mechanism underlying the SensorWeb, as well as (3) a model for the declarative description of sensor interfaces which serves as a generic driver mechanism. We implement and evaluate our approach by applying it to an oil spill scenario. The matchmaking is realized using existing ontologies and reasoning engines and provides a strong case for the semantic integration capabilities provided by Semantic Web research.

Design for Connecting Spatial Data Infrastructures with Sensor Web (sensdi)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bhattacharya, D.; M., M.

2016-06-01

Integrating Sensor Web With Spatial Data Infrastructures (SENSDI) aims to extend SDIs with sensor web enablement, converging geospatial and built infrastructure, and implement test cases with sensor data and SDI. It is about research to harness the sensed environment by utilizing domain specific sensor data to create a generalized sensor webframework. The challenges being semantic enablement for Spatial Data Infrastructures, and connecting the interfaces of SDI with interfaces of Sensor Web. The proposed research plan is to Identify sensor data sources, Setup an open source SDI, Match the APIs and functions between Sensor Web and SDI, and Case studies like hazard applications, urban applications etc. We take up co-operative development of SDI best practices to enable a new realm of a location enabled and semantically enriched World Wide Web - the "Geospatial Web" or "Geosemantic Web" by setting up one to one correspondence between WMS, WFS, WCS, Metadata and 'Sensor Observation Service' (SOS); 'Sensor Planning Service' (SPS); 'Sensor Alert Service' (SAS); a service that facilitates asynchronous message interchange between users and services, and between two OGC-SWE services, called the 'Web Notification Service' (WNS). Hence in conclusion, it is of importance to geospatial studies to integrate SDI with Sensor Web. The integration can be done through merging the common OGC interfaces of SDI and Sensor Web. Multi-usability studies to validate integration has to be undertaken as future research.

Uncertainty visualisation in the Model Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gerharz, L. E.; Autermann, C.; Hopmann, H.; Stasch, C.; Pebesma, E.

2012-04-01

Visualisation of geospatial data as maps is a common way to communicate spatially distributed information. If temporal and furthermore uncertainty information are included in the data, efficient visualisation methods are required. For uncertain spatial and spatio-temporal data, numerous visualisation methods have been developed and proposed, but only few tools for visualisation of data in a standardised way exist. Furthermore, usually they are realised as thick clients, and lack functionality of handling data coming from web services as it is envisaged in the Model Web. We present an interactive web tool for visualisation of uncertain spatio-temporal data developed in the UncertWeb project. The client is based on the OpenLayers JavaScript library. OpenLayers provides standard map windows and navigation tools, i.e. pan, zoom in/out, to allow interactive control for the user. Further interactive methods are implemented using jStat, a JavaScript library for statistics plots developed in UncertWeb, and flot. To integrate the uncertainty information into existing standards for geospatial data, the Uncertainty Markup Language (UncertML) was applied in combination with OGC Observations&Measurements 2.0 and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) encodings for vector and NetCDF for raster data. The client offers methods to visualise uncertain vector and raster data with temporal information. Uncertainty information considered for the tool are probabilistic and quantified attribute uncertainties which can be provided as realisations or samples, full probability distributions functions and statistics. Visualisation is supported for uncertain continuous and categorical data. In the client, the visualisation is realised using a combination of different methods. Based on previously conducted usability studies, a differentiation between expert (in statistics or mapping) and non-expert users has been indicated as useful. Therefore, two different modes are realised together in the tool: (i) adjacent maps showing data and uncertainty separately, and (ii) multidimensional mapping providing different visualisation methods in combination to explore the spatial, temporal and uncertainty distribution of the data. Adjacent maps allow a simpler visualisation by separating value and uncertainty maps for non-experts and a first overview. The multidimensional approach allows a more complex exploration of the data for experts by browsing through the different dimensions. It offers the visualisation of maps, statistic plots and time series in different windows and sliders to interactively move through time, space and uncertainty (thresholds).

Towards Web-based representation and processing of health information

PubMed Central

Gao, Sheng; Mioc, Darka; Yi, Xiaolun; Anton, Francois; Oldfield, Eddie; Coleman, David J

2009-01-01

Background There is great concern within health surveillance, on how to grapple with environmental degradation, rapid urbanization, population mobility and growth. The Internet has emerged as an efficient way to share health information, enabling users to access and understand data at their fingertips. Increasingly complex problems in the health field require increasingly sophisticated computer software, distributed computing power, and standardized data sharing. To address this need, Web-based mapping is now emerging as an important tool to enable health practitioners, policy makers, and the public to understand spatial health risks, population health trends and vulnerabilities. Today several web-based health applications generate dynamic maps; however, for people to fully interpret the maps they need data source description and the method used in the data analysis or statistical modeling. For the representation of health information through Web-mapping applications, there still lacks a standard format to accommodate all fixed (such as location) and variable (such as age, gender, health outcome, etc) indicators in the representation of health information. Furthermore, net-centric computing has not been adequately applied to support flexible health data processing and mapping online. Results The authors of this study designed a HEalth Representation XML (HERXML) schema that consists of the semantic (e.g., health activity description, the data sources description, the statistical methodology used for analysis), geometric, and cartographical representations of health data. A case study has been carried on the development of web application and services within the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI) framework for community health programs of the New Brunswick Lung Association. This study facilitated the online processing, mapping and sharing of health information, with the use of HERXML and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services. It brought a new solution in better health data representation and initial exploration of the Web-based processing of health information. Conclusion The designed HERXML has been proven to be an appropriate solution in supporting the Web representation of health information. It can be used by health practitioners, policy makers, and the public in disease etiology, health planning, health resource management, health promotion and health education. The utilization of Web-based processing services in this study provides a flexible way for users to select and use certain processing functions for health data processing and mapping via the Web. This research provides easy access to geospatial and health data in understanding the trends of diseases, and promotes the growth and enrichment of the CGDI in the public health sector. PMID:19159445

Best Practices for Making Scientific Data Discoverable and Accessible through Integrated, Standards-Based Data Portals

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lucido, J. M.

2013-12-01

Scientists in the fields of hydrology, geophysics, and climatology are increasingly using the vast quantity of publicly-available data to address broadly-scoped scientific questions. For example, researchers studying contamination of nearshore waters could use a combination of radar indicated precipitation, modeled water currents, and various sources of in-situ monitoring data to predict water quality near a beach. In discovering, gathering, visualizing and analyzing potentially useful data sets, data portals have become invaluable tools. The most effective data portals often aggregate distributed data sets seamlessly and allow multiple avenues for accessing the underlying data, facilitated by the use of open standards. Additionally, adequate metadata are necessary for attribution, documentation of provenance and relating data sets to one another. Metadata also enable thematic, geospatial and temporal indexing of data sets and entities. Furthermore, effective portals make use of common vocabularies for scientific methods, units of measure, geologic features, chemical, and biological constituents as they allow investigators to correctly interpret and utilize data from external sources. One application that employs these principles is the National Ground Water Monitoring Network (NGWMN) Data Portal (http://cida.usgs.gov/ngwmn), which makes groundwater data from distributed data providers available through a single, publicly accessible web application by mediating and aggregating native data exposed via web services on-the-fly into Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) compliant service output. That output may be accessed either through the map-based user interface or through the aforementioned OGC web services. Furthermore, the Geo Data Portal (http://cida.usgs.gov/climate/gdp/), which is a system that provides users with data access, subsetting and geospatial processing of large and complex climate and land use data, exemplifies the application of International Standards Organization (ISO) metadata records to enhance data discovery for both human and machine interpretation. Lastly, the Water Quality Portal (http://www.waterqualitydata.us/) achieves interoperable dissemination of water quality data by referencing a vocabulary service for mapping constituents and methods between the USGS and USEPA. The NGWMN Data Portal, Geo Data Portal and Water Quality Portal are three examples of best practices when implementing data portals that provide distributed scientific data in an integrated, standards-based approach.

An Updated Status of the Experiments with Sensor Webs and OGC Service-Oriented Architectures to Enable Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mandl, Dan; Sohlberg, Rob; Frye, Stu; Cappelaere, P.; Derezinski, L.; Ungar, Steve; Ames, Troy; Chien, Steve; Tran, Danny

2007-01-01

A viewgraph presentation on experiments with sensor webs and service oriented architectures is shown. The topics include: 1) Problem; 2) Basic Service Oriented Architecture Approach; 3) Series of Experiments; and 4) Next Experiments.

Spatial Data Services for Interdisciplinary Applications from the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, R. S.; MacManus, K.; Vinay, S.; Yetman, G.

2016-12-01

The Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), one of 12 Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) in the NASA Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS), has developed a variety of operational spatial data services aimed at providing online access, visualization, and analytic functions for geospatial socioeconomic and environmental data. These services include: open web services that implement Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) specifications such as Web Map Service (WMS), Web Feature Service (WFS), and Web Coverage Service (WCS); spatial query services that support Web Processing Service (WPS) and Representation State Transfer (REST); and web map clients and a mobile app that utilize SEDAC and other open web services. These services may be accessed from a variety of external map clients and visualization tools such as NASA's WorldView, NOAA's Climate Explorer, and ArcGIS Online. More than 200 data layers related to population, settlements, infrastructure, agriculture, environmental pollution, land use, health, hazards, climate change and other aspects of sustainable development are available through WMS, WFS, and/or WCS. Version 2 of the SEDAC Population Estimation Service (PES) supports spatial queries through WPS and REST in the form of a user-defined polygon or circle. The PES returns an estimate of the population residing in the defined area for a specific year (2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, or 2020) based on SEDAC's Gridded Population of the World version 4 (GPWv4) dataset, together with measures of accuracy. The SEDAC Hazards Mapper and the recently released HazPop iOS mobile app enable users to easily submit spatial queries to the PES and see the results. SEDAC has developed an operational virtualized backend infrastructure to manage these services and support their continual improvement as standards change, new data and services become available, and user needs evolve. An ongoing challenge is to improve the reliability and performance of the infrastructure, in conjunction with external services, to meet both research and operational needs.

The Water SWITCH-ON Spatial Information Platform (SIP)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sala Calero, J., Sr.; Boot, G., Sr.; Dihé, P., Sr.; Arheimer, B.

2017-12-01

The amount of hydrological open data is continually growing and providing opportunities to the scientific community. Although the existing data portals (GEOSS Portal, INSPIRE community geoportal and others) enable access to open data, many users still find browsing through them difficult. Moreover, the time spent on gathering and preparing data usually is more significant than the time spent on the experiment itself. Thus, any improvement on searching, understanding, accessing or using open data is greatly beneficial. The Spatial Information Platform (SIP) has been developed to tackle these issues within the SWITCH-ON European Commission funded FP7 project. The SIP has been designed as a set of tools based on open standards that provide to the user all the necessary functionalities as described in the Publish-Find-Bind (PFB) pattern. In other words, this means that the SIP helps users to locate relevant and suitable data for their experiments analysis, to access and transform it (filtering, extraction, selection, conversion, aggregation). Moreover, the SIP can be used to provide descriptive information about the data and to publish it so others can find and use it. The SIP is based on existing open data protocols such as the OGC/CSW, OGC/WMS, OpenDAP and open-source components like PostgreSQL/PostGIS, GeoServer and pyCSW. The SIP is divided in three main user interfaces: the BYOD (Browse your open dataset) web interface, the Expert GUI tool and the Upload Data and Metadata web interface. The BYOD HTML5 client is the main entry point for users that want to browse through open data in the SIP. The BYOD has a map interface based on Leaflet JavaScript libraries so that the users can search more efficiently. The web-based Open Data Registration Tool is a user-friendly upload and metadata description interface (geographical extent, license, DOI generation). The Expert GUI is a desktop application that provides full metadata editing capabilities for the metadata moderators of the project. In conclusion, the Spatial Information Platform (SIP) provides to its community a set of tools for better understanding and ease of use of hydrological open-data. Moreover, the SIP has been based on well-known OGC standards that will allow the connection and data harvesting from popular open data portals such as the GEOSS system of systems.

Modern Technologies aspects for Oceanographic Data Management and Dissemination : The HNODC Implementation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lykiardopoulos, A.; Iona, A.; Lakes, V.; Batis, A.; Balopoulos, E.

2009-04-01

The development of new technologies for the aim of enhancing Web Applications with Dynamically data access was the starting point for Geospatial Web Applications to developed at the same time as well. By the means of these technologies the Web Applications embed the capability of presenting Geographical representations of the Geo Information. The induction in nowadays, of the state of the art technologies known as Web Services, enforce the Web Applications to have interoperability among them i.e. to be able to process requests from each other via a network. In particular throughout the Oceanographic Community, modern Geographical Information systems based on Geospatial Web Services are now developed or will be developed shortly in the near future, with capabilities of managing the information itself fully through Web Based Geographical Interfaces. The exploitation of HNODC Data Base, through a Web Based Application enhanced with Web Services by the use of open source tolls may be consider as an ideal case of such implementation. Hellenic National Oceanographic Data Center (HNODC) as a National Public Oceanographic Data provider and at the same time a member of the International Net of Oceanographic Data Centers( IOC/IODE), owns a very big volume of Data and Relevant information about the Marine Ecosystem. For the efficient management and exploitation of these Data, a relational Data Base has been constructed with a storage of over 300.000 station data concerning, physical, chemical and biological Oceanographic information. The development of a modern Web Application for the End User worldwide to be able to explore and navigate throughout HNODC data via the use of an interface with the capability of presenting Geographical representations of the Geo Information, is today a fact. The application is constituted with State of the art software components and tools such as: • Geospatial and no Spatial Web Services mechanisms • Geospatial open source tools for the creation of Dynamic Geographical Representations. • Communication protocols (messaging mechanisms) in all Layers such as XML and GML together with SOAP protocol via Apache/Axis. At the same time the application may interact with any other SOA application either in sending or receiving Geospatial Data through Geographical Layers, since it inherits the big advantage of interoperability between Web Services systems. Roughly the Architecture can denoted as follows: • At the back End Open source PostgreSQL DBMS stands as the data storage mechanism with more than one Data Base Schemas cause of the separation of the Geospatial Data and the non Geospatial Data. • UMN Map Server and Geoserver are the mechanisms for: Represent Geospatial Data via Web Map Service (WMS) Querying and Navigating in Geospatial and Meta Data Information via Web Feature Service (WFS) oAnd in the near future Transacting and processing new or existing Geospatial Data via Web Processing Service (WPS) • Map Bender, a geospatial portal site management software for OGC and OWS architectures acts as the integration module between the Geospatial Mechanisms. Mapbender comes with an embedded data model capable to manage interfaces for displaying, navigating and querying OGC compliant web map and feature services (WMS and transactional WFS). • Apache and Tomcat stand again as the Web Service middle Layers • Apache Axis with it's embedded implementation of the SOAP protocol ("Simple Object Access Protocol") acts as the No spatial data Mechanism of Web Services. These modules of the platform are still under development but their implementation will be fulfilled in the near future. • And a new Web user Interface for the end user based on enhanced and customized version of a MapBender GUI, a powerful Web Services client. For HNODC the interoperability of Web Services is the big advantage of the developed platform since it is capable to act in the future as provider and consumer of Web Services in both ways: • Either as data products provider for external SOA platforms. • Or as consumer of data products from external SOA platforms for new applications to be developed or for existing applications to be enhanced. A great paradigm of Data Managenet integration and dissemination via the use of such technologies is the European's Union Research Project Seadatanet, with the main objective to develop a standardized distributed system for managing and disseminating the large and diverse data sets and to enhance the currently existing infrastructures with Web Services Further more and when the technology of Web Processing Service (WPS), will be mature enough and applicable for development, the derived data products will be able to have any kind of GIS functionality for consumers across the network. From this point of view HNODC, joins the global scientific community by providing and consuming application Independent data products.

Big Geo Data Services: From More Bytes to More Barrels

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Misev, Dimitar; Baumann, Peter

2016-04-01

The data deluge is affecting the oil and gas industry just as much as many other industries. However, aside from the sheer volume there is the challenge of data variety, such as regular and irregular grids, multi-dimensional space/time grids, point clouds, and TINs and other meshes. A uniform conceptualization for modelling and serving them could save substantial effort, such as the proverbial "department of reformatting". The notion of a coverage actually can accomplish this. Its abstract model in ISO 19123 together with the concrete, interoperable OGC Coverage Implementation Schema (CIS), which is currently under adoption as ISO 19123-2, provieds a common platform for representing any n-D grid type, point clouds, and general meshes. This is paired by the OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS) together with its datacube analytics language, the OGC Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS). The OGC WCS Core Reference Implementation, rasdaman, relies on Array Database technology, i.e. a NewSQL/NoSQL approach. It supports the grid part of coverages, with installations of 100+ TB known and single queries parallelized across 1,000+ cloud nodes. Recent research attempts to address the point cloud and mesh part through a unified query model. The Holy Grail envisioned is that these approaches can be merged into a single service interface at some time. We present both grid amd point cloud / mesh approaches and discuss status, implementation, standardization, and research perspectives, including a live demo.

Service Oriented Architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks in Agriculture

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sawant, S. A.; Adinarayana, J.; Durbha, S. S.; Tripathy, A. K.; Sudharsan, D.

2012-08-01

Rapid advances in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) for agricultural applications has provided a platform for better decision making for crop planning and management, particularly in precision agriculture aspects. Due to the ever-increasing spread of WSNs there is a need for standards, i.e. a set of specifications and encodings to bring multiple sensor networks on common platform. Distributed sensor systems when brought together can facilitate better decision making in agricultural domain. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) through Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) provides guidelines for semantic and syntactic standardization of sensor networks. In this work two distributed sensing systems (Agrisens and FieldServer) were selected to implement OGC SWE standards through a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach. Online interoperable data processing was developed through SWE components such as Sensor Model Language (SensorML) and Sensor Observation Service (SOS). An integrated web client was developed to visualize the sensor observations and measurements that enables the retrieval of crop water resources availability and requirements in a systematic manner for both the sensing devices. Further, the client has also the ability to operate in an interoperable manner with any other OGC standardized WSN systems. The study of WSN systems has shown that there is need to augment the operations / processing capabilities of SOS in order to understand about collected sensor data and implement the modelling services. Also, the very low cost availability of WSN systems in future, it is possible to implement the OGC standardized SWE framework for agricultural applications with open source software tools.

Next Generation Landsat Products Delivered Using Virtual Globes and OGC Standard Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Neiers, M.; Dwyer, J.; Neiers, S.

2008-12-01

The Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) is the next in the series of Landsat satellite missions and is tasked with the objective of delivering data acquired by the Operational Land Imager (OLI). The OLI instrument will provide data continuity to over 30 years of global multispectral data collected by the Landsat series of satellites. The U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science (USGS EROS) Center has responsibility for the development and operation of the LDCM ground system. One of the mission objectives of the LDCM is to distribute OLI data products electronically over the Internet to the general public on a nondiscriminatory basis and at no cost. To ensure the user community and general public can easily access LDCM data from multiple clients, the User Portal Element (UPE) of the LDCM ground system will use OGC standards and services such as Keyhole Markup Language (KML), Web Map Service (WMS), Web Coverage Service (WCS), and Geographic encoding of Really Simple Syndication (GeoRSS) feeds for both access to and delivery of LDCM products. The USGS has developed and tested the capabilities of several successful UPE prototypes for delivery of Landsat metadata, full resolution browse, and orthorectified (L1T) products from clients such as Google Earth, Google Maps, ESRI ArcGIS Explorer, and Microsoft's Virtual Earth. Prototyping efforts included the following services: using virtual globes to search the historical Landsat archive by dynamic generation of KML; notification of and access to new Landsat acquisitions and L1T downloads from GeoRSS feeds; Google indexing of KML files containing links to full resolution browse and data downloads; WMS delivery of reduced resolution browse, full resolution browse, and cloud mask overlays; and custom data downloads using WCS clients. These various prototypes will be demonstrated and LDCM service implementation plans will be discussed during this session.

TRMM Precipitation Application Examples Using Data Services at NASA GES DISC

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Liu, Zhong; Ostrenga, D.; Teng, W.; Kempler, S.; Greene, M.

2012-01-01

Data services to support precipitation applications are important for maximizing the NASA TRMM (Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission) and the future GPM (Global Precipitation Mission) mission's societal benefits. TRMM Application examples using data services at the NASA GES DISC, including samples from users around the world will be presented in this poster. Precipitation applications often require near-real-time support. The GES DISC provides such support through: 1) Providing near-real-time precipitation products through TOVAS; 2) Maps of current conditions for monitoring precipitation and its anomaly around the world; 3) A user friendly tool (TOVAS) to analyze and visualize near-real-time and historical precipitation products; and 4) The GES DISC Hurricane Portal that provides near-real-time monitoring services for the Atlantic basin. Since the launch of TRMM, the GES DISC has developed data services to support precipitation applications around the world. In addition to the near-real-time services, other services include: 1) User friendly TRMM Online Visualization and Analysis System (TOVAS; URL: http://disc2.nascom.nasa.gov/Giovanni/tovas/); 2) Mirador (http://mirador.gsfc.nasa.gov/), a simplified interface for searching, browsing, and ordering Earth science data at GES DISC. Mirador is designed to be fast and easy to learn; 3) Data via OPeNDAP (http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/services/opendap/). The OPeNDAP provides remote access to individual variables within datasets in a form usable by many tools, such as IDV, McIDAS-V, Panoply, Ferret and GrADS; and 4) The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS) (http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/services/wxs_ogc.shtml). The WMS is an interface that allows the use of data and enables clients to build customized maps with data coming from a different network.

A Walk through TRIDEC's intermediate Tsunami Early Warning System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hammitzsch, M.; Reißland, S.; Lendholt, M.

2012-04-01

The management of natural crises is an important application field of the technology developed in the project Collaborative, Complex, and Critical Decision-Support in Evolving Crises (TRIDEC), co-funded by the European Commission in its Seventh Framework Programme. TRIDEC is based on the development of the German Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS) and the Distant Early Warning System (DEWS) providing a service platform for both sensor integration and warning dissemination. In TRIDEC new developments in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) are used to extend the existing platform realising a component-based technology framework for building distributed tsunami warning systems for deployment, e.g. in the North-eastern Atlantic, the Mediterranean and Connected Seas (NEAM) region. The TRIDEC system will be implemented in three phases, each with a demonstrator. Successively, the demonstrators are addressing challenges, such as the design and implementation of a robust and scalable service infrastructure supporting the integration and utilisation of existing resources with accelerated generation of large volumes of data. These include sensor systems, geo-information repositories, simulation tools and data fusion tools. In addition to conventional sensors also unconventional sensors and sensor networks play an important role in TRIDEC. The system version presented is based on service-oriented architecture (SOA) concepts and on relevant standards of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). In this way the system continuously gathers, processes and displays events and data coming from open sensor platforms to enable operators to quickly decide whether an early warning is necessary and to send personalized warning messages to the authorities and the population at large through a wide range of communication channels. The system integrates OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) compliant sensor systems for the rapid detection of hazardous events, like earthquakes, sea level anomalies, ocean floor occurrences, and ground displacements. Using OGC Web Map Service (WMS) and Web Feature Service (WFS) spatial data are utilized to depict the situation picture. The integration of a simulation system to identify affected areas is considered using the OGC Web Processing Service (WPS). Warning messages are compiled and transmitted in the OASIS Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) together with addressing information defined via the OASIS Emergency Data Exchange Language - Distribution Element (EDXL-DE). The first system demonstrator has been designed and implemented to support plausible scenarios demonstrating the treatment of simulated tsunami threats with an essential subset of a National Tsunami Warning Centre (NTWC). The feasibility and the potentials of the implemented approach are demonstrated covering standard operations as well as tsunami detection and alerting functions. The demonstrator presented addresses information management and decision-support processes in a hypothetical natural crisis situation caused by a tsunami in the Eastern Mediterranean. Developments of the system are based to the largest extent on free and open source software (FOSS) components and industry standards. Emphasis has been and will be made on leveraging open source technologies that support mature system architecture models wherever appropriate. All open source software produced is foreseen to be published on a publicly available software repository thus allowing others to reuse results achieved and enabling further development and collaboration with a wide community including scientists, developers, users and stakeholders. This live demonstration is linked with the talk "TRIDEC Natural Crisis Management Demonstrator for Tsunamis" (EGU2012-7275) given in the session "Architecture of Future Tsunami Warning Systems" (NH5.7/ESSI1.7).

A Walk through TRIDEC's intermediate Tsunami Early Warning System for the Turkish and Portuguese NEAMWave12 exercise tsunami scenarios

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hammitzsch, Martin; Lendholt, Matthias; Reißland, Sven; Schulz, Jana

2013-04-01

On November 27-28, 2012, the Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute (KOERI) and the Portuguese Institute for the Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA) joined other countries in the North-eastern Atlantic, the Mediterranean and Connected Seas (NEAM) region as participants in an international tsunami response exercise. The exercise, titled NEAMWave12, simulated widespread Tsunami Watch situations throughout the NEAM region. It is the first international exercise as such, in this region, where the UNESCO-IOC ICG/NEAMTWS tsunami warning chain has been tested to a full scale for the first time with different systems. One of the systems is developed in the project Collaborative, Complex, and Critical Decision-Support in Evolving Crises (TRIDEC) and has been validated in this exercise among others by KOERI and IPMA. In TRIDEC new developments in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) are used to extend the existing platform realising a component-based technology framework for building distributed tsunami warning systems for deployment, e.g. in the North-eastern Atlantic, the Mediterranean and Connected Seas (NEAM) region. The TRIDEC system will be implemented in three phases, each with a demonstrator. Successively, the demonstrators are addressing related challenges. The first and second phase system demonstrator, deployed at KOERI's crisis management room and deployed at IPMA has been designed and implemented, firstly, to support plausible scenarios for the Turkish NTWC and for the Portuguese NTWC to demonstrate the treatment of simulated tsunami threats with an essential subset of a NTWC. Secondly, the feasibility and the potentials of the implemented approach are demonstrated covering ICG/NEAMTWS standard operations as well as tsunami detection and alerting functions beyond ICG/NEAMTWS requirements. The demonstrator presented addresses information management and decision-support processes for hypothetical tsunami-related crisis situations in the context of the ICG/NEAMTWS NEAMWave12 exercise for the Turkish and Portuguese tsunami exercise scenarios. Impressions gained with the standards compliant TRIDEC system during the exercise will be reported. The system version presented is based on event-driven architecture (EDA) and service-oriented architecture (SOA) concepts and is making use of relevant standards of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). In this way the system continuously gathers, processes and displays events and data coming from open sensor platforms to enable operators to quickly decide whether an early warning is necessary and to send personalized warning messages to the authorities and the population at large through a wide range of communication channels. The system integrates OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) compliant sensor systems for the rapid detection of hazardous events, like earthquakes, sea level anomalies, ocean floor occurrences, and ground displacements. Using OGC Web Map Service (WMS) and Web Feature Service (WFS) spatial data are utilized to depict the situation picture. The integration of a simulation system to identify affected areas is considered using the OGC Web Processing Service (WPS). Warning messages are compiled and transmitted in the OASIS Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) together with addressing information defined via the OASIS Emergency Data Exchange Language - Distribution Element (EDXL-DE). This demonstration is linked with the talk 'Experiences with TRIDEC's Crisis Management Demonstrator in the Turkish NEAMWave12 exercise tsunami scenario' (EGU2013-2833) given in the session "Architecture of Future Tsunami Warning Systems" (NH5.6).

Crowdsourcing, citizen sensing and Sensor Web technologies for public and environmental health surveillance and crisis management: trends, OGC standards and application examples

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Kamel Boulos, Maged; Resch, Bernd; Crowley, David N.

The PIE Activity Awareness Environment is designed to be an adaptive data triage and decision support tool that allows role and activity based situation awareness through a dynamic, trainable filtering system. This paper discusses the process and methodology involved in the application as well as some of its capabilities. 'Wikification of GIS by the masses' is a phrase-term first coined by Kamel Boulos in 2005, two years earlier than Goodchild's term 'Volunteered Geographic Information'. Six years later (2005-2011), OpenStreetMap and Google Earth (GE) are now full-fledged, crowdsourced 'Wikipedias of the Earth' par excellence, with millions of users contributing their ownmore » layers to GE, attaching photos, videos, notes and even 3-D (three dimensional) models to locations in GE. From using Twitter in participatory sensing and bicycle-mounted sensors in pervasive environmental sensing, to creating a 100,000-sensor geo-mashup using Semantic Web technology, to the 3-D visualisation of indoor and outdoor surveillance data in real-time and the development of next-generation, collaborative natural user interfaces that will power the spatially-enabled public health and emergency situation rooms of the future, where sensor data and citizen reports can be triaged and acted upon in real-time by distributed teams of professionals, this paper offers a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of the overlapping domains of the Sensor Web, citizen sensing and 'human-in-the-loop sensing' in the era of the Mobile and Social Web, and the roles these domains can play in environmental and public health surveillance and crisis/disaster informatics. We provide an in-depth review of the key issues and trends in these areas, the challenges faced when reasoning and making decisions with real-time crowdsourced data (such as issues of information overload, 'noise', misinformation, bias and trust), the core technologies and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards involved (Sensor Web Enablement and Open GeoSMS), as well as a few outstanding project implementation examples from around the world.« less

Architecture of a spatial data service system for statistical analysis and visualization of regional climate changes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Titov, A. G.; Okladnikov, I. G.; Gordov, E. P.

2017-11-01

The use of large geospatial datasets in climate change studies requires the development of a set of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) elements, including geoprocessing and cartographical visualization web services. This paper presents the architecture of a geospatial OGC web service system as an integral part of a virtual research environment (VRE) general architecture for statistical processing and visualization of meteorological and climatic data. The architecture is a set of interconnected standalone SDI nodes with corresponding data storage systems. Each node runs a specialized software, such as a geoportal, cartographical web services (WMS/WFS), a metadata catalog, and a MySQL database of technical metadata describing geospatial datasets available for the node. It also contains geospatial data processing services (WPS) based on a modular computing backend realizing statistical processing functionality and, thus, providing analysis of large datasets with the results of visualization and export into files of standard formats (XML, binary, etc.). Some cartographical web services have been developed in a system’s prototype to provide capabilities to work with raster and vector geospatial data based on OGC web services. The distributed architecture presented allows easy addition of new nodes, computing and data storage systems, and provides a solid computational infrastructure for regional climate change studies based on modern Web and GIS technologies.

Standardized acquisition, storing and provision of 3D enabled spatial data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wagner, B.; Maier, S.; Peinsipp-Byma, E.

2017-05-01

In the area of working with spatial data, in addition to the classic, two-dimensional geometrical data (maps, aerial images, etc.), the needs for three-dimensional spatial data (city models, digital elevation models, etc.) is increasing. Due to this increased demand the acquiring, storing and provision of 3D enabled spatial data in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is more and more important. Existing proprietary solutions quickly reaches their limits during data exchange and data delivery to other systems. They generate a large workload, which will be very costly. However, it is noticeable that these expenses and costs can generally be significantly reduced using standards. The aim of this research is therefore to develop a concept in the field of three-dimensional spatial data that runs on existing standards whenever possible. In this research, the military image analysts are the preferred user group of the system. To achieve the objective of the widest possible use of standards in spatial 3D data, existing standards, proprietary interfaces and standards under discussion have been analyzed. Since the here used GIS of the Fraunhofer IOSB is already using and supporting OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) and NATO-STANAG (NATO-Standardization Agreement) standards for the most part of it, a special attention for possible use was laid on their standards. The most promising standard is the OGC standard 3DPS (3D Portrayal Service) with its occurrences W3DS (Web 3D Service) and WVS (Web View Service). A demo system was created, using a standardized workflow from the data acquiring, storing and provision and showing the benefit of our approach.

Exploring U.S Cropland - A Web Service based Cropland Data Layer Visualization, Dissemination and Querying System (Invited)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang, Z.; Han, W.; di, L.

2010-12-01

The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) of the USDA produces the Cropland Data Layer (CDL) product, which is a raster-formatted, geo-referenced, U.S. crop specific land cover classification. These digital data layers are widely used for a variety of applications by universities, research institutions, government agencies, and private industry in climate change studies, environmental ecosystem studies, bioenergy production & transportation planning, environmental health research and agricultural production decision making. The CDL is also used internally by NASS for crop acreage and yield estimation. Like most geospatial data products, the CDL product is only available by CD/DVD delivery or online bulk file downloading via the National Research Conservation Research (NRCS) Geospatial Data Gateway (external users) or in a printed paper map format. There is no online geospatial information access and dissemination, no crop visualization & browsing, no geospatial query capability, nor online analytics. To facilitate the application of this data layer and to help disseminating the data, a web-service based CDL interactive map visualization, dissemination, querying system is proposed. It uses Web service based service oriented architecture, adopts open standard geospatial information science technology and OGC specifications and standards, and re-uses functions/algorithms from GeoBrain Technology (George Mason University developed). This system provides capabilities of on-line geospatial crop information access, query and on-line analytics via interactive maps. It disseminates all data to the decision makers and users via real time retrieval, processing and publishing over the web through standards-based geospatial web services. A CDL region of interest can also be exported directly to Google Earth for mashup or downloaded for use with other desktop application. This web service based system greatly improves equal-accessibility, interoperability, usability, and data visualization, facilitates crop geospatial information usage, and enables US cropland online exploring capability without any client-side software installation. It also greatly reduces the need for paper map and analysis report printing and media usages, and thus enhances low-carbon Agro-geoinformation dissemination for decision support.

The International Solid Earth Research Virtual Observatory

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fox, G.; Pierce, M.; Rundle, J.; Donnellan, A.; Parker, J.; Granat, R.; Lyzenga, G.; McLeod, D.; Grant, L.

2004-12-01

We describe the architecture and initial implementation of the International Solid Earth Research Virtual Observatory (iSERVO). This has been prototyped within the USA as SERVOGrid and expansion is planned to Australia, China, Japan and other countries. We base our design on a globally scalable distributed "cyber-infrastructure" or Grid built around a Web Services-based approach consistent with the extended Web Service Interoperability approach. The Solid Earth Science Working Group of NASA has identified several challenges for Earth Science research. In order to investigate these, we need to couple numerical simulation codes and data mining tools to observational data sets. This observational data are now available on-line in internet-accessible forms, and the quantity of this data is expected to grow explosively over the next decade. We architect iSERVO as a loosely federated Grid of Grids with each country involved supporting a national Solid Earth Research Grid. The national Grid Operations, possibly with dedicated control centers, are linked together to support iSERVO where an International Grid control center may eventually be necessary. We address the difficult multi-administrative domain security and ownership issues by exposing capabilities as services for which the risk of abuse is minimized. We support large scale simulations within a single domain using service-hosted tools (mesh generation, data repository and sensor access, GIS, visualization). Simulations typically involve sequential or parallel machines in a single domain supported by cross-continent services. We use Web Services implement Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) using WSDL for service description and SOAP for message formats. These are augmented by UDDI, WS-Security, WS-Notification/Eventing and WS-ReliableMessaging in the WS-I+ approach. Support for the latter two capabilities will be available over the next 6 months from the NaradaBrokering messaging system. We augment these specifications with the powerful portlet architecture using WSRP and JSR168 supported by such portal containers as uPortal, WebSphere, and Apache JetSpeed2. The latter portal aggregates component user interfaces for each iSERVO service allowing flexible customization of the user interface. We exploit the portlets produced by the NSF NMI (Middleware initiative) OGCE activity. iSERVO also uses specifications from the Open Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Consortium (OGC) that defines a number of standards for modeling earth surface feature data and services for interacting with this data. The data models are expressed in the XML-based Geography Markup Language (GML), and the OGC service framework are being adapted to use the Web Service model. The SERVO prototype includes a GIS Grid that currently includes the core WMS and WFS (Map and Feature) services. We will follow the best practice in the Grid and Web Service field and will adapt our technology as appropriate. For example, we expect to support services built on WS-RF when is finalized and to make use of the database interfaces OGSA-DAI and its WS-I+ versions. Finally, we review advances in Web Service scripting (such as HPSearch) and workflow systems (such as GCF) and their applications to iSERVO.

Testing Conformance to Standards: Notes on the OGC CITE Initiative

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bigagli, Lorenzo; Vitale, Fabrizio

2010-05-01

In this work, we report on the issues and lessons learnt from our recent experience on assessing service compliance to OGC geospatial standards. Official conformity is warranted by the OGC Compliance & Interoperability Testing & Evaluation (CITE) initiative, through a centrally managed repository of tests, typically developed via initiatives funded by external sponsors. In particular, we have been involved in the ESA-led Heterogeneous Missions Accessibility Testbed (HMA-T) project. HMA-T objectives included the definition of specifications (and related compliance tests) for Earth Observation (EO) Product discovery and access. Our activities have focused on the EO and Catalogue of ISO Metadata (CIM) Extension Packages (EPs) of the ebRIM Application Profile (AP) of the Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW) OGC standard. Our main contributions have regarded the definition of Abstract Test Suites (ATS's) for the above specifications, as well as the development of Reference Implementations (RIs) and concrete Executable Test Suites (ETS's). According to the state-of-the-art, we have implemented the ETS's in Compliance Test Language (CTL), an OGC standard dialect of XML, and deployed the scripts onto the open-source Test Evaluation And Measurement (TEAM) Engine, the official OGC compliance test platform. A significant challenge was to accommodate legacy services, that can not support data publishing. Hence, we could not assume the presence of control test data, necessary for exhaustive assessment. To cope with this, we have proposed and experimented tests for assessing the internal coherence of a target service instance. Another issue was to assess the overall behavior of a target service instance. Although quite obvious, this requirement proved to be hard (if unviable) to implement, since the design of the OGC catalogue specification is multi-layered (i.e. comprised of EP, AP, binding and core functionalities) and, according to the current OGC rationale, ATS/ETS at each layer are supposed to only assess layer-specific functionalities. We argue that a sequence of individually correct "steps" may not result in an overall correct "route". In general, our experience suggests that an ATS is conveniently modeled as a multi-dimensional structure, in that compliance with a (multi-layered) specification may be partitioned into several orthogonal axes (e.g. operation, binding, data model). Hence, the correspondence between Abstract and Executable Test Cases (ATC, ETC, respectively) is not simply biunivocal, but generally an ATC maps to a number of ETCs (or to a single, "multi-modal" ETC), whose actual run-time behavior depend on the intended point of intersection of the ATS axes. This suggests possible benefits of an Aspect-Oriented extension of the ATC/ETC/CTL conceptual model. We identified several other open issues in the current CITE framework: noticeably, the lack of support for the test development phase (the design of the current tools seems more oriented to the certification use-case). Other results we obtained include: the definition of best practices for improved ETS/CTL documentation and the implementation of functionalities for its extraction and formatting; improvements to the readability of test logs and implementation of appropriate log consolidation functionalities in the TEAM Engine; comments and bug reports on the CSW 2.0.2 ETS. These results have been appropriately contributed to the relevant stakeholders. Besides, this work has provided us with new insights into the general OGC specification framework, particularly into the rationale for modular specifications.

Modern Data Center Services Supporting Science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Varner, J. D.; Cartwright, J.; McLean, S. J.; Boucher, J.; Neufeld, D.; LaRocque, J.; Fischman, D.; McQuinn, E.; Fugett, C.

2011-12-01

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) World Data Center for Geophysics and Marine Geology provides scientific stewardship, products and services for geophysical data, including bathymetry, gravity, magnetics, seismic reflection, data derived from sediment and rock samples, as well as historical natural hazards data (tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanoes). Although NGDC has long made many of its datasets available through map and other web services, it has now developed a second generation of services to improve the discovery and access to data. These new services use off-the-shelf commercial and open source software, and take advantage of modern JavaScript and web application frameworks. Services are accessible using both RESTful and SOAP queries as well as Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard protocols such as WMS, WFS, WCS, and KML. These new map services (implemented using ESRI ArcGIS Server) are finer-grained than their predecessors, feature improved cartography, and offer dramatic speed improvements through the use of map caches. Using standards-based interfaces allows customers to incorporate the services without having to coordinate with the provider. Providing fine-grained services increases flexibility for customers building custom applications. The Integrated Ocean and Coastal Mapping program and Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning program are two examples of national initiatives that require common data inventories from multiple sources and benefit from these modern data services. NGDC is also consuming its own services, providing a set of new browser-based mapping applications which allow the user to quickly visualize and search for data. One example is a new interactive mapping application to search and display information about historical natural hazards. NGDC continues to increase the amount of its data holdings that are accessible and is augmenting the capabilities with modern web application frameworks such as Groovy and Grails. Data discovery is being improved and simplified by leveraging ISO metadata standards along with ESRI Geoportal Server.

Adding Processing Functionality to the Sensor Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Stasch, Christoph; Pross, Benjamin; Jirka, Simon; Gräler, Benedikt

2017-04-01

The Sensor Web allows discovering, accessing and tasking different kinds of environmental sensors in the Web, ranging from simple in-situ sensors to remote sensing systems. However, (geo-)processing functionality needs to be applied to integrate data from different sensor sources and to generate higher level information products. Yet, a common standardized approach for processing sensor data in the Sensor Web is still missing and the integration differs from application to application. Standardizing not only the provision of sensor data, but also the processing facilitates sharing and re-use of processing modules, enables reproducibility of processing results, and provides a common way to integrate external scalable processing facilities or legacy software. In this presentation, we provide an overview on on-going research projects that develop concepts for coupling standardized geoprocessing technologies with Sensor Web technologies. At first, different architectures for coupling sensor data services with geoprocessing services are presented. Afterwards, profiles for linear regression and spatio-temporal interpolation of the OGC Web Processing Services that allow consuming sensor data coming from and uploading predictions to Sensor Observation Services are introduced. The profiles are implemented in processing services for the hydrological domain. Finally, we illustrate how the R software can be coupled with existing OGC Sensor Web and Geoprocessing Services and present an example, how a Web app can be built that allows exploring the results of environmental models in an interactive way using the R Shiny framework. All of the software presented is available as Open Source Software.

Moving Beyond the 10,000 Ways That Don't Work

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bermudez, L. E.; Arctur, D. K.; Rueda, C.

2009-12-01

From his research in developing light bulb filaments, Thomas Edison provide us with a good lesson to advance any venture. He said "I have not failed, I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Advancing data and access interoperability is one of those ventures difficult to achieve because of the differences among the participating communities. Even within the marine domain, different communities exist and with them different technologies (formats and protocols) to publish data and its descriptions, and different vocabularies to name things (e.g. parameters, sensor types). Simplifying the heterogeneity of technologies is not only accomplished by adopting standards, but by creating profiles, and advancing tools that use those standards. In some cases, standards are advanced by building from existing tools. But what is the best strategy? Edison could provide us a hint. Prototypes and test beds are essential to achieve interoperability among geospatial communities. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) calls them interoperability experiments. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) calls them incubator projects. Prototypes help test and refine specifications. The Marine Metadata Interoperability (MMI) Initiative, which is advancing marine data integration and re-use by promoting community solutions, understood this strategy and started an interoperability demonstration with the SURA Coastal Ocean Observing and Prediction (SCOOP) program. This interoperability demonstration transformed into the OGC Ocean Science Interoperability Experiment (Oceans IE). The Oceans IE brings together the Ocean-Observing community to advance interoperability of ocean observing systems by using OGC Standards. The Oceans IE Phase I investigated the use of OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) and OGC Sensor Observation Service (SOS) standards for representing and exchanging point data records from fixed in-situ marine platforms. The Oceans IE Phase I produced an engineering best practices report, advanced reference implementations, and submitted various change requests that are now being considered by the OGC SOS working group. Building on Phase I, and with a focus on semantically-enabled services, Oceans IE Phase II will continue the use and improvement of OGC specifications in the marine community. We will present the lessons learned and in particular the strategy of experimenting with technologies to advance standards to publish data in marine communities, which could also help advance interoperability in other geospatial communities. We will also discuss the growing collaborations among ocean-observing standards organizations that will bring about the institutional acceptance needed for these technologies and practices to gain traction globally.

Ceos Wgiss Common Framework for Wgiss Connected Data Assets

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Enloe, Y.; Mitchell, A. E.; Albani, M.; Yapur, M.

2016-12-01

The Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), established in 1984 to coordinate civil space-borne observations of the Earth, has been building through its Working Group on Information Systems and Services (WGISS), a common data framework to identify and connect data assets at member agencies. Some of these data assets are federated systems such as the CEOS WGISS Integrated Catalog (CWIC), the European Space Agency's FedEO (Federated Earth Observations Missions Access) system, and the International Directory Network (IDN) which is an international effort developed by NASA to assist researchers in locating information on available data sets. A system level team provides coordination and oversight to make this loosely coupled federated system function and evolve. WGISS has identified 2 search standards, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Catalog Services for the Web (CSW) and the CEOS OpenSearch Best Practices (which references the OGC OpenSearch Geo and Time Extensions and OGC OpenSearch Extension for Earth Observation) as well as an interoperable metadata standard (ISO 19115) for use within the WGISS Connected Assets. Data partners must register their data collections in the IDN using the Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Keywords. Data partners need to support one of the 2 search standards and be able to map their internal metadata to the ISO 19115 metadata elements. All searchable data must have a data access path. Clients can offer search and access to all or a subset of the satellite data available through the WGISS Connected Data Assets. Clients can offer support for a 2-step search: (1) Discovery through collection search using platform, instrument, science keywords, etc. at the IDN and (2) Search granule metadata at data partners through CWIC or FedEO. There are more than a dozen international agencies that offer their data through the WGISS Federation or working on developing their connections. This list includes European Space Agency, NASA, NOAA, USGS, National Institute for Space Research (Brazil), Canadian Center for Mapping and Earth Observations (CCMEO), the Academy for Opto-Electronics (China), the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), EUMETSAT, Russian Federal Space Agency (ROSCOSMOS) and several agencies within Australia.

GéoSAS: A modular and interoperable Open Source Spatial Data Infrastructure for research

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bera, R.; Squividant, H.; Le Henaff, G.; Pichelin, P.; Ruiz, L.; Launay, J.; Vanhouteghem, J.; Aurousseau, P.; Cudennec, C.

2015-05-01

To-date, the commonest way to deal with geographical information and processes still appears to consume local resources, i.e. locally stored data processed on a local desktop or server. The maturity and subsequent growing use of OGC standards to exchange data on the World Wide Web, enhanced in Europe by the INSPIRE Directive, is bound to change the way people (and among them research scientists, especially in environmental sciences) make use of, and manage, spatial data. A clever use of OGC standards can help scientists to better store, share and use data, in particular for modelling. We propose a framework for online processing by making an intensive use of OGC standards. We illustrate it using the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) GéoSAS which is the SDI set up for researchers' needs in our department. It is based on the existing open source, modular and interoperable Spatial Data Architecture geOrchestra.

Using Globe Browsing Systems in Planetariums to Take Audiences to Other Worlds.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Emmart, C. B.

2014-12-01

For the last decade planetariums have been adding capability of "full dome video" systems for both movie playback and interactive display. True scientific data visualization has now come to planetarium audiences as a means to display the actual three dimensional layout of the universe, the time based array of planets, minor bodies and spacecraft across the solar system, and now globe browsing systems to examine planetary bodies to the limits of resolutions acquired. Additionally, such planetarium facilities can be networked for simultaneous display across the world for wider audience and reach to authoritative scientist description and commentary. Data repositories such as NASA's Lunar Mapping and Modeling Project (LMMP), NASA GSFC's LANCE-MODIS, and others conforming to the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard of Web Map Server (WMS) protocols make geospatial data available for a growing number of dome supporting globe visualization systems. The immersive surround graphics of full dome video replicates our visual system creating authentic virtual scenes effectively placing audiences on location in some cases to other worlds only mapped robotically.

Building Geospatial Web Services for Ecological Monitoring and Forecasting

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hiatt, S. H.; Hashimoto, H.; Melton, F. S.; Michaelis, A. R.; Milesi, C.; Nemani, R. R.; Wang, W.

2008-12-01

The Terrestrial Observation and Prediction System (TOPS) at NASA Ames Research Center is a modeling system that generates a suite of gridded data products in near real-time that are designed to enhance management decisions related to floods, droughts, forest fires, human health, as well as crop, range, and forest production. While these data products introduce great possibilities for assisting management decisions and informing further research, realization of their full potential is complicated by their shear volume and by the need for a necessary infrastructure for remotely browsing, visualizing, and analyzing the data. In order to address these difficulties we have built an OGC-compliant WMS and WCS server based on an open source software stack that provides standardized access to our archive of data. This server is built using the open source Java library GeoTools which achieves efficient I/O and image rendering through Java Advanced Imaging. We developed spatio-temporal raster management capabilities using the PostGrid raster indexation engine. We provide visualization and browsing capabilities through a customized Ajax web interface derived from the kaMap project. This interface allows resource managers to quickly assess ecosystem conditions and identify significant trends and anomalies from within their web browser without the need to download source data or install special software. Our standardized web services also expose TOPS data to a range of potential clients, from web mapping applications to virtual globes and desktop GIS packages. However, support for managing the temporal dimension of our data is currently limited in existing software systems. Future work will attempt to overcome this shortcoming by building time-series visualization and analysis tools that can be integrated with existing geospatial software.

Challenges in Visualizing Satellite Level 2 Atmospheric Data with GIS approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wei, J. C.; Yang, W.; Zhao, P.; Pham, L.; Meyer, D. J.

2017-12-01

Satellite data products are important for a wide variety of applications that can bring far-reaching benefits to the science community and the broader society. These benefits can best be achieved if the satellite data are well utilized and interpreted. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, despite the abundance and relative maturity of numerous satellite data products provided by NASA and other organizations. One way to help users better understand the satellite data is to provide data along with `Images', including accurate pixel coverage area delineation, and science team recommended quality screening for individual geophysical parameters. However, there are challenges of visualizing remote sensed non-gridded products: (1) different geodetics of space-borne instruments (2) data often arranged in "along-track" and "across-track" axes (3) spatially and temporally continuous data chunked into granule files: data for a portion (or all) of a satellite orbit (4) no general rule of resampling or interpolations to a grid (5) geophysical retrieval only based on pixel center location without shape information. In this presentation, we will unravel a new Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) Level 2 (L2) visualization on-demand service. The service's front end provides various visualization and data accessing capabilities, such as overlay and swipe of multiply variables and subset and download of data in different formats. The backend of the service consists of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard-compliant Web Mapping Service (WMS) and Web Coverage Service. The infrastructure allows inclusion of outside data sources served in OGC compliant protocols and allows other interoperable clients, such as ArcGIS clients, to connect to our L2 WCS/WMS.

Challenges in Obtaining and Visualizing Satellite Level 2 Data in GIS

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wei, Jennifer C.; Yang, Wenli; Zhao, Peisheng; Pham, Long; Meyer, David J.

2017-01-01

Satellite data products are important for a wide variety of applications that can bring far-reaching benefits to the science community and the broader society. These benefits can best be achieved if the satellite data are well utilized and interpreted. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, despite the abundance and relative maturity of numerous satellite data products provided by NASA and other organizations. One way to help users better understand the satellite data is to provide data along with Images, including accurate pixel coverage area delineation, and science team recommended quality screening for individual geophysical parameters. However, there are challenges of visualizing remote sensed non-gridded products: (1) different geodetics of space-borne instruments (2) data often arranged in a long-track� and a cross-track� axes (3) spatially and temporally continuous data chunked into granule files: data for a portion (or all) of a satellite orbit (4) no general rule of resampling or interpolations to a grid (5) geophysical retrieval only based on pixel center location without shape information. In this presentation, we will unravel a new Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) Level 2 (L2) visualization on-demand service. The service's front end provides various visualization and data accessing capabilities, such as overlay and swipe of multiply variables and subset and download of data in different formats. The backend of the service consists of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard-compliant Web Mapping Service (WMS) and Web Coverage Service. The infrastructure allows inclusion of outside data sources served in OGC compliant protocols and allows other interoperable clients, such as ArcGIS clients, to connect to our L2 WCS/WMS.

Marine Profiles for OGC Sensor Web Enablement Standards

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jirka, Simon

2016-04-01

The use of OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards in oceanology is increasing. Several projects are developing SWE-based infrastructures to ease the sharing of marine sensor data. This work ranges from developments on sensor level to efforts addressing interoperability of data flows between observatories and organisations. The broad range of activities using SWE standards leads to a risk of diverging approaches how the SWE specifications are applied. Because the SWE standards are designed in a domain independent manner, they intentionally offer a high degree of flexibility enabling implementation across different domains and usage scenarios. At the same time this flexibility allows one to achieve similar goals in different ways. To avoid interoperability issues, an agreement is needed on how to apply SWE concepts and how to use vocabularies in a common way that will be shared by different projects, implementations, and users. To address this need, partners from several projects and initiatives (AODN, BRIDGES, envri+, EUROFLEETS/EUROFLEETS2, FixO3, FRAM, IOOS, Jerico/Jerico-Next, NeXOS, ODIP/ODIP II, RITMARE, SeaDataNet, SenseOcean, X-DOMES) have teamed up to develop marine profiles of OGC SWE standards that can serve as a common basis for developments in multiple projects and organisations. The following aspects will be especially considered: 1.) Provision of metadata: For discovering sensors/instruments as well as observation data, to facilitate the interpretation of observations, and to integrate instruments in sensor platforms, the provision of metadata is crucial. Thus, a marine profile of the OGC Sensor Model Language 2.0 (SensorML 2.0) will be developed allowing to provide metadata for different levels (e.g. observatory, instrument, and detector) and sensor types. The latter will enable metadata of a specific type to be automatically inherited by all devices/sensors of the same type. The application of further standards such as OGC PUCK will benefit from this encoding, too, by facilitating the communication with instruments. 2.) Encoding and modelling of observation data: For delivering observation data, the ISO/OGC Observations and Measurements 2.0 (O&M 2.0) standard serves as a good basis. Within an O&M profile, recommendations will be given on needed observation types that cover different aspects of marine sensing (trajectory, stationary, or profile measurements, etc.). Besides XML, further O&M encodings (e.g. JSON-based) will be considered. 3.) Data access: A profile of the OGC Sensor Observation Service 2.0 (SOS 2.0) standard will be specified to offer a common way on how this web service interface can be used for requesting marine observations and metadata. At the same time this will offer a common interface to cross-domain applications based upon tools such as the GEOSS DAB. Lightweight approaches such as REST will be considered as further bindings for the SOS interface. 4.) Backward compatibility: The profile will consider the existing observation systems so that migration paths towards the specified profiles can be offered. We will present the current state of the profile development. In particular, a comparative analysis of SWE usage in different projects, an outline of the requirements, and fundamental aspects of profiles of SWE standards will be shown.

Smart Cities Intelligence System (SMACiSYS) Integrating Sensor Web with Spatial Data Infrastructures (sensdi)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bhattacharya, D.; Painho, M.

2017-09-01

The paper endeavours to enhance the Sensor Web with crucial geospatial analysis capabilities through integration with Spatial Data Infrastructure. The objective is development of automated smart cities intelligence system (SMACiSYS) with sensor-web access (SENSDI) utilizing geomatics for sustainable societies. There has been a need to develop automated integrated system to categorize events and issue information that reaches users directly. At present, no web-enabled information system exists which can disseminate messages after events evaluation in real time. Research work formalizes a notion of an integrated, independent, generalized, and automated geo-event analysing system making use of geo-spatial data under popular usage platform. Integrating Sensor Web With Spatial Data Infrastructures (SENSDI) aims to extend SDIs with sensor web enablement, converging geospatial and built infrastructure, and implement test cases with sensor data and SDI. The other benefit, conversely, is the expansion of spatial data infrastructure to utilize sensor web, dynamically and in real time for smart applications that smarter cities demand nowadays. Hence, SENSDI augments existing smart cities platforms utilizing sensor web and spatial information achieved by coupling pairs of otherwise disjoint interfaces and APIs formulated by Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) keeping entire platform open access and open source. SENSDI is based on Geonode, QGIS and Java, that bind most of the functionalities of Internet, sensor web and nowadays Internet of Things superseding Internet of Sensors as well. In a nutshell, the project delivers a generalized real-time accessible and analysable platform for sensing the environment and mapping the captured information for optimal decision-making and societal benefit.

Expanding Access and Usage of NASA Near Real-Time Imagery and Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cechini, M.; Murphy, K. J.; Boller, R. A.; Schmaltz, J. E.; Thompson, C. K.; Huang, T.; McGann, J. M.; Ilavajhala, S.; Alarcon, C.; Roberts, J. T.

2013-12-01

In late 2009, the Land Atmosphere Near-real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE) was created to greatly expand the range of near real-time data products from a variety of Earth Observing System (EOS) instruments. Since that time, NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) developed the Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS) to provide highly responsive, scalable, and expandable imagery services that distribute near real-time imagery in an intuitive and geo-referenced format. The GIBS imagery services provide access through standards-based protocols such as the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Tile Service (WMTS) and standard mapping file formats such as the Keyhole Markup Language (KML). Leveraging these standard mechanisms opens NASA near real-time imagery to a broad landscape of mapping libraries supporting mobile applications. By easily integrating with mobile application development libraries, GIBS makes it possible for NASA imagery to become a reliable and valuable source for end-user applications. Recently, EOSDIS has taken steps to integrate near real-time metadata products into the EOS ClearingHOuse (ECHO) metadata repository. Registration of near real-time metadata allows for near real-time data discovery through ECHO clients. In kind with the near real-time data processing requirements, the ECHO ingest model allows for low-latency metadata insertion and updates. Combining with the ECHO repository, the fast visual access of GIBS imagery can now be linked directly back to the source data file(s). Through the use of discovery standards such as OpenSearch, desktop and mobile applications can connect users to more than just an image. As data services, such as OGC Web Coverage Service, become more prevalent within the EOSDIS system, applications may even be able to connect users from imagery to data values. In addition, the full resolution GIBS imagery provides visual context to other GIS data and tools. The NASA near real-time imagery covers a broad set of Earth science disciplines. By leveraging the ECHO and GIBS services, these data can become a visual context within which other GIS activities are performed. The focus of this presentation is to discuss the GIBS imagery and ECHO metadata services facilitating near real-time discovery and usage. Existing synergies and future possibilities will also be discussed. The NASA Worldview demonstration client will be used to show an existing application combining the ECHO and GIBS services.

Web access and dissemination of Andalusian coastal erosion rates: viewers and standard/filtered map services.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Álvarez Francoso, Jose; Prieto Campos, Antonio; Ojeda Zujar, Jose; Guisado-Pintado, Emilia; Pérez Alcántara, Juan Pedro

2017-04-01

The accessibility to environmental information via web viewers using map services (OGC or proprietary services) has become more frequent since newly information sources (ortophotos, LIDAR, GPS) are of great detailed and thus generate a great volume of data which barely can be disseminated using either analogue (paper maps) or digital (pdf) formats. Moreover, governments and public institutions are concerned about the need of facilitates provision to research results and improve communication about natural hazards to citizens and stakeholders. This information ultimately, if adequately disseminated, it's crucial in decision making processes, risk management approaches and could help to increase social awareness related to environmental issues (particularly climate change impacts). To overcome this issue, two strategies for wide dissemination and communication of the results achieved in the calculation of beach erosion for the 640 km length of the Andalusian coast (South Spain) using web viewer technology are presented. Each of them are oriented to different end users and thus based on different methodologies. Erosion rates has been calculated at 50m intervals for different periods (1956-1977-2001-2011) as part of a National Research Project based on the spasialisation and web-access of coastal vulnerability indicators for Andalusian region. The 1st proposal generates WMS services (following OGC standards) that are made available by Geoserver, using a geoviewer client developed through Leaflet. This viewer is designed to be used by the general public (citizens, politics, etc) by combining a set of tools that give access to related documents (pdfs), visualisation tools (panoramio pictures, geo-localisation with GPS) are which are displayed within an user-friendly interface. Further, the use of WMS services (implemented on Geoserver) provides a detailed semiology (arrows and proportional symbols, using alongshore coastaline buffers to represent data) which not only enhances access to erosion rates but also enables multi-scale data representation. The 2nd proposal, as intended to be used by technicians and specialists on the field, includes a geoviewer with an innovative profile (including visualization of time-ranges, application of different uncertainty levels to the data, etc) to fulfil the needs of these users. For its development, a set of Javascript libraries combined with Openlayers (or Leaflet) are implemented to guarantee all the functionalities existing for the basic geoviewer. Further to this, the viewer has been improved by i) the generation of services by request through the application of a filter in ECQL language (Extended Common Query Language), using the vendor parameter CQL_FILTER from Geoserver. These dynamic filters allow the final user to predefine the visualised variable, its spatial and temporal domain, a range of specific values and other attributes, thus multiplying the generation of real-time cartography; ii) by using the layer's WFS service, the Javascript application exploit the alphanumeric data to generate related statistics in real time (e.g. mean rates, length of eroded coast, etc.) and interactive graphs (via HighCharts.js library) which accurately help in beach erosion rates interpretation (representing trends and bars diagrams, among others. As a result two approaches for communicating scientific results to different audiences based on web-based with complete dataset of geo-information, services and functionalities are implemented. The combination of standardised environmental data with tailor-made exploitation techniques (interactive maps, and real-time statistics) assures the correct access and interpretation of the information.

PAVICS: A platform for the Analysis and Visualization of Climate Science - adopting a workflow-based analysis method for dealing with a multitude of climate data sources

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gauvin St-Denis, B.; Landry, T.; Huard, D. B.; Byrns, D.; Chaumont, D.; Foucher, S.

2017-12-01

As the number of scientific studies and policy decisions requiring tailored climate information continues to increase, the demand for support from climate service centers to provide the latest information in the format most helpful for the end-user is also on the rise. Ouranos, being one such organization based in Montreal, has partnered with the Centre de recherche informatique de Montreal (CRIM) to develop a platform that will offer climate data products that have been identified as most useful for users through years of consultation. The platform is built as modular components that target the various requirements of climate data analysis. The data components host and catalog NetCDF data as well as geographical and political delimitations. The analysis components are made available as atomic operations through Web Processing Service (WPS) or as workflows, whereby the operations are chained through a simple JSON structure and executed on a distributed network of computing resources. The visualization components range from Web Map Service (WMS) to a complete frontend for searching the data, launching workflows and interacting with maps of the results. Each component can easily be deployed and executed as an independent service through the use of Docker technology and a proxy is available to regulate user workspaces and access permissions. PAVICS includes various components from birdhouse, a collection of WPS initially developed by the German Climate Research Center (DKRZ) and Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL) and is designed to be highly interoperable with other WPS as well as many Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards. Further connectivity is made with the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) nodes and local results are made searchable using the same API terminology. Other projects conducted by CRIM that integrate with PAVICS include the OGC Testbed 13 Innovation Program (IP) initiative that will enhance advanced cloud capabilities, application packaging deployment processes, as well as enabling Earth Observation (EO) processes relevant to climate. As part of its experimental agenda, working implementations of scalable machine learning on big climate data with Spark and SciSpark were delivered.

A Tale of Two Observing Systems: Interoperability in the World of Microsoft Windows

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Babin, B. L.; Hu, L.

2008-12-01

Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium's (LUMCON) and Dauphin Island Sea Lab's (DISL) Environmental Monitoring System provide a unified coastal ocean observing system. These two systems are mirrored to maintain autonomy while offering an integrated data sharing environment. Both systems collect data via Campbell Scientific Data loggers, store the data in Microsoft SQL servers, and disseminate the data in real- time on the World Wide Web via Microsoft Internet Information Servers and Active Server Pages (ASP). The utilization of Microsoft Windows technologies presented many challenges to these observing systems as open source tools for interoperability grow. The current open source tools often require the installation of additional software. In order to make data available through common standards formats, "home grown" software has been developed. One example of this is the development of software to generate xml files for transmission to the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC). OOSTethys partners develop, test and implement easy-to-use, open-source, OGC-compliant software., and have created a working prototype of networked, semantically interoperable, real-time data systems. Partnering with OOSTethys, we are developing a cookbook to implement OGC web services. The implementation will be written in ASP, will run in a Microsoft operating system environment, and will serve data via Sensor Observation Services (SOS). This cookbook will give observing systems running Microsoft Windows the tools to easily participate in the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Oceans Interoperability Experiment (OCEANS IE).

An interoperable standard system for the automatic generation and publication of the fire risk maps based on Fire Weather Index (FWI)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Julià Selvas, Núria; Ninyerola Casals, Miquel

2015-04-01

It has been implemented an automatic system to predict the fire risk in the Principality of Andorra, a small country located in the eastern Pyrenees mountain range, bordered by Catalonia and France, due to its location, his landscape is a set of a rugged mountains with an average elevation around 2000 meters. The system is based on the Fire Weather Index (FWI) that consists on different components, each one, measuring a different aspect of the fire danger calculated by the values of the weather variables at midday. CENMA (Centre d'Estudis de la Neu i de la Muntanya d'Andorra) has a network around 10 automatic meteorological stations, located in different places, peeks and valleys, that measure weather data like relative humidity, wind direction and speed, surface temperature, rainfall and snow cover every ten minutes; this data is sent daily and automatically to the system implemented that will be processed in the way to filter incorrect measurements and to homogenizer measurement units. Then this data is used to calculate all components of the FWI at midday and for the level of each station, creating a database with the values of the homogeneous measurements and the FWI components for each weather station. In order to extend and model this data to all Andorran territory and to obtain a continuous map, an interpolation method based on a multiple regression with spline residual interpolation has been implemented. This interpolation considerer the FWI data as well as other relevant predictors such as latitude, altitude, global solar radiation and sea distance. The obtained values (maps) are validated using a cross-validation leave-one-out method. The discrete and continuous maps are rendered in tiled raster maps and published in a web portal conform to Web Map Service (WMS) Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard. Metadata and other reference maps (fuel maps, topographic maps, etc) are also available from this geoportal.

Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS) - Rapidly Serving NASA Imagery for Applications and Science Users

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schmaltz, J. E.; Ilavajhala, S.; Plesea, L.; Hall, J. R.; Boller, R. A.; Chang, G.; Sadaqathullah, S.; Kim, R.; Murphy, K. J.; Thompson, C. K.

2012-12-01

Expedited processing of imagery from NASA satellites for near-real time use by non-science applications users has a long history, especially since the beginning of the Terra and Aqua missions. Several years ago, the Land Atmosphere Near-real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE) was created to greatly expand the range of near-real time data products from a variety of Earth Observing System (EOS) instruments. NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) began exploring methods to distribute these data as imagery in an intuitive, geo-referenced format, which would be available within three hours of acquisition. Toward this end, EOSDIS has developed the Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS, http://earthdata.nasa.gov/gibs) to provide highly responsive, scalable, and expandable imagery services. The baseline technology chosen for GIBS was a Tiled Web Mapping Service (TWMS) developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Using this, global images and mosaics are divided into tiles with fixed bounding boxes for a pyramid of fixed resolutions. Initially, the satellite imagery is created at the existing data systems for each sensor, ensuring the oversight of those most knowledgeable about the science. There, the satellite data is geolocated and converted to an image format such as JPEG, TIFF, or PNG. The GIBS ingest server retrieves imagery from the various data systems and converts them into image tiles, which are stored in a highly-optimized raster format named Meta Raster Format (MRF). The image tiles are then served to users via HTTP by means of an Apache module. Services are available for the entire globe (lat-long projection) and for both polar regions (polar stereographic projection). Requests to the services can be made with the non-standard, but widely known, TWMS format or via the well-known OGC Web Map Tile Service (WMTS) standard format. Standard OGC Web Map Service (WMS) access to the GIBS server is also available. In addition, users may request a KML pyramid. This variety of access methods allows stakeholders to develop visualization/browse clients for a diverse variety of specific audiences. Currently, EOSDIS is providing an OpenLayers web client, Worldview (http://earthdata.nasa.gov/worldview), as an interface to GIBS. A variety of other existing clients can also be developed using such tools as Google Earth, Google Earth browser Plugin, ESRI's Adobe Flash/Flex Client Library, NASA World Wind, Perceptive Pixel Client, Esri's iOS Client Library, and OpenLayers for Mobile. The imagery browse capabilities from GIBS can be combined with other EOSDIS services (i.e. ECHO OpenSearch) via a client that ties them both together to provide an interface that enables data download from the onscreen imagery. Future plans for GIBS include providing imagery based on science quality data from the entire data record of these EOS instruments.

NASA's Earth Imagery Service as Open Source Software

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

De Cesare, C.; Alarcon, C.; Huang, T.; Roberts, J. T.; Rodriguez, J.; Cechini, M. F.; Boller, R. A.; Baynes, K.

2016-12-01

The NASA Global Imagery Browse Service (GIBS) is a software system that provides access to an archive of historical and near-real-time Earth imagery from NASA-supported satellite instruments. The imagery itself is open data, and is accessible via standards such as the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)'s Web Map Tile Service (WMTS) protocol. GIBS includes three core software projects: The Imagery Exchange (TIE), OnEarth, and the Meta Raster Format (MRF) project. These projects are developed using a variety of open source software, including: Apache HTTPD, GDAL, Mapserver, Grails, Zookeeper, Eclipse, Maven, git, and Apache Commons. TIE has recently been released for open source, and is now available on GitHub. OnEarth, MRF, and their sub-projects have been on GitHub since 2014, and the MRF project in particular receives many external contributions from the community. Our software has been successful beyond the scope of GIBS: the PO.DAAC State of the Ocean and COVERAGE visualization projects reuse components from OnEarth. The MRF source code has recently been incorporated into GDAL, which is a core library in many widely-used GIS software such as QGIS and GeoServer. This presentation will describe the challenges faced in incorporating open software and open data into GIBS, and also showcase GIBS as a platform on which scientists and the general public can build their own applications.

Cool Apps: Building Cryospheric Data Applications with Standards-Based Service Oriented Architecture

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Oldenburg, J.; Truslove, I.; Collins, J. A.; Liu, M.; Lewis, S.; Brodzik, M.

2012-12-01

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) holds a large collection of cryospheric data, and is involved in a number of informatics research and development projects aimed at improving the discoverability and accessibility of these data. To develop high- quality software in a timely manner, we have adopted a Service- Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach for our core technical infrastructure development. Data services at NSIDC are internally exposed to other tools and applications through standards-based service interfaces. These standards include OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting), various OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) standards including WMS (Web Map Service) and WFS (Web Feature Service), ESIP (Federation of Earth Sciences Information Partners) OpenSearch, and NSIDC-defined service endpoints which follow a RESTful architecture. By taking a standards-based approach, we are able to use off-the-shelf tools and libraries to consume, translate and broker these data services, and thus develop applications faster. Additionally, by exposing public interfaces to these services we provide valuable data services to technical collaborators; for example, NASA Reverb (http://reverb.echo.nasa.gov) uses NSIDC's WMS services. Our latest generation of web applications consume these data services directly. The most complete example of this is the Operation IceBridge Data Portal (http://nsidc.org/icebridge/ portal) which depends on many of the aforementioned services, retrieving data in several ways. The maps it displays are obtained through the use of WMS and WFS protocols from a MapServer instance hosted at NSIDC. Links to the scientific data collected on Operation IceBridge campaigns are obtained through ESIP OpenSearch requests service providers that encapsulate our metadata databases. These standards-based web services are also developed at NSIDC and are designed to be used independently of the Portal. This poster provides a visual representation of the relationships described above, with additional details and examples, and more generally outlines the benefits and challenges of this SOA approach.

Using Sensor Web Processes and Protocols to Assimilate Satellite Data into a Forecast Model

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Goodman, H. Michael; Conover, Helen; Zavodsky, Bradley; Maskey, Manil; Jedlovec, Gary; Regner, Kathryn; Li, Xiang; Lu, Jessica; Botts, Mike; Berthiau, Gregoire

2008-01-01

The goal of the Sensor Management Applied Research Technologies (SMART) On-Demand Modeling project is to develop and demonstrate the readiness of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) capabilities to integrate both space-based Earth observations and forecast model output into new data acquisition and assimilation strategies. The project is developing sensor web-enabled processing plans to assimilate Atmospheric Infrared Sounding (AIRS) satellite temperature and moisture retrievals into a regional Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model over the southeastern United States.

Analyzing CRISM hyperspectral imagery using PlanetServer.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Figuera, Ramiro Marco; Pham Huu, Bang; Minin, Mikhail; Flahaut, Jessica; Halder, Anik; Rossi, Angelo Pio

2017-04-01

Mineral characterization of planetary surfaces bears great importance for space exploration. In order to perform it, orbital hyperspectral imagery is widely used. In our research we use Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) [1] TRDR L observations with a spectral range of 1 to 4 µm. PlanetServer comprises a server, a web client and a Python client/API. The server side uses the Array DataBase Management System (DBMS) Raster Data Manager (Rasdaman) Community Edition [2]. OGC standards such as the Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS) [3], an SQL-like language capable to query information along the image cube, are implemented in the PetaScope component [4]. The client side uses NASA's Web World Wind [5] allowing the user to access the data in an intuitive way. The client consists of a globe where all cubes are deployed, a main menu where projections, base maps and RGB combinations are provided, and a plot dock where the spectral information is shown. The RGB combinator tool allows to do band combination such as the CRISM products [6] using WCPS. The spectral information is retrieved using WCPS and shown in the plot dock/widget. The USGS splib06a library [7] is available to compare CRISM vs. laboratory spectra. The Python API provides an environment to create RGB combinations that can be embedded into existing pipelines. All employed libraries and tools are open source and can be easily adapted to other datasets. PlanetServer stands as a promising tool for spectral analysis on planetary bodies. M3/Moon and OMEGA datasets will be soon available. [1] S. Murchie et al., "Compact Connaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)," J. Geophys. Res. E Planets,2007. [2] P. Baumann, A. Dehmel, P. Furtado, R. Ritsch, and N. Widmann, "The multidimensional database system RasDaMan," ACM SIGMOD Rec., vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 575-577, Jun. 1998. [3] P. Baumann, "The OGC web coverage processing service (WCPS) standard," Geoinformatica, vol. 14, no. 4, Jul. 2010. [4] A. Aiordǎchioaie and P. Baumann, "PetaScope: An open-source implementation of the OGC WCS Geo service standards suite," Lect. Notes Comput. Sci. (including Subser. Lect. Notes Artif. Intell. Lect. Notes Bioinformatics), vol. 6187 LNCS, pp. 160-168, Jun. 2010. [5] P. Hogan, C. Maxwell, R. Kim, and T. Gaskins, "World Wind 3D Earth Viewing," Apr. 2007. [6] C. E. Viviano-Beck et al., "Revised CRISM spectral parameters and summary products based on the currently detected mineral diversity on Mars," J. Geophys. Res. E Planets, vol. 119, no. 6, pp. 1403-1431, Jun. 2014. [7] R. N. Clark et al., "USGS digital spectral library splib06a: U.S. Geological Survey, Digital Data Series 231," 2007. [Online]. Available: http://speclab.cr.usgs.gov/spectral.lib06.

Proteus - A Free and Open Source Sensor Observation Service (SOS) Client

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Henriksson, J.; Satapathy, G.; Bermudez, L. E.

2013-12-01

The Earth's 'electronic skin' is becoming ever more sophisticated with a growing number of sensors measuring everything from seawater salinity levels to atmospheric pressure. To further the scientific application of this data collection effort, it is important to make the data easily available to anyone who wants to use it. Making Earth Science data readily available will allow the data to be used in new and potentially groundbreaking ways. The US National Science and Technology Council made this clear in its most recent National Strategy for Civil Earth Observations report, when it remarked that Earth observations 'are often found to be useful for additional purposes not foreseen during the development of the observation system'. On the road to this goal the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is defining uniform data formats and service interfaces to facilitate the discovery and access of sensor data. This is being done through the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) stack of standards, which include the Sensor Observation Service (SOS), Sensor Model Language (SensorML), Observations & Measurements (O&M) and Catalog Service for the Web (CSW). End-users do not have to use these standards directly, but can use smart tools that leverage and implement them. We have developed such a tool named Proteus. Proteus is an open-source sensor data discovery client. The goal of Proteus is to be a general-purpose client that can be used by anyone for discovering and accessing sensor data via OGC-based services. Proteus is a desktop client and supports a straightforward workflow for finding sensor data. The workflow takes the user through the process of selecting appropriate services, bounding boxes, observed properties, time periods and other search facets. NASA World Wind is used to display the matching sensor offerings on a map. Data from any sensor offering can be previewed in a time series. The user can download data from a single sensor offering, or download data in bulk from all matching sensor offerings. Proteus leverages NASA World Wind's WMS capabilities and allow overlaying sensor offerings on top of any map. Specific search criteria (i.e. user discoveries) can be saved and later restored. Proteus is supports two user types: 1) the researcher/scientist interested in discovering and downloading specific sensor data as input to research processes, and 2) the data manager responsible for maintaining sensor data services (e.g. SOSs) and wants to ensure proper data and metadata delivery, verify sensor data, and receive sensor data alerts. Proteus has a Web-based companion product named the Community Hub that is used to generate sensor data alerts. Alerts can be received via an RSS feed, viewed in a Web browser or displayed directly in Proteus via a Web-based API. To advance the vision of making Earth Science data easily discoverable and accessible to end-users, professional or laymen, Proteus is available as open-source on GitHub (https://github.com/intelligentautomation/proteus).

The European Drought Observatory (EDO): Current State and Future Directions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vogt, Jürgen; Sepulcre, Guadalupe; Magni, Diego; Valentini, Luana; Singleton, Andrew; Micale, Fabio; Barbosa, Paulo

2013-04-01

Europe has repeatedly been affected by droughts, resulting in considerable ecological and economic damage and climate change studies indicate a trend towards increasing climate variability most likely resulting in more frequent drought occurrences also in Europe. Against this background, the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) is developing methods and tools for assessing, monitoring and forecasting droughts in Europe and develops a European Drought Observatory (EDO) to complement and integrate national activities with a European view. At the core of the European Drought Observatory (EDO) is a portal, including a map server, a metadata catalogue, a media-monitor and analysis tools. The map server presents Europe-wide up-to-date information on the occurrence and severity of droughts, which is complemented by more detailed information provided by regional, national and local observatories through OGC compliant web mapping and web coverage services. In addition, time series of historical maps as well as graphs of the temporal evolution of drought indices for individual grid cells and administrative regions in Europe can be retrieved and analysed. Current work is focusing on validating the available products, developing combined indicators, improving the functionalities, extending the linkage to additional national and regional drought information systems and testing options for medium-range probabilistic drought forecasting across Europe. Longer-term goals include the development of long-range drought forecasting products, the analysis of drought hazard and risk, the monitoring of drought impact and the integration of EDO in a global drought information system. The talk will provide an overview on the development and state of EDO, the different products, and the ways to include a wide range of stakeholders (i.e. European, national river basin, and local authorities) in the development of the system as well as an outlook on the future developments.

Developing a Web-based system by integrating VGI and SDI for real estate management and marketing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Salajegheh, J.; Hakimpour, F.; Esmaeily, A.

2014-10-01

Property importance of various aspects, especially the impact on various sectors of the economy and the country's macroeconomic is clear. Because of the real, multi-dimensional and heterogeneous nature of housing as a commodity, the lack of an integrated system includes comprehensive information of property, the lack of awareness of some actors in this field about comprehensive information about property and the lack of clear and comprehensive rules and regulations for the trading and pricing, several problems arise for the people involved in this field. In this research implementation of a crowd-sourced Web-based real estate support system is desired. Creating a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) in this system for collecting, updating and integrating all official data about property is also desired in this study. In this system a Web2.0 broker and technologies such as Web services and service composition has been used. This work aims to provide comprehensive and diverse information about property from different sources. For this purpose five-level real estate support system architecture is used. PostgreSql DBMS is used to implement the desired system. Geoserver software is also used as map server and reference implementation of OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) standards. And Apache server is used to run web pages and user interfaces. Integration introduced methods and technologies provide a proper environment for various users to use the system and share their information. This goal is only achieved by cooperation between all involved organizations in real estate with implementation their required infrastructures in interoperability Web services format.

Cloud Based Web 3d GIS Taiwan Platform

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tsai, W.-F.; Chang, J.-Y.; Yan, S. Y.; Chen, B.

2011-09-01

This article presents the status of the web 3D GIS platform, which has been developed in the National Applied Research Laboratories. The purpose is to develop a global earth observation 3D GIS platform for applications to disaster monitoring and assessment in Taiwan. For quick response to preliminary and detailed assessment after a natural disaster occurs, the web 3D GIS platform is useful to access, transfer, integrate, display and analyze the multi-scale huge data following the international OGC standard. The framework of cloud service for data warehousing management and efficiency enhancement using VMWare is illustrated in this article.

Web-GIS visualisation of permafrost-related Remote Sensing products for ESA GlobPermafrost

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Haas, A.; Heim, B.; Schaefer-Neth, C.; Laboor, S.; Nitze, I.; Grosse, G.; Bartsch, A.; Kaab, A.; Strozzi, T.; Wiesmann, A.; Seifert, F. M.

2016-12-01

The ESA GlobPermafrost (www.globpermafrost.info) provides a remote sensing service for permafrost research and applications. The service comprises of data product generation for various sites and regions as well as specific infrastructure allowing overview and access to datasets. Based on an online user survey conducted within the project, the user community extensively applies GIS software to handle remote sensing-derived datasets and requires preview functionalities before accessing them. In response, we develop the Permafrost Information System PerSys which is conceptualized as an open access geospatial data dissemination and visualization portal. PerSys will allow visualisation of GlobPermafrost raster and vector products such as land cover classifications, Landsat multispectral index trend datasets, lake and wetland extents, InSAR-based land surface deformation maps, rock glacier velocity fields, spatially distributed permafrost model outputs, and land surface temperature datasets. The datasets will be published as WebGIS services relying on OGC-standardized Web Mapping Service (WMS) and Web Feature Service (WFS) technologies for data display and visualization. The WebGIS environment will be hosted at the AWI computing centre where a geodata infrastructure has been implemented comprising of ArcGIS for Server 10.4, PostgreSQL 9.2 and a browser-driven data viewer based on Leaflet (http://leafletjs.com). Independently, we will provide an `Access - Restricted Data Dissemination Service', which will be available to registered users for testing frequently updated versions of project datasets. PerSys will become a core project of the Arctic Permafrost Geospatial Centre (APGC) within the ERC-funded PETA-CARB project (www.awi.de/petacarb). The APGC Data Catalogue will contain all final products of GlobPermafrost, allow in-depth dataset search via keywords, spatial and temporal coverage, data type, etc., and will provide DOI-based links to the datasets archived in the long-term, open access PANGAEA data repository.

Exploiting OAuth 2.0: from User Delegation for OGC Services to a Generic Federation-as-a-Service Solution for Federated Identity Management

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kershaw, Philip; Jensen, Jens; Stephens, Ag; van Engen, Willem

2013-04-01

We explore an application of OAuth to enable user delegation for OGC-based services and the evolution of this solution to form part of a wider Federation-as-a-Service offering for federated identity management. OAuth has established itself in the commercial sector as a means for users to delegate access to secured resources under their control to third parties. It has also found its way into the academic and research domains as a solution for user delegation. Notable examples including the CILogon project for Teragrid in the US, and also, closer to the Earth Sciences, as part of the OGC Web Services, Phase 6 Testbed. Both are examples of OAuth 1.0 implementations. Version 2.0 has seen significant changes to this original specification which have not been without controversy but it has arguably provided a greater degree of flexibility in how it can be applied and the use cases that it can address. At CEDA (Centre for Environmental Data Archival, STFC), a Python implementation of OAuth 2.0 was made to explore these capabilities with a focus on providing a solution for user delegation for data access, processing and visualisation services for the Earth Observation and Climate sciences domains. The initial goal was to provide a means of delegating short-lived user credentials to trusted services along the same lines as the established approach of Proxy certificates widely used in Grid computing. For the OGC and other HTTP-based services employed by CEDA, OAuth makes a natural fit for this role, integrating with minimal impact on existing interfaces. Working implementations have been made for CEDA's COWS Web Processing Service and Web Map Service. Packaging the software and making it available in Open Source repositories together with the generic nature of the solution have made it readily exploitable in other application domains. At the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (Nijmegen, The Netherlands), the software will be used to integrate some tools in the CLARIN infrastructure*. Enhancements have been fedback to the package through this activity. Collaboration with STFC's Scientific Computing department has also seen this solution expand and evolve to support a more demanding set of use cases required to meet the needs for Contrail, an EU Framework 7 project. The goal of Contrail is to develop an Open Source solution for federating resources from multiple Cloud providers. Bringing the solution developed with OAuth together with technologies such as SAML and OpenID it has been possible to develop a generic suite of services to support federated access and identity management, a Federation-as-a-Service package. This is showing promise with trials with the EUDAT project. A deployment of the Contrail software is also planned for CEMS (the facility for Climate and Environmental Monitoring from Space), a new joint academic-industry led facility based at the STFC Harwell site providing access to large-volume Earth Observation and Climate datasets through a Cloud-based service model. * This work is part of the programme of BiG Grid, the Dutch e-Science Grid, which is financially supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, NWO.

Citygml Modelling for Singapore 3d National Mapping

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Soon, K. H.; Khoo, V. H. S.

2017-10-01

Since 2014, the Land Survey Division of Singapore Land Authority (SLA) has spearheaded a Whole-of-Government (WOG) 3D mapping project to create and maintain a 3D national map for Singapore. The implementation of the project is divided into two phases. The first phase of the project, which was based on airborne data collection, has produced 3D models for Relief, Building, Vegetation and Waterbody. This part of the work was completed in 2016. To complement the first phase, the second phase used mobile imaging and scanning technique. This phase is targeted to be completed by the mid of 2017 and is creating 3D models for Transportation, CityFurniture, Bridge and Tunnel. The project has extensively adopted the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)'s CityGML standard. Out of 10 currently supported thematic modules in CityGML 2.0, the project has implemented 8. The paper describes the adoption of CityGML in the project, and discusses challenges, data validations and management of the models.

Integration of Grid and Sensor Web for Flood Monitoring and Risk Assessment from Heterogeneous Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kussul, Nataliia; Skakun, Sergii; Shelestov, Andrii

2013-04-01

Over last decades we have witnessed the upward global trend in natural disaster occurrence. Hydrological and meteorological disasters such as floods are the main contributors to this pattern. In recent years flood management has shifted from protection against floods to managing the risks of floods (the European Flood risk directive). In order to enable operational flood monitoring and assessment of flood risk, it is required to provide an infrastructure with standardized interfaces and services. Grid and Sensor Web can meet these requirements. In this paper we present a general approach to flood monitoring and risk assessment based on heterogeneous geospatial data acquired from multiple sources. To enable operational flood risk assessment integration of Grid and Sensor Web approaches is proposed [1]. Grid represents a distributed environment that integrates heterogeneous computing and storage resources administrated by multiple organizations. SensorWeb is an emerging paradigm for integrating heterogeneous satellite and in situ sensors and data systems into a common informational infrastructure that produces products on demand. The basic Sensor Web functionality includes sensor discovery, triggering events by observed or predicted conditions, remote data access and processing capabilities to generate and deliver data products. Sensor Web is governed by the set of standards, called Sensor Web Enablement (SWE), developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). Different practical issues regarding integration of Sensor Web with Grids are discussed in the study. We show how the Sensor Web can benefit from using Grids and vice versa. For example, Sensor Web services such as SOS, SPS and SAS can benefit from the integration with the Grid platform like Globus Toolkit. The proposed approach is implemented within the Sensor Web framework for flood monitoring and risk assessment, and a case-study of exploiting this framework, namely the Namibia SensorWeb Pilot Project, is described. The project was created as a testbed for evaluating and prototyping key technologies for rapid acquisition and distribution of data products for decision support systems to monitor floods and enable flood risk assessment. The system provides access to real-time products on rainfall estimates and flood potential forecast derived from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) mission with lag time of 6 h, alerts from the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS) with lag time of 4 h, and the Coupled Routing and Excess STorage (CREST) model to generate alerts. These are alerts are used to trigger satellite observations. With deployed SPS service for NASA's EO-1 satellite it is possible to automatically task sensor with re-image capability of less 8 h. Therefore, with enabled computational and storage services provided by Grid and cloud infrastructure it was possible to generate flood maps within 24-48 h after trigger was alerted. To enable interoperability between system components and services OGC-compliant standards are utilized. [1] Hluchy L., Kussul N., Shelestov A., Skakun S., Kravchenko O., Gripich Y., Kopp P., Lupian E., "The Data Fusion Grid Infrastructure: Project Objectives and Achievements," Computing and Informatics, 2010, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 319-334.

A tool for the estimation of the distribution of landslide area in R

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rossi, M.; Cardinali, M.; Fiorucci, F.; Marchesini, I.; Mondini, A. C.; Santangelo, M.; Ghosh, S.; Riguer, D. E. L.; Lahousse, T.; Chang, K. T.; Guzzetti, F.

2012-04-01

We have developed a tool in R (the free software environment for statistical computing, http://www.r-project.org/) to estimate the probability density and the frequency density of landslide area. The tool implements parametric and non-parametric approaches to the estimation of the probability density and the frequency density of landslide area, including: (i) Histogram Density Estimation (HDE), (ii) Kernel Density Estimation (KDE), and (iii) Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE). The tool is available as a standard Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Processing Service (WPS), and is accessible through the web using different GIS software clients. We tested the tool to compare Double Pareto and Inverse Gamma models for the probability density of landslide area in different geological, morphological and climatological settings, and to compare landslides shown in inventory maps prepared using different mapping techniques, including (i) field mapping, (ii) visual interpretation of monoscopic and stereoscopic aerial photographs, (iii) visual interpretation of monoscopic and stereoscopic VHR satellite images and (iv) semi-automatic detection and mapping from VHR satellite images. Results show that both models are applicable in different geomorphological settings. In most cases the two models provided very similar results. Non-parametric estimation methods (i.e., HDE and KDE) provided reasonable results for all the tested landslide datasets. For some of the datasets, MLE failed to provide a result, for convergence problems. The two tested models (Double Pareto and Inverse Gamma) resulted in very similar results for large and very large datasets (> 150 samples). Differences in the modeling results were observed for small datasets affected by systematic biases. A distinct rollover was observed in all analyzed landslide datasets, except for a few datasets obtained from landslide inventories prepared through field mapping or by semi-automatic mapping from VHR satellite imagery. The tool can also be used to evaluate the probability density and the frequency density of landslide volume.

Sensor Webs with a Service-Oriented Architecture for On-demand Science Products

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mandl, Daniel; Ungar, Stephen; Ames, Troy; Justice, Chris; Frye, Stuart; Chien, Steve; Tran, Daniel; Cappelaere, Patrice; Derezinsfi, Linda; Paules, Granville;

Oregon OCS seafloor mapping: Selected lease blocks relevant to renewable energy

USGS Publications Warehouse

Cochrane, Guy R.; Hemery, Lenaïg G.; Henkel, Sarah K.

2017-05-23

In 2014 the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) entered into Intra-agency agreement M13PG00037 to map an area of the Oregon Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) off of Coos Bay, Oregon, under consideration for development of a floating wind energy farm. The BOEM requires seafloor mapping and site characterization studies in order to evaluate the impact of seafloor and sub-seafloor conditions on the installation, operation, and structural integrity of proposed renewable energy projects, as well as to assess the potential effects of construction and operations on archaeological resources. The mission of the USGS is to provide geologic, topographic, and hydrologic information that contributes to the wise management of the Nation's natural resources and that promotes the health, safety, and well being of the people. This information consists of maps, databases, and descriptions and analyses of the water, energy, and mineral resources, land surface, underlying geologic structure, and dynamic processes of the earth.For the Oregon OCS study, the USGS acquired multibeam echo sounder and seafloor video data surrounding the proposed development site, which is 95 km2 in area and 15 miles offshore from Coos Bay. The development site had been surveyed by Solmar Hydro Inc. in 2013 under a contract with WindFloat Pacific. The USGS subsequently produced a bathymetry digital elevation model and a backscatter intensity grid that were merged with existing data collected by the contractor. The merged grids were published along with visual observations of benthic geo-habitat from the video data in an associated USGS data release (Cochrane and others, 2015).This report includes the results of analysis of the video data conducted by Oregon State University and the geo-habitat interpretation of the multibeam echo sounder (MBES) data conducted by the USGS. MBES data was published in Cochrane and others (2015). Interpretive data associated with this publication is published in Cochrane (2017). All the data is provided as geographic information system (GIS) files that contain both Esri ArcGIS geotiffs or shapefiles. For those who do not own the full suite of Esri GIS and mapping software, the data can be read using Esri ArcReader, a free viewer that is available at http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcreader/index.html (last accessed August 29, 2016). Web services, which consist of standard implementations of ArcGIS representational state transfer (REST) Service and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) GIS web map service (WMS), also are available for all published GIS data. Web services were created using an ArcGIS service definition file, resulting in data layers that are symbolized as shown on the associated report figures. Both the ArcGIS REST Service and OGC WMS Service include all the individual GIS layers. Data layers are bundled together in a map-area web service; however, each layer can be symbolized and accessed individually after the web service is ingested into a desktop application or web map. Web services enable users to download and view data, as well as to easily add data to their own workflows, using any browser-enabled, standalone or mobile device.Though the surficial substrate is dominated by combinations of mud and sand substrate, a diverse assortment of geomorphologic features are related to geologic processes—one anticlinal ridge where bedrock is exposed, a slump and associated scarps, and pockmarks. Pockmarks are seen in the form of fields of small pockmarks, a lineation of large pockmarks with methanogenic carbonates, and areas of large pockmarks that have merged into larger variously shaped depressions. The slump appears to have originated at the pockmark lineation. Video-supervised numerical analysis of the MBES backscatter intensity data and vector ruggedness derived from the MBES bathymetry data was used to produce a substrate model called a seafloor character raster for the study area. The seafloor character raster consists of three substrate classes: soft-flat areas, hard-flat areas, and hard-rugged areas. A Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS) geoform and substrate map was also produced using depth, slope, and benthic position index classes to delineate geoform boundaries. Seven geoforms were identified in this process, including ridges, slump scars, slump deposits, basins, and pockmarks.Statistical analysis of the video data for correlations between substrate, depth, and invertebrate assemblages resulted in the identification of seven biomes: three hard-bottom biomes and four softbottom biomes. A similar analysis of vertebrate observations produces a similar set of biomes. The biome between-group dissimilarity was very high or high. Invertebrates alone represent most of the structure of the whole benthic community into different assemblages. A biotope map was generated using the seafloor character raster and the substrate and depth values of the biomes. Hard substrate biotopes were small in size and were located primarily on the ridge and in pockmarks along the pockmark lineation. The soft-bottom bitopes consisted of large contiguous areas delimited by isobaths.

A BPMN solution for chaining OGC services to quality assure location-based crowdsourced data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Meek, Sam; Jackson, Mike; Leibovici, Didier G.

2016-02-01

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Processing Service (WPS) standard enables access to a centralized repository of processes and services from compliant clients. A crucial part of the standard includes the provision to chain disparate processes and services to form a reusable workflow. To date this has been realized by methods such as embedding XML requests, using Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) engines and other external orchestration engines. Although these allow the user to define tasks and data artifacts as web services, they are often considered inflexible and complicated, often due to vendor specific solutions and inaccessible documentation. This paper introduces a new method of flexible service chaining using the standard Business Process Markup Notation (BPMN). A prototype system has been developed upon an existing open source BPMN suite to illustrate the advantages of the approach. The motivation for the software design is qualification of crowdsourced data for use in policy-making. The software is tested as part of a project that seeks to qualify, assure, and add value to crowdsourced data in a biological monitoring use case.

A Web 2.0 and OGC Standards Enabled Sensor Web Architecture for Global Earth Observing System of Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mandl, Daniel; Unger, Stephen; Ames, Troy; Frye, Stuart; Chien, Steve; Cappelaere, Pat; Tran, Danny; Derezinski, Linda; Paules, Granville

2007-01-01

This paper will describe the progress of a 3 year research award from the NASA Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) that began October 1, 2006, in response to a NASA Announcement of Research Opportunity on the topic of sensor webs. The key goal of this research is to prototype an interoperable sensor architecture that will enable interoperability between a heterogeneous set of space-based, Unmanned Aerial System (UAS)-based and ground based sensors. Among the key capabilities being pursued is the ability to automatically discover and task the sensors via the Internet and to automatically discover and assemble the necessary science processing algorithms into workflows in order to transform the sensor data into valuable science products. Our first set of sensor web demonstrations will prototype science products useful in managing wildfires and will use such assets as the Earth Observing 1 spacecraft, managed out of NASA/GSFC, a UASbased instrument, managed out of Ames and some automated ground weather stations, managed by the Forest Service. Also, we are collaborating with some of the other ESTO awardees to expand this demonstration and create synergy between our research efforts. Finally, we are making use of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) suite of standards and some Web 2.0 capabilities to Beverage emerging technologies and standards. This research will demonstrate and validate a path for rapid, low cost sensor integration, which is not tied to a particular system, and thus be able to absorb new assets in an easily evolvable, coordinated manner. This in turn will help to facilitate the United States contribution to the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), as agreed by the U.S. and 60 other countries at the third Earth Observation Summit held in February of 2005.

A Query Language for Handling Big Observation Data Sets in the Sensor Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Autermann, Christian; Stasch, Christoph; Jirka, Simon; Koppe, Roland

2017-04-01

The Sensor Web provides a framework for the standardized Web-based sharing of environmental observations and sensor metadata. While the issue of varying data formats and protocols is addressed by these standards, the fast growing size of observational data is imposing new challenges for the application of these standards. Most solutions for handling big observational datasets currently focus on remote sensing applications, while big in-situ datasets relying on vector features still lack a solid approach. Conventional Sensor Web technologies may not be adequate, as the sheer size of the data transmitted and the amount of metadata accumulated may render traditional OGC Sensor Observation Services (SOS) unusable. Besides novel approaches to store and process observation data in place, e.g. by harnessing big data technologies from mainstream IT, the access layer has to be amended to utilize and integrate these large observational data archives into applications and to enable analysis. For this, an extension to the SOS will be discussed that establishes a query language to dynamically process and filter observations at storage level, similar to the OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS) and it's Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS) extension. This will enable applications to request e.g. spatial or temporal aggregated data sets in a resolution it is able to display or it requires. The approach will be developed and implemented in cooperation with the The Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research whose catalogue of data compromises marine observations of physical, chemical and biological phenomena from a wide variety of sensors, including mobile (like research vessels, aircrafts or underwater vehicles) and stationary (like buoys or research stations). Observations are made with a high temporal resolution and the resulting time series may span multiple decades.

Making large amounts of meteorological plots easily accessible to users

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lamy-Thepaut, Sylvie; Siemen, Stephan; Sahin, Cihan; Raoult, Baudouin

2015-04-01

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is an international organisation providing its member organisations with forecasts in the medium time range of 3 to 15 days, and some longer-range forecasts for up to a year ahead, with varying degrees of detail. As part of its mission, ECMWF generates an increasing number of forecast data products for its users. To support the work of forecasters and researchers and to let them make best use of ECMWF forecasts, the Centre also provides tools and interfaces to visualise their products. This allows users to make use of and explore forecasts without having to transfer large amounts of raw data. This is especially true for products based on ECMWF's 50 member ensemble forecast, where some specific processing and visualisation are applied to extract information. Every day, thousands of raw data are being pushed to the ECMWF's interactive web charts application called ecCharts, and thousands of products are processed and pushed to ECMWF's institutional web site ecCharts provides a highly interactive application to display and manipulate recent numerical forecasts to forecasters in national weather services and ECMWF's commercial customers. With ecCharts forecasters are able to explore ECMWF's medium-range forecasts in far greater detail than has previously been possible on the web, and this as soon as the forecast becomes available. All ecCharts's products are also available through a machine-to-machine web map service based on the OGC Web Map Service (WMS) standard. ECMWF institutional web site provides access to a large number of graphical products. It was entirely redesigned last year. It now shares the same infrastructure as ECMWF's ecCharts, and can benefit of some ecCharts functionalities, for example the dashboard. The dashboard initially developed for ecCharts allows users to organise their own collection of products depending on their work flow, and is being further developed. In its first implementation, It presents the user's products in a single interface with fast access to the original product, and possibilities of synchronous animations between them. But its functionalities are being extended to give users the freedom to collect not only ecCharts's 2D maps and graphs, but also other ECMWF Web products such as monthly and seasonal products, scores, and observation monitoring. The dashboard will play a key role to help the user to interpret the large amount of information that ECMWF is providing. This talk will present examples of how the new user interface can organise complex meteorological maps and graphs and show the new possibilities users have gained by using the web as a medium.

Realising the Uncertainty Enabled Model Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cornford, D.; Bastin, L.; Pebesma, E. J.; Williams, M.; Stasch, C.; Jones, R.; Gerharz, L.

2012-12-01

The FP7 funded UncertWeb project aims to create the "uncertainty enabled model web". The central concept here is that geospatial models and data resources are exposed via standard web service interfaces, such as the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) suite of encodings and interface standards, allowing the creation of complex workflows combining both data and models. The focus of UncertWeb is on the issue of managing uncertainty in such workflows, and providing the standards, architecture, tools and software support necessary to realise the "uncertainty enabled model web". In this paper we summarise the developments in the first two years of UncertWeb, illustrating several key points with examples taken from the use case requirements that motivate the project. Firstly we address the issue of encoding specifications. We explain the usage of UncertML 2.0, a flexible encoding for representing uncertainty based on a probabilistic approach. This is designed to be used within existing standards such as Observations and Measurements (O&M) and data quality elements of ISO19115 / 19139 (geographic information metadata and encoding specifications) as well as more broadly outside the OGC domain. We show profiles of O&M that have been developed within UncertWeb and how UncertML 2.0 is used within these. We also show encodings based on NetCDF and discuss possible future directions for encodings in JSON. We then discuss the issues of workflow construction, considering discovery of resources (both data and models). We discuss why a brokering approach to service composition is necessary in a world where the web service interfaces remain relatively heterogeneous, including many non-OGC approaches, in particular the more mainstream SOAP and WSDL approaches. We discuss the trade-offs between delegating uncertainty management functions to the service interfaces themselves and integrating the functions in the workflow management system. We describe two utility services to address conversion between uncertainty types, and between the spatial / temporal support of service inputs / outputs. Finally we describe the tools being generated within the UncertWeb project, considering three main aspects: i) Elicitation of uncertainties on model inputs. We are developing tools to enable domain experts to provide judgements about input uncertainties from UncertWeb model components (e.g. parameters in meteorological models) which allow panels of experts to engage in the process and reach a consensus view on the current knowledge / beliefs about that parameter or variable. We are developing systems for continuous and categorical variables as well as stationary spatial fields. ii) Visualisation of the resulting uncertain outputs from the end of the workflow, but also at intermediate steps. At this point we have prototype implementations driven by the requirements from the use cases that motivate UncertWeb. iii) Sensitivity and uncertainty analysis on model outputs. Here we show the design of the overall system we are developing, including the deployment of an emulator framework to allow computationally efficient approaches. We conclude with a summary of the open issues and remaining challenges we are facing in UncertWeb, and provide a brief overview of how we plan to tackle these.

DISTANT EARLY WARNING SYSTEM for Tsunamis - A wide-area and multi-hazard approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hammitzsch, Martin; Lendholt, Matthias; Wächter, Joachim

2010-05-01

The DEWS (Distant Early Warning System) [1] project, funded under the 6th Framework Programme of the European Union, has the objective to create a new generation of interoperable early warning systems based on an open sensor platform. This platform integrates OGC [2] SWE [3] compliant sensor systems for the rapid detection of hazardous events, like earthquakes, sea level anomalies, ocean floor occurrences, and ground displacements in the case of tsunami early warning. Based on the upstream information flow DEWS focuses on the improvement of downstream capacities of warning centres especially by improving information logistics for effective and targeted warning message aggregation for a multilingual environment. Multiple telecommunication channels will be used for the dissemination of warning messages. Wherever possible, existing standards have been integrated. The Command and Control User Interface (CCUI), a rich client application based on Eclipse RCP (Rich Client Platform) [4] and the open source GIS uDig [5], integrates various OGC services. Using WMS (Web Map Service) [6] and WFS (Web Feature Service) [7] spatial data are utilized to depict the situation picture and to integrate a simulation system via WPS (Web Processing Service) [8] to identify affected areas. Warning messages are compiled and transmitted in the OASIS [9] CAP (Common Alerting Protocol) [10] standard together with addressing information defined via EDXL-DE (Emergency Data Exchange Language - Distribution Element) [11]. Internal interfaces are realized with SOAP [12] web services. Based on results of GITEWS [13] - in particular the GITEWS Tsunami Service Bus [14] - the DEWS approach provides an implementation for tsunami early warning systems but other geological paradigms are going to follow, e.g. volcanic eruptions or landslides. Therefore in future also multi-hazard functionality is conceivable. The specific software architecture of DEWS makes it possible to dock varying sensors to the system and to extend the CCUI with hazard specific functionality. The presentation covers the DEWS project, the system architecture and the CCUI in conjunction with details of information logistics. The DEWS Wide Area Centre connecting national centres to allow the international communication and warning exchange is presented also. REFERENCES: [1] DEWS, www.dews-online.org [2] OGC, www.opengeospatial.org [3] SWE, www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/sensorweb [4] Eclipse RCP, www.eclipse.org/home/categories/rcp.php [5] uDig, udig.refractions.net [6] WMS, www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wms [7] WFS, www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wfs [8] WPS, www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wps [9] OASIS, www.oasis-open.org [10] CAP, www.oasis-open.org/specs/#capv1.1 [11] EDXL-DE, www.oasis-open.org/specs/#edxlde-v1.0 [12] SOAP, www.w3.org/TR/soap [13] GITEWS (German Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System) is a project of the German Federal Government to aid the recon¬struction of the tsunami-prone Indian Ocean region, www.gitews.org [14] The Tsunami Service Bus is the GITEWS sensor system integration platform offering standardised services for the detection and monitoring of tsunamis

New implementation of OGC Web Processing Service in Python programming language. PyWPS-4 and issues we are facing with processing of large raster data using OGC WPS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Čepický, Jáchym; Moreira de Sousa, Luís

2016-06-01

The OGC® Web Processing Service (WPS) Interface Standard provides rules for standardizing inputs and outputs (requests and responses) for geospatial processing services, such as polygon overlay. The standard also defines how a client can request the execution of a process, and how the output from the process is handled. It defines an interface that facilitates publishing of geospatial processes and client discovery of processes and and binding to those processes into workflows. Data required by a WPS can be delivered across a network or they can be available at a server. PyWPS was one of the first implementations of OGC WPS on the server side. It is written in the Python programming language and it tries to connect to all existing tools for geospatial data analysis, available on the Python platform. During the last two years, the PyWPS development team has written a new version (called PyWPS-4) completely from scratch. The analysis of large raster datasets poses several technical issues in implementing the WPS standard. The data format has to be defined and validated on the server side and binary data have to be encoded using some numeric representation. Pulling raster data from remote servers introduces security risks, in addition, running several processes in parallel has to be possible, so that system resources are used efficiently while preserving security. Here we discuss these topics and illustrate some of the solutions adopted within the PyWPS implementation.

Supporting NEESPI with Data Services - The SIB-ESS-C e-Infrastructure

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gerlach, R.; Schmullius, C.; Frotscher, K.

2009-04-01

Data discovery and retrieval is commonly among the first steps performed for any Earth science study. The way scientific data is searched and accessed has changed significantly over the past two decades. Especially the development of the World Wide Web and the technologies that evolved along shortened the data discovery and data exchange process. On the other hand the amount of data collected and distributed by earth scientists has increased exponentially requiring new concepts for data management and sharing. One such concept to meet the demand is to build up Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) or e-Infrastructures. These infrastructures usually contain components for data discovery allowing users (or other systems) to query a catalogue or registry and retrieve metadata information on available data holdings and services. Data access is typically granted using FTP/HTTP protocols or, more advanced, through Web Services. A Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach based on standardized services enables users to benefit from interoperability among different systems and to integrate distributed services into their application. The Siberian Earth System Science Cluster (SIB-ESS-C) being established at the University of Jena (Germany) is such a spatial data infrastructure following these principles and implementing standards published by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The prime objective is to provide researchers with focus on Siberia with the technical means for data discovery, data access, data publication and data analysis. The region of interest covers the entire Asian part of the Russian Federation from the Ural to the Pacific Ocean including the Ob-, Lena- and Yenissey river catchments. The aim of SIB-ESS-C is to provide a comprehensive set of data products for Earth system science in this region. Although SIB-ESS-C will be equipped with processing capabilities for in-house data generation (mainly from Earth Observation), current data holdings of SIB-ESS-C have been created in collaboration with a number of partners in previous and ongoing research projects (e.g. SIBERIA-II, SibFORD, IRIS). At the current development stage the SIB-ESS-C system comprises a federated metadata catalogue accessible through the SIB-ESS-C Web Portal or from any OGC-CSW compliant client. Due to full interoperability with other metadata catalogues users of the SIB-ESS-C Web Portal are able to search external metadata repositories. The Web Portal contains also a simple visualization component which will be extended to a comprehensive visualization and analysis tool in the near future. All data products are already accessible as a Web Mapping Service and will be made available as Web Feature and Web Coverage Services soon allowing users to directly incorporate the data into their application. The SIB-ESS-C infrastructure will be further developed as one node in a network of similar systems (e.g. NASA GIOVANNI) in the NEESPI region.

Extending Climate Analytics-As to the Earth System Grid Federation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tamkin, G.; Schnase, J. L.; Duffy, D.; McInerney, M.; Nadeau, D.; Li, J.; Strong, S.; Thompson, J. H.

2015-12-01

We are building three extensions to prior-funded work on climate analytics-as-a-service that will benefit the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) as it addresses the Big Data challenges of future climate research: (1) We are creating a cloud-based, high-performance Virtual Real-Time Analytics Testbed supporting a select set of climate variables from six major reanalysis data sets. This near real-time capability will enable advanced technologies like the Cloudera Impala-based Structured Query Language (SQL) query capabilities and Hadoop-based MapReduce analytics over native NetCDF files while providing a platform for community experimentation with emerging analytic technologies. (2) We are building a full-featured Reanalysis Ensemble Service comprising monthly means data from six reanalysis data sets. The service will provide a basic set of commonly used operations over the reanalysis collections. The operations will be made accessible through NASA's climate data analytics Web services and our client-side Climate Data Services (CDS) API. (3) We are establishing an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) WPS-compliant Web service interface to our climate data analytics service that will enable greater interoperability with next-generation ESGF capabilities. The CDS API will be extended to accommodate the new WPS Web service endpoints as well as ESGF's Web service endpoints. These activities address some of the most important technical challenges for server-side analytics and support the research community's requirements for improved interoperability and improved access to reanalysis data.

Development of ITSASGIS-5D: seeking interoperability between Marine GIS layers and scientific multidimensional data using open source tools and OGC services for multidisciplinary research.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sagarminaga, Y.; Galparsoro, I.; Reig, R.; Sánchez, J. A.

2012-04-01

Since 2000, an intense effort was conducted in AZTI's Marine Research Division to set up a data management system which could gather all the marine datasets that were being produced by different in-house research projects. For that, a corporative GIS was designed that included a data and metadata repository, a database, a layer catalog & search application and an internet map viewer. Several layers, mostly dealing with physical, chemical and biological in-situ sampling, and basic and thematic cartography including bathymetry, geomorphology, different species habitat maps, and human pressure and activities maps, were successfully gathered in this system. Very soon, it was realised that new marine technologies yielding continuous multidimensional data, sometimes called FES (Fluid Earth System) data, were difficult to handle in this structure. The data affected, mainly included numerical oceanographic and meteorological models, remote sensing data, coastal RADAR data, and some in-situ observational systems such as CTD's casts, moored or lagrangian buoys, etc. A management system for gridded multidimensional data was developed using standardized formats (netcdf using CF conventions) and tools such as THREDDS catalog (UNIDATA/UCAR) providing web services such as OPENDAP, NCSS, and WCS, as well as ncWMS service developed by the Reading e-science Center. At present, a system (ITSASGIS-5D) is being developed, based on OGC standards and open-source tools to allow interoperability between all the data types mentioned before. This system includes, in the server side, postgresql/postgis databases and geoserver for GIS layers, and THREDDS/Opendap and ncWMS services for FES gridded data. Moreover, an on-line client is being developed to allow joint access, user configuration, data visualisation & query and data distribution. This client is using mapfish, ExtJS - GeoEXT, and openlayers libraries. Through this presentation the elements of the first released version of this system will be described and showed, together with the new topics to be developed in new versions that include among others, the integration of geoNetwork libraries and tools for both FES and GIS metadata management, and the use of new OGC Sensor Observation Services (SOS) to integrate non gridded multidimensional data such as time series, depth profiles or trajectories provided by different observational systems. The final aim of this approach is to contribute to the multidisciplinary access and use of marine data for management and research activities, and facilitate the implementation of integrated ecosystem based approaches in the fields of fisheries advice and management, marine spatial planning, or the implementation of the European policies such as the Water Framework Directive, the Marine Strategy Framework Directive or the Habitat Framework Directive.

Datacube Interoperability, Encoding Independence, and Analytics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baumann, Peter; Hirschorn, Eric; Maso, Joan

2017-04-01

Datacubes are commonly accepted as an enabling paradigm which provides a handy abstraction for accessing and analyzing the zillions of image files delivered by the manifold satellite instruments and climate simulations, among others. Additionally, datacubes are the classic model for statistical and OLAP datacubes, so a further information category can be integrated. From a standards perspective, spatio-temporal datacubes naturally are included in the concept of coverages which encompass regular and irregular grids, point clouds, and general meshes - or, more abstractly, digital representations of spatio-temporally varying phenomena. ISO 19123, which is identical to OGC Abstract Topic 6, gives a high-level abstract definition which is complemented by the OGC Coverage Implementation Schema (CIS) which is an interoperable, yet format independent concretization of the abstract model. Currently, ISO is working on adopting OGC CIS as ISO 19123-2; the existing ISO 19123 standard is under revision by one of the abstract authors and will become ISO 19123-1. The roadmap agreed by ISO further foresees adoption of the OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS) as an ISO standard so that a complete data and service model will exist. In 2016, INSPIRE has adopted WCS as Coverage Download Service, including the datacube analytics language Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS). The rasdaman technology (www.rasdaman.org) is both OGC and INSPIRE Reference Implementation. In the global EarthServer initiative rasdaman database sizes are exceeding 250 TB today, heading for the Petabyte frontier well in 2017. Technically, CIS defines a compact, efficient model for representing multi-dimensional datacubes in several ways. The classical coverage cube defines a domain set (where are values?), a range set (what are these values?), and range type (what do the values mean?), as well as a "bag" for arbitrary metadata. With CIS 1.1, coordinate/value pair sequences have been added, as well as tiled representations. Further, CIS 1.1 offers a unified model for any kind of regular and irregular grids, also allowing sensor models as per SensorML. Encodings include ASCII formats like GML, JSON, RDF as well as binary formats like GeoTIFF, NetCDF, JPEG2000, and GRIB2; further, a container concept allows mixed representations within one coverage file utilizing zip or other convenient package formats. Through the tight integration with the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE), a lossless "transport" from sensor into coverage world is ensured. The corresponding service model of WCS supports datacube operations ranging from simple data extraction to complex ad-hoc analytics with WPCS. Notably, W3C is working has set out on a coverage model as well; it has been designed relatively independently from the abovementioned standards, but there is informal agreement to link it into the CIS universe (which allows for different, yet interchangeable representations). Particularly interesting in the W3C proposal is the detailed semantic modeling of metadata; as CIS 1.1 supports RDF, a tight coupling seems feasible.

Exploring NASA OMI Level 2 Data With Visualization

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wei, Jennifer; Yang, Wenli; Johnson, James; Zhao, Peisheng; Gerasimov, Irina; Pham, Long; Vicente, Gilberto

2014-01-01

Satellite data products are important for a wide variety of applications that can bring far-reaching benefits to the science community and the broader society. These benefits can best be achieved if the satellite data are well utilized and interpreted, such as model inputs from satellite, or extreme events (such as volcano eruptions, dust storms,... etc.). Unfortunately, this is not always the case, despite the abundance and relative maturity of numerous satellite data products provided by NASA and other organizations. Such obstacles may be avoided by allowing users to visualize satellite data as "images", with accurate pixel-level (Level-2) information, including pixel coverage area delineation and science team recommended quality screening for individual geophysical parameters. We present a prototype service from the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) supporting Aura OMI Level-2 Data with GIS-like capabilities. Functionality includes selecting data sources (e.g., multiple parameters under the same scene, like NO2 and SO2, or the same parameter with different aggregation methods, like NO2 in OMNO2G and OMNO2D products), user-defined area-of-interest and temporal extents, zooming, panning, overlaying, sliding, and data subsetting, reformatting, and reprojection. The system will allow any user-defined portal interface (front-end) to connect to our backend server with OGC standard-compliant Web Mapping Service (WMS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS) calls. This back-end service should greatly enhance its expandability to integrate additional outside data/map sources.

Exploring NASA OMI Level 2 Data With Visualization

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wei, Jennifer C.; Yang, Wenli; Johnson, James; Zhao, Peisheng; Gerasimov, Irina; Pham, Long; Vincente, Gilbert

2014-01-01

Satellite data products are important for a wide variety of applications that can bring far-reaching benefits to the science community and the broader society. These benefits can best be achieved if the satellite data are well utilized and interpreted, such as model inputs from satellite, or extreme events (such as volcano eruptions, dust storms, etc.).Unfortunately, this is not always the case, despite the abundance and relative maturity of numerous satellite data products provided by NASA and other organizations. Such obstacles may be avoided by allowing users to visualize satellite data as images, with accurate pixel-level (Level-2) information, including pixel coverage area delineation and science team recommended quality screening for individual geophysical parameters. We present a prototype service from the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) supporting Aura OMI Level-2 Data with GIS-like capabilities. Functionality includes selecting data sources (e.g., multiple parameters under the same scene, like NO2 and SO2, or the same parameter with different aggregation methods, like NO2 in OMNO2G and OMNO2D products), user-defined area-of-interest and temporal extents, zooming, panning, overlaying, sliding, and data subsetting, reformatting, and reprojection. The system will allow any user-defined portal interface (front-end) to connect to our backend server with OGC standard-compliant Web Mapping Service (WMS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS) calls. This back-end service should greatly enhance its expandability to integrate additional outside data-map sources.

Climate Data Service in the FP7 EarthServer Project

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mantovani, Simone; Natali, Stefano; Barboni, Damiano; Grazia Veratelli, Maria

2013-04-01

EarthServer is a European Framework Program project that aims at developing and demonstrating the usability of open standards (OGC and W3C) in the management of multi-source, any-size, multi-dimensional spatio-temporal data - in short: "Big Earth Data Analytics". In order to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach, six thematic Lighthouse Applications (Cryospheric Science, Airborne Science, Atmospheric/ Climate Science, Geology, Oceanography, and Planetary Science), each with 100+ TB, are implemented. Scope of the Atmospheric/Climate lighthouse application (Climate Data Service) is to implement the system containing global to regional 2D / 3D / 4D datasets retrieved either from satellite observations, from numerical modelling and in-situ observations. Data contained in the Climate Data Service regard atmospheric profiles of temperature / humidity, aerosol content, AOT, and cloud properties provided by entities such as the European Centre for Mesoscale Weather Forecast (ECMWF), the Austrian Meteorological Service (Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik - ZAMG), the Italian National Agency for new technologies, energies and sustainable development (ENEA), and the Sweden's Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (Sveriges Meteorologiska och Hydrologiska Institut -- SMHI). The system, through an easy-to-use web application permits to browse the loaded data, visualize their temporal evolution on a specific point with the creation of 2D graphs of a single field, or compare different fields on the same point (e.g. temperatures from different models and satellite observations), and visualize maps of specific fields superimposed with high resolution background maps. All data access operations and display are performed by means of OGC standard operations namely WMS, WCS and WCPS. The EarthServer project has just started its second year over a 3-years development plan: the present status the system contains subsets of the final database, with the scope of demonstrating I/O modules and visualization tools. At the end of the project all datasets will be available to the users.

rasdaman Array Database: current status

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Merticariu, George; Toader, Alexandru

2015-04-01

rasdaman (Raster Data Manager) is a Free Open Source Array Database Management System which provides functionality for storing and processing massive amounts of raster data in the form of multidimensional arrays. The user can access, process and delete the data using SQL. The key features of rasdaman are: flexibility (datasets of any dimensionality can be processed with the help of SQL queries), scalability (rasdaman's distributed architecture enables it to seamlessly run on cloud infrastructures while offering an increase in performance with the increase of computation resources), performance (real-time access, processing, mixing and filtering of arrays of any dimensionality) and reliability (legacy communication protocol replaced with a new one based on cutting edge technology - Google Protocol Buffers and ZeroMQ). Among the data with which the system works, we can count 1D time series, 2D remote sensing imagery, 3D image time series, 3D geophysical data, and 4D atmospheric and climate data. Most of these representations cannot be stored only in the form of raw arrays, as the location information of the contents is also important for having a correct geoposition on Earth. This is defined by ISO 19123 as coverage data. rasdaman provides coverage data support through the Petascope service. Extensions were added on top of rasdaman in order to provide support for the Geoscience community. The following OGC standards are currently supported: Web Map Service (WMS), Web Coverage Service (WCS), and Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS). The Web Map Service is an extension which provides zoom and pan navigation over images provided by a map server. Starting with version 9.1, rasdaman supports WMS version 1.3. The Web Coverage Service provides capabilities for downloading multi-dimensional coverage data. Support is also provided for several extensions of this service: Subsetting Extension, Scaling Extension, and, starting with version 9.1, Transaction Extension, which defines request types for inserting, updating and deleting coverages. A web client, designed for both novice and experienced users, is also available for the service and its extensions. The client offers an intuitive interface that allows users to work with multi-dimensional coverages by abstracting the specifics of the standard definitions of the requests. The Web Coverage Processing Service defines a language for on-the-fly processing and filtering multi-dimensional raster coverages. rasdaman exposes this service through the WCS processing extension. Demonstrations are provided online via the Earthlook website (earthlook.org) which presents use-cases from a wide variety of application domains, using the rasdaman system as processing engine.

Stream Flow Prediction and Flood Mapping in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya with the ICIMOD Water Resources App Portal (IWRAP)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nelson, J.; Ames, D. P.; Jones, N.; Souffront, M.

2016-12-01

Earth observations of precipitation, temperature, moisture, and other atmospheric and land surface conditions form the foundation of global hydrologic forecasts that are increasingly available in native as well as other derived products. The European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) have developed such products for global flood awareness which can be downscaled to smaller regions and used for stream flow prediction in underserved areas such as the Hindu Kush-Himalaya. Combined with digital elevation data, now available at 30 meters through the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) reconnaissance-level flood maps can be generated across wide regions that would otherwise not be possible and where increased information to drive higher resolution models are available the same forecasts can be used to provide forcing inflows for improved flood maps. Advances in cloud computing offer a unique opportunity to facilitate deployment of water resources models as decision-making tools in the cloud-based ICIMOD Water Resources App Portal or IWRAP. The interactive nature of web apps makes this an excellent medium for creating decision support tools that harness cutting edge modeling techniques. Thin client apps hosted in a cloud portal eliminates the need for the decision makers to procure and maintain the high performance hardware required by the models, deal with issues related to software installation and platform incompatibilities, or monitor and install software updates, a problem that is exacerbated in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya where both financial and technical capacity are limited. All that is needed to use the system is an Internet connection and a web browser. We will take advantage of these technologies to develop tools which can be centrally maintained but openly accessible. Advanced mapping and visualization will make results intuitive and information derived actionable. We will also take advantage of the emerging standards for sharing water information across the web using the OGC and WMO approved WaterML standards. This will make our tools interoperable and we will help train those we work with so that tools and data from other projects can both consume and share with the tools developed in our project.

LandEx - Fast, FOSS-Based Application for Query and Retrieval of Land Cover Patterns

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Netzel, P.; Stepinski, T.

2012-12-01

The amount of satellite-based spatial data is continuously increasing making a development of efficient data search tools a priority. The bulk of existing research on searching satellite-gathered data concentrates on images and is based on the concept of Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR); however, available solutions are not efficient and robust enough to be put to use as deployable web-based search tools. Here we report on development of a practical, deployable tool that searches classified, rather than raw image. LandEx (Landscape Explorer) is a GeoWeb-based tool for Content-Based Pattern Retrieval (CBPR) contained within the National Land Cover Dataset 2006 (NLCD2006). The USGS-developed NLCD2006 is derived from Landsat multispectral images; it covers the entire conterminous U.S. with the resolution of 30 meters/pixel and it depicts 16 land cover classes. The size of NLCD2006 is about 10 Gpixels (161,000 x 100,000 pixels). LandEx is a multi-tier GeoWeb application based on Open Source Software. Main components are: GeoExt/OpenLayers (user interface), GeoServer (OGC WMS, WCS and WPS server), and GRASS (calculation engine). LandEx performs search using query-by-example approach: user selects a reference scene (exhibiting a chosen pattern of land cover classes) and the tool produces, in real time, a map indicating a degree of similarity between the reference pattern and all local patterns across the U.S. Scene pattern is encapsulated by a 2D histogram of classes and sizes of single-class clumps. Pattern similarity is based on the notion of mutual information. The resultant similarity map can be viewed and navigated in a web browser, or it can download as a GeoTiff file for more in-depth analysis. The LandEx is available at http://sil.uc.edu

Development of a Ground Water Data Portal for Interoperable Data Exchange within the U.S. National Ground Water Monitoring Network and Beyond

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Booth, N. L.; Brodaric, B.; Lucido, J. M.; Kuo, I.; Boisvert, E.; Cunningham, W. L.

2011-12-01

The need for a national groundwater monitoring network within the United States is profound and has been recognized by organizations outside government as a major data gap for managing ground-water resources. Our country's communities, industries, agriculture, energy production and critical ecosystems rely on water being available in adequate quantity and suitable quality. To meet this need the Subcommittee on Ground Water, established by the Federal Advisory Committee on Water Information, created a National Ground Water Monitoring Network (NGWMN) envisioned as a voluntary, integrated system of data collection, management and reporting that will provide the data needed to address present and future ground-water management questions raised by Congress, Federal, State and Tribal agencies and the public. The NGWMN Data Portal is the means by which policy makers, academics and the public will be able to access ground water data through one seamless web-based application from disparate data sources. Data systems in the United States exist at many organizational and geographic levels and differing vocabulary and data structures have prevented data sharing and reuse. The data portal will facilitate the retrieval of and access to groundwater data on an as-needed basis from multiple, dispersed data repositories allowing the data to continue to be housed and managed by the data provider while being accessible for the purposes of the national monitoring network. This work leverages Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) data exchange standards and information models. To advance these standards for supporting the exchange of ground water information, an OGC Interoperability Experiment was organized among international participants from government, academia and the private sector. The experiment focused on ground water data exchange across the U.S. / Canadian border. WaterML2.0, an evolving international standard for water observations, encodes ground water levels and is exchanged using the OGC Sensor Observation Service (SOS) standard. Ground Water Markup Language (GWML) encodes well log, lithology and construction information and is exchanged using the OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) standard. Within the NGWMN Data Portal, data exchange between distributed data provider repositories is achieved through the use of these web services and a central mediation hub, which performs both format (syntactic) and nomenclature (semantic) mediation, conforming heterogeneous inputs into common standards-based outputs. Through these common standards, interoperability between the U.S. NGWMN and Canada's Groundwater Information Network (GIN) is achieved, advancing a ground water virtual observatory across North America.

Exposing Coverage Data to the Semantic Web within the MELODIES project: Challenges and Solutions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Riechert, Maik; Blower, Jon; Griffiths, Guy

2016-04-01

Coverage data, typically big in data volume, assigns values to a given set of spatiotemporal positions, together with metadata on how to interpret those values. Existing storage formats like netCDF, HDF and GeoTIFF all have various restrictions that prevent them from being preferred formats for use over the web, especially the semantic web. Factors that are relevant here are the processing complexity, the semantic richness of the metadata, and the ability to request partial information, such as a subset or just the appropriate metadata. Making coverage data available within web browsers opens the door to new ways for working with such data, including new types of visualization and on-the-fly processing. As part of the European project MELODIES (http://melodiesproject.eu) we look into the challenges of exposing such coverage data in an interoperable and web-friendly way, and propose solutions using a host of emerging technologies like JSON-LD, the DCAT and GeoDCAT-AP ontologies, the CoverageJSON format, and new approaches to REST APIs for coverage data. We developed the CoverageJSON format within the MELODIES project as an additional way to expose coverage data to the web, next to having simple rendered images available using standards like OGC's WMS. CoverageJSON partially incorporates JSON-LD but does not encode individual data values as semantic resources, making use of the technology in a practical manner. The development also focused on it being a potential output format for OGC WCS. We will demonstrate how existing netCDF data can be exposed as CoverageJSON resources on the web together with a REST API that allows users to explore the data and run operations such as spatiotemporal subsetting. We will show various use cases from the MELODIES project, including reclassification of a Land Cover dataset client-side within the browser with the ability for the user to influence the reclassification result by making use of the above technologies.

Concept of a spatial data infrastructure for web-mapping, processing and service provision for geo-hazards

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Weinke, Elisabeth; Hölbling, Daniel; Albrecht, Florian; Friedl, Barbara

2017-04-01

Geo-hazards and their effects are distributed geographically over wide regions. The effective mapping and monitoring is essential for hazard assessment and mitigation. It is often best achieved using satellite imagery and new object-based image analysis approaches to identify and delineate geo-hazard objects (landslides, floods, forest fires, storm damages, etc.). At the moment, several local/national databases and platforms provide and publish data of different types of geo-hazards as well as web-based risk maps and decision support systems. Also, the European commission implemented the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (EMS) in 2015 that publishes information about natural and man-made disasters and risks. Currently, no platform for landslides or geo-hazards as such exists that enables the integration of the user in the mapping and monitoring process. In this study we introduce the concept of a spatial data infrastructure for object delineation, web-processing and service provision of landslide information with the focus on user interaction in all processes. A first prototype for the processing and mapping of landslides in Austria and Italy has been developed within the project Land@Slide, funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG in the Austrian Space Applications Program ASAP. The spatial data infrastructure and its services for the mapping, processing and analysis of landslides can be extended to other regions and to all types of geo-hazards for analysis and delineation based on Earth Observation (EO) data. The architecture of the first prototypical spatial data infrastructure includes four main areas of technical components. The data tier consists of a file storage system and the spatial data catalogue for the management of EO-data, other geospatial data on geo-hazards, as well as descriptions and protocols for the data processing and analysis. An interface to extend the data integration from external sources (e.g. Sentinel-2 data) is planned for the possibility of rapid mapping. The server tier consists of java based web and GIS server. Sub and main services are part of the service tier. Sub services are for example map services, feature editing services, geometry services, geoprocessing services and metadata services. For (meta)data provision and to support data interoperability, web standards of the OGC and the rest-interface is used. Four central main services are designed and developed: (1) a mapping service (including image segmentation and classification approaches), (2) a monitoring service to monitor changes over time, (3) a validation service to analyze landslide delineations from different sources and (4) an infrastructure service to identify affected landslides. The main services use and combine parts of the sub services. Furthermore, a series of client applications based on new technology standards making use of the data and services offered by the spatial data infrastructure. Next steps include the design to extend the current spatial data infrastructure to other areas and geo-hazard types to develop a spatial data infrastructure that can assist targeted mapping and monitoring of geo-hazards on a global context.

Mapping and Modeling Web Portal to Advance Global Monitoring and Climate Research

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chang, G.; Malhotra, S.; Bui, B.; Sadaqathulla, S.; Goodale, C. E.; Ramirez, P.; Kim, R. M.; Rodriguez, L.; Law, E.

2011-12-01

Today, the principal investigators of NASA Earth Science missions develop their own software to manipulate, visualize, and analyze the data collected from Earth, space, and airborne observation instruments. There is very little, if any, collaboration among these principal investigators due to the lack of collaborative tools, which would allow these scientists to share data and results. At NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), under the Lunar Mapping and Modeling Project (LMMP), we have built a web portal that exposes a set of common services to users to allow search, visualization, subset, and download lunar science data. Users also have access to a set of tools that visualize, analyze and annotate the data. These services are developed according to industry standards for data access and manipulation, such REST and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web services. As a result, users can access the datasets through custom written applications or off-the-shelf applications such as Google Earth. Even though it's currently used to store and process lunar data, this web portal infrastructure has been designed to support other solar system bodies such as asteroids and planets, including Earth. The infrastructure uses a combination of custom, commercial, and open-source software as well as off-the-shelf hardware and pay-by-use cloud computing services. The use of standardized web service interfaces facilitates platform and application-independent access to the services and data. For instance, we have software clients for the LMMP portal that provide a rich browsing and analysis experience from a variety of platforms including iOS and Android mobile platforms and large screen multi-touch displays with 3-D terrain viewing functions. The service-oriented architecture and design principles utilized in the implementation of the portal lends itself to be reusable and scalable and could naturally be extended to include a collaborative environment that enables scientists and principal investigators to share their research and analysis seamlessly. In addition, this extension will allow users to easily share their tools and data, and to enrich their mapping and analysis experiences. In this talk, we will describe the advanced data management and portal technologies used to power this collaborative environment. We will further illustrate how this environment can enable, enhance and advance global monitoring and climate research.

Integrated Web-Based Access to and use of Satellite Remote Sensing Data for Improved Decision Making in Hydrologic Applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Teng, W.; Chiu, L.; Kempler, S.; Liu, Z.; Nadeau, D.; Rui, H.

2006-12-01

Using NASA satellite remote sensing data from multiple sources for hydrologic applications can be a daunting task and requires a detailed understanding of the data's internal structure and physical implementation. Gaining this understanding and applying it to data reduction is a time-consuming task that must be undertaken before the core investigation can begin. In order to facilitate such investigations, the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) has developed the GES-DISC Interactive Online Visualization ANd aNalysis Infrastructure or "Giovanni," which supports a family of Web interfaces (instances) that allow users to perform interactive visualization and analysis online without downloading any data. Two such Giovanni instances are particularly relevant to hydrologic applications: the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Online Visualization and Analysis System (TOVAS) and the Agricultural Online Visualization and Analysis System (AOVAS), both highly popular and widely used for a variety of applications, including those related to several NASA Applications of National Priority, such as Agricultural Efficiency, Disaster Management, Ecological Forecasting, Homeland Security, and Public Health. Dynamic, context- sensitive Web services provided by TOVAS and AOVAS enable users to seamlessly access NASA data from within, and deeply integrate the data into, their local client environments. One example is between TOVAS and Florida International University's TerraFly, a Web-enabled system that serves a broad segment of the research and applications community, by facilitating access to various textual, remotely sensed, and vector data. Another example is between AOVAS and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service (USDA FAS)'s Crop Explorer, the primary decision support tool used by FAS to monitor the production, supply, and demand of agricultural commodities worldwide. AOVAS is also part of GES DISC's Agricultural Information System (AIS), which can operationally provide satellite remote sensing data products (e.g., near- real-time rainfall) and analysis services to agricultural users. AIS enables the remote, interoperable access to distributed data, by using the GrADS-Data Server (GDS) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)- compliant MapServer. The latter allows the access of AIS data from any OGC-compliant client, such as the Earth-Sun System Gateway (ESG) or Google Earth. The Giovanni system is evolving towards a Service- Oriented Architecture and is highly customizable (e.g., adding new products or services), thus availing the hydrologic applications user community of Giovanni's simple-to-use and powerful capabilities to improve decision-making.

Generic Sensor Data Fusion Services for Web-enabled Environmental Risk Management and Decision-Support Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sabeur, Zoheir; Middleton, Stuart; Veres, Galina; Zlatev, Zlatko; Salvo, Nicola

2010-05-01

The advancement of smart sensor technology in the last few years has led to an increase in the deployment of affordable sensors for monitoring the environment around Europe. This is generating large amounts of sensor observation information and inevitably leading to problems about how to manage large volumes of data as well as making sense out the data for decision-making. In addition, the various European Directives (Water Framework Diectives, Bathing Water Directives, Habitat Directives, etc.. ) which regulate human activities in the environment and the INSPIRE Directive on spatial information management regulations have implicitely led the designated European Member States environment agencies and authorities to put in place new sensor monitoring infrastructure and share information about environmental regions under their statutory responsibilities. They will need to work cross border and collectively reach environmental quality standards. They will also need to regularly report to the EC on the quality of the environments of which they are responsible and make such information accessible to the members of the public. In recent years, early pioneering work on the design of service oriented architecture using sensor networks has been achieved. Information web-services infrastructure using existing data catalogues and web-GIS map services can now be enriched with the deployment of new sensor observation and data fusion and modelling services using OGC standards. The deployment of the new services which describe sensor observations and intelligent data-processing using data fusion techniques can now be implemented and provide added value information with spatial-temporal uncertainties to the next generation of decision support service systems. The new decision support service systems have become key to implement across Europe in order to comply with EU environmental regulations and INSPIRE. In this paper, data fusion services using OGC standards with sensor observation data streams are described in context of a geo-distributed service infrastructure specialising in multiple environmental risk management and decision-support. The sensor data fusion services are deployed and validated in two use cases. These are respectively concerned with: 1) Microbial risks forecast in bathing waters; and 2) Geohazards in urban zones during underground tunneling activities. This research was initiated in the SANY Integrated Project(www.sany-ip.org) and funded by the European Commission under the 6th Framework Programme.

The evolution of the CUAHSI Water Markup Language (WaterML)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zaslavsky, I.; Valentine, D.; Maidment, D.; Tarboton, D. G.; Whiteaker, T.; Hooper, R.; Kirschtel, D.; Rodriguez, M.

2009-04-01

The CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System (HIS, his.cuahsi.org) uses web services as the core data exchange mechanism which provides programmatic connection between many heterogeneous sources of hydrologic data and a variety of online and desktop client applications. The service message schema follows the CUAHSI Water Markup Language (WaterML) 1.x specification (see OGC Discussion Paper 07-041r1). Data sources that can be queried via WaterML-compliant water data services include national and international repositories such as USGS NWIS (National Water Information System), USEPA STORET (Storage & Retrieval), USDA SNOTEL (Snowpack Telemetry), NCDC ISH and ISD(Integrated Surface Hourly and Daily Data), MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), and DAYMET (Daily Surface Weather Data and Climatological Summaries). Besides government data sources, CUAHSI HIS provides access to a growing number of academic hydrologic observation networks. These networks are registered by researchers associated with 11 hydrologic observatory testbeds around the US, and other research, government and commercial groups wishing to join the emerging CUAHSI Water Data Federation. The Hydrologic Information Server (HIS Server) software stack deployed at NSF-supported hydrologic observatory sites and other universities around the country, supports a hydrologic data publication workflow which includes the following steps: (1) observational data are loaded from static files or streamed from sensors into a local instance of an Observations Data Model (ODM) database; (2) a generic web service template is configured for the new ODM instance to expose the data as a WaterML-compliant water data service, and (3) the new water data service is registered at the HISCentral registry (hiscentral.cuahsi.org), its metadata are harvested and semantically tagged using concepts from a hydrologic ontology. As a result, the new service is indexed in the CUAHSI central metadata catalog, and becomes available for spatial and semantics-based queries. The main component of interoperability across hydrologic data repositories in CUAHSI HIS is mapping different repository schemas and semantics to a shared community information model for observations made at stationary points. This information model has been implemented as both a relational schema (ODM) and an XML schema (WaterML). Its main design drivers have been data storage and data interchange needs of hydrology researchers, a series of community reviews of the ODM, and the practices of hydrologic data modeling and presentation adopted by federal agencies as observed in agency online data access applications, such as NWISWeb and USEPA STORET. The goal of the first version of WaterML was to encode the semantics of hydrologic observations discovery and retrieval and implement water data services in a way that is generic across different data providers. In particular, this implied maintaining a single common representation for the key constructs returned to web service calls, related to observations, features of interest, observation procedures, observation series, etc. Another WaterML design consideration was to create (in version 1 of CUAHSI HIS in particular) a fairly rigid, compact, and simple XML schema which was easy to generate and parse, thus creating the least barrier for adoption by hydrologists. Each of the three main request methods in the water data web services - GetSiteInfo, GetVariableInfo, and GetValues - has a corresponding response element in WaterML: SiteResponse, VariableResponse, and TimeSeriesResponse. The strictness and compactness of the first version of WaterML supported its community adoption. Over the last two years, several ODM and WaterML implementations for various platforms have emerged, and several Water Data Services client applications have been created by outside groups in both industry and academia. In a significant development, the WaterML specification has been adopted by federal agencies. The experimental USGS NWIS Daily Values web service returns WaterML-compliant TimeSeriesResponse. NCDC is also prototyping WaterML for data delivery, and has developed a REST-based service that generates WaterML- compliant output for its integrated station network. These agency-supported web services provide a much more efficient way to deliver agency data compared to the web site scraper services that the CUAHSI HIS project developed initially. Adoption of WaterML by the US Geological Survey is particularly significant because the USGS maintains by far the largest water data repository in the United States. For version 1.1, WaterML has evolved to reflect the deployment experience at hydrologic observatory testbeds, as well as feedback from hydrologic data repository managers at federal and state agencies. Further development of WaterML and enhancement of the underlying information model is the focus of the recently established OGC Hydrology Domain Working Group, whose mission is to profile OGC standards (GML, O&M, SOS, WCS, WFS) for the water resources domain and thus ensure WaterML's wider applicability and easier implementation. WaterML 2.0 is envisioned as an OGC-compliant application schema that supports OGC features, can express different types of observations and various groupings of observations, and allows researchers to define custom metadata elements. This presentation will discuss the information model underlying WaterML and describe the rationale, design drivers and evolution of WaterML and the water data services, illustrating their recent application in the context of CUAHSI HIS and the hydrologic observatory testbeds.

The European Drought Observatory (EDO): Current State and Future Directions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vogt, J.; Singleton, A.; Sepulcre, G.; Micale, F.; Barbosa, P.

2012-12-01

Europe has repeatedly been affected by droughts, resulting in considerable ecological and economic damage and climate change studies indicate a trend towards increasing climate variability most likely resulting in more frequent drought occurrences also in Europe. Against this background, the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) is developing methods and tools for assessing, monitoring and forecasting droughts in Europe and develops a European Drought Observatory (EDO) to complement and integrate national activities with a European view. At the core of the European Drought Observatory (EDO) is a portal, including a map server, a metadata catalogue, a media-monitor and analysis tools. The map server presents Europe-wide up-to-date information on the occurrence and severity of droughts, which is complemented by more detailed information provided by regional, national and local observatories through OGC compliant web mapping and web coverage services. In addition, time series of historical maps as well as graphs of the temporal evolution of drought indices for individual grid cells and administrative regions in Europe can be retrieved and analysed. Current work is focusing on validating the available products, improving the functionalities, extending the linkage to additional national and regional drought information systems and improving medium to long-range probabilistic drought forecasting products. Probabilistic forecasts are attractive in that they provide an estimate of the range of uncertainty in a particular forecast. Longer-term goals include the development of long-range drought forecasting products, the analysis of drought hazard and risk, the monitoring of drought impact and the integration of EDO in a global drought information system. The talk will provide an overview on the development and state of EDO, the different products, and the ways to include a wide range of stakeholders (i.e. European, national river basin, and local authorities) in the development of the system as well as an outlook on the future developments.

Remote Sensing Information Gateway: A free application and web service for fast, convenient, interoperable access to large repositories of atmospheric data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Plessel, T.; Szykman, J.; Freeman, M.

2012-12-01

EPA's Remote Sensing Information Gateway (RSIG) is a widely used free applet and web service for quickly and easily retrieving, visualizing and saving user-specified subsets of atmospheric data - by variable, geographic domain and time range. Petabytes of available data include thousands of variables from a set of NASA and NOAA satellites, aircraft, ground stations and EPA air-quality models. The RSIG applet is used by atmospheric researchers and uses the rsigserver web service to obtain data and images. The rsigserver web service is compliant with the Open Geospatial Consortium Web Coverage Service (OGC-WCS) standard to facilitate data discovery and interoperability. Since rsigserver is publicly accessible, it can be (and is) used by other applications. This presentation describes the architecture and technical implementation details of this successful system with an emphasis on achieving convenience, high-performance, data integrity and security.

Software Framework for Development of Web-GIS Systems for Analysis of Georeferenced Geophysical Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Okladnikov, I.; Gordov, E. P.; Titov, A. G.

2011-12-01

Georeferenced datasets (meteorological databases, modeling and reanalysis results, remote sensing products, etc.) are currently actively used in numerous applications including modeling, interpretation and forecast of climatic and ecosystem changes for various spatial and temporal scales. Due to inherent heterogeneity of environmental datasets as well as their size which might constitute up to tens terabytes for a single dataset at present studies in the area of climate and environmental change require a special software support. A dedicated software framework for rapid development of providing such support information-computational systems based on Web-GIS technologies has been created. The software framework consists of 3 basic parts: computational kernel developed using ITTVIS Interactive Data Language (IDL), a set of PHP-controllers run within specialized web portal, and JavaScript class library for development of typical components of web mapping application graphical user interface (GUI) based on AJAX technology. Computational kernel comprise of number of modules for datasets access, mathematical and statistical data analysis and visualization of results. Specialized web-portal consists of web-server Apache, complying OGC standards Geoserver software which is used as a base for presenting cartographical information over the Web, and a set of PHP-controllers implementing web-mapping application logic and governing computational kernel. JavaScript library aiming at graphical user interface development is based on GeoExt library combining ExtJS Framework and OpenLayers software. Based on the software framework an information-computational system for complex analysis of large georeferenced data archives was developed. Structured environmental datasets available for processing now include two editions of NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis, JMA/CRIEPI JRA-25 Reanalysis, ECMWF ERA-40 Reanalysis, ECMWF ERA Interim Reanalysis, MRI/JMA APHRODITE's Water Resources Project Reanalysis, meteorological observational data for the territory of the former USSR for the 20th century, and others. Current version of the system is already involved into a scientific research process. Particularly, recently the system was successfully used for analysis of Siberia climate changes and its impact in the region. The software framework presented allows rapid development of Web-GIS systems for geophysical data analysis thus providing specialists involved into multidisciplinary research projects with reliable and practical instruments for complex analysis of climate and ecosystems changes on global and regional scales. This work is partially supported by RFBR grants #10-07-00547, #11-05-01190, and SB RAS projects 4.31.1.5, 4.31.2.7, 4, 8, 9, 50 and 66.

Enabling Web-Based GIS Tools for Internet and Mobile Devices To Improve and Expand NASA Data Accessibility and Analysis Functionality for the Renewable Energy and Agricultural Applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ross, A.; Stackhouse, P. W.; Tisdale, B.; Tisdale, M.; Chandler, W.; Hoell, J. M., Jr.; Kusterer, J.

2014-12-01

The NASA Langley Research Center Science Directorate and Atmospheric Science Data Center have initiated a pilot program to utilize Geographic Information System (GIS) tools that enable, generate and store climatological averages using spatial queries and calculations in a spatial database resulting in greater accessibility of data for government agencies, industry and private sector individuals. The major objectives of this effort include the 1) Processing and reformulation of current data to be consistent with ESRI and openGIS tools, 2) Develop functions to improve capability and analysis that produce "on-the-fly" data products, extending these past the single location to regional and global scales. 3) Update the current web sites to enable both web-based and mobile application displays for optimization on mobile platforms, 4) Interact with user communities in government and industry to test formats and usage of optimization, and 5) develop a series of metrics that allow for monitoring of progressive performance. Significant project results will include the the development of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) compliant web services (WMS, WCS, WFS, WPS) that serve renewable energy and agricultural application products to users using GIS software and tools. Each data product and OGC service will be registered within ECHO, the Common Metadata Repository, the Geospatial Platform, and Data.gov to ensure the data are easily discoverable and provide data users with enhanced access to SSE data, parameters, services, and applications. This effort supports cross agency, cross organization, and interoperability of SSE data products and services by collaborating with DOI, NRCan, NREL, NCAR, and HOMER for requirements vetting and test bed users before making available to the wider public.

Development of Integration Framework for Sensor Network and Satellite Image based on OGC Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ninsawat, Sarawut; Yamamoto, Hirokazu; Kamei, Akihide; Nakamura, Ryosuke; Tsuchida, Satoshi; Maeda, Takahisa

2010-05-01

With the availability of network enabled sensing devices, the volume of information being collected by networked sensors has increased dramatically in recent years. Over 100 physical, chemical and biological properties can be sensed using in-situ or remote sensing technology. A collection of these sensor nodes forms a sensor network, which is easily deployable to provide a high degree of visibility into real-world physical processes as events unfold. The sensor observation network could allow gathering of diverse types of data at greater spatial and temporal resolution, through the use of wired or wireless network infrastructure, thus real-time or near-real time data from sensor observation network allow researchers and decision-makers to respond speedily to events. However, in the case of environmental monitoring, only a capability to acquire in-situ data periodically is not sufficient but also the management and proper utilization of data also need to be careful consideration. It requires the implementation of database and IT solutions that are robust, scalable and able to interoperate between difference and distributed stakeholders to provide lucid, timely and accurate update to researchers, planners and citizens. The GEO (Global Earth Observation) Grid is primarily aiming at providing an e-Science infrastructure for the earth science community. The GEO Grid is designed to integrate various kinds of data related to the earth observation using the grid technology, which is developed for sharing data, storage, and computational powers of high performance computing, and is accessible as a set of services. A comprehensive web-based system for integrating field sensor and data satellite image based on various open standards of OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) specifications has been developed. Web Processing Service (WPS), which is most likely the future direction of Web-GIS, performs the computation of spatial data from distributed data sources and returns the outcome in a standard format. The interoperability capabilities and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) of web services allow incorporating between sensor network measurement available from Sensor Observation Service (SOS) and satellite remote sensing data from Web Mapping Service (WMS) as distributed data sources for WPS. Various applications have been developed to demonstrate the efficacy of integrating heterogeneous data source. For example, the validation of the MODIS aerosol products (MOD08_D3, the Level-3 MODIS Atmosphere Daily Global Product) by ground-based measurements using the sunphotometer (skyradiometer, Prede POM-02) installed at Phenological Eyes Network (PEN) sites in Japan. Furthermore, the web-based framework system for studying a relationship between calculated Vegetation Index from MODIS satellite image surface reflectance (MOD09GA, the Surface Reflectance Daily L2G Global 1km and 500m Product) and Gross Primary Production (GPP) field measurement at flux tower site in Thailand and Japan has been also developed. The success of both applications will contribute to maximize data utilization and improve accuracy of information by validate MODIS satellite products using high degree of accuracy and temporal measurement of field measurement data.

Interoperable Data Access Services for NOAA IOOS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

de La Beaujardiere, J.

2008-12-01

The Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) is intended to enhance our ability to collect, deliver, and use ocean information. The goal is to support research and decision-making by providing data on our open oceans, coastal waters, and Great Lakes in the formats, rates, and scales required by scientists, managers, businesses, governments, and the public. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is the lead agency for IOOS. NOAA's IOOS office supports the development of regional coastal observing capability and promotes data management efforts to increase data accessibility. Geospatial web services have been established at NOAA data providers including the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC), the Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS), and CoastWatch, and at regional data provider sites. Services established include Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol (OpenDAP), Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Observation Service (SOS), and OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS). These services provide integrated access to data holdings that have been aggregated at each center from multiple sources. We wish to collaborate with other groups to improve our service offerings to maximize interoperability and enhance cross-provider data integration, and to share common service components such as registries, catalogs, data conversion, and gateways. This paper will discuss the current status of NOAA's IOOS efforts and possible next steps.

On-line Geoscience Data Resources for Today's Undergraduates

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Goodwillie, A. M.; Ryan, W.; Carbotte, S.; Melkonian, A.; Coplan, J.; Arko, R.; O'Hara, S.; Ferrini, V.; Leung, A.; Bonckzowski, J.

2008-12-01

Broadening the experience of undergraduates can be achieved by enabling free, unrestricted and convenient access to real scientific data. With funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Marine Geoscience Data System (MGDS) (http://www.marine-geo.org/) serves as the integrated data portal for various NSF-funded projects and provides free public access and preservation to a wide variety of marine and terrestrial data including rock, fluid, biology and sediment samples information, underway geophysical data and multibeam bathymetry, water column and multi-channel seismics data. Users can easily view the locations of cruise tracks, sample and station locations against a backdrop of a multi-resolution global digital elevation model. A Search For Data web page rapidly extracts data holdings from the database and can be filtered on data and device type, field program ID, investigator name, geographical and date bounds. The data access experience is boosted by the MGDS use of standardised OGC-compliant Web Services to support uniform programmatic interfaces. GeoMapApp (http://www.geomapapp.org/), a free MGDS data visualization tool, supports map-based dynamic exploration of a broad suite of geosciences data. Built-in land and marine data sets include tectonic plate boundary compilations, DSDP/ODP core logs, earthquake events, seafloor photos, and submersible dive tracks. Seamless links take users to data held by external partner repositories including PetDB, UNAVCO, IRIS and NGDC. Users can generate custom maps and grids and import their own data sets and grids. A set of short, video-style on-line tutorials familiarises users step- by-step with GeoMapApp functionality (http://www.geomapapp.org/tutorials/). Virtual Ocean (http://www.virtualocean.org/) combines the functionality of GeoMapApp with a 3-D earth browser built using the NASA WorldWind API for a powerful new data resource. MGDS education involvement (http://www.marine-geo.org/, go to Education tab) includes the searchable Media Bank of images and video; KML files for viewing several MGDS data sets in Google Earth (tm); support in developing undergraduate- level teaching modules using NSF-MARGINS data. Examples of many of these data sets will be shown.

Using URIs to effectively transmit sensor data and metadata

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kokkinaki, Alexandra; Buck, Justin; Darroch, Louise; Gardner, Thomas

2017-04-01

Autonomous ocean observation is massively increasing the number of sensors in the ocean. Accordingly, the continuing increase in datasets produced, makes selecting sensors that are fit for purpose a growing challenge. Decision making on selecting quality sensor data, is based on the sensor's metadata, i.e. manufacturer specifications, history of calibrations etc. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has developed the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards to facilitate integration and interoperability of sensor data and metadata. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Semantic Web technologies enable machine comprehensibility promoting sophisticated linking and processing of data published on the web. Linking the sensor's data and metadata according to the above-mentioned standards can yield practical difficulties, because of internal hardware bandwidth restrictions and a requirement to constrain data transmission costs. Our approach addresses these practical difficulties by uniquely identifying sensor and platform models and instances through URIs, which resolve via content negotiation to either OGC's sensor meta language, sensorML or W3C's Linked Data. Data transmitted by a sensor incorporate the sensor's unique URI to refer to its metadata. Sensor and platform model URIs and descriptions are created and hosted by the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) linked systems service. The sensor owner creates the sensor and platform instance URIs prior and during sensor deployment, through an updatable web form, the Sensor Instance Form (SIF). SIF enables model and instance URI association but also platform and sensor linking. The use of URIs, which are dynamically generated through the SIF, offers both practical and economical benefits to the implementation of SWE and Linked Data standards in near real time systems. Data can be linked to metadata dynamically in-situ while saving on the costs associated to the transmission of long metadata descriptions. The transmission of short URIs also enables the implementation of standards on systems where it is impractical, such as legacy hardware.

OOSTethys - Open Source Software for the Global Earth Observing Systems of Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bridger, E.; Bermudez, L. E.; Maskey, M.; Rueda, C.; Babin, B. L.; Blair, R.

2009-12-01

An open source software project is much more than just picking the right license, hosting modular code and providing effective documentation. Success in advancing in an open collaborative way requires that the process match the expected code functionality to the developer's personal expertise and organizational needs as well as having an enthusiastic and responsive core lead group. We will present the lessons learned fromOOSTethys , which is a community of software developers and marine scientists who develop open source tools, in multiple languages, to integrate ocean observing systems into an Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS). OOSTethys' goal is to dramatically reduce the time it takes to install, adopt and update standards-compliant web services. OOSTethys has developed servers, clients and a registry. Open source PERL, PYTHON, JAVA and ASP tool kits and reference implementations are helping the marine community publish near real-time observation data in interoperable standard formats. In some cases publishing an OpenGeospatial Consortium (OGC), Sensor Observation Service (SOS) from NetCDF files or a database or even CSV text files could take only minutes depending on the skills of the developer. OOSTethys is also developing an OGC standard registry, Catalog Service for Web (CSW). This open source CSW registry was implemented to easily register and discover SOSs using ISO 19139 service metadata. A web interface layer over the CSW registry simplifies the registration process by harvesting metadata describing the observations and sensors from the “GetCapabilities” response of SOS. OPENIOOS is the web client, developed in PERL to visualize the sensors in the SOS services. While the number of OOSTethys software developers is small, currently about 10 around the world, the number of OOSTethys toolkit implementers is larger and growing and the ease of use has played a large role in spreading the use of interoperable standards compliant web services widely in the marine community.

NOAA Operational Tsunameter Support for Research

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bouchard, R.; Stroker, K.

2008-12-01

In March 2008, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) completed the deployment of the last of the 39-station network of deep-sea tsunameters. As part of NOAA's effort to strengthen tsunami warning capabilities, NDBC expanded the network from 6 to 39 stations and upgraded all stations to the second generation Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis technology (DART II). Consisting of a bottom pressure recorder (BPR) and a surface buoy, the tsunameters deliver water-column heights, estimated from pressure measurements at the sea floor, to Tsunami Warning Centers in less than 3 minutes. This network provides coastal communities in the Pacific, Atlantic, Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico with faster and more accurate tsunami warnings. In addition, both the coarse resolution real-time data and the high resolution (15-second) recorded data provide invaluable contributions to research, such as the detection of the 2004 Sumatran tsunami in the Northeast Pacific (Gower and González, 2006) and the experimental tsunami forecast system (Bernard et al., 2007). NDBC normally recovers the BPRs every 24 months and sends the recovered high resolution data to NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) for archive and distribution. NGDC edits and processes this raw binary format to obtain research-quality data. NGDC provides access to retrospective BPR data from 1986 to the present. The DART database includes pressure and temperature data from the ocean floor, stored in a relational database, enabling data integration with the global tsunami and significant earthquake databases. All data are accessible via the Web as tables, reports, interactive maps, OGC Web Map Services (WMS), and Web Feature Services (WFS) to researchers around the world. References: Gower, J. and F. González, 2006. U.S. Warning System Detected the Sumatra Tsunami, Eos Trans. AGU, 87(10). Bernard, E. N., C. Meinig, and A. Hilton, 2007. Deep Ocean Tsunami Detection: Third Generation DART, Eos Trans. AGU, 88(52), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract S51C-03.

Expressive map design: OGC SLD/SE++ extension for expressive map styles

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Christophe, Sidonie; Duménieu, Bertrand; Masse, Antoine; Hoarau, Charlotte; Ory, Jérémie; Brédif, Mathieu; Lecordix, François; Mellado, Nicolas; Turbet, Jérémie; Loi, Hugo; Hurtut, Thomas; Vanderhaeghe, David; Vergne, Romain; Thollot, Joëlle

2018-05-01

In the context of custom map design, handling more artistic and expressive tools has been identified as a carto-graphic need, in order to design stylized and expressive maps. Based on previous works on style formalization, an approach for specifying the map style has been proposed and experimented for particular use cases. A first step deals with the analysis of inspiration sources, in order to extract `what does make the style of the source', i.e. the salient visual characteristics to be automatically reproduced (textures, spatial arrangements, linear stylization, etc.). In a second step, in order to mimic and generate those visual characteristics, existing and innovative rendering techniques have been implemented in our GIS engine, thus extending the capabilities to generate expressive renderings. Therefore, an extension of the existing cartographic pipeline has been proposed based on the following aspects: 1- extension of the symbolization specifications OGC SLD/SE in order to provide a formalism to specify and reference expressive rendering methods; 2- separate the specification of each rendering method and its parameterization, as metadata. The main contribution has been described in (Christophe et al. 2016). In this paper, we focus firstly on the extension of the cartographic pipeline (SLD++ and metadata) and secondly on map design capabilities which have been experimented on various topographic styles: old cartographic styles (Cassini), artistic styles (watercolor, impressionism, Japanese print), hybrid topographic styles (ortho-imagery & vector data) and finally abstract and photo-realist styles for the geovisualization of costal area. The genericity and interoperability of our approach are promising and have already been tested for 3D visualization.

Leverage and Delegation in Developing an Information Model for Geology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cox, S. J.

2007-12-01

GeoSciML is an information model and XML encoding developed by a group of primarily geologic survey organizations under the auspices of the IUGS CGI. The scope of the core model broadly corresponds with information traditionally portrayed on a geologic map, viz. interpreted geology, some observations, the map legend and accompanying memoir. The development of GeoSciML has followed the methodology specified for an Application Schema defined by OGC and ISO 19100 series standards. This requires agreement within a community concerning their domain model, its formal representation using UML, documentation as a Feature Type Catalogue, with an XML Schema implementation generated from the model by applying a rule-based transformation. The framework and technology supports a modular governance process. Standard datatypes and GI components (geometry, the feature and coverage metamodels, metadata) are imported from the ISO framework. The observation and sampling model (including boreholes) is imported from OGC. The scale used for most scalar literal values (terms, codes, measures) allows for localization where necessary. Wildcards and abstract base- classes provide explicit extensibility points. Link attributes appear in a regular way in the encodings, allowing reference to external resources using URIs. The encoding is compatible with generic GI data-service interfaces (WFS, WMS, SOS). For maximum interoperability within a community, the interfaces may be specialised through domain-specified constraints (e.g. feature-types, scale and vocabulary bindings, query-models). Formalization using UML and XML allows use of standard validation and processing tools. Use of upper-level elements defined for generic GI application reduces the development effort and governance resonsibility, while maximising cross-domain interoperability. On the other hand, enabling specialization to be delegated in a controlled manner is essential to adoption across a range of subdisciplines and jurisdictions. The GeoSciML design team is responsible only for the part of the model that is unique to geology but for which general agreement can be reached within the domain. This paper is presented on behalf of the Interoperability Working Group of the IUGS Commission for Geoscience Information (CGI) - follow web-link for details of the membership.

Developing of operational hydro-meteorological simulating and displaying system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Y.; Shih, D.; Chen, C.

2010-12-01

Hydrological hazards, which often occur in conjunction with extreme precipitation events, are the most frequent type of natural disaster in Taiwan. Hence, the researchers at the Taiwan Typhoon and Flood Research Institute (TTFRI) are devoted to analyzing and gaining a better understanding of the causes and effects of natural disasters, and in particular, typhoons and floods. The long-term goal of the TTFRI is to develop a unified weather-hydrological-oceanic model suitable for simulations with local parameterizations in Taiwan. The development of a fully coupled weather-hydrology interaction model is not yet completed but some operational hydro-meteorological simulations are presented as a step in the direction of completing a full model. The predicted rainfall data from Weather Research Forecasting (WRF) are used as our meteorological forcing on watershed modeling. The hydrology and hydraulic modeling are conducted by WASH123D numerical model. And the WRF/WASH123D coupled system is applied to simulate floods during the typhoon landfall periods. The daily operational runs start at 04UTC, 10UTC, 16UTC and 22UTC, about 4 hours after data downloaded from NCEP GFS. This system will execute 72-hr weather forecasts. The simulation of WASH123D will sequentially trigger after receiving WRF rainfall data. This study presents the preliminary framework of establishing this system, and our goal is to build this earlier warning system to alert the public form dangerous. The simulation results are further display by a 3D GIS web service system. This system is established following the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standardization process for GIS web service, such as Web Map Service (WMS) and Web Feature Service (WFS). The traditional 2D GIS data, such as high resolution aerial photomaps and satellite images are integrated into 3D landscape model. The simulated flooding and inundation area can be dynamically mapped on Wed 3D world. The final goal of this system is to real-time forecast flood and the results can be visually displayed on the virtual catchment. The policymaker can easily and real-time gain visual information for decision making at any site through internet.

The new OGC Catalogue Services 3.0 specification - status of work

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bigagli, Lorenzo; Voges, Uwe

2013-04-01

We report on the work of the Open Geospatial Consortium Catalogue Services 3.0 Standards Working Group (OGC Cat 3.0 SWG for short), started in March 2008, with the purpose to process change requests on the Catalogue Services 2.0.2 Implementation Specification (OGC 07-006r1) and produce a revised version thereof, comprising the related XML schemas and abstract test suite. The work was initially intended as a minor revision (version 2.1), but later retargeted as a major update of the standard and rescheduled (the anticipated roadmap ended in 2008). The target audience of Catalogue Services 3.0 includes: • Implementors of catalogue services solutions. • Designers and developers of catalogue services profiles. • Providers/users of catalogue services. The two main general areas of enhancement included: restructuring the specification document according to the OGC standard for modular specifications (OGC 08-131r3, also known as Core and Extension model); incorporating the current mass-market technologies for discovery on the Web, namely OpenSearch. The document was initially split into four parts: the general model and the three protocol bindings HTTP, Z39.50, and CORBA. The CORBA binding, which was very rarely implemented, and the Z39.50 binding have later been dropped. Parts of the Z39.50 binding, namely Search/Retrieve via URL (SRU; same semantics as Z39.50, but stateless), have been provided as a discussion paper (OGC 12-082) for possibly developing a future SRU profile. The Catalogue Services 3.0 specification is structured as follows: • Part 1: General Model (Core) • Part 2: HTTP Protocol Binding (CSW) In CSW, the GET/KVP encoding is mandatory. The POST/XML encoding is optional. SOAP is supported as a special case of the POST/XML encoding. OpenSearch must always be supported, regardless of the implemented profiles, along with the OpenSearch Geospatial and Temporal Extensions (OGC 10-032r2). The latter specifies spatial (e.g. point-plus-radius, bounding box, polygons, in EPSG:4326/WGS84 coordinates) and temporal constraints (e.g. time start/end) for searching. The temporal extent (begin/end) is added as a core queryable and returnable property. Plenty of other changes are incorporated, including improvements to query distribution, WSDL and schema documents, requirements and conformance classes. In conclusion, CS 3.0 is a long-awaited revision of the previous CS 2.0.2 Implementation Specification (approved in early 2007), whose requirements started to be collected as early as July 2007. Various profiles of CS 2.0.2 exist, with related dependencies, and will need to be harmonized with this specification.

ISTIMES Integrated System for Transport Infrastructures Surveillance and Monitoring by Electromagnetic Sensing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Argenti, M.; Giannini, V.; Averty, R.; Bigagli, L.; Dumoulin, J.

2012-04-01

The EC FP7 ISTIMES project has the goal of realizing an ICT-based system exploiting distributed and local sensors for non destructive electromagnetic monitoring in order to make critical transport infrastructures more reliable and safe. Higher situation awareness thanks to real time and detailed information and images of the controlled infrastructure status allows improving decision capabilities for emergency management stakeholders. Web-enabled sensors and a service-oriented approach are used as core of the architecture providing a sys-tem that adopts open standards (e.g. OGC SWE, OGC CSW etc.) and makes efforts to achieve full interoperability with other GMES and European Spatial Data Infrastructure initiatives as well as compliance with INSPIRE. The system exploits an open easily scalable network architecture to accommodate a wide range of sensors integrated with a set of tools for handling, analyzing and processing large data volumes from different organizations with different data models. Situation Awareness tools are also integrated in the system. Definition of sensor observations and services follows a metadata model based on the ISO 19115 Core set of metadata elements and the O&M model of OGC SWE. The ISTIMES infrastructure is based on an e-Infrastructure for geospatial data sharing, with a Data Cata-log that implements the discovery services for sensor data retrieval, acting as a broker through static connections based on standard SOS and WNS interfaces; a Decision Support component which helps decision makers providing support for data fusion and inference and generation of situation indexes; a Presentation component which implements system-users interaction services for information publication and rendering, by means of a WEB Portal using SOA design principles; A security framework using Shibboleth open source middleware based on the Security Assertion Markup Language supporting Single Sign On (SSO). ACKNOWLEDGEMENT - The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant Agreement n° 225663

The Future of Geospatial Standards

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bermudez, L. E.; Simonis, I.

2016-12-01

The OGC is an international not-for-profit standards development organization (SDO) committed to making quality standards for the geospatial community. A community of more than 500 member organizations with more than 6,000 people registered at the OGC communication platform drives the development of standards that are freely available for anyone to use and to improve sharing of the world's geospatial data. OGC standards are applied in a variety of application domains including Environment, Defense and Intelligence, Smart Cities, Aviation, Disaster Management, Agriculture, Business Development and Decision Support, and Meteorology. Profiles help to apply information models to different communities, thus adapting to particular needs of that community while ensuring interoperability by using common base models and appropriate support services. Other standards address orthogonal aspects such as handling of Big Data, Crowd-sourced information, Geosemantics, or container for offline data usage. Like most SDOs, the OGC develops and maintains standards through a formal consensus process under the OGC Standards Program (OGC-SP) wherein requirements and use cases are discussed in forums generally open to the public (Domain Working Groups, or DWGs), and Standards Working Groups (SWGs) are established to create standards. However, OGC is unique among SDOs in that it also operates the OGC Interoperability Program (OGC-IP) to provide real-world testing of existing and proposed standards. The OGC-IP is considered the experimental playground, where new technologies are researched and developed in a user-driven process. Its goal is to prototype, test, demonstrate, and promote OGC Standards in a structured environment. Results from the OGC-IP often become requirements for new OGC standards or identify deficiencies in existing OGC standards that can be addressed. This presentation will provide an analysis of the work advanced in the OGC consortium including standards and testbeds, where we can extract a trend for the future of geospatial standards. We see a number of key elements in focus, but simultaneously a broadening of standards to address particular communities' needs.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hatano, Yu; Department of Cardivascular Medicine, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, 1-5-45, Yushima, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8510; Nakahama, Ken-ichi, E-mail: nakacell@tmd.ac.jp

Highlights: • M-CSF and RANKL expressing HeLa cells induced osteoclastogenesis in vitro. • We established OGC-containing tumor model in vivo. • OGC-containing tumor became larger independent of M-CSF or RANKL effect. • VEGF-C secreted from OGCs was a one of candidates for OGC-containing tumor growth. - Abstract: Tumors with osteoclast-like giant cells (OGCs) have been reported in a variety of organs and exert an invasive and prometastatic phenotype, but the functional role of OGCs in the tumor environment has not been fully clarified. We established tumors containing OGCs to clarify the role of OGCs in tumor phenotype. A mixture ofmore » HeLa cells expressing macrophage colony-stimulating factor (M-CSF, HeLa-M) and receptor activator of nuclear factor-κB ligand (RANKL, HeLa-R) effectively supported the differentiation of osteoclast-like cells from bone marrow macrophages in vitro. Moreover, a xenograft study showed OGC formation in a tumor composed of HeLa-M and HeLa-R. Surprisingly, the tumors containing OGCs were significantly larger than the tumors without OGCs, although the growth rates were not different in vitro. Histological analysis showed that lymphangiogenesis and macrophage infiltration in the tumor containing OGCs, but not in other tumors were accelerated. According to quantitative PCR analysis, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-C mRNA expression increased with differentiation of osteoclast-like cells. To investigate whether VEGF-C expression is responsible for tumor growth and macrophage infiltration, HeLa cells overexpressing VEGF-C (HeLa-VC) were established and transplanted into mice. Tumors composed of HeLa-VC mimicked the phenotype of the tumors containing OGCs. Furthermore, the vascular permeability of tumor microvessels also increased in tumors containing OGCs and to some extent in VEGF-C-expressing tumors. These results suggest that macrophage infiltration and vascular permeability are possible mediators in these tumors. These findings revealed that OGCs in the tumor environment promoted tumor growth and lymphangiogenesis, at least in part, by secreting VEGF-C.« less

The Climate-G testbed: towards a large scale data sharing environment for climate change

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Aloisio, G.; Fiore, S.; Denvil, S.; Petitdidier, M.; Fox, P.; Schwichtenberg, H.; Blower, J.; Barbera, R.

2009-04-01

The Climate-G testbed provides an experimental large scale data environment for climate change addressing challenging data and metadata management issues. The main scope of Climate-G is to allow scientists to carry out geographical and cross-institutional climate data discovery, access, visualization and sharing. Climate-G is a multidisciplinary collaboration involving both climate and computer scientists and it currently involves several partners such as: Centro Euro-Mediterraneo per i Cambiamenti Climatici (CMCC), Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace (IPSL), Fraunhofer Institut für Algorithmen und Wissenschaftliches Rechnen (SCAI), National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), University of Reading, University of Catania and University of Salento. To perform distributed metadata search and discovery, we adopted a CMCC metadata solution (which provides a high level of scalability, transparency, fault tolerance and autonomy) leveraging both on P2P and grid technologies (GRelC Data Access and Integration Service). Moreover, data are available through OPeNDAP/THREDDS services, Live Access Server as well as the OGC compliant Web Map Service and they can be downloaded, visualized, accessed into the proposed environment through the Climate-G Data Distribution Centre (DDC), the web gateway to the Climate-G digital library. The DDC is a data-grid portal allowing users to easily, securely and transparently perform search/discovery, metadata management, data access, data visualization, etc. Godiva2 (integrated into the DDC) displays 2D maps (and animations) and also exports maps for display on the Google Earth virtual globe. Presently, Climate-G publishes (through the DDC) about 2TB of data related to the ENSEMBLES project (also including distributed replicas of data) as well as to the IPCC AR4. The main results of the proposed work are: wide data access/sharing environment for climate change; P2P/grid metadata approach; production-level Climate-G DDC; high quality tools for data visualization; metadata search/discovery across several countries/institutions; open environment for climate change data sharing.

Building asynchronous geospatial processing workflows with web services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhao, Peisheng; Di, Liping; Yu, Genong

2012-02-01

Geoscience research and applications often involve a geospatial processing workflow. This workflow includes a sequence of operations that use a variety of tools to collect, translate, and analyze distributed heterogeneous geospatial data. Asynchronous mechanisms, by which clients initiate a request and then resume their processing without waiting for a response, are very useful for complicated workflows that take a long time to run. Geospatial contents and capabilities are increasingly becoming available online as interoperable Web services. This online availability significantly enhances the ability to use Web service chains to build distributed geospatial processing workflows. This paper focuses on how to orchestrate Web services for implementing asynchronous geospatial processing workflows. The theoretical bases for asynchronous Web services and workflows, including asynchrony patterns and message transmission, are examined to explore different asynchronous approaches to and architecture of workflow code for the support of asynchronous behavior. A sample geospatial processing workflow, issued by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Service, Phase 6 (OWS-6), is provided to illustrate the implementation of asynchronous geospatial processing workflows and the challenges in using Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL) to develop them.

The EarthServer Geology Service: web coverage services for geosciences

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Laxton, John; Sen, Marcus; Passmore, James

2014-05-01

The EarthServer FP7 project is implementing web coverage services using the OGC WCS and WCPS standards for a range of earth science domains: cryospheric; atmospheric; oceanographic; planetary; and geological. BGS is providing the geological service (http://earthserver.bgs.ac.uk/). Geoscience has used remote sensed data from satellites and planes for some considerable time, but other areas of geosciences are less familiar with the use of coverage data. This is rapidly changing with the development of new sensor networks and the move from geological maps to geological spatial models. The BGS geology service is designed initially to address two coverage data use cases and three levels of data access restriction. Databases of remote sensed data are typically very large and commonly held offline, making it time-consuming for users to assess and then download data. The service is designed to allow the spatial selection, editing and display of Landsat and aerial photographic imagery, including band selection and contrast stretching. This enables users to rapidly view data, assess is usefulness for their purposes, and then enhance and download it if it is suitable. At present the service contains six band Landsat 7 (Blue, Green, Red, NIR 1, NIR 2, MIR) and three band false colour aerial photography (NIR, green, blue), totalling around 1Tb. Increasingly 3D spatial models are being produced in place of traditional geological maps. Models make explicit spatial information implicit on maps and thus are seen as a better way of delivering geosciences information to non-geoscientists. However web delivery of models, including the provision of suitable visualisation clients, has proved more challenging than delivering maps. The EarthServer geology service is delivering 35 surfaces as coverages, comprising the modelled superficial deposits of the Glasgow area. These can be viewed using a 3D web client developed in the EarthServer project by Fraunhofer. As well as remote sensed imagery and 3D models, the geology service is also delivering DTM coverages which can be viewed in the 3D client in conjunction with both imagery and models. The service is accessible through a web GUI which allows the imagery to be viewed against a range of background maps and DTMs, and in the 3D client; spatial selection to be carried out graphically; the results of image enhancement to be displayed; and selected data to be downloaded. The GUI also provides access to the Glasgow model in the 3D client, as well as tutorial material. In the final year of the project it is intended to increase the volume of data to 20Tb and enhance the WCPS processing, including depth and thickness querying of 3D models. We have also investigated the use of GeoSciML, developed to describe and interchange the information on geological maps, to describe model surface coverages. EarthServer is developing a combined WCPS and xQuery query language, and we will investigate applying this to the GeoSciML described surfaces to answer questions such as 'find all units with a predominant sand lithology within 25m of the surface'.

Analysis of hydrological processes across the Northern Eurasia with recently re-developed online informational system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shiklomanov, A. I.; Proussevitch, A. A.; Gordov, E. P.; Okladnikov, I.; Titov, A. G.

2016-12-01

The volume of georeferenced datasets used for hydrology and climate research is growing immensely due to recent advances in modeling, high performance computers, and sensor networks, as well as initiation of a set of large scale complex global and regional monitoring experiments. To facilitate the management and analysis of these extensive data pools we developed Web-based data management, visualization, and analysis system - RIMS - http://earthatlas.sr.unh.edu/ (Rapid Integrated Mapping and Analysis System) with a focus on hydrological applications. Recently, under collaboration with Russian colleagues from the Institute of Monitoring of Climatic and Ecological Systems SB RAS, Russia, we significantly re-designed the RIMS to include the latest Web and GIS technologies in compliance with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards. An upgraded RIMS can be successfully applied to address multiple research problems using an extensive data archive and embedded tools for data computations, visualizations and distributions. We will demonstrate current possibility of the system providing several results of applied data analysis fulfilled for territory of the Northern Eurasia. These results will include the analysis of historical, contemporary and future changes in climate and hydrology based on station and gridded data, investigations of recent extreme hydrological events, their anomalies, causes and potential impacts, and creation and analysis of new data sets through integration of social and geophysical data.

Geospatial data sharing, online spatial analysis and processing of Indian Biodiversity data in Internet GIS domain - A case study for raster based online geo-processing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Karnatak, H.; Pandey, K.; Oberai, K.; Roy, A.; Joshi, D.; Singh, H.; Raju, P. L. N.; Krishna Murthy, Y. V. N.

2014-11-01

National Biodiversity Characterization at Landscape Level, a project jointly sponsored by Department of Biotechnology and Department of Space, was implemented to identify and map the potential biodiversity rich areas in India. This project has generated spatial information at three levels viz. Satellite based primary information (Vegetation Type map, spatial locations of road & village, Fire occurrence); geospatially derived or modelled information (Disturbance Index, Fragmentation, Biological Richness) and geospatially referenced field samples plots. The study provides information of high disturbance and high biological richness areas suggesting future management strategies and formulating action plans. The study has generated for the first time baseline database in India which will be a valuable input towards climate change study in the Indian Subcontinent. The spatial data generated during the study is organized as central data repository in Geo-RDBMS environment using PostgreSQL and POSTGIS. The raster and vector data is published as OGC WMS and WFS standard for development of web base geoinformation system using Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). The WMS and WFS based system allows geo-visualization, online query and map outputs generation based on user request and response. This is a typical mashup architecture based geo-information system which allows access to remote web services like ISRO Bhuvan, Openstreet map, Google map etc., with overlay on Biodiversity data for effective study on Bio-resources. The spatial queries and analysis with vector data is achieved through SQL queries on POSTGIS and WFS-T operations. But the most important challenge is to develop a system for online raster based geo-spatial analysis and processing based on user defined Area of Interest (AOI) for large raster data sets. The map data of this study contains approximately 20 GB of size for each data layer which are five in number. An attempt has been to develop system using python, PostGIS and PHP for raster data analysis over the web for Biodiversity conservation and prioritization. The developed system takes inputs from users as WKT, Openlayer based Polygon geometry and Shape file upload as AOI to perform raster based operation using Python and GDAL/OGR. The intermediate products are stored in temporary files and tables which generate XML outputs for web representation. The raster operations like clip-zip-ship, class wise area statistics, single to multi-layer operations, diagrammatic representation and other geo-statistical analysis are performed. This is indigenous geospatial data processing engine developed using Open system architecture for spatial analysis of Biodiversity data sets in Internet GIS environment. The performance of this applications in multi-user environment like Internet domain is another challenging task which is addressed by fine tuning the source code, server hardening, spatial indexing and running the process in load balance mode. The developed system is hosted in Internet domain (http://bis.iirs.gov.in) for user access.

A Collaborative Decision Environment for UAV Operations

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

D'Ortenzio, Matthew V.; Enomoto, Francis Y.; Johan, Sandra L.

2005-01-01

NASA is developing Intelligent Mission Management (IMM) technology for science missions employing long endurance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's). The IMM groundbased component is the Collaborative Decision Environment (CDE), a ground system that provides the Mission/Science team with situational awareness, collaboration, and decisionmaking tools. The CDE is used for pre-flight planning, mission monitoring, and visualization of acquired data. It integrates external data products used for planning and executing a mission, such as weather, satellite data products, and topographic maps by leveraging established and emerging Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards to acquire external data products via the Internet, and an industry standard geographic information system (GIs) toolkit for visualization As a Science/Mission team may be geographically dispersed, the CDE is capable of providing access to remote users across wide area networks using Web Services technology. A prototype CDE is being developed for an instrument checkout flight on a manned aircraft in the fall of 2005, in preparation for a full deployment in support of the US Forest Service and NASA Ames Western States Fire Mission in 2006.

Enhancing Access to Drought Information Using the CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schreuders, K. A.; Tarboton, D. G.; Horsburgh, J. S.; Sen Gupta, A.; Reeder, S.

2011-12-01

The National Drought Information System (NIDIS) Upper Colorado River Basin pilot study is investigating and establishing capabilities for better dissemination of drought information for early warning and management. As part of this study we are using and extending functionality from the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI) Hydrologic Information System (HIS) to provide better access to drought-related data in the Upper Colorado River Basin. The CUAHSI HIS is a federated system for sharing hydrologic data. It is comprised of multiple data servers, referred to as HydroServers, that publish data in a standard XML format called Water Markup Language (WaterML), using web services referred to as WaterOneFlow web services. HydroServers can also publish geospatial data using Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web map, feature and coverage services and are capable of hosting web and map applications that combine geospatial datasets with observational data served via web services. HIS also includes a centralized metadata catalog that indexes data from registered HydroServers and a data access client referred to as HydroDesktop. For NIDIS, we have established a HydroServer to publish drought index values as well as the input data used in drought index calculations. Primary input data required for drought index calculation include streamflow, precipitation, reservoir storages, snow water equivalent, and soil moisture. We have developed procedures to redistribute the input data to the time and space scales chosen for drought index calculation, namely half monthly time intervals for HUC 10 subwatersheds. The spatial redistribution approaches used for each input parameter are dependent on the spatial linkages for that parameter, i.e., the redistribution procedure for streamflow is dependent on the upstream/downstream connectivity of the stream network, and the precipitation redistribution procedure is dependent on elevation to account for orographic effects. A set of drought indices are then calculated from the redistributed data. We have created automated data and metadata harvesters that periodically scan and harvest new data from each of the input databases, and calculates extensions to the resulting derived data sets, ensuring that the data available on the drought server is kept up to date. This paper will describe this system, showing how it facilitates the integration of data from multiple sources to inform the planning and management of water resources during drought. The system may be accessed at http://drought.usu.edu.

Model application for rapid detection of the exact location when calling an ambulance using OGC Open GeoSMS Standards

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sukic, Enes; Stoimenov, Leonid

2016-02-01

The web has penetrated just about every sphere of human interest and using information from the web has become ubiquitous among different categories of users. Medicine has long being using the benefits of modern technologies and without them it cannot function. This paper offers a proposal of use and mutual collaboration of several modern technologies within facilitating the location and communication between persons in need of emergency medical assistance and the emergency head offices, i.e., the ambulance. The main advantage of the proposed model is the technical possibility of implementation and use of these technologies in developing countries and low implementation cost.

Data Integration Support for Data Served in the OPeNDAP and OGC Environments

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

McDonald, Kenneth R.; Wharton, Stephen W. (Technical Monitor)

2006-01-01

NASA is coordinating a technology development project to construct a gateway between system components built upon the Open-source Project for a Network Data AcceSs Protocol (OPeNDAP) and those made available made available via interfaces specified by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). This project is funded though the Advanced Collaborative Connections for Earth-Sun System Science (ACCESS) Program and is a NASA contribution to the Committee on Earth Satellites (CEOS) Working Group on Information Systems and Services (WGISS). The motivation for the project is the set of data integration needs that have been expressed by the Coordinated Enhanced Observing Period (CEOP), an international program that is addressing the study of the global water cycle. CEOP is assembling a large collection in situ and satellite data and mode1 results from a wide variety of sources covering 35 sites around the globe. The data are provided by systems based on either the OPeNDAP or OGC protocols but the research community desires access to the full range of data and associated services from a single client. This presentation will discuss the current status of the OPeNDAP/OGC Gateway Project. The project is building upon an early prototype that illustrated the feasibility of such a gateway and which was demonstrated to the CEOP science community. In its first year as an ACCESS project, the effort has been has focused on the design of the catalog and data services that will be provided by the gateway and the mappings between the metadata and services provided in the two environments.

Towards Direct Manipulation and Remixing of Massive Data: The EarthServer Approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baumann, P.

2012-04-01

Complex analytics on "big data" is one of the core challenges of current Earth science, generating strong requirements for on-demand processing and fil tering of massive data sets. Issues under discussion include flexibility, performance, scalability, and the heterogeneity of the information types invo lved. In other domains, high-level query languages (such as those offered by database systems) have proven successful in the quest for flexible, scalable data access interfaces to massive amounts of data. However, due to the lack of support for many of the Earth science data structures, database systems are only used for registries and catalogs, but not for the bulk of spatio-temporal data. One core information category in this field is given by coverage data. ISO 19123 defines coverages, simplifying, as a representation of a "space-time varying phenomenon". This model can express a large class of Earth science data structures, including rectified and non-rectified rasters, curvilinear grids, point clouds, TINs, general meshes, trajectories, surfaces, and solids. This abstract definition, which is too high-level to establish interoperability, is concretized by the OGC GML 3.2.1 Application Schema for Coverages Standard into an interoperable representation. The OGC Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS) Standard defines a declarative query language on multi-dimensional raster-type coverages, such as 1D in-situ sensor timeseries, 2D EO imagery, 3D x/y/t image time series and x/y/z geophysical data, 4D x/y/z/t climate and ocean data. Hence, important ingredients for versatile coverage retrieval are given - however, this potential has not been fully unleashed by service architectures up to now. The EU FP7-INFRA project EarthServer, launched in September 2011, aims at enabling standards-based on-demand analytics over the Web for Earth science data based on an integration of W3C XQuery for alphanumeric data and OGC-WCPS for raster data. Ultimately, EarthServer will support all OGC coverage types. The platform used by EarthServer is the rasdaman raster database system. To exploit heterogeneous multi-parallel platforms, automatic request distribution and orchestration is being established. Client toolkits are under development which will allow to quickly compose bespoke interactive clients, ranging from mobile devices over Web clients to high-end immersive virtual reality. The EarthServer platform has been deployed in six large-scale data centres with the aim of setting up Lighthouse Applications addressing all Earth Sciences, including satellite and airborne earth observation as well as use cases from atmosphere, ocean, snow, and ice monitoring, and geology on Earth and Mars. These services, each of which will ultimately host at least 100 TB, will form a peer cloud with distributed query processing for arbitrarily mixing database and in-situ access. With its ability to directly manipulate, analyze and remix massive data, the goal of EarthServer is to lift the data providers' semantic level from data stewardship to service stewardship.

EarthServer - 3D Visualization on the Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wagner, Sebastian; Herzig, Pasquale; Bockholt, Ulrich; Jung, Yvonne; Behr, Johannes

2013-04-01

EarthServer (www.earthserver.eu), funded by the European Commission under its Seventh Framework Program, is a project to enable the management, access and exploration of massive, multi-dimensional datasets using Open GeoSpatial Consortium (OGC) query and processing language standards like WCS 2.0 and WCPS. To this end, a server/client architecture designed to handle Petabyte/Exabyte volumes of multi-dimensional data is being developed and deployed. As an important part of the EarthServer project, six Lighthouse Applications, major scientific data exploitation initiatives, are being established to make cross-domain, Earth Sciences related data repositories available in an open and unified manner, as service endpoints based on solutions and infrastructure developed within the project. Clients technology developed and deployed in EarthServer ranges from mobile and web clients to immersive virtual reality systems, all designed to interact with a physically and logically distributed server infrastructure using exclusively OGC standards. In this contribution, we would like to present our work on a web-based 3D visualization and interaction client for Earth Sciences data using only technology found in standard web browsers without requiring the user to install plugins or addons. Additionally, we are able to run the earth data visualization client on a wide range of different platforms with very different soft- and hardware requirements such as smart phones (e.g. iOS, Android), different desktop systems etc. High-quality, hardware-accelerated visualization of 3D and 4D content in standard web browsers can be realized now and we believe it will become more and more common to use this fast, lightweight and ubiquitous platform to provide insights into big datasets without requiring the user to set up a specialized client first. With that in mind, we will also point out some of the limitations we encountered using current web technologies. Underlying the EarthServer web client and on top of HTML5, WebGL and JavaScript we have developed the X3DOM framework (www.x3dom.org), which makes possible to embed declarative X3D scenegraphs, an ISO standard XML-based file format for representing 3D computer graphics, directly within HTML, thus enabling developers to rapidly design 3D content that blends seamlessly into HTML interfaces using Javascript. This approach (commonly referred to as a polyfill layer) is used to mimic native web browser support for declarative 3D content and is an important component in our web client architecture.

Implementation of data node in spatial information grid based on WS resource framework and WS notification

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Dengrong; Yu, Le

2006-10-01

Abstract-An approach of constructing a data node in spatial information grid (SIG) based on Web Service Resource Framework (WSRF) and Web Service Notification (WSN) is described in this paper. Attentions are paid to construct and implement SIG's resource layer, which is the most important part. A study on this layer find out, it is impossible to require persistent interaction with the clients of the services in common SIG architecture because of inheriting "stateless" and "not persistent" limitations of Web Service. A WSRF/WSN-based data node is designed to hurdle this short comes. Three different access modes are employed to test the availability of this node. Experimental results demonstrate this service node can successfully respond to standard OGC requests and returns specific spatial data in different network environment, also is stateful, dynamic and persistent.

Turning Interoperability Operational with GST

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schaeben, Helmut; Gabriel, Paul; Gietzel, Jan; Le, Hai Ha

2013-04-01

GST - Geosciences in space and time is being developed and implemented as hub to facilitate the exchange of spatially and temporally indexed multi-dimensional geoscience data and corresponding geomodels amongst partners. It originates from TUBAF's contribution to the EU project "ProMine" and its perspective extensions are TUBAF's contribution to the actual EU project "GeoMol". As of today, it provides basic components of a geodata infrastructure as required to establish interoperability with respect to geosciences. Generally, interoperability means the facilitation of cross-border and cross-sector information exchange, taking into account legal, organisational, semantic and technical aspects, cf. Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (ISA), cf. http://ec.europa.eu/isa/. Practical interoperability for partners of a joint geoscience project, say European Geological Surveys acting in a border region, means in particular provision of IT technology to exchange spatially and maybe additionally temporally indexed multi-dimensional geoscience data and corresponding models, i.e. the objects composing geomodels capturing the geometry, topology, and various geoscience contents. Geodata Infrastructure (GDI) and interoperability are objectives of several inititatives, e.g. INSPIRE, OneGeology-Europe, and most recently EGDI-SCOPE to name just the most prominent ones. Then there are quite a few markup languages (ML) related to geographical or geological information like GeoSciML, EarthResourceML, BoreholeML, ResqML for reservoir characterization, earth and reservoir models, and many others featuring geoscience information. Several Web Services are focused on geographical or geoscience information. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) promotes specifications of a Web Feature Service (WFS), a Web Map Service (WMS), a Web Coverage Serverice (WCS), a Web 3D Service (W3DS), and many more. It will be clarified how GST is related to these initiatives, especially how it complies with existing or developing standards or quasi-standards and how it applies and extents services towards interoperability in the Earth sciences.

Web-Based Tools for Data Visualization and Decision Support for South Asia

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jones, N.; Nelson, J.; Pulla, S. T.; Ames, D. P.; Souffront, M.; David, C. H.; Zaitchik, B. F.; Gatlin, P. N.; Matin, M. A.

2017-12-01

The objective of the NASA SERVIR project is to assist developing countries in using information provided by Earth observing satellites to assess and manage climate risks, land use, and water resources. We present a collection of web apps that integrate earth observations and in situ data to facilitate deployment of data and water resources models as decision-making tools in support of this effort. The interactive nature of web apps makes this an excellent medium for creating decision support tools that harness cutting edge modeling techniques. Thin client apps hosted in a cloud portal eliminates the need for the decision makers to procure and maintain the high performance hardware required by the models, deal with issues related to software installation and platform incompatibilities, or monitor and install software updates, a problem that is exacerbated for many of the regional SERVIR hubs where both financial and technical capacity may be limited. All that is needed to use the system is an Internet connection and a web browser. We take advantage of these technologies to develop tools which can be centrally maintained but openly accessible. Advanced mapping and visualization make results intuitive and information derived actionable. We also take advantage of the emerging standards for sharing water information across the web using the OGC and WMO approved WaterML standards. This makes our tools interoperable and extensible via application programming interfaces (APIs) so that tools and data from other projects can both consume and share the tools developed in our project. Our approach enables the integration of multiple types of data and models, thus facilitating collaboration between science teams in SERVIR. The apps developed thus far by our team process time-varying netCDF files from Earth observations and large-scale computer simulations and allow visualization and exploration via raster animation and extraction of time series at selected points and/or regions.

UNAVCO Software and Services for Visualization and Exploration of Geoscience Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Meertens, C.; Wier, S.

2007-12-01

UNAVCO has been involved in visualization of geoscience data to support education and research for several years. An early and ongoing service is the Jules Verne Voyager, a web browser applet built on the GMT that displays any area on Earth, with many data set choices, including maps, satellite images, topography, geoid heights, sea-floor ages, strain rates, political boundaries, rivers and lakes, earthquake and volcano locations, focal mechanisms, stress axes, and observed and modeled plate motion and deformation velocity vectors from geodetic measurements around the world. As part of the GEON project, UNAVCO has developed the GEON IDV, a research-level, 4D (earth location, depth and/or altitude, and time), Java application for interactive display and analysis of geoscience data. The GEON IDV is designed to meet the challenge of investigating complex, multi-variate, time-varying, three-dimensional geoscience data anywhere on earth. The GEON IDV supports simultaneous displays of data sets from differing sources, with complete control over colors, time animation, map projection, map area, point of view, and vertical scale. The GEON IDV displays gridded and point data, images, GIS shape files, and several other types of data. The GEON IDV has symbols and displays for GPS velocity vectors, seismic tomography, earthquake focal mechanisms, earthquake locations with magnitude or depth, seismic ray paths in 3D, seismic anisotropy, convection model visualization, earth strain axes and strain field imagery, and high-resolution 3D topographic relief maps. Multiple data sources and display types may appear in one view. As an example of GEON IDV utility, it can display hypocenters under a volcano, a surface geology map of the volcano draped over 3D topographic relief, town locations and political boundaries, and real-time 3D weather radar clouds of volcanic ash in the atmosphere, with time animation. The GEON IDV can drive a GeoWall or other 3D stereo system. IDV output includes imagery, movies, and KML files for Google Earth use of IDV static images, where Google Earth can handle the display. The IDV can be scripted to create display images on user request or automatically on data arrival, offering the use of the IDV as a back end to support a data web site. We plan to extend the power of the IDV by accepting new data types and data services, such as GeoSciML. An active program of online and video training in GEON IDV use is planned. UNAVCO will support users who need assistance converting their data to the standard formats used by the GEON IDV. The UNAVCO Facility provides web-accessible support for Google Earth and Google Maps display of any of more than 9500 GPS stations and survey points, including metadata for each installation. UNAVCO provides corresponding Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web services with the same data. UNAVCO's goal is to facilitate data access, interoperability, and efficient searches, exploration, and use of data by promoting web services, standards for GEON IDV data formats and metadata, and software able to simultaneously read and display multiple data sources, formats, and map locations or projections. Retention and propagation of semantics and metadata with observational and experimental values is essential for interoperability and understanding diverse data sources.

The BCube Crawler: Web Scale Data and Service Discovery for EarthCube.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lopez, L. A.; Khalsa, S. J. S.; Duerr, R.; Tayachow, A.; Mingo, E.

2014-12-01

Web-crawling, a core component of the NSF-funded BCube project, is researching and applying the use of big data technologies to find and characterize different types of web services, catalog interfaces, and data feeds such as the ESIP OpenSearch, OGC W*S, THREDDS, and OAI-PMH that describe or provide access to scientific datasets. Given the scale of the Internet, which challenges even large search providers such as Google, the BCube plan for discovering these web accessible services is to subdivide the problem into three smaller, more tractable issues. The first, to be able to discover likely sites where relevant data and data services might be found, the second, to be able to deeply crawl the sites discovered to find any data and services which might be present. Lastly, to leverage the use of semantic technologies to characterize the services and data found, and to filter out everything but those relevant to the geosciences. To address the first two challenges BCube uses an adapted version of Apache Nutch (which originated Hadoop), a web scale crawler, and Amazon's ElasticMapReduce service for flexibility and cost effectiveness. For characterization of the services found, BCube is examining existing web service ontologies for their applicability to our needs and will re-use and/or extend these in order to query for services with specific well-defined characteristics in scientific datasets such as the use of geospatial namespaces. The original proposal for the crawler won a grant from Amazon's academic program, which allowed us to become operational; we successfully tested the Bcube Crawler at web scale obtaining a significant corpus, sizeable enough to enable work on characterization of the services and data found. There is still plenty of work to be done, doing "smart crawls" by managing the frontier, developing and enhancing our scoring algorithms and fully implementing the semantic characterization technologies. We describe the current status of the project, our successes and issues encountered. The final goal of the BCube crawler project is to provide relevant data services to other projects on the EarthCube stack and third party partners so they can be brokered and used by a wider scientific community.

The GEOSS Clearinghouse based on the GeoNetwork opensource

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, K.; Yang, C.; Wu, H.; Huang, Q.

2010-12-01

The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) is established to support the study of the Earth system in a global community. It provides services for social management, quick response, academic research, and education. The purpose of GEOSS is to achieve comprehensive, coordinated and sustained observations of the Earth system, improve monitoring of the state of the Earth, increase understanding of Earth processes, and enhance prediction of the behavior of the Earth system. In 2009, GEO called for a competition for an official GEOSS clearinghouse to be selected as a source to consolidating catalogs for Earth observations. The Joint Center for Intelligent Spatial Computing at George Mason University worked with USGS to submit a solution based on the open-source platform - GeoNetwork. In the spring of 2010, the solution is selected as the product for GEOSS clearinghouse. The GEOSS Clearinghouse is a common search facility for the Intergovernmental Group on Ea rth Observation (GEO). By providing a list of harvesting functions in Business Logic, GEOSS clearinghouse can collect metadata from distributed catalogs including other GeoNetwork native nodes, webDAV/sitemap/WAF, catalog services for the web (CSW)2.0, GEOSS Component and Service Registry (http://geossregistries.info/), OGC Web Services (WCS, WFS, WMS and WPS), OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting 2.0, ArcSDE Server and Local File System. Metadata in GEOSS clearinghouse are managed in a database (MySQL, Postgresql, Oracle, or MckoiDB) and an index of the metadata is maintained through Lucene engine. Thus, EO data, services, and related resources can be discovered and accessed. It supports a variety of geospatial standards including CSW and SRU for search, FGDC and ISO metadata, and WMS related OGC standards for data access and visualization, as linked from the metadata.

Development of web-GIS system for analysis of georeferenced geophysical data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Okladnikov, I.; Gordov, E. P.; Titov, A. G.; Bogomolov, V. Y.; Genina, E.; Martynova, Y.; Shulgina, T. M.

2012-12-01

Georeferenced datasets (meteorological databases, modeling and reanalysis results, remote sensing products, etc.) are currently actively used in numerous applications including modeling, interpretation and forecast of climatic and ecosystem changes for various spatial and temporal scales. Due to inherent heterogeneity of environmental datasets as well as their huge size which might constitute up to tens terabytes for a single dataset at present studies in the area of climate and environmental change require a special software support. A dedicated web-GIS information-computational system for analysis of georeferenced climatological and meteorological data has been created. The information-computational system consists of 4 basic parts: computational kernel developed using GNU Data Language (GDL), a set of PHP-controllers run within specialized web-portal, JavaScript class libraries for development of typical components of web mapping application graphical user interface (GUI) based on AJAX technology, and an archive of geophysical datasets. Computational kernel comprises of a number of dedicated modules for querying and extraction of data, mathematical and statistical data analysis, visualization, and preparing output files in geoTIFF and netCDF format containing processing results. Specialized web-portal consists of a web-server Apache, complying OGC standards Geoserver software which is used as a base for presenting cartographical information over the Web, and a set of PHP-controllers implementing web-mapping application logic and governing computational kernel. JavaScript libraries aiming at graphical user interface development are based on GeoExt library combining ExtJS Framework and OpenLayers software. The archive of geophysical data consists of a number of structured environmental datasets represented by data files in netCDF, HDF, GRIB, ESRI Shapefile formats. For processing by the system are available: two editions of NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis, JMA/CRIEPI JRA-25 Reanalysis, ECMWF ERA-40 Reanalysis, ECMWF ERA Interim Reanalysis, MRI/JMA APHRODITE's Water Resources Project Reanalysis, DWD Global Precipitation Climatology Centre's data, GMAO Modern Era-Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, meteorological observational data for the territory of the former USSR for the 20th century, results of modeling by global and regional climatological models, and others. The system is already involved into a scientific research process. Particularly, recently the system was successfully used for analysis of Siberia climate changes and its impact in the region. The Web-GIS information-computational system for geophysical data analysis provides specialists involved into multidisciplinary research projects with reliable and practical instruments for complex analysis of climate and ecosystems changes on global and regional scales. Using it even unskilled user without specific knowledge can perform computational processing and visualization of large meteorological, climatological and satellite monitoring datasets through unified web-interface in a common graphical web-browser. This work is partially supported by the Ministry of education and science of the Russian Federation (contract #07.514.114044), projects IV.31.1.5, IV.31.2.7, RFBR grants #10-07-00547a, #11-05-01190a, and integrated project SB RAS #131.

Catch the A-Train from the NASA GIBS/Worldview Platform

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schmaltz, J. E.; Alarcon, C.; Baynes, K.; Boller, R. A.; Cechini, M. F.; De Cesare, C.; De Luca, A. P.; Gunnoe, T.; King, B. A.; King, J.; Pressley, N. N.; Roberts, J. T.; Rodriguez, J.; Thompson, C. K.; Wong, M. M.

2016-12-01

The satellites and instruments of the Afternoon Train are providing an unprecedented combination of nearly simultaneous measurements. One of the challenges for researchers and applications users is to sift through these combinations to find particular sets of data that correspond to their interests. Using visualization of the data is one way to explore these combinations. NASA's Worldview tool is designed to do just that - to interactively browse full-resolution satellite imagery. Worldview (https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/) is web-based and developed using open libraries and standards (OpenLayers, JavaScript, CSS, HTML) for cross-platform compatibility. It addresses growing user demands for access to full-resolution imagery by providing a responsive, interactive interface with global coverage and no artificial boundaries. In addition to science data imagery, Worldview provides ancillary datasets such as coastlines and borders, socio-economic layers, and satellite orbit tracks. Worldview interacts with the Earthdata Search Client to provide download of the data files associated with the imagery being viewed. The imagery used by Worldview is provided NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS - https://earthdata.nasa.gov/gibs) which provide highly responsive, highly scalable imagery services. Requests are made via the OGC Web Map Tile Service (WMTS) standard. In addition to Worldview, other clients can be developed using a variety of web-based libraries, desktop and mobile app libraries, and GDAL script-based access. GIBS currently includes more than 106 science data sets from seven instruments aboard three of the A-Train satellites and new data sets are being added as part of the President's Big Earth Data Initiative (BEDI). Efforts are underway to include new imagery types, such as vectors and curtains, into Worldview/GIBS which will be used to visualize additional A-Train science parameters.

A New Data Management System for Biological and Chemical Oceanography

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Groman, R. C.; Chandler, C.; Allison, D.; Glover, D. M.; Wiebe, P. H.

2007-12-01

The Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO) was created to serve PIs principally funded by NSF to conduct marine chemical and ecological research. The new office is dedicated to providing open access to data and information developed in the course of scientific research on short and intermediate time-frames. The data management system developed in support of U.S. JGOFS and U.S. GLOBEC programs is being modified to support the larger scope of the BCO-DMO effort, which includes ultimately providing a way to exchange data with other data systems. The open access system is based on a philosophy of data stewardship, support for existing and evolving data standards, and use of public domain software. The DMO staff work closely with originating PIs to manage data gathered as part of their individual programs. In the new BCO-DMO data system, project and data set metadata records designed to support re-use of the data are stored in a relational database (MySQL) and the data are stored in or made accessible by the JGOFS/GLOBEC object- oriented, relational, data management system. Data access will be provided via any standard Web browser client user interface through a GIS application (Open Source, OGC-compliant MapServer), a directory listing from the data holdings catalog, or a custom search engine that facilitates data discovery. In an effort to maximize data system interoperability, data will also be available via Web Services; and data set descriptions will be generated to comply with a variety of metadata content standards. The office is located at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and web access is via http://www.bco-dmo.org.

Extending Climate Analytics as a Service to the Earth System Grid Federation Progress Report on the Reanalysis Ensemble Service

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tamkin, G.; Schnase, J. L.; Duffy, D.; Li, J.; Strong, S.; Thompson, J. H.

2016-12-01

We are extending climate analytics-as-a-service, including: (1) A high-performance Virtual Real-Time Analytics Testbed supporting six major reanalysis data sets using advanced technologies like the Cloudera Impala-based SQL and Hadoop-based MapReduce analytics over native NetCDF files. (2) A Reanalysis Ensemble Service (RES) that offers a basic set of commonly used operations over the reanalysis collections that are accessible through NASA's climate data analytics Web services and our client-side Climate Data Services Python library, CDSlib. (3) An Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) WPS-compliant Web service interface to CDSLib to accommodate ESGF's Web service endpoints. This presentation will report on the overall progress of this effort, with special attention to recent enhancements that have been made to the Reanalysis Ensemble Service, including the following: - An CDSlib Python library that supports full temporal, spatial, and grid-based resolution services - A new reanalysis collections reference model to enable operator design and implementation - An enhanced library of sample queries to demonstrate and develop use case scenarios - Extended operators that enable single- and multiple reanalysis area average, vertical average, re-gridding, and trend, climatology, and anomaly computations - Full support for the MERRA-2 reanalysis and the initial integration of two additional reanalyses - A prototype Jupyter notebook-based distribution mechanism that combines CDSlib documentation with interactive use case scenarios and personalized project management - Prototyped uncertainty quantification services that combine ensemble products with comparative observational products - Convenient, one-stop shopping for commonly used data products from multiple reanalyses, including basic subsetting and arithmetic operations over the data and extractions of trends, climatologies, and anomalies - The ability to compute and visualize multiple reanalysis intercomparisons

Cool Apps: Building Cryospheric Data Applications With Standards-Based Service Oriented Architecture

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Collins, J. A.; Truslove, I.; Billingsley, B. W.; Oldenburg, J.; Brodzik, M.; Lewis, S.; Liu, M.

2012-12-01

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) holds a large collection of cryospheric data, and is involved in a number of informatics research and development projects aimed at improving the discoverability and accessibility of these data. To develop high-quality software in a timely manner, we have adopted a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach for our core technical infrastructure development. Data services at NSIDC are internally exposed to other tools and applications through standards-based service interfaces. These standards include OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting), various OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) standards including WMS (Web Map Service) and WFS (Web Feature Service), ESIP (Federation of Earth Sciences Information Partners) OpenSearch, and NSIDC-specific RESTful services. By taking a standards-based approach, we are able to use off-the-shelf tools and libraries to consume, translate and broker these data services, and thus develop applications faster. Additionally, by exposing public interfaces to these services we provide valuable data services to technical collaborators; for example, NASA Reverb (http://reverb.echo.nasa.gov) uses NSIDC's WMS services. Our latest generation of web applications consume these data services directly. The most complete example of this is the Operation IceBridge Data Portal (http://nsidc.org/icebridge/portal) which depends on many of the aforementioned services, and clearly exhibits many of the advantages of building applications atop a service-oriented architecture. This presentation outlines the architectural approach and components and open standards and protocols adopted at NSIDC, demonstrates the interactions and uses of public and internal service interfaces currently powering applications including the IceBridge Data Portal, and outlines the benefits and challenges of this approach.

An interoperability experiment for sharing hydrological rating tables

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lemon, D.; Taylor, P.; Sheahan, P.

2013-12-01

The increasing demand on freshwater resources is requiring authorities to produce more accurate and timely estimates of their available water. Calculation of continuous time-series of river discharge and storage volumes generally requires rating tables. These approximate relationships between two phenomena, such as river level and discharge, and allow us to produce continuous estimates of a phenomenon that may be impractical or impossible to measure directly. Standardised information models or access mechanisms for rating tables are required to support sharing and exchange of water flow data. An Interoperability Experiment (IE) is underway to test an information model that describes rating tables, the observations made to build these ratings, and river cross-section data. The IE is an initiative of the joint World Meteorological Organisation/Open Geospatial Consortium's Hydrology Domain Working Group (HydroDWG) and the model will be published as WaterML2.0 part 2. Interoperability Experiments (IEs) are low overhead, multiple member projects that are run under the OGC's interoperability program to test existing and emerging standards. The HydroDWG has previously run IEs to test early versions of OGC WaterML2.0 part 1 - timeseries. This IE is focussing on two key exchange scenarios: Sharing rating tables and gauging observations between water agencies. Through the use of standard OGC web services, rating tables and associated data will be made available from water agencies. The (Australian) Bureau of Meteorology will retrieve rating tables on-demand from water authorities, allowing the Bureau to run conversions of data within their own systems. Exposing rating tables and gaugings for online analysis and educational purposes. A web client will be developed to enable exploration and visualization of rating tables, gaugings and related metadata for monitoring points. The client gives a quick view into available rating tables, their periods of applicability and the standard deviation of observations against the relationship. An example of this client running can be seen at the link provided. The result of the IE will form the basis for the standardisation of WaterML2.0 part 2. The use of the standard will lead to increased transparency and accessibility of rating tables, while also improving general understanding of this important hydrological concept.

Towards a National Hydrological Forecasting system for Canada : Lessons Learned from the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Prediction System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fortin, V.; Durnford, D.; Gaborit, E.; Davison, B.; Dimitrijevic, M.; Matte, P.

2016-12-01

Environment and Climate Change Canada has recently deployed a water cycle prediction system for the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River. The model domain includes both the Canadian and US portions of the watershed. It provides 84-h forecasts of weather elements, lake level, lake ice cover and surface currents based on two-way coupling of the GEM numerical weather prediction (NWP) model with the NEMO ocean model. Streamflow of all the major tributaries of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River are estimated by the WATROUTE routing model, which routes the surface runoff forecasted by GEM's land-surface scheme and assimilates streamflow observations where available. Streamflow forecasts are updated twice daily and are disseminated through an OGC compliant web map service (WMS) and a web feature service (WFS). In this presentation, in addition to describing the system and documenting its forecast skill, we show how it is being used by clients for various environmental prediction applications. We then discuss the importance of two-way coupling, land-surface and hillslope modelling and the impact of horizontal resolution on hydrological prediction skill. In the second portion of the talk, we discuss plans for implementing a similar system at the national scale, using what we have learned in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence watershed. Early results obtained for the headwaters of the Saskatchewan River as well as for the whole Nelson-Churchill watershed are presented.

Gazetteer Brokering through Semantic Mediation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hobona, G.; Bermudez, L. E.; Brackin, R.

2013-12-01

A gazetteer is a geographical directory containing some information regarding places. It provides names, location and other attributes for places which may include points of interest (e.g. buildings, oilfields and boreholes), and other features. These features can be published via web services conforming to the Gazetteer Application Profile of the Web Feature Service (WFS) standard of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). Against the backdrop of advances in geophysical surveys, there has been a significant increase in the amount of data referenced to locations. Gazetteers services have played a significant role in facilitating access to such data, including through provision of specialized queries such as text, spatial and fuzzy search. Recent developments in the OGC have led to advances in gazetteers such as support for multilingualism, diacritics, and querying via advanced spatial constraints (e.g. search by radial search and nearest neighbor). A challenge remaining however, is that gazetteers produced by different organizations have typically been modeled differently. Inconsistencies from gazetteers produced by different organizations may include naming the same feature in a different way, naming the attributes differently, locating the feature in a different location, and providing fewer or more attributes than the other services. The Gazetteer application profile of the WFS is a starting point to address such inconsistencies by providing a standardized interface based on rules specified in ISO 19112, the international standard for spatial referencing by geographic identifiers. The profile, however, does not provide rules to deal with semantic inconsistencies. The USGS and NGA commissioned research into the potential for a Single Point of Entry Global Gazetteer (SPEGG). The research was conducted by the Cross Community Interoperability thread of the OGC testbed, referenced OWS-9. The testbed prototyped approaches for brokering gazetteers through use of semantic web technologies, including ontologies and a semantic mediator. The semantically-enhanced SPEGG allowed a client to submit a single query (e.g. ';hills') and to retrieve data from two separate gazetteers with different vocabularies (e.g. where one refers to ';summits' another refers to ';hills'). Supporting the SPEGG was a SPARQL server that held the ontologies and processed queries on them. Earth Science surveys and forecast always have a place on Earth. Being able to share the information about a place and solve inconsistencies about that place from different sources will enable geoscientists to better do their research. In the advent of mobile geo computing and location based services (LBS), brokering gazetteers will provide geoscientists with access to gazetteer services rich with information and functionality beyond that offered by current generic gazetteers.

Informatics and Decisions support in Galway Bay (SmartBay) using ERDDAP, OGC Technologies and Third Party Data Sources to Provide Services to the Marine Community.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Delaney, Conor; Gaughan, Paul; Smyth, Damian

2013-04-01

The global marine sector generates and consumes vast quantities of operational and forecast data on a daily basis. One of the key challenges facing the sector relates to the management and transformation of that data into knowledge. The Irish Marine Institute (MI) generates oceanographic and environmental data on a regular and frequent basis. This data comes from operational ocean models run on the MI's high performance computer (HPC) and various environmental observation sensors systems. Some of the data published by the Marine Institute is brokered by the Environmental Research Division's Data Access Program (ERDDAP) data broker, which is a broker technology that uses technology based on OPeNDAP and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards. The broker provides a consistent web service interface to the data services of the Marine Institute; these services include wave, tide and weather sensors and numerical model output. An ERDDAP server publishes data in a number of standard and developer friendly ways, including some OGC formats. The data on the MI ERDDAP (http://erddap.marine.ie) server is published as OpenData. The marine work package of the FP7 funded ENVIROFI project (http://www.envirofi.eu/) has used the ERDDAP data broker as a core resource in the development of its Marine Asset management decision Support Tool (MAST) portal and phone App. Communication between MAST and ERDDAP is via a Uniform Resource Identifier (Linked Data). A key objective of the MAST prototype is to demonstrate the potential of next-generation dynamic web-based products and services and how they can be harnessed to facilitate growth of both the marine and IT sectors. The use case driving the project is the management of ocean energy assets in the marine environment. In particular the provision of information that aid in the decision making process surrounding maintenance at sea. This question is common to any offshore industry and solution proposed here is applicable to other users of Galway Bay, Ireland. The architecture of the MAST is based on the concepts of Representational State Transfer (REST), Resource Orientated Architecture (ROA), Service Orientated Architecture (SOA), OpenData and MASHUPS. In this paper we demonstrate the architecture of the MAST system and discuss the potential of ERDDAP technology to serve complex data in formats that are accessible to the general developer community. We also discuss of the potential of next generation web technologies and OpenData to encourage the use of valuable marine data resources.

A semantically rich and standardised approach enhancing discovery of sensor data and metadata

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kokkinaki, Alexandra; Buck, Justin; Darroch, Louise

2016-04-01

The marine environment plays an essential role in the earth's climate. To enhance the ability to monitor the health of this important system, innovative sensors are being produced and combined with state of the art sensor technology. As the number of sensors deployed is continually increasing,, it is a challenge for data users to find the data that meet their specific needs. Furthermore, users need to integrate diverse ocean datasets originating from the same or even different systems. Standards provide a solution to the above mentioned challenges. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has created Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards that enable different sensor networks to establish syntactic interoperability. When combined with widely accepted controlled vocabularies, they become semantically rich and semantic interoperability is achievable. In addition, Linked Data is the recommended best practice for exposing, sharing and connecting information on the Semantic Web using Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), Resource Description Framework (RDF) and RDF Query Language (SPARQL). As part of the EU-funded SenseOCEAN project, the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) is working on the standardisation of sensor metadata enabling 'plug and play' sensor integration. Our approach combines standards, controlled vocabularies and persistent URIs to publish sensor descriptions, their data and associated metadata as 5 star Linked Data and OGC SWE (SensorML, Observations & Measurements) standard. Thus sensors become readily discoverable, accessible and useable via the web. Content and context based searching is also enabled since sensors descriptions are understood by machines. Additionally, sensor data can be combined with other sensor or Linked Data datasets to form knowledge. This presentation will describe the work done in BODC to achieve syntactic and semantic interoperability in the sensor domain. It will illustrate the reuse and extension of the Semantic Sensor Network (SSN) ontology to Linked Sensor Ontology (LSO) and the steps taken to combine OGC SWE with the Linked Data approach through alignment and embodiment of other ontologies. It will then explain how data and models were annotated with controlled vocabularies to establish unambiguous semantics and interconnect them with data from different sources. Finally, it will introduce the RDF triple store where the sensor descriptions and metadata are stored and can be queried through the standard query language SPARQL. Providing different flavours of machine readable interpretations of sensors, sensor data and metadata enhances discoverability but most importantly allows seamless aggregation of information from different networks that will finally produce knowledge.

Grid enablement of OpenGeospatial Web Services: the G-OWS Working Group

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mazzetti, Paolo

2010-05-01

In last decades two main paradigms for resource sharing emerged and reached maturity: the Web and the Grid. They both demonstrate suitable for building Distributed Computing Infrastructures (DCIs) supporting the coordinated sharing of resources (i.e. data, information, services, etc) on the Internet. Grid and Web DCIs have much in common as a result of their underlying Internet technology (protocols, models and specifications). However, being based on different requirements and architectural approaches, they show some differences as well. The Web's "major goal was to be a shared information space through which people and machines could communicate" [Berners-Lee 1996]. The success of the Web, and its consequent pervasiveness, made it appealing for building specialized systems like the Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs). In this systems the introduction of Web-based geo-information technologies enables specialized services for geospatial data sharing and processing. The Grid was born to achieve "flexible, secure, coordinated resource sharing among dynamic collections of individuals, institutions, and resources" [Foster 2001]. It specifically focuses on large-scale resource sharing, innovative applications, and, in some cases, high-performance orientation. In the Earth and Space Sciences (ESS) the most part of handled information is geo-referred (geo-information) since spatial and temporal meta-information is of primary importance in many application domains: Earth Sciences, Disasters Management, Environmental Sciences, etc. On the other hand, in several application areas there is the need of running complex models which require the large processing and storage capabilities that the Grids are able to provide. Therefore the integration of geo-information and Grid technologies might be a valuable approach in order to enable advanced ESS applications. Currently both geo-information and Grid technologies have reached a high level of maturity, allowing to build such an integration on existing solutions. More specifically, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Services (OWS) specifications play a fundamental role in geospatial information sharing (e.g. in INSPIRE Implementing Rules, GEOSS architecture, GMES Services, etc.). On the Grid side, the gLite middleware, developed in the European EGEE (Enabling Grids for E-sciencE) Projects, is widely spread in Europe and beyond, proving its high scalability and it is one of the middleware chosen for the future European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) initiative. Therefore the convergence between OWS and gLite technologies would be desirable for a seamless access to the Grid capabilities through OWS-compliant systems. Anyway, to achieve this harmonization there are some obstacles to overcome. Firstly, a semantics mismatch must be addressed: gLite handle low-level (e.g. close to the machine) concepts like "file", "data", "instruments", "job", etc., while geo-information services handle higher-level (closer to the human) concepts like "coverage", "observation", "measurement", "model", etc. Secondly, an architectural mismatch must be addressed: OWS implements a Web Service-Oriented-Architecture which is stateless, synchronous and with no embedded security (which is demanded to other specs), while gLite implements the Grid paradigm in an architecture which is stateful, asynchronous (even not fully event-based) and with strong embedded security (based on the VO paradigm). In recent years many initiatives and projects have worked out possible approaches for implementing Grid-enabled OWSs. Just to mention some: (i) in 2007 the OGC has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Open Grid Forum, "a community of users, developers, and vendors leading the global standardization effort for grid computing."; (ii) the OGC identified "WPS Profiles - Conflation; and Grid processing" as one of the tasks in the Geo Processing Workflow theme of the OWS Phase 6 (OWS-6); (iii) several national, European and international projects investigated different aspects of this integration, developing demonstrators and Proof-of-Concepts; In this context, "gLite enablement of OpenGeospatial Web Services" (G-OWS) is an initiative started in 2008 by the European CYCLOPS, GENESI-DR, and DORII Projects Consortia in order to collect/coordinate experiences on the enablement of OWS on top of the gLite middleware [GOWS]. Currently G-OWS counts ten member organizations from Europe and beyond, and four European Projects involved. It broadened its scope to the development of Spatial Data and Information Infrastructures (SDI and SII) based on the Grid/Cloud capacity in order to enable Earth Science applications and tools. Its operational objectives are the following: i) to contribute to the OGC-OGF initiative; ii) to release a reference implementation as standard gLite APIs (under the gLite software license); iii) to release a reference model (including procedures and guidelines) for OWS Grid-ification, as far as gLite is concerned; iv) to foster and promote the formation of consortiums for participation to projects/initiatives aimed at building Grid-enabled SDIs To achieve this objectives G-OWS bases its activities on two main guiding principles: a) the adoption of a service-oriented architecture based on the information modelling approach, and b) standardization as a means of achieving interoperability (i.e. adoption of standards from ISO TC211, OGC OWS, OGF). In the first year of activity G-OWS has designed a general architectural framework stemming from the FP6 CYCLOPS studies and enriched by the outcomes of other projects and initiatives involved (i.e. FP7 GENESI-DR, FP7 DORII, AIST GeoGrid, etc.). Some proof-of-concepts have been developed to demonstrate the flexibility and scalability of such architectural framework. The G-OWS WG developed implementations of gLite-enabled Web Coverage Service (WCS) and Web Processing Service (WPS), and an implementation of a Shibboleth authentication for gLite-enabled OWS in order to evaluate the possible integration of Web and Grid security models. The presentation will aim to communicate the G-OWS organization, activities, future plans and means to involve the ESSI community. References [Berners-Lee 1996] T. Berners-Lee, "WWW: Past, present, and future". IEEE Computer, 29(10), Oct. 1996, pp. 69-77. [Foster 2001] I. Foster, C. Kesselman and S. Tuecke, "The Anatomy of the Grid. The International Journal ofHigh Performance Computing Applications", 15(3):200-222, Fall 2001 [GOWS] G-OWS WG, https://www.g-ows.org/, accessed: 15 January 2010

Cytologic Features of Malignant Melanoma with Osteoclast-Like Giant Cells.

PubMed

Jiménez-Heffernan, José A; Adrados, Magdalena; Muñoz-Hernández, Patricia; Fernández-Rico, Paloma; Ballesteros-García, Ana I; Fraga, Javier

2018-01-01

Malignant melanoma showing numerous osteoclast-like giant cells (OGCs) is an uncommon morphologic phenomenon, rarely mentioned in the cytologic literature. The few reported cases seem to have an aggressive clinical behavior. Although most findings support monocyte/macrophage differentiation, the exact nature of OGCs is not clear. A 57-year-old woman presented with an inguinal lymphadenopathy. Sixteen years before, cutaneous malignant melanoma of the lower limb had been excised. Needle aspiration revealed abundant neoplastic single cells as well as numerous multinucleated OGCs. Occasional neoplastic giant cells were also present. Nuclei of OGCs were monomorphic with oval morphology and were smaller than those of melanoma cells. The immunophenotype of OGCs (S100-, HMB45-, Melan-A-, SOX10-, Ki67-, CD163-, BRAF-, CD68+, MiTF+, p16+) was the expected for reactive OGCs of monocyte/macrophage origin. The tumor has shown an aggressive behavior with further metastases to the axillary lymph nodes and oral cavity. Numerous OGCs are a rare and relevant finding in malignant melanoma. Their presence should not induce confusion with other tumors rich in osteoclastic cells. Since a relevant number of OGCs in melanoma may mean a more aggressive behavior, and patients may benefit from specific treatments, their presence should be mentioned in the pathologic report. © 2018 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Software reuse example and challenges at NSIDC

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Billingsley, B. W.; Brodzik, M.; Collins, J. A.

2009-12-01

NSIDC has created a new data discovery and access system, Searchlight, to provide users with the data they want in the format they want. NSIDC Searchlight supports discovery and access to disparate data types with on-the-fly reprojection, regridding and reformatting. Architected to both reuse open source systems and be reused itself, Searchlight reuses GDAL and Proj4 for manipulating data and format conversions, the netCDF Java library for creating netCDF output, MapServer and OpenLayers for defining spatial criteria and the JTS Topology Suite (JTS) in conjunction with Hibernate Spatial for database interaction and rich OGC-compliant spatial objects. The application reuses popular Java and Java Script libraries including Struts 2, Spring, JPA (Hibernate), Sitemesh, JFreeChart, JQuery, DOJO and a PostGIS PostgreSQL database. Future reuse of Searchlight components is supported at varying architecture levels, ranging from the database and model components to web services. We present the tools, libraries and programs that Searchlight has reused. We describe the architecture of Searchlight and explain the strategies deployed for reusing existing software and how Searchlight is built for reuse. We will discuss NSIDC reuse of the Searchlight components to support rapid development of new data delivery systems.

OGC Dashboard

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

The Office of General Counsel (OGC) has an ongoing business process engineering and business process automation initiative which has helped the office reduce administrative labor costs while increasing employee effectiveness. Supporting this effort is a system of automated routines accessible through a portal' interface called OGC Dashboard. The dashboard helps OGC track work progress, legal case load, written work products such as legal briefs and advice, and scheduling processes such as employee leave plans (via calendar) and travel compensatory time off.

Sensor Webs in Digital Earth

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Heavner, M. J.; Fatland, D. R.; Moeller, H.; Hood, E.; Schultz, M.

2007-12-01

The University of Alaska Southeast is currently implementing a sensor web identified as the SouthEast Alaska MOnitoring Network for Science, Telecommunications, Education, and Research (SEAMONSTER). From power systems and instrumentation through data management, visualization, education, and public outreach, SEAMONSTER is designed with modularity in mind. We are utilizing virtual earth infrastructures to enhance both sensor web management and data access. We will describe how the design philosophy of using open, modular components contributes to the exploration of different virtual earth environments. We will also describe the sensor web physical implementation and how the many components have corresponding virtual earth representations. This presentation will provide an example of the integration of sensor webs into a virtual earth. We suggest that IPY sensor networks and sensor webs may integrate into virtual earth systems and provide an IPY legacy easily accessible to both scientists and the public. SEAMONSTER utilizes geobrowsers for education and public outreach, sensor web management, data dissemination, and enabling collaboration. We generate near-real-time auto-updating geobrowser files of the data. In this presentation we will describe how we have implemented these technologies to date, the lessons learned, and our efforts towards greater OGC standard implementation. A major focus will be on demonstrating how geobrowsers have made this project possible.

A New User Interface for On-Demand Customizable Data Products for Sensors in a SensorWeb

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mandl, Daniel; Cappelaere, Pat; Frye, Stuart; Sohlberg, Rob; Ly, Vuong; Chien, Steve; Sullivan, Don

2011-01-01

A SensorWeb is a set of sensors, which can consist of ground, airborne and space-based sensors interoperating in an automated or autonomous collaborative manner. The NASA SensorWeb toolbox, developed at NASA/GSFC in collaboration with NASA/JPL, NASA/Ames and other partners, is a set of software and standards that (1) enables users to create virtual private networks of sensors over open networks; (2) provides the capability to orchestrate their actions; (3) provides the capability to customize the output data products and (4) enables automated delivery of the data products to the users desktop. A recent addition to the SensorWeb Toolbox is a new user interface, together with web services co-resident with the sensors, to enable rapid creation, loading and execution of new algorithms for processing sensor data. The web service along with the user interface follows the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard called Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS). This presentation will detail the prototype that was built and how the WCPS was tested against a HyspIRI flight testbed and an elastic computation cloud on the ground with EO-1 data. HyspIRI is a future NASA decadal mission. The elastic computation cloud stores EO-1 data and runs software similar to Amazon online shopping.

The Matsu Wheel: A Cloud-Based Framework for Efficient Analysis and Reanalysis of Earth Satellite Imagery

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Patterson, Maria T.; Anderson, Nicholas; Bennett, Collin; Bruggemann, Jacob; Grossman, Robert L.; Handy, Matthew; Ly, Vuong; Mandl, Daniel J.; Pederson, Shane; Pivarski, James;

NCI's Distributed Geospatial Data Server

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Larraondo, P. R.; Evans, B. J. K.; Antony, J.

2016-12-01

Earth systems, environmental and geophysics datasets are an extremely valuable source of information about the state and evolution of the Earth. However, different disciplines and applications require this data to be post-processed in different ways before it can be used. For researchers experimenting with algorithms across large datasets or combining multiple data sets, the traditional approach to batch data processing and storing all the output for later analysis rapidly becomes unfeasible, and often requires additional work to publish for others to use. Recent developments on distributed computing using interactive access to significant cloud infrastructure opens the door for new ways of processing data on demand, hence alleviating the need for storage space for each individual copy of each product. The Australian National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) has developed a highly distributed geospatial data server which supports interactive processing of large geospatial data products, including satellite Earth Observation data and global model data, using flexible user-defined functions. This system dynamically and efficiently distributes the required computations among cloud nodes and thus provides a scalable analysis capability. In many cases this completely alleviates the need to preprocess and store the data as products. This system presents a standards-compliant interface, allowing ready accessibility for users of the data. Typical data wrangling problems such as handling different file formats and data types, or harmonising the coordinate projections or temporal and spatial resolutions, can now be handled automatically by this service. The geospatial data server exposes functionality for specifying how the data should be aggregated and transformed. The resulting products can be served using several standards such as the Open Geospatial Consortium's (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS) or Web Feature Service (WFS), Open Street Map tiles, or raw binary arrays under different conventions. We will show some cases where we have used this new capability to provide a significant improvement over previous approaches.

Geospatial Data as a Service: The GEOGLAM Rangelands and Pasture Productivity Map Experience

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Evans, B. J. K.; Antony, J.; Guerschman, J. P.; Larraondo, P. R.; Richards, C. J.

2017-12-01

Empowering end-users like pastoralists, land management specialists and land policy makers in the use of earth observation data for both day-to-day and seasonal planning needs both interactive delivery of multiple geospatial datasets and the capability of supporting on-the-fly dynamic queries while simultaneously fostering a community around the effort. The use of and wide adoption of large data archives, like those produced by earth observation missions, are often limited by compute and storage capabilities of the remote user. We demonstrate that wide-scale use of large data archives can be facilitated by end-users dynamically requesting value-added products using open standards (WCS, WMS, WPS), with compute running in the cloud or dedicated data-centres and visualizing outputs on web-front ends. As an example, we will demonstrate how a tool called GSKY can empower a remote end-user by providing the data delivery and analytics capabilities for the GEOGLAM Rangelands and Pasture Productivity (RAPP) Map tool. The GEOGLAM RAPP initiative from the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and its Agricultural Monitoring subgroup aims at providing practical tools to end-users focusing on the important role of rangelands and pasture systems in providing food production security from both agricultural crops and animal protein. Figure 1, is a screen capture from the RAPP Map interface for an important pasture area in the Namibian rangelands. The RAPP Map has been in production for six months and has garnered significant interest from groups and users all over the world. GSKY, being formulated around the theme of Open Geospatial Data-as-a-Service capabilities uses distributed computing and storage to facilitate this. It works behind the scenes, accepting OGC standard requests in WCS, WMS and WPS. Results from these requests are rendered on a web-front end. In this way, the complexities of data locality and compute execution are masked from an end user. On-the-fly computation of products such as NDVI, Leaf Area Index, vegetation cover and others from original source data including MODIS are achived, with Landsat and Sentinel-2 on the horizon. Innovative use of cloud computing and storage along with flexible front-ends, allow the democratization of data dissemination and we hope better outcomes for the planet.

Automating Mapping Production for the Enterprise: from Contract to Delivery

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Uebbing, R.; Xie, C.; Beshah, B.; Welter, J.

2012-07-01

The ever increasing volume and quality of geospatial data has created new challenges for mapping companies. Due to increased image resolution, fusion of different data sources and more frequent data update requirements, mapping production is forced to streamline the work flow to meet client deadlines. But the data volume alone is not the only barrier for an efficient production work flow. Processing geospatial information traditionally uses domain and vendor specific applications that do not interface with each other, often leading to data duplication and therefore creating sources for error. Also, it creates isolation between different departments within a mapping company resulting in additional communication barriers. North West Geomatics has designed and implemented a data centric enterprise solution for the flight acquisition and production work flow to combat the above challenges. A central data repository containing not only geospatial data in the strictest sense such as images, vector layers and 3D point clouds, but also other information such as product specifications, client requirements, flight acquisition data, production resource usage and much more has been deployed at the company. As there is only one instance of the database shared throughout the whole organization it allows all employees, given they have been granted the appropriate permission, to view the current status of any project with a graphical and table based interface through its life cycle from sales, through flight acquisition, production and product delivery. Not only can users track progress and status of various work flow steps, but the system also allows users and applications to actively schedule or start specific production steps such as data ingestion and triangulation with many other steps (orthorectification, mosaicing, accounting, etc.) in the planning stages. While the complete system is exposed to the users through a web interface and therefore allowing outside customers to also view their data, much of the design and development was focused on work flow automation, scalability and security. Ideally, users will interact with the system to retrieve a specific project status and summaries while the work flow processes are triggered automatically by modeling their dependencies. The enterprise system is built using open source technologies (PostGIS, Hibernate, OpenLayers, GWT and others) and adheres to OGC web services for data delivery (WMS/WFS/WCS) to third party applications.

Global Near Real-Time MODIS and Landsat Flood Mapping and Product Delivery

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Policelli, F. S.; Slayback, D. A.; Tokay, M. M.; Brakenridge, G. R.

2014-12-01

Flooding is the most destructive, frequent, and costly natural disaster faced by modern society, and is increasing in frequency and damage (deaths, displacements, and financial costs) as populations increase and climate change generates more extreme weather events. When major flooding events occur, the disaster management community needs frequently updated and easily accessible information to better understand the extent of flooding and coordinate response efforts. With funding from NASA's Applied Sciences program, we developed and are now operating a near real-time global flood mapping system to help provide flood extent information within 24-48 hours of events. The principal element of the system applies a water detection algorithm to MODIS imagery, which is processed by the LANCE (Land Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS) system at NASA Goddard within a few hours of satellite overpass. Using imagery from both the Terra (10:30 AM local time overpass) and Aqua (1:30 PM) platforms allows the system to deliver an initial daily assessment of flood extent by late afternoon, and more robust assessments after accumulating cloud-free imagery over several days. Cloud cover is the primary limitation in detecting surface water from MODIS imagery. Other issues include the relatively coarse scale of the MODIS imagery (250 meters) for some events, the difficulty of detecting flood waters in areas with continuous canopy cover, confusion of shadow (cloud or terrain) with water, and accurately identifying detected water as flood as opposed to normal water extent. We are working on improvements to address these limitations. We have also begun delivery of near real time water maps at 30 m resolution from Landsat imagery. Although Landsat is not available daily globally, but only every 8 days if imagery from both operating platforms (Landsat 7 and 8) is accessed, it can provide useful higher resolution data on water extent when a clear acquisition coincides with an active flood event. These data products are provided in various formats on our website, and also via live OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) services, and ArcGIS Online accessible web maps, allowing easy access from a variety of platforms, from desktop GIS software to web browsers on mobile phones. https://oas.gsfc.nasa.gov/floodmap

The Live Access Server Scientific Product Generation Through Workflow Orchestration

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hankin, S.; Calahan, J.; Li, J.; Manke, A.; O'Brien, K.; Schweitzer, R.

2006-12-01

The Live Access Server (LAS) is a well-established Web-application for display and analysis of geo-science data sets. The software, which can be downloaded and installed by anyone, gives data providers an easy way to establish services for their on-line data holdings, so their users can make plots; create and download data sub-sets; compare (difference) fields; and perform simple analyses. Now at version 7.0, LAS has been in operation since 1994. The current "Armstrong" release of LAS V7 consists of three components in a tiered architecture: user interface, workflow orchestration and Web Services. The LAS user interface (UI) communicates with the LAS Product Server via an XML protocol embedded in an HTTP "get" URL. Libraries (APIs) have been developed in Java, JavaScript and perl that can readily generate this URL. As a result of this flexibility it is common to find LAS user interfaces of radically different character, tailored to the nature of specific datasets or the mindset of specific users. When a request is received by the LAS Product Server (LPS -- the workflow orchestration component), business logic converts this request into a series of Web Service requests invoked via SOAP. These "back- end" Web services perform data access and generate products (visualizations, data subsets, analyses, etc.). LPS then packages these outputs into final products (typically HTML pages) via Jakarta Velocity templates for delivery to the end user. "Fine grained" data access is performed by back-end services that may utilize JDBC for data base access; the OPeNDAP "DAPPER" protocol; or (in principle) the OGC WFS protocol. Back-end visualization services are commonly legacy science applications wrapped in Java or Python (or perl) classes and deployed as Web Services accessible via SOAP. Ferret is the default visualization application used by LAS, though other applications such as Matlab, CDAT, and GrADS can also be used. Other back-end services may include generation of Google Earth layers using KML; generation of maps via WMS or ArcIMS protocols; and data manipulation with Unix utilities.

SensorWeb 3G: Extending On-Orbit Sensor Capabilities to Enable Near Realtime User Configurability

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mandl, Daniel; Cappelaere, Pat; Frye, Stuart; Sohlberg, Rob; Ly, Vuong; Chien, Steve; Tran, Daniel; Davies, Ashley; Sullivan, Don; Ames, Troy;

Kinota: An Open-Source NoSQL implementation of OGC SensorThings for large-scale high-resolution real-time environmental monitoring

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Miles, B.; Chepudira, K.; LaBar, W.

2017-12-01

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) SensorThings API (STA) specification, ratified in 2016, is a next-generation open standard for enabling real-time communication of sensor data. Building on over a decade of OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) Standards, STA offers a rich data model that can represent a range of sensor and phenomena types (e.g. fixed sensors sensing fixed phenomena, fixed sensors sensing moving phenomena, mobile sensors sensing fixed phenomena, and mobile sensors sensing moving phenomena) and is data agnostic. Additionally, and in contrast to previous SWE standards, STA is developer-friendly, as is evident from its convenient JSON serialization, and expressive OData-based query language (with support for geospatial queries); with its Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT), STA is also well-suited to efficient real-time data publishing and discovery. All these attributes make STA potentially useful for use in environmental monitoring sensor networks. Here we present Kinota(TM), an Open-Source NoSQL implementation of OGC SensorThings for large-scale high-resolution real-time environmental monitoring. Kinota, which roughly stands for Knowledge from Internet of Things Analyses, relies on Cassandra its underlying data store, which is a horizontally scalable, fault-tolerant open-source database that is often used to store time-series data for Big Data applications (though integration with other NoSQL or rational databases is possible). With this foundation, Kinota can scale to store data from an arbitrary number of sensors collecting data every 500 milliseconds. Additionally, Kinota architecture is very modular allowing for customization by adopters who can choose to replace parts of the existing implementation when desirable. The architecture is also highly portable providing the flexibility to choose between cloud providers like azure, amazon, google etc. The scalable, flexible and cloud friendly architecture of Kinota makes it ideal for use in next-generation large-scale and high-resolution real-time environmental monitoring networks used in domains such as hydrology, geomorphology, and geophysics, as well as management applications such as flood early warning, and regulatory enforcement.

Oceanids command and control (C2) data system - Marine autonomous systems data for vehicle piloting, scientific data users, operational data assimilation, and big data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Buck, J. J. H.; Phillips, A.; Lorenzo, A.; Kokkinaki, A.; Hearn, M.; Gardner, T.; Thorne, K.

2017-12-01

The National Oceanography Centre (NOC) operate a fleet of approximately 36 autonomous marine platforms including submarine gliders, autonomous underwater vehicles, and autonomous surface vehicles. Each platform effectivity has the capability to observe the ocean and collect data akin to a small research vessel. This is creating a growth in data volumes and complexity while the amount of resource available to manage data remains static. The OceanIds Command and Control (C2) project aims to solve these issues by fully automating the data archival, processing and dissemination. The data architecture being implemented jointly by NOC and the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) includes a single Application Programming Interface (API) gateway to handle authentication, forwarding and delivery of both metadata and data. Technicians and principle investigators will enter expedition data prior to deployment of vehicles enabling automated data processing when vehicles are deployed. The system will support automated metadata acquisition from platforms as this technology moves towards operational implementation. The metadata exposure to the web builds on a prototype developed by the European Commission supported SenseOCEAN project and is via open standards including World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) RDF/XML and the use of the Semantic Sensor Network ontology and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) SensorML standard. Data will be delivered in the marine domain Everyone's Glider Observatory (EGO) format and OGC Observations and Measurements. Additional formats will be served by implementation of endpoints such as the NOAA ERDDAP tool. This standardised data delivery via the API gateway enables timely near-real-time data to be served to Oceanids users, BODC users, operational users and big data systems. The use of open standards will also enable web interfaces to be rapidly built on the API gateway and delivery to European research infrastructures that include aligned reference models for data infrastructure.

Data near processing support for climate data analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kindermann, Stephan; Ehbrecht, Carsten; Hempelmann, Nils

2016-04-01

Climate data repositories grow in size exponentially. Scalable data near processing capabilities are required to meet future data analysis requirements and to replace current "data download and process at home" workflows and approaches. On one hand side, these processing capabilities should be accessible via standardized interfaces (e.g. OGC WPS), on the other side a large variety of processing tools, toolboxes and deployment alternatives have to be supported and maintained at the data/processing center. We present a community approach of a modular and flexible system supporting the development, deployment and maintenace of OGC-WPS based web processing services. This approach is organized in an open source github project (called "bird-house") supporting individual processing services ("birds", e.g. climate index calculations, model data ensemble calculations), which rely on basic common infrastructural components (e.g. installation and deployment recipes, analysis code dependencies management). To support easy deployment at data centers as well as home institutes (e.g. for testing and development) the system supports the management of the often very complex package dependency chain of climate data analysis packages as well as docker based packaging and installation. We present a concrete deployment scenario at the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ). The DKRZ one hand side hosts a multi-petabyte climate archive which is integrated e.g. into the european ENES and worldwide ESGF data infrastructure, and on the other hand hosts an HPC center supporting (model) data production and data analysis. The deployment scenario also includes openstack based data cloud services to support data import and data distribution for bird-house based WPS web processing services. Current challenges for inter-institutionnal deployments of web processing services supporting the european and international climate modeling community as well as the climate impact community are highlighted. Also aspects supporting future WPS based cross community usage scenarios supporting data reuse and data provenance aspects are reflected.

Integrated web system of geospatial data services for climate research

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Okladnikov, Igor; Gordov, Evgeny; Titov, Alexander

2016-04-01

Georeferenced datasets are currently actively used for modeling, interpretation and forecasting of climatic and ecosystem changes on different spatial and temporal scales. Due to inherent heterogeneity of environmental datasets as well as their huge size (up to tens terabytes for a single dataset) a special software supporting studies in the climate and environmental change areas is required. An approach for integrated analysis of georefernced climatological data sets based on combination of web and GIS technologies in the framework of spatial data infrastructure paradigm is presented. According to this approach a dedicated data-processing web system for integrated analysis of heterogeneous georeferenced climatological and meteorological data is being developed. It is based on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards and involves many modern solutions such as object-oriented programming model, modular composition, and JavaScript libraries based on GeoExt library, ExtJS Framework and OpenLayers software. This work is supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Agreement #14.613.21.0037.

A SOA-based approach to geographical data sharing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Zonghua; Peng, Mingjun; Fan, Wei

2009-10-01

In the last few years, large volumes of spatial data have been available in different government departments in China, but these data are mainly used within these departments. With the e-government project initiated, spatial data sharing become more and more necessary. Currently, the Web has been used not only for document searching but also for the provision and use of services, known as Web services, which are published in a directory and may be automatically discovered by software agents. Particularly in the spatial domain, the possibility of accessing these large spatial datasets via Web services has motivated research into the new field of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) implemented using service-oriented architecture. In this paper a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) based Geographical Information Systems (GIS) is proposed, and a prototype system is deployed based on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard in Wuhan, China, thus that all the departments authorized can access the spatial data within the government intranet, and also these spatial data can be easily integrated into kinds of applications.

MaNIDA: Integration of marine expedition information, data and publications: Data Portal of German Marine Research

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Koppe, Roland; Scientific MaNIDA-Team

2013-04-01

The Marine Network for Integrated Data Access (MaNIDA) aims to build a sustainable e-infrastructure to support discovery and re-use of marine data from distinct data providers in Germany (see related abstracts in session ESSI 1.2). In order to provide users integrated access and retrieval of expedition or cruise metadata, data, services and publications as well as relationships among the various objects, we are developing (web) applications based on state of the art technologies: the Data Portal of German Marine Research. Since the German network of distributed content providers have distinct objectives and mandates for storing digital objects (e.g. long-term data preservation, near real time data, publication repositories), we have to cope with heterogeneous metadata in terms of syntax and semantic, data types and formats as well as access solutions. We have defined a set of core metadata elements which are common to our content providers and therefore useful for discovery and building relationships among objects. Existing catalogues for various types of vocabularies are being used to assure the mapping to community-wide used terms. We distinguish between expedition metadata and continuously harvestable metadata objects from distinct data providers. • Existing expedition metadata from distinct sources is integrated and validated in order to create an expedition metadata catalogue which is used as authoritative source for expedition-related content. The web application allows browsing by e.g. research vessel and date, exploring expeditions and research gaps by tracklines and viewing expedition details (begin/end, ports, platforms, chief scientists, events, etc.). Also expedition-related objects from harvesting are dynamically associated with expedition information and presented to the user. Hence we will provide web services to detailed expedition information. • Other harvestable content is separated into four categories: archived data and data products, near real time data, publications and reports. Reports are a special case of publication, describing cruise planning, cruise reports or popular reports on expeditions and are orthogonal to e.g. peer-reviewed articles. Each object's metadata contains at least: identifier(s) e.g. doi/hdl, title, author(s), date, expedition(s), platform(s) e.g. research vessel Polarstern. Furthermore project(s), parameter(s), device(s) and e.g. geographic coverage are of interest. An international gazetteer resolves geographic coverage to region names and annotates to object metadata. Information is homogenously presented to the user, independent of the underlying format, but adaptable to specific disciplines e.g. bathymetry. Also data access and dissemination information is available to the user as data download link or web services (e.g. WFS, WMS). Based on relationship metadata we are dynamically building graphs of objects to support the user in finding possible relevant associated objects. Technically metadata is based on ISO / OGC standards or provider specification. Metadata is harvested via OAI-PMH or OGC CSW and indexed with Apache Lucene. This enables powerful full-text search, geographic and temporal search as well as faceting. In this presentation we will illustrate the architecture and the current implementation of our integrated approach.

THE TSUNAMI SERVICE BUS, AN INTEGRATION PLATFORM FOR HETEROGENEOUS SENSOR SYSTEMS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fleischer, J.; Häner, R.; Herrnkind, S.; Kriegel, U.; Schwarting, H.; Wächter, J.

2009-12-01

The Tsunami Service Bus (TSB) is the sensor integration platform of the German Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS) [1]. The primary goal of GITEWS is to deliver reliable tsunami warnings as fast as possible. This is achieved on basis of various sensor systems like seismometers, ocean instrumentation, and GPS stations, all providing fundamental data to support prediction of tsunami wave propagation by the GITEWS warning center. However, all these sensors come with their own proprietary data formats and specific behavior. Also new sensor types might be added, old sensors will be replaced. To keep GITEWS flexible the TSB was developed in order to access and control sensors in a uniform way. To meet these requirements the TSB follows the architectural blueprint of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). The integration platform implements dedicated services communicating via a service infrastructure. The functionality required for early warnings is provided by loosely coupled services replacing the "hard-wired" coupling at data level. Changes in the sensor specification are confined to the data level without affecting the warning center. Great emphasis was laid on following the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standard [2], specified by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) [3]. As a result the full functionality needed in GITEWS could be achieved by implementing the four SWE services: The Sensor Observation Service for retrieving sensor measurements, the Sensor Alert Service in order to deliver sensor alerts, the Sensor Planning Service for tasking sensors, and the Web Notification Service for conduction messages to various media channels. Beyond these services the TSB also follows SWE Observation & Measurements specifications (O&M) for data encoding and Sensor Model Language (SensorML) for meta information. Moreover, accessing sensors via the TSB is not restricted to GITEWS. Multiple instances of the TSB can be composed to realize federate warning system. Beside the already operating TSB at the BMKG warning center [4], two other organizations in Indonesia ([5], [6]) consider using the TSB, making their data centers available to GITEWS. The presentation takes a look at the concepts and implementation and reflects the usefulness of the mentioned standards. REFERENCES [1] GITEWS is a project of the German Federal Government to aid the recon¬struction of the tsunami-prone region of the Indian Ocean, http://www.gitews.org/ [2] SWE, www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/sensorweb [3] OGC, www.opengeospatial.org [4] Meteorological and Geophysical Agency of Indonesia (BMKG), www.bmg.go.id [5] National Coordinating Agency for Surveys and Mapping (BAKOSURTANAL), www.bakosurtanal.go.id [6] Agency for the Assessment & Application of Technology (BPPT), www.bppt.go.id

A SMART groundwater portal: An OGC web services orchestration framework for hydrology to improve data access and visualisation in New Zealand

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Klug, Hermann; Kmoch, Alexander

2014-08-01

Transboundary and cross-catchment access to hydrological data is the key to designing successful environmental policies and activities. Electronic maps based on distributed databases are fundamental for planning and decision making in all regions and for all spatial and temporal scales. Freshwater is an essential asset in New Zealand (and globally) and the availability as well as accessibility of hydrological information held by or held for public authorities and businesses are becoming a crucial management factor. Access to and visual representation of environmental information for the public is essential for attracting greater awareness of water quality and quantity matters. Detailed interdisciplinary knowledge about the environment is required to ensure that the environmental policy-making community of New Zealand considers regional and local differences of hydrological statuses, while assessing the overall national situation. However, cross-regional and inter-agency sharing of environmental spatial data is complex and challenging. In this article, we firstly provide an overview of the state of the art standard compliant techniques and methodologies for the practical implementation of simple, measurable, achievable, repeatable, and time-based (SMART) hydrological data management principles. Secondly, we contrast international state of the art data management developments with the present status for groundwater information in New Zealand. Finally, for the topics (i) data access and harmonisation, (ii) sensor web enablement and (iii) metadata, we summarise our findings, provide recommendations on future developments and highlight the specific advantages resulting from a seamless view, discovery, access, and analysis of interoperable hydrological information and metadata for decision making.

In-field Access to Geoscientific Metadata through GPS-enabled Mobile Phones

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hobona, Gobe; Jackson, Mike; Jordan, Colm; Butchart, Ben

2010-05-01

Fieldwork is an integral part of much geosciences research. But whilst geoscientists have physical or online access to data collections whilst in the laboratory or at base stations, equivalent in-field access is not standard or straightforward. The increasing availability of mobile internet and GPS-supported mobile phones, however, now provides the basis for addressing this issue. The SPACER project was commissioned by the Rapid Innovation initiative of the UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to explore the potential for GPS-enabled mobile phones to access geoscientific metadata collections. Metadata collections within the geosciences and the wider geospatial domain can be disseminated through web services based on the Catalogue Service for Web(CSW) standard of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) - a global grouping of over 380 private, public and academic organisations aiming to improve interoperability between geospatial technologies. CSW offers an XML-over-HTTP interface for querying and retrieval of geospatial metadata. By default, the metadata returned by CSW is based on the ISO19115 standard and encoded in XML conformant to ISO19139. The SPACER project has created a prototype application that enables mobile phones to send queries to CSW containing user-defined keywords and coordinates acquired from GPS devices built-into the phones. The prototype has been developed using the free and open source Google Android platform. The mobile application offers views for listing titles, presenting multiple metadata elements and a Google Map with an overlay of bounding coordinates of datasets. The presentation will describe the architecture and approach applied in the development of the prototype.

Complex virtual urban environment modeling from CityGML data and OGC web services: application to the SIMFOR project

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chambelland, Jean-Christophe; Gesquière, Gilles

2012-03-01

Due to the advances in computer graphics and network speed it is possible to navigate in 3D virtual world in real time. This technology proposed for example in computer games, has been adapted for training systems. In this context, a collaborative serious game for urban crisis management called SIMFOR is born in France. This project has been designed for intensive realistic training and consequently must allow the players to create new urban operational theatres. In this goal, importing, structuring, processing and exchanging 3D urban data remains an important underlying problem. This communication will focus on the design of the 3D Environment Editor (EE) and the related data processes needed to prepare the data flow to be exploitable by the runtime environment of SIMFOR. We will use solutions proposed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to aggregate and share data. A presentation of the proposed architecture will be given. The overall design of the EE and some strategies for efficiently analyzing, displaying and exporting large amount of urban CityGML information will be presented. An example illustrating the potentiality of the EE and the reliability of the proposed data processing will be proposed.

Footprint Representation of Planetary Remote Sensing Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Walter, S. H. G.; Gasselt, S. V.; Michael, G.; Neukum, G.

The geometric outline of remote sensing image data, the so called footprint, can be represented as a number of coordinate tuples. These polygons are associated with according attribute information such as orbit name, ground- and image resolution, solar longitude and illumination conditions to generate a powerful base for classification of planetary experiment data. Speed, handling and extended capabilites are the reasons for using geodatabases to store and access these data types. Techniques for such a spatial database of footprint data are demonstrated using the Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) PostgreSQL, spatially enabled by the PostGIS extension. Exemplary, footprints of the HRSC and OMEGA instruments, both onboard ESA's Mars Express Orbiter, are generated and connected to attribute information. The aim is to provide high-resolution footprints of the OMEGA instrument to the science community for the first time and make them available for web-based mapping applications like the "Planetary Interactive GIS-on-the-Web Analyzable Database" (PIG- WAD), produced by the USGS. Map overlays with HRSC or other instruments like MOC and THEMIS (footprint maps are already available for these instruments and can be integrated into the database) allow on-the-fly intersection and comparison as well as extended statistics of the data. Footprint polygons are generated one by one using standard software provided by the instrument teams. Attribute data is calculated and stored together with the geometric information. In the case of HRSC, the coordinates of the footprints are already available in the VICAR label of each image file. Using the VICAR RTL and PostgreSQL's libpq C library they are loaded into the database using the Well-Known Text (WKT) notation by the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC). For the OMEGA instrument, image data is read using IDL routines developed and distributed by the OMEGA team. Image outlines are exported together with relevant attribute data to the industry standard Shapefile format. These files are translated to a Structured Query Language (SQL) command sequence suitable for insertion into the PostGIS/PostgrSQL database using the shp2pgsql data loader provided by the PostGIS software. PostgreSQL's advanced features such as geometry types, rules, operators and functions allow complex spatial queries and on-the-fly processing of data on DBMS level e.g. generalisation of the outlines. Processing done by the DBMS, visualisation via GIS systems and utilisation for web-based applications like mapservers will be demonstrated.

Earth Observation oriented teaching materials development based on OGC Web services and Bashyt generated reports

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Stefanut, T.; Gorgan, D.; Giuliani, G.; Cau, P.

2012-04-01

Creating e-Learning materials in the Earth Observation domain is a difficult task especially for non-technical specialists who have to deal with distributed repositories, large amounts of information and intensive processing requirements. Furthermore, due to the lack of specialized applications for developing teaching resources, technical knowledge is required also for defining data presentation structures or in the development and customization of user interaction techniques for better teaching results. As a response to these issues during the GiSHEO FP7 project [1] and later in the EnviroGRIDS FP7 [2] project, we have developed the eGLE e-Learning Platform [3], a tool based application that provides dedicated functionalities to the Earth Observation specialists for developing teaching materials. The proposed architecture is built around a client-server design that provides the core functionalities (e.g. user management, tools integration, teaching materials settings, etc.) and has been extended with a distributed component implemented through the tools that are integrated into the platform, as described further. Our approach in dealing with multiple transfer protocol types, heterogeneous data formats or various user interaction techniques involve the development and integration of very specialized elements (tools) that can be customized by the trainers in a visual manner through simple user interfaces. In our concept each tool is dedicated to a specific data type, implementing optimized mechanisms for searching, retrieving, visualizing and interacting with it. At the same time, in each learning resource can be integrated any number of tools, through drag-and-drop interaction, allowing the teacher to retrieve pieces of data of various types (e.g. images, charts, tables, text, videos etc.) from different sources (e.g. OGC web services, charts created through Bashyt application, etc.) through different protocols (ex. WMS, BASHYT API, FTP, HTTP etc.) and to display them all together in a unitary manner using the same visual structure [4]. Addressing the High Power Computation requirements that are met while processing environmental data, our platform can be easily extended through tools that connect to GRID infrastructures, WCS web services, Bashyt API (for creating specialized hydrological reports) or any other specialized services (ex. graphics cluster visualization) that can be reached over the Internet. At run time, on the trainee's computer each tool is launched in an asynchronous running mode and connects to the data source that has been established by the teacher, retrieving and displaying the information to the user. The data transfer is accomplished directly between the trainee's computer and the corresponding services (e.g. OGC, Bashyt API, etc.) without passing through the core server platform. In this manner, the eGLE application can provide better and more responsive connections to a large number of users.

EarthServer: a Summary of Achievements in Technology, Services, and Standards

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baumann, Peter

2015-04-01

Big Data in the Earth sciences, the Tera- to Exabyte archives, mostly are made up from coverage data, according to ISO and OGC defined as the digital representation of some space-time varying phenomenon. Common examples include 1-D sensor timeseries, 2-D remote sensing imagery, 3D x/y/t image timese ries and x/y/z geology data, and 4-D x/y/z/t atmosphere and ocean data. Analytics on such data requires on-demand processing of sometimes significant complexity, such as getting the Fourier transform of satellite images. As network bandwidth limits prohibit transfer of such Big Data it is indispensable to devise protocols allowing clients to task flexible and fast processing on the server. The transatlantic EarthServer initiative, running from 2011 through 2014, has united 11 partners to establish Big Earth Data Analytics. A key ingredient has been flexibility for users to ask whatever they want, not impeded and complicated by system internals. The EarthServer answer to this is to use high-level, standards-based query languages which unify data and metadata search in a simple, yet powerful way. A second key ingredient is scalability. Without any doubt, scalability ultimately can only be achieved through parallelization. In the past, parallelizing cod e has been done at compile time and usually with manual intervention. The EarthServer approach is to perform a samentic-based dynamic distribution of queries fragments based on networks optimization and further criteria. The EarthServer platform is comprised by rasdaman, the pioneer and leading Array DBMS built for any-size multi-dimensional raster data being extended with support for irregular grids and general meshes; in-situ retrieval (evaluation of database queries on existing archive structures, avoiding data import and, hence, duplication); the aforementioned distributed query processing. Additionally, Web clients for multi-dimensional data visualization are being established. Client/server interfaces are strictly based on OGC and W3C standards, in particular the Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS) which defines a high-level coverage query language. Reviewers have attested EarthServer that "With no doubt the project has been shaping the Big Earth Data landscape through the standardization activities within OGC, ISO and beyond". We present the project approach, its outcomes and impact on standardization and Big Data technology, and vistas for the future.

77 FR 41186 - Proposed Consent Decree, Clean Air Act Citizen Suit

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-07-12

... ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY [EPA-HQ-OGC-2012-0554; FRL-9699-6] Proposed Consent Decree, Clean... August 13, 2012. ADDRESSES: Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID number EPA-HQ- OGC-2012-0554... (identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OGC-2012-0554) contains a copy of the proposed consent decree. The...

User-driven Cloud Implementation of environmental models and data for all

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gurney, R. J.; Percy, B. J.; Elkhatib, Y.; Blair, G. S.

2014-12-01

Environmental data and models come from disparate sources over a variety of geographical and temporal scales with different resolutions and data standards, often including terabytes of data and model simulations. Unfortunately, these data and models tend to remain solely within the custody of the private and public organisations which create the data, and the scientists who build models and generate results. Although many models and datasets are theoretically available to others, the lack of ease of access tends to keep them out of reach of many. We have developed an intuitive web-based tool that utilises environmental models and datasets located in a cloud to produce results that are appropriate to the user. Storyboards showing the interfaces and visualisations have been created for each of several exemplars. A library of virtual machine images has been prepared to serve these exemplars. Each virtual machine image has been tailored to run computer models appropriate to the end user. Two approaches have been used; first as RESTful web services conforming to the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Processing Service (WPS) interface standard using the Python-based PyWPS; second, a MySQL database interrogated using PHP code. In all cases, the web client sends the server an HTTP GET request to execute the process with a number of parameter values and, once execution terminates, an XML or JSON response is sent back and parsed at the client side to extract the results. All web services are stateless, i.e. application state is not maintained by the server, reducing its operational overheads and simplifying infrastructure management tasks such as load balancing and failure recovery. A hybrid cloud solution has been used with models and data sited on both private and public clouds. The storyboards have been transformed into intuitive web interfaces at the client side using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, utilising plug-ins such as jQuery and Flot (for graphics), and Google Maps APIs. We have demonstrated that a cloud infrastructure can be used to assemble a virtual research environment that, coupled with a user-driven development approach, is able to cater to the needs of a wide range of user groups, from domain experts to concerned members of the general public.

77 FR 68140 - Privacy Act of 1974; New System of Records, Office of General Counsel E-Discovery Management...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-11-15

... System of Records, Office of General Counsel E-Discovery Management System: Republication of System... Counsel (OGC) E- Discovery Management System (EDMS). EDMS was first announced and described in a July 17... for OGC's E-Discovery Management System (OGC-EDMS), a system expected to significantly improve the...

GSKY: A scalable distributed geospatial data server on the cloud

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rozas Larraondo, Pablo; Pringle, Sean; Antony, Joseph; Evans, Ben

2017-04-01

Earth systems, environmental and geophysical datasets are an extremely valuable sources of information about the state and evolution of the Earth. Being able to combine information coming from different geospatial collections is in increasing demand by the scientific community, and requires managing and manipulating data with different formats and performing operations such as map reprojections, resampling and other transformations. Due to the large data volume inherent in these collections, storing multiple copies of them is unfeasible and so such data manipulation must be performed on-the-fly using efficient, high performance techniques. Ideally this should be performed using a trusted data service and common system libraries to ensure wide use and reproducibility. Recent developments in distributed computing based on dynamic access to significant cloud infrastructure opens the door for such new ways of processing geospatial data on demand. The National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), hosted at the Australian National University (ANU), has over 10 Petabytes of nationally significant research data collections. Some of these collections, which comprise a variety of observed and modelled geospatial data, are now made available via a highly distributed geospatial data server, called GSKY (pronounced [jee-skee]). GSKY supports on demand processing of large geospatial data products such as satellite earth observation data as well as numerical weather products, allowing interactive exploration and analysis of the data. It dynamically and efficiently distributes the required computations among cloud nodes providing a scalable analysis framework that can adapt to serve large number of concurrent users. Typical geospatial workflows handling different file formats and data types, or blending data in different coordinate projections and spatio-temporal resolutions, is handled transparently by GSKY. This is achieved by decoupling the data ingestion and indexing process as an independent service. An indexing service crawls data collections either locally or remotely by extracting, storing and indexing all spatio-temporal metadata associated with each individual record. GSKY provides the user with the ability of specifying how ingested data should be aggregated, transformed and presented. It presents an OGC standards-compliant interface, allowing ready accessibility for users of the data via Web Map Services (WMS), Web Processing Services (WPS) or raw data arrays using Web Coverage Services (WCS). The presentation will show some cases where we have used this new capability to provide a significant improvement over previous approaches.

A Web Service Protocol Realizing Interoperable Internet of Things Tasking Capability.

PubMed

Huang, Chih-Yuan; Wu, Cheng-Hung

2016-08-31

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an infrastructure that interconnects uniquely-identifiable devices using the Internet. By interconnecting everyday appliances, various monitoring, and physical mashup applications can be constructed to improve human's daily life. In general, IoT devices provide two main capabilities: sensing and tasking capabilities. While the sensing capability is similar to the World-Wide Sensor Web, this research focuses on the tasking capability. However, currently, IoT devices created by different manufacturers follow different proprietary protocols and are locked in many closed ecosystems. This heterogeneity issue impedes the interconnection between IoT devices and damages the potential of the IoT. To address this issue, this research aims at proposing an interoperable solution called tasking capability description that allows users to control different IoT devices using a uniform web service interface. This paper demonstrates the contribution of the proposed solution by interconnecting different IoT devices for different applications. In addition, the proposed solution is integrated with the OGC SensorThings API standard, which is a Web service standard defined for the IoT sensing capability. Consequently, the Extended SensorThings API can realize both IoT sensing and tasking capabilities in an integrated and interoperable manner.

Utilizing Satellite-derived Precipitation Products in Hydrometeorological Applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Z.; Ostrenga, D.; Teng, W. L.; Kempler, S. J.; Huffman, G. J.

2012-12-01

Each year droughts and floods happen around the world and can cause severe property damages and human casualties. Accurate measurement and forecast are important for preparedness and mitigation efforts. Through multi-satellite blended techniques, significant progress has been made over the past decade in satellite-based precipitation product development, such as, products' spatial and temporal resolutions as well as timely availability. These new products are widely used in various research and applications. In particular, the TRMM Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) products archived and distributed by the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC) provide 3-hourly, daily and monthly near-global (50° N - 50° S) precipitation datasets for research and applications. Two versions of TMPA products are available, research (3B42, 3B43, rain gauge adjusted) and near-real-time (3B42RT). At GES DISC, we have developed precipitation data services to support hydrometeorological applications in order to maximize the TRMM mission's societal benefits. In this presentation, we will present examples of utilizing TMPA precipitation products in hydrometeorological applications including: 1) monitoring global floods and droughts; 2) providing data services to support the USDA Crop Explorer; 3) support hurricane monitoring activities and research; and 4) retrospective analog year analyses to improve USDA's world agricultural supply and demand estimates. We will also present precipitation data services that can be used to support hydrometeorological applications including: 1) User friendly TRMM Online Visualization and Analysis System (TOVAS; URL: http://disc2.nascom.nasa.gov/Giovanni/tovas/); 2) Mirador (http://mirador.gsfc.nasa.gov/), a simplified interface for searching, browsing, and ordering Earth science data at GES DISC; 3) Simple Subset Wizard (http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/SSW/ ) for data subsetting and format conversion; 4) Data via OPeNDAP (http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/services/opendap/) that can be used for remote access to individual variables within datasets in a form usable by many tools, such as IDV, McIDAS-V, Panoply, Ferret and GrADS; 4) GrADS-DODS Data Server or GDS (http://disc2.nascom.nasa.gov/dods/); 5) The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS) (http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/services/wxs_ogc.shtml) that allows the use of data and enables clients to build customized maps with data coming from a different network; and 6) Providing NASA gridded hydrological data access through CUAHSI HIS (Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. - Hydrologic Information Systems).

NOAA's Data Catalog and the Federal Open Data Policy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wengren, M. J.; de la Beaujardiere, J.

2014-12-01

The 2013 Open Data Policy Presidential Directive requires Federal agencies to create and maintain a 'public data listing' that includes all agency data that is currently or will be made publicly-available in the future. The directive requires the use of machine-readable and open formats that make use of 'common core' and extensible metadata formats according to the best practices published in an online repository called 'Project Open Data', to use open licenses where possible, and to adhere to existing metadata and other technology standards to promote interoperability. In order to meet the requirements of the Open Data Policy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has implemented an online data catalog that combines metadata from all subsidiary NOAA metadata catalogs into a single master inventory. The NOAA Data Catalog is available to the public for search and discovery, providing access to the NOAA master data inventory through multiple means, including web-based text search, OGC CS-W endpoint, as well as a native Application Programming Interface (API) for programmatic query. It generates on a daily basis the Project Open Data JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) file required for compliance with the Presidential directive. The Data Catalog is based on the open source Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN) software and runs on the Amazon Federal GeoCloud. This presentation will cover topics including mappings of existing metadata in standard formats (FGDC-CSDGM and ISO 19115 XML ) to the Project Open Data JSON metadata schema, representation of metadata elements within the catalog, and compatible metadata sources used to feed the catalog to include Web Accessible Folder (WAF), Catalog Services for the Web (CS-W), and Esri ArcGIS.com. It will also discuss related open source technologies that can be used together to build a spatial data infrastructure compliant with the Open Data Policy.

OnEarth: An Open Source Solution for Efficiently Serving High-Resolution Mapped Image Products

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Thompson, C. K.; Plesea, L.; Hall, J. R.; Roberts, J. T.; Cechini, M. F.; Schmaltz, J. E.; Alarcon, C.; Huang, T.; McGann, J. M.; Chang, G.; Boller, R. A.; Ilavajhala, S.; Murphy, K. J.; Bingham, A. W.

2013-12-01

This presentation introduces OnEarth, a server side software package originally developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), that facilitates network-based, minimum-latency geolocated image access independent of image size or spatial resolution. The key component in this package is the Meta Raster Format (MRF), a specialized raster file extension to the Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) consisting of an internal indexed pyramid of image tiles. Imagery to be served is converted to the MRF format and made accessible online via an expandable set of server modules handling requests in several common protocols, including the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) compliant Web Map Tile Service (WMTS) as well as Tiled WMS and Keyhole Markup Language (KML). OnEarth has recently transitioned to open source status and is maintained and actively developed as part of GIBS (Global Imagery Browse Services), a collaborative project between JPL and Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The primary function of GIBS is to enhance and streamline the data discovery process and to support near real-time (NRT) applications via the expeditious ingestion and serving of full-resolution imagery representing science products from across the NASA Earth Science spectrum. Open source software solutions are leveraged where possible in order to utilize existing available technologies, reduce development time, and enlist wider community participation. We will discuss some of the factors and decision points in transitioning OnEarth to a suitable open source paradigm, including repository and licensing agreement decision points, institutional hurdles, and perceived benefits. We will also provide examples illustrating how OnEarth is integrated within GIBS and other applications.

What Iswebmapping Anyway?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Veenendaal, B.; Brovelli, M. A.; Li, S.; Ivánová, I.

2017-09-01

Although maps have been around for a very long time, web maps are yet very young in their origin. Despite their relatively short history, web maps have been developing very rapidly over the past few decades. The use, users and usability of web maps have rapidly expanded along with developments in web technologies and new ways of mapping. In the process of these developments, the terms and terminology surrounding web mapping have also changed and evolved, often relating to the new technologies or new uses. Examples include web mapping, web GIS, cloud mapping, internet mapping, internet GIS, geoweb, map mashup, online mapping etc., not to mention those with prefixes such as "web-based" and "internet-based". So, how do we keep track of these terms, relate them to each other and have common understandings of their meanings so that references to them are not ambiguous, misunderstood or even different? This paper explores the terms surrounding web mapping and web GIS, and the development of their meaning over time. The paper then suggests the current context in which these terms are used and provides meanings that may assist in better understanding and communicating using these terms in the future.

Using OPeNDAP's Data-Services Framework to Lift Mash-Ups above Blind Dates

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gallagher, J. H. R.; Fulker, D. W.

2015-12-01

OPeNDAP's data-as-service framework (Hyrax) matches diverse sources with many end-user tools and contexts. Keys to its flexibility include: A data model embracing tabular data alongside n-dim arrays and other structures useful in geoinformatics. A REST-like protocol that supports—via suffix notation—a growing set of output forms (netCDF, XML, etc.) plus a query syntax for subsetting. Subsetting applies (via constraints on column values) to tabular data or (via constraints on indices or coordinates) to array-style data . A handler-style architecture that admits a growing set of input types. Community members may contribute handlers, making Hyrax effective as middleware, where N sources are mapped to M outputs with order N+M effort (not NxM). Hyrax offers virtual aggregations of source data, enabling granularity aimed at users, not data-collectors. OPeNDAP-access libraries exist in multiple languages, including Python, Java, and C++. Recent enhancements are increasing this framework's interoperability (i.e., its mash-up) potential. Extensions implemented as servlets—running adjacent to Hyrax—are enriching the forms of aggregation and enabling new protocols: User-specified aggregations, namely, applying a query to (huge) lists of source granules, and receiving one (large) table or zipped netCDF file. OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) protocols, WMS and WCS. A Webification (W10n) protocol that returns JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). Extensions to OPeNDAP's query language are reducing transfer volumes and enabling new forms of inspection. Advances underway include: Functions that, for triangular-mesh sources, return sub-meshes spec'd via geospatial bounding boxes. Functions that, for data from multiple, satellite-borne sensors (with differing orbits), select observations based on coincidence. Calculations of means, histograms, etc. that greatly reduce output volumes.. Paths for communities to contribute new server functions (in Python, e.g.) that data providers may incorporate into Hyrax via installation parameters. One could say Hyrax itself is a mash-up, but we suggest it as an instrument for a mash-up artist's toolbox. This instrument can support mash-ups built on netCDF files, OGC protocols, JavaScript Web pages, and/or programs written in Python, Java, C or C++.

The Mitochondrial 2-Oxoglutarate Carrier Is Part of a Metabolic Pathway That Mediates Glucose- and Glutamine-stimulated Insulin Secretion*

PubMed Central

Odegaard, Matthew L.; Joseph, Jamie W.; Jensen, Mette V.; Lu, Danhong; Ilkayeva, Olga; Ronnebaum, Sarah M.; Becker, Thomas C.; Newgard, Christopher B.

2010-01-01

Glucose-stimulated insulin secretion from pancreatic islet β-cells is dependent in part on pyruvate cycling through the pyruvate/isocitrate pathway, which generates cytosolic α-ketoglutarate, also known as 2-oxoglutarate (2OG). Here, we have investigated if mitochondrial transport of 2OG through the 2-oxoglutarate carrier (OGC) participates in control of nutrient-stimulated insulin secretion. Suppression of OGC in clonal pancreatic β-cells (832/13 cells) and isolated rat islets by adenovirus-mediated delivery of small interfering RNA significantly decreased glucose-stimulated insulin secretion. OGC suppression also reduced insulin secretion in response to glutamine plus the glutamate dehydrogenase activator 2-amino-2-norbornane carboxylic acid. Nutrient-stimulated increases in glucose usage, glucose oxidation, glutamine oxidation, or ATP:ADP ratio were not affected by OGC knockdown, whereas suppression of OGC resulted in a significant decrease in the NADPH:NADP+ ratio during stimulation with glucose but not glutamine + 2-amino-2-norbornane carboxylic acid. Finally, OGC suppression reduced insulin secretion in response to a membrane-permeant 2OG analog, dimethyl-2OG. These data reveal that the OGC is part of a mechanism of fuel-stimulated insulin secretion that is common to glucose, amino acid, and organic acid secretagogues, involving flux through the pyruvate/isocitrate cycling pathway. Although the components of this pathway must remain intact for appropriate stimulus-secretion coupling, production of NADPH does not appear to be the universal second messenger signal generated by these reactions. PMID:20356834

Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R): Big Data and Standard Services for the Fleet Community

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Arko, R. A.; Carbotte, S. M.; Chandler, C. L.; Smith, S. R.; Stocks, K. I.

2014-12-01

The Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R; http://rvdata.us/) program curates underway environmental sensor data from the U.S. academic oceanographic research fleet, ensuring data sets are routinely and consistently documented, preserved in long-term archives, and disseminated to the science community. Currently 25 in-service vessels contribute 7 terabytes of data to R2R each year, acquired from a full suite of geophysical, oceanographic, meteorological, and navigational sensors on over 400 cruises worldwide. To accommodate this large volume and variety of data, R2R has developed highly efficient stewardship procedures. These include scripted "break out" of cruise data packages from each vessel based on standard filename and directory patterns; automated harvest of cruise metadata from the UNOLS Office via Web Services and from OpenXML-based forms submitted by vessel operators; scripted quality assessment routines that calculate statistical summaries and standard ratings for selected data types; adoption of community-standard controlled vocabularies for vessel codes, instrument types, etc, provided by the NERC Vocabulary Server, in lieu of maintaining custom local term lists; and a standard package structure based on the IETF BagIt format for delivering data to long-term archives. Documentation and standard post-field products, including quality-controlled shiptrack navigation data for every cruise, are published in multiple services and formats to satisfy a diverse range of clients. These include Catalog Service for Web (CSW), GeoRSS, and OAI-PMH discovery services via a GeoNetwork portal; OGC Web Map and Feature Services for GIS clients; a citable Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for each dataset; ISO 19115-2 standard geospatial metadata records suitable for submission to long-term archives as well as the POGO global catalog; and Linked Open Data resources with a SPARQL query endpoint for Semantic Web clients. R2R participates in initiatives such as the Ocean Data Interoperability Platform (ODIP) and the NSF EarthCube OceanLink project to promote community-standard formats, vocabularies, and services among ocean data providers.

A simple method for serving Web hypermaps with dynamic database drill-down

PubMed Central

Boulos, Maged N Kamel; Roudsari, Abdul V; Carson, Ewart R

2002-01-01

Background HealthCyberMap aims at mapping parts of health information cyberspace in novel ways to deliver a semantically superior user experience. This is achieved through "intelligent" categorisation and interactive hypermedia visualisation of health resources using metadata, clinical codes and GIS. HealthCyberMap is an ArcView 3.1 project. WebView, the Internet extension to ArcView, publishes HealthCyberMap ArcView Views as Web client-side imagemaps. The basic WebView set-up does not support any GIS database connection, and published Web maps become disconnected from the original project. A dedicated Internet map server would be the best way to serve HealthCyberMap database-driven interactive Web maps, but is an expensive and complex solution to acquire, run and maintain. This paper describes HealthCyberMap simple, low-cost method for "patching" WebView to serve hypermaps with dynamic database drill-down functionality on the Web. Results The proposed solution is currently used for publishing HealthCyberMap GIS-generated navigational information maps on the Web while maintaining their links with the underlying resource metadata base. Conclusion The authors believe their map serving approach as adopted in HealthCyberMap has been very successful, especially in cases when only map attribute data change without a corresponding effect on map appearance. It should be also possible to use the same solution to publish other interactive GIS-driven maps on the Web, e.g., maps of real world health problems. PMID:12437788

SensorWeb Hub infrastructure for open access to scientific research data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

de Filippis, Tiziana; Rocchi, Leandro; Rapisardi, Elena

2015-04-01

The sharing of research data is a new challenge for the scientific community that may benefit from a large amount of information to solve environmental issues and sustainability in agriculture and urban contexts. Prerequisites for this challenge is the development of an infrastructure that ensure access, management and preservation of data, technical support for a coordinated and harmonious management of data that, in the framework of Open Data Policies, should encourages the reuse and the collaboration. The neogeography and the citizen as sensors approach, highlight that new data sources need a new set of tools and practices so to collect, validate, categorize, and use / access these "crowdsourced" data, that integrate the data sets produced in the scientific field, thus "feeding" the overall available data for analysis and research. When the scientific community embraces the dimension of collaboration and sharing, access and re-use, in order to accept the open innovation approach, it should redesign and reshape the processes of data management: the challenges of technological and cultural innovation, enabled by web 2.0 technologies, bring to the scenario where the sharing of structured and interoperable data will constitute the unavoidable building block to set up a new paradigm of scientific research. In this perspective the Institute of Biometeorology, CNR, whose aim is contributing to sharing and development of research data, has developed the "SensorWebHub" (SWH) infrastructure to support the scientific activities carried out in several research projects at national and international level. It is designed to manage both mobile and fixed open source meteorological and environmental sensors, in order to integrate the existing agro-meteorological and urban monitoring networks. The proposed architecture uses open source tools to ensure sustainability in the development and deployment of web applications with geographic features and custom analysis, as requested by the different research projects. The SWH components are organized in typical client-server architecture and interact from the sensing process to the representation of the results to the end-users. The Web Application enables to view and analyse the data stored in the GeoDB. The interface is designed following Internet browsers specifications allowing the visualization of collected data in different formats (tabular, chart and geographic map). The services for the dissemination of geo-referenced information, adopt the OGC specifications. SWH is a bottom-up collaborative initiative to share real time research data and pave the way for a open innovation approach in the scientific research. Until now this framework has been used for several WebGIS applications and WebApp for environmental monitoring at different temporal and spatial scales.

Design & implementation of distributed spatial computing node based on WPS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Liping; Li, Guoqing; Xie, Jibo

2014-03-01

Currently, the research work of SIG (Spatial Information Grid) technology mostly emphasizes on the spatial data sharing in grid environment, while the importance of spatial computing resources is ignored. In order to implement the sharing and cooperation of spatial computing resources in grid environment, this paper does a systematical research of the key technologies to construct Spatial Computing Node based on the WPS (Web Processing Service) specification by OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium). And a framework of Spatial Computing Node is designed according to the features of spatial computing resources. Finally, a prototype of Spatial Computing Node is implemented and the relevant verification work under the environment is completed.

MyOcean Central Information System - Achievements and Perspectives

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Claverie, Vincent; Loubrieu, Thomas; Jolibois, Tony; de Dianous, Rémi; Blower, Jon; Romero, Laia; Griffiths, Guy

2013-04-01

Since 2009, MyOcean (http://www.myocean.eu) is providing an operational service, for forecasts, analysis and expertise on ocean currents, temperature, salinity, sea level, primary ecosystems and ice coverage. The production of observation and forecasting data is done by 42 Production Units (PU). Product download and visualisation are hosted by 25 Dissemination Units (DU). All these products and associated services are gathered in a single catalogue hiding the intricate distributed organization of PUs and DUs. Besides applying INSPIRE directive and OGC recommendations, MyOcean overcomes technical choices and challenges. This presentation focuses on 3 specific issues met by MyOcean and relevant for many Spatial Data Infrastructures: user's transaction accounting, large volume download and stream line the catalogue maintenance. Transaction Accounting: Set up powerful means to get detailed knowledge of system usage in order to subsequently improve the products (ocean observations, analysis and forecast dataset) and services (view, download) offer. This subject drives the following ones: Central authentication management for the distributed web services implementations: add-on to THREDDS Data Server for WMS and NETCDF sub-setting service, specific FTP. Share user management with co-funding projects. In addition to MyOcean, alternate projects also need consolidated information about the use of the cofunded products. Provide a central facility for the user management. This central facility provides users' rights to geographically distributed services and gathers transaction accounting history from these distributed services. Propose a user-friendly web interface to download large volume of data (several GigaBytes) as robust as basic FTP but intuitive and file/directory independent. This should rely on a web service drafting the INSPIRE to-be specification and OGC recommendations for download taking into account that FTP server is not enough friendly (need to know filenames, directories) and Web-page not allowing downloading several files. Streamline the maintenance of the central catalogue. The major update for MyOcean v3 (April 2013) is the usage of Geonetwork for catalogue management. This improves the system at different levels : The editing interface is more user-friendly and the catalogue updates are managed in a workflow. This workflow allows higher flexibility for minor updates without giving up the high level qualification requirements for the catalogue content. The distributed web services (download, view) are automatically harvested from the THREDDS Data Server. Thus the manual editing on the catalogue is reduced, the associated typos are avoided and the quality of information is finally improved.

Sharing Human-Generated Observations by Integrating HMI and the Semantic Sensor Web

PubMed Central

Sigüenza, Álvaro; Díaz-Pardo, David; Bernat, Jesús; Vancea, Vasile; Blanco, José Luis; Conejero, David; Gómez, Luis Hernández

2012-01-01

Current “Internet of Things” concepts point to a future where connected objects gather meaningful information about their environment and share it with other objects and people. In particular, objects embedding Human Machine Interaction (HMI), such as mobile devices and, increasingly, connected vehicles, home appliances, urban interactive infrastructures, etc., may not only be conceived as sources of sensor information, but, through interaction with their users, they can also produce highly valuable context-aware human-generated observations. We believe that the great promise offered by combining and sharing all of the different sources of information available can be realized through the integration of HMI and Semantic Sensor Web technologies. This paper presents a technological framework that harmonizes two of the most influential HMI and Sensor Web initiatives: the W3C's Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces (MMI) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) with its semantic extension, respectively. Although the proposed framework is general enough to be applied in a variety of connected objects integrating HMI, a particular development is presented for a connected car scenario where drivers' observations about the traffic or their environment are shared across the Semantic Sensor Web. For implementation and evaluation purposes an on-board OSGi (Open Services Gateway Initiative) architecture was built, integrating several available HMI, Sensor Web and Semantic Web technologies. A technical performance test and a conceptual validation of the scenario with potential users are reported, with results suggesting the approach is sound. PMID:22778643

Research of marine sensor web based on SOA and EDA

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jiang, Yongguo; Dou, Jinfeng; Guo, Zhongwen; Hu, Keyong

2015-04-01

A great deal of ocean sensor observation data exists, for a wide range of marine disciplines, derived from in situ and remote observing platforms, in real-time, near-real-time and delayed mode. Ocean monitoring is routinely completed using sensors and instruments. Standardization is the key requirement for exchanging information about ocean sensors and sensor data and for comparing and combining information from different sensor networks. One or more sensors are often physically integrated into a single ocean `instrument' device, which often brings in many challenges related to diverse sensor data formats, parameters units, different spatiotemporal resolution, application domains, data quality and sensors protocols. To face these challenges requires the standardization efforts aiming at facilitating the so-called Sensor Web, which making it easy to provide public access to sensor data and metadata information. In this paper, a Marine Sensor Web, based on SOA and EDA and integrating the MBARI's PUCK protocol, IEEE 1451 and OGC SWE 2.0, is illustrated with a five-layer architecture. The Web Service layer and Event Process layer are illustrated in detail with an actual example. The demo study has demonstrated that a standard-based system can be built to access sensors and marine instruments distributed globally using common Web browsers for monitoring the environment and oceanic conditions besides marine sensor data on the Web, this framework of Marine Sensor Web can also play an important role in many other domains' information integration.

Sharing human-generated observations by integrating HMI and the Semantic Sensor Web.

PubMed

Sigüenza, Alvaro; Díaz-Pardo, David; Bernat, Jesús; Vancea, Vasile; Blanco, José Luis; Conejero, David; Gómez, Luis Hernández

2012-01-01

Current "Internet of Things" concepts point to a future where connected objects gather meaningful information about their environment and share it with other objects and people. In particular, objects embedding Human Machine Interaction (HMI), such as mobile devices and, increasingly, connected vehicles, home appliances, urban interactive infrastructures, etc., may not only be conceived as sources of sensor information, but, through interaction with their users, they can also produce highly valuable context-aware human-generated observations. We believe that the great promise offered by combining and sharing all of the different sources of information available can be realized through the integration of HMI and Semantic Sensor Web technologies. This paper presents a technological framework that harmonizes two of the most influential HMI and Sensor Web initiatives: the W3C's Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces (MMI) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) with its semantic extension, respectively. Although the proposed framework is general enough to be applied in a variety of connected objects integrating HMI, a particular development is presented for a connected car scenario where drivers' observations about the traffic or their environment are shared across the Semantic Sensor Web. For implementation and evaluation purposes an on-board OSGi (Open Services Gateway Initiative) architecture was built, integrating several available HMI, Sensor Web and Semantic Web technologies. A technical performance test and a conceptual validation of the scenario with potential users are reported, with results suggesting the approach is sound.

The Climate-G Portal: a Grid Enabled Scientifc Gateway for Climate Change

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fiore, Sandro; Negro, Alessandro; Aloisio, Giovanni

2010-05-01

Grid portals are web gateways aiming at concealing the underlying infrastructure through a pervasive, transparent, user-friendly, ubiquitous and seamless access to heterogeneous and geographical spread resources (i.e. storage, computational facilities, services, sensors, network, databases). Definitively they provide an enhanced problem-solving environment able to deal with modern, large scale scientific and engineering problems. Scientific gateways are able to introduce a revolution in the way scientists and researchers organize and carry out their activities. Access to distributed resources, complex workflow capabilities, and community-oriented functionalities are just some of the features that can be provided by such a web-based environment. In the context of the EGEE NA4 Earth Science Cluster, Climate-G is a distributed testbed focusing on climate change research topics. The Euro-Mediterranean Center for Climate Change (CMCC) is actively participating in the testbed providing the scientific gateway (Climate-G Portal) to access to the entire infrastructure. The Climate-G Portal has to face important and critical challenges as well as has to satisfy and address key requirements. In the following, the most relevant ones are presented and discussed. Transparency: the portal has to provide a transparent access to the underlying infrastructure preventing users from dealing with low level details and the complexity of a distributed grid environment. Security: users must be authenticated and authorized on the portal to access and exploit portal functionalities. A wide set of roles is needed to clearly assign the proper one to each user. The access to the computational grid must be completely secured, since the target infrastructure to run jobs is a production grid environment. A security infrastructure (based on X509v3 digital certificates) is strongly needed. Pervasivity and ubiquity: the access to the system must be pervasive and ubiquitous. This is easily true due to the nature of the needed web approach. Usability and simplicity: the portal has to provide simple, high level and user friendly interfaces to ease the access and exploitation of the entire system. Coexistence of general purpose and domain oriented services: along with general purpose services (file transfer, job submission, etc.), the portal has to provide domain based services and functionalities. Subsetting of data, visualization of 2D maps around a virtual globe, delivery of maps through OGC compliant interfaces (i.e. Web Map Service - WMS) are just some examples. Since april 2009, about 70 users (85% coming from the climate change community) got access to the portal. A key challenge of this work is the idea to provide users with an integrated working environment, that is a place where scientists can find huge amount of data, complete metadata support, a wide set of data access services, data visualization and analysis tools, easy access to the underlying grid infrastructure and advanced monitoring interfaces.

ENVI-PV: An Interactive Web Client for Multi-Criteria Life Cycle Assessment of Photovoltaic Systems Worldwide

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Perez-Lopez, Paula; Gschwind, Benoit; Blanc, Philippe

Solar photovoltaics (PV) is the second largest source of new capacity among renewable energies. The worldwide capacity encompassed 135 GW in 2013 and is estimated to increase to 1721 GW in 2030 and 4674 GW in 2050, according to a prospective high-renewable scenario. To achieve this production level while minimizing environmental impacts, decision makers must have access to environmental performance data that reflect their high spatial variability accurately. We propose ENVI-PV (http://viewer.webservice-energy.org/project_iea), a new interactive tool that provides maps and screening level data, based on weighted average supply chains, for the environmental performance of common PV technologies. Environmental impacts ofmore » PV systems are evaluated according to a life cycle assessment approach. ENVI-PV was developed using a state-of-the-art interoperable and open standard Web Service framework from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). It combines the latest life cycle inventories, published in 2015 by the International Energy Agency (IEA) under the Photovoltaic Power Systems Program (PVPS) Task 12, and some inventories previously published from Ecoinvent v2.2 database with solar irradiation estimates computed from the worldwide NASA SSE database. ENVI-PV is the first tool to propose a worldwide coverage of environmental performance of PV systems using a multi-criteria assessment. The user can compare the PV environmental performance to the environmental footprint of country electricity mixes. ENVI-PV is designed as an environmental interactive tool to generate PV technological options and evaluate their performance in different spatial and techno-economic contexts. Its potential applications are illustrated in this paper with several examples.« less

GES DAAC HDF Data Processing and Visualization Tools

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ouzounov, D.; Cho, S.; Johnson, J.; Li, J.; Liu, Z.; Lu, L.; Pollack, N.; Qin, J.; Savtchenko, A.; Teng, B.

2002-12-01

The Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) plays a major role in enabling basic scientific research and providing access to scientific data to the general user community. Several GES DAAC Data Support Teams provide expert assistance to users in accessing data, including information on visualization tools and documentation for data products. To provide easy access to the science data, the data support teams have additionally developed many online and desktop tools for data processing and visualization. This presentation is an overview of major HDF tools implemented at the GES DAAC and aimed at optimizing access to EOS data for the Earth Sciences community. GES DAAC ONLINE TOOLS: MODIS and AIRS on-demand Channel/Variable Subsetter are web-based, on-the-fly/on-demand subsetters that perform channel/variable subsetting and restructuring for Level1B and Level 2 data products. Users can specify criteria to subset data files with desired channels and variables and then download the subsetted file. AIRS QuickLook is a CGI/IDL combo package that allows users to view AIRS/HSB/AMSU Level-1B data online by specifying a channel prior to obtaining data. A global map is also provided along with the image to show geographic coverage of the granule and flight direction of the spacecraft. OASIS (Online data AnalySIS) is an IDL-based HTML/CGI interface for search, selection, and simple analysis of earth science data. It supports binary and GRIB formatted data, such as TOVS, Data Assimilation products, and some NCEP operational products. TRMM Online Analysis System is designed for quick exploration, analyses, and visualization of TRMM Level-3 and other precipitation products. The products consist of the daily (3B42), monthly(3B43), near-real-time (3B42RT), and Willmott's climate data. The system is also designed to be simple and easy to use - users can plot the average or accumulated rainfall over their region of interest for a given time period, or plot the time series of regional rainfall average. WebGIS is an online web software that implements the Open GIS Consortium (OGC) standards for mapping requests and rendering. It allows users access to TRMM, MODIS, SeaWiFS, and AVHRR data from several DAAC map servers, as well as externally served data such as political boundaries, population centers, lakes, rivers, and elevation. GES DAAC DESKTOP TOOLS: HDFLook-MODIS is a new, multifunctional, data processing and visualization tool for Radiometric and Geolocation, Atmosphere, Ocean, and Land MODIS HDF-EOS data. Features include (1) accessing and visualization of all swath (Levels l and 2) MODIS and AIRS products, and gridded (Levels 3 and 4) MODIS products; (2) re-mapping of swath data to world map; (3) geo-projection conversion; (4) interactive and batch mode capabilities; (5) subsetting and multi-granule processing; and (6) data conversion. SIMAP is an IDL-based script that is designed to read and map MODIS Level 1B (L1B) and Level 2 (L2) Ocean and Atmosphere products. It is a non-interactive, command line executed tool. The resulting maps are scaled to physical units (e.g., radiances, concentrations, brightness temperatures) and saved in binary files. TRMM HDF (in C and Fortran), reads in TRMM HDF data files and writes out user-selected SDS arrays and Vdata tables as separate flat binary files.

Implementation and Evaluation of Four Interoperable Open Standards for the Internet of Things.

PubMed

Jazayeri, Mohammad Ali; Liang, Steve H L; Huang, Chih-Yuan

2015-09-22

Recently, researchers are focusing on a new use of the Internet called the Internet of Things (IoT), in which enabled electronic devices can be remotely accessed over the Internet. As the realization of IoT concept is still in its early stages, manufacturers of Internet-connected devices and IoT web service providers are defining their proprietary protocols based on their targeted applications. Consequently, IoT becomes heterogeneous in terms of hardware capabilities and communication protocols. Addressing these heterogeneities by following open standards is a necessary step to communicate with various IoT devices. In this research, we assess the feasibility of applying existing open standards on resource-constrained IoT devices. The standard protocols developed in this research are OGC PUCK over Bluetooth, TinySOS, SOS over CoAP, and OGC SensorThings API. We believe that by hosting open standard protocols on IoT devices, not only do the devices become self-describable, self-contained, and interoperable, but innovative applications can also be easily developed with standardized interfaces. In addition, we use memory consumption, request message size, response message size, and response latency to benchmark the efficiency of the implemented protocols. In all, this research presents and evaluates standard-based solutions to better understand the feasibility of applying existing standards to the IoT vision.

The Demonstrator for the European Plate Observing System (EPOS)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hoffmann, T. L.; Euteneuer, F.; Ulbricht, D.; Lauterjung, J.; Bailo, D.; Jeffery, K. G.

2014-12-01

An important outcome of the 4-year Preparatory Phase of the ESFRI project European Plate Observing System (EPOS) was the development and first implementation of the EPOS Demonstrator by the project's ICT Working Group 7. The Demonstrator implements the vertical integration of the three-layer architectural scheme for EPOS, connecting the Integrated Core Services (ICS), Thematic Core Services (TCS) and the National Research Infrastructures (NRI). The demonstrator provides a single GUI with central key discovery and query functionalities, based on already existing services by the seismic, geologic and geodetic communities. More specifically the seismic services of the Demonstrator utilize webservices and APIs for data and discovery of raw seismic data (FDSN webservices by the EIDA Network), events (Geoportal by EMSC) and analytical data products (e.g., hazard maps by EFEHR via OGC WMS). For geologic services, the EPOS Demonstrator accesses OneGeology Europe which serves the community with geologic maps and point information via OGC webservices. The Demonstrator also provides access to raw geodetic data via a newly developed universal tool called GSAC. The Demonstrator itself resembles the future Integrated Core Service (ICS) and provides direct access to the end user. Its core functionality lies in a metadata catalogue, which serves as the central information hub and stores information about all RIs, related persons, projects, financial background and technical access information. The database schema of the catalogue is based on CERIF, which has been slightly adapted. Currently, the portal provides basic query functions as well as cross domain search. [www.epos.cineca.it

Using Maps in Web Analytics to Evaluate the Impact of Web-Based Extension Programs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Veregin, Howard

2015-01-01

Maps can be a valuable addition to the Web analytics toolbox for Extension programs that use the Web to disseminate information. Extension professionals use Web analytics tools to evaluate program impacts. Maps add a unique perspective through visualization and analysis of geographic patterns and their relationships to other variables. Maps can…

Best Practices for Preparing Interoperable Geospatial Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wei, Y.; Santhana Vannan, S.; Cook, R. B.; Wilson, B. E.; Beaty, T. W.

2010-12-01

Geospatial data is critically important for a wide scope of research and applications: carbon cycle and ecosystem, climate change, land use and urban planning, environmental protecting, etc. Geospatial data is created by different organizations using different methods, from remote sensing observations, field surveys, model simulations, etc., and stored in various formats. So geospatial data is diverse and heterogeneous, which brings a huge barrier for the sharing and using of geospatial data, especially when targeting a broad user community. Many efforts have been taken to address different aspects of using geospatial data by improving its interoperability. For example, the specification for Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) catalog services defines a standard way for geospatial information discovery; OGC Web Coverage Services (WCS) and OPeNDAP define interoperable protocols for geospatial data access, respectively. But the reality is that only having the standard mechanisms for data discovery and access is not enough. The geospatial data content itself has to be organized in standard, easily understandable, and readily usable formats. The Oak Ridge National Lab Distributed Archived Data Center (ORNL DAAC) archives data and information relevant to biogeochemical dynamics, ecological data, and environmental processes. The Modeling and Synthesis Thematic Data Center (MAST-DC) prepares and distributes both input data and output data of carbon cycle models and provides data support for synthesis and terrestrial model inter-comparison in multi-scales. Both of these NASA-funded data centers compile and distribute a large amount of diverse geospatial data and have broad user communities, including GIS users, Earth science researchers, and ecosystem modeling teams. The ORNL DAAC and MAST-DC address this geospatial data interoperability issue by standardizing the data content and feeding them into a well-designed Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) which provides interoperable mechanisms to advertise, visualize, and distribute the standardized geospatial data. In this presentation, we summarize the experiences learned and the best practices for geospatial data standardization. The presentation will describe how diverse and historical data archived in the ORNL DAAC were converted into standard and non-proprietary formats; what tools were used to make the conversion; how the spatial and temporal information are properly captured in a consistent manor; how to name a data file or a variable to make it both human-friendly and semantically interoperable; how NetCDF file format and CF convention can promote the data usage in ecosystem modeling user community; how those standardized geospatial data can be fed into OGC Web Services to support on-demand data visualization and access; and how the metadata should be collected and organized so that they can be discovered through standard catalog services.

Usage of Wireless Sensor Networks in a service based spatial data infrastructure for Landslide Monitoring and Early Warning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Arnhardt, C.; Fernandez-Steeger, T. M.; Walter, K.; Kallash, A.; Niemeyer, F.; Azzam, R.; Bill, R.

2007-12-01

The joint project Sensor based Landslide Early Warning System (SLEWS) aims at a systematic development of a prototyping alarm- and early warning system for the detection of mass movements by application of an ad hoc wireless sensor network (WSN). Next to the development of suitable sensor setups, sensor fusion and network fusion are applied to enhance data quality and reduce false alarm rates. Of special interest is the data retrieval, processing and visualization in GI-Systems. Therefore a suitable serviced based Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) will be developed with respect to existing and upcoming Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards.The application of WSN provides a cheap and easy to set up solution for special monitoring and data gathering in large areas. Measurement data from different low-cost transducers for deformation observation (acceleration, displacement, tilting) is collected by distributed sensor nodes (motes), which interact separately and connect each other in a self-organizing manner. Data are collected and aggregated at the beacon (transmission station) and further operations like data pre-processing and compression can be performed. The WSN concept provides next to energy efficiency, miniaturization, real-time monitoring and remote operation, but also new monitoring strategies like sensor and network fusion. Since not only single sensors can be integrated at single motes either cross-validation or redundant sensor setups are possible to enhance data quality. The planned monitoring and information system will include a mobile infrastructure (information technologies and communication components) as well as methods and models to estimate surface deformation parameters (positioning systems). The measurements result in heterogeneous observation sets that have to be integrated in a common adjustment and filtering approach. Reliable real-time information will be obtained using a range of sensor input and algorithms, from which early warnings and prognosis may be derived. Implementation of sensor algorithms is an important task to form the business logic. This will be represented in self-contained web-based processing services (WPS). In the future different types of sensor networks can communicate via an infrastructure of OGC services using an interoperable way by standardized protocols as the Sensor Markup Language (SensorML) and Observations & Measurements Schema (O&M). Synchronous and asynchronous information services as the Sensor Alert Service (SAS) and the Web Notification Services (WNS) will provide defined users and user groups with time-critical readings from the observation site. Techniques using services for visualizing mapping data (WMS), meta data (CSW), vector (WFS) and raster data (WCS) will range from high detailed expert based output to fuzzy graphical warning elements.The expected results will be an advancement regarding classical alarm and early warning systems as the WSN are free scalable, extensible and easy to install.

Remote Sensing Data Analytics for Planetary Science with PlanetServer/EarthServer

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rossi, Angelo Pio; Figuera, Ramiro Marco; Flahaut, Jessica; Martinot, Melissa; Misev, Dimitar; Baumann, Peter; Pham Huu, Bang; Besse, Sebastien

2016-04-01

Planetary Science datasets, beyond the change in the last two decades from physical volumes to internet-accessible archives, still face the problem of large-scale processing and analytics (e.g. Rossi et al., 2014, Gaddis and Hare, 2015). PlanetServer, the Planetary Science Data Service of the EC-funded EarthServer-2 project (#654367) tackles the planetary Big Data analytics problem with an array database approach (Baumann et al., 2014). It is developed to serve a large amount of calibrated, map-projected planetary data online, mainly through Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS) (e.g. Rossi et al., 2014; Oosthoek et al., 2013; Cantini et al., 2014). The focus of the H2020 evolution of PlanetServer is still on complex multidimensional data, particularly hyperspectral imaging and topographic cubes and imagery. In addition to hyperspectral and topographic from Mars (Rossi et al., 2014), the use of WCPS is applied to diverse datasets on the Moon, as well as Mercury. Other Solar System Bodies are going to be progressively available. Derived parameters such as summary products and indices can be produced through WCPS queries, as well as derived imagery colour combination products, dynamically generated and accessed also through OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS). Scientific questions translated into queries can be posed to a large number of individual coverages (data products), locally, regionally or globally. The new PlanetServer system uses the the Open Source Nasa WorldWind (e.g. Hogan, 2011) virtual globe as visualisation engine, and the array database Rasdaman Community Edition as core server component. Analytical tools and client components of relevance for multiple communities and disciplines are shared across service such as the Earth Observation and Marine Data Services of EarthServer. The Planetary Science Data Service of EarthServer is accessible on http://planetserver.eu. All its code base is going to be available on GitHub, on https://github.com/planetserver References: Baumann, P., et al. (2015) Big Data Analytics for Earth Sciences: the EarthServer approach, International Journal of Digital Earth, doi: 10.1080/17538947.2014.1003106. Cantini, F. et al. (2014) Geophys. Res. Abs., Vol. 16, #EGU2014-3784. Gaddis, L., and T. Hare (2015), Status of tools and data for planetary research, Eos, 96, dos: 10.1029/2015EO041125. Hogan, P., 2011. NASA World Wind: Infrastructure for Spatial Data. Technical report. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computing for Geospatial Research & Applications ACM. Oosthoek, J.H.P, et al. (2013) Advances in Space Research. doi: 10.1016/j.asr.2013.07.002. Rossi, A. P., et al. (2014) PlanetServer/EarthServer: Big Data analytics in Planetary Science. Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 16, #EGU2014-5149.

Operational Marine Data Acquisition and Delivery Powered by Web and Geospatial Standards

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Thomas, R.; Buck, J. J. H.

2015-12-01

As novel sensor types and new platforms are deployed to monitor the global oceans, the volumes of scientific and environmental data collected in the marine context are rapidly growing. In order to use these data in both the traditional operational modes and in innovative "Big Data" applications the data must be readily understood by software agents. One approach to achieving this is the application of both World Wide Web and Open Geospatial Consortium standards: namely Linked Data1 and Sensor Web Enablement2 (SWE). The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) is adopting this strategy in a number of European Commission funded projects (NETMAR; SenseOCEAN; Ocean Data Interoperability Platform - ODIP; and AtlantOS) to combine its existing data archiving architecture with SWE components (such as Sensor Observation Services) and a Linked Data interface. These will evolve the data management and data transfer from a process that requires significant manual intervention to an automated operational process enabling the rapid, standards-based, ingestion and delivery of data. This poster will show the current capabilities of BODC and the status of on-going implementation of this strategy. References1. World Wide Web Consortium. (2013). Linked Data. Available:http://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/data. Last accessed 7th April 20152. Open Geospatial Consortium. (2014). Sensor Web Enablement (SWE). Available:http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/markets-technologies/swe. Last accessed 8th October 2014

Improving Groundwater Data Interoperability: Results of the Second OGC Groundwater Interoperability Experiment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lucido, J. M.; Booth, N.

2014-12-01

Interoperable sharing of groundwater data across international boarders is essential for the proper management of global water resources. However storage and management of groundwater data is often times distributed across many agencies or organizations. Furthermore these data may be represented in disparate proprietary formats, posing a significant challenge for integration. For this reason standard data models are required to achieve interoperability across geographical and political boundaries. The GroundWater Markup Language 1.0 (GWML1) was developed in 2010 as an extension of the Geography Markup Language (GML) in order to support groundwater data exchange within Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI). In 2013, development of GWML2 was initiated under the sponsorship of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) for intended adoption by the international community as the authoritative standard for the transfer of groundwater feature data, including data about water wells, aquifers, and related entities. GWML2 harmonizes GWML1 and the EU's INSPIRE models related to geology and hydrogeology. Additionally, an interoperability experiment was initiated to test the model for commercial, technical, scientific, and policy use cases. The scientific use case focuses on the delivery of data required for input into computational flow modeling software used to determine the flow of groundwater within a particular aquifer system. It involves the delivery of properties associated with hydrogeologic units, observations related to those units, and information about the related aquifers. To test this use case web services are being implemented using GWML2 and WaterML2, which is the authoritative standard for water time series observations, in order to serve USGS water well and hydrogeologic data via standard OGC protocols. Furthermore, integration of these data into a computational groundwater flow model will be tested. This submission will present the GWML2 information model and results of an interoperability experiment with a particular emphasis on the scientific use case.

A Web Service Protocol Realizing Interoperable Internet of Things Tasking Capability

PubMed Central

Huang, Chih-Yuan; Wu, Cheng-Hung

2016-01-01

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an infrastructure that interconnects uniquely-identifiable devices using the Internet. By interconnecting everyday appliances, various monitoring, and physical mashup applications can be constructed to improve human’s daily life. In general, IoT devices provide two main capabilities: sensing and tasking capabilities. While the sensing capability is similar to the World-Wide Sensor Web, this research focuses on the tasking capability. However, currently, IoT devices created by different manufacturers follow different proprietary protocols and are locked in many closed ecosystems. This heterogeneity issue impedes the interconnection between IoT devices and damages the potential of the IoT. To address this issue, this research aims at proposing an interoperable solution called tasking capability description that allows users to control different IoT devices using a uniform web service interface. This paper demonstrates the contribution of the proposed solution by interconnecting different IoT devices for different applications. In addition, the proposed solution is integrated with the OGC SensorThings API standard, which is a Web service standard defined for the IoT sensing capability. Consequently, the Extended SensorThings API can realize both IoT sensing and tasking capabilities in an integrated and interoperable manner. PMID:27589759

PlanetServer: Innovative approaches for the online analysis of hyperspectral satellite data from Mars

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Oosthoek, J. H. P.; Flahaut, J.; Rossi, A. P.; Baumann, P.; Misev, D.; Campalani, P.; Unnithan, V.

2014-06-01

PlanetServer is a WebGIS system, currently under development, enabling the online analysis of Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer (CRISM) hyperspectral data from Mars. It is part of the EarthServer project which builds infrastructure for online access and analysis of huge Earth Science datasets. Core functionality consists of the rasdaman Array Database Management System (DBMS) for storage, and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS) for data querying. Various WCPS queries have been designed to access spatial and spectral subsets of the CRISM data. The client WebGIS, consisting mainly of the OpenLayers javascript library, uses these queries to enable online spatial and spectral analysis. Currently the PlanetServer demonstration consists of two CRISM Full Resolution Target (FRT) observations, surrounding the NASA Curiosity rover landing site. A detailed analysis of one of these observations is performed in the Case Study section. The current PlanetServer functionality is described step by step, and is tested by focusing on detecting mineralogical evidence described in earlier Gale crater studies. Both the PlanetServer methodology and its possible use for mineralogical studies will be further discussed. Future work includes batch ingestion of CRISM data and further development of the WebGIS and analysis tools.

Charting Our Path with a Web Literacy Map

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dalton, Bridget

2015-01-01

Being a literacy teacher today means being a teacher of Web literacies. This article features the "Web Literacy Map", an open source tool from Mozilla's Webmaker project. The map focuses on Exploring (Navigating the Web); Building (creating for the Web), and Connecting (Participating on the Web). Readers are invited to use resources,…

Improving 3d Spatial Queries Search: Newfangled Technique of Space Filling Curves in 3d City Modeling

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Uznir, U.; Anton, F.; Suhaibah, A.; Rahman, A. A.; Mioc, D.

2013-09-01

The advantages of three dimensional (3D) city models can be seen in various applications including photogrammetry, urban and regional planning, computer games, etc.. They expand the visualization and analysis capabilities of Geographic Information Systems on cities, and they can be developed using web standards. However, these 3D city models consume much more storage compared to two dimensional (2D) spatial data. They involve extra geometrical and topological information together with semantic data. Without a proper spatial data clustering method and its corresponding spatial data access method, retrieving portions of and especially searching these 3D city models, will not be done optimally. Even though current developments are based on an open data model allotted by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) called CityGML, its XML-based structure makes it challenging to cluster the 3D urban objects. In this research, we propose an opponent data constellation technique of space-filling curves (3D Hilbert curves) for 3D city model data representation. Unlike previous methods, that try to project 3D or n-dimensional data down to 2D or 3D using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) or Hilbert mappings, in this research, we extend the Hilbert space-filling curve to one higher dimension for 3D city model data implementations. The query performance was tested using a CityGML dataset of 1,000 building blocks and the results are presented in this paper. The advantages of implementing space-filling curves in 3D city modeling will improve data retrieval time by means of optimized 3D adjacency, nearest neighbor information and 3D indexing. The Hilbert mapping, which maps a subinterval of the [0, 1] interval to the corresponding portion of the d-dimensional Hilbert's curve, preserves the Lebesgue measure and is Lipschitz continuous. Depending on the applications, several alternatives are possible in order to cluster spatial data together in the third dimension compared to its clustering in 2D.

E-Learning Applications for Urban Modelling and Ogc Standards Using HTML5 Capabilities

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kaden, R.; König, G.; Malchow, C.; Kolbe, T. H.

2012-07-01

This article reports on the development of HTML5 based web-content related to urban modelling with special focus on GML and CityGML, allowing participants to access it regardless of the device platform. An essential part of the learning modules are short video lectures, supplemented by exercises and tests during the lecture to improve students' individual progress and success. The evaluation of the tests is used to guide students through the course content, depending on individual knowledge. With this approach, we provide learning applications on a wide range of devices, either mobile or desktop, fulfil the needs of just-in-time knowledge, and increase the emphasis on lifelong learning.

EarthServer: Use of Rasdaman as a data store for use in visualisation of complex EO data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Clements, Oliver; Walker, Peter; Grant, Mike

2013-04-01

The European Commission FP7 project EarthServer is establishing open access and ad-hoc analytics on extreme-size Earth Science data, based on and extending cutting-edge Array Database technology. EarthServer is built around the Rasdaman Raster Data Manager which extends standard relational database systems with the ability to store and retrieve multi-dimensional raster data of unlimited size through an SQL style query language. Rasdaman facilitates visualisation of data by providing several Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard interfaces through its web services wrapper, Petascope. These include the well established standards, Web Coverage Service (WCS) and Web Map Service (WMS) as well as the emerging standard, Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS). The WCPS standard allows the running of ad-hoc queries on the data stored within Rasdaman, creating an infrastructure where users are not restricted by bandwidth when manipulating or querying huge datasets. Here we will show that the use of EarthServer technologies and infrastructure allows access and visualisation of massive scale data through a web client with only marginal bandwidth use as opposed to the current mechanism of copying huge amounts of data to create visualisations locally. For example if a user wanted to generate a plot of global average chlorophyll for a complete decade time series they would only have to download the result instead of Terabytes of data. Firstly we will present a brief overview of the capabilities of Rasdaman and the WCPS query language to introduce the ways in which it is used in a visualisation tool chain. We will show that there are several ways in which WCPS can be utilised to create both standard and novel web based visualisations. An example of a standard visualisation is the production of traditional 2d plots, allowing users the ability to plot data products easily. However, the query language allows the creation of novel/custom products, which can then immediately be plotted with the same system. For more complex multi-spectral data, WCPS allows the user to explore novel combinations of bands in standard band-ratio algorithms through a web browser with dynamic updating of the resultant image. To visualise very large datasets Rasdaman has the capability to dynamically scale a dataset or query result so that it can be appraised quickly for use in later unscaled queries. All of these techniques are accessible through a web based GIS interface increasing the number of potential users of the system. Lastly we will show the advances in dynamic web based 3D visualisations being explored within the EarthServer project. By utilising the emerging declarative 3D web standard X3DOM as a tool to visualise the results of WCPS queries we introduce several possible benefits, including quick appraisal of data for outliers or anomalous data points and visualisation of the uncertainty of data alongside the actual data values.

UNH Data Cooperative: A Cyber Infrastructure for Earth System Studies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Braswell, B. H.; Fekete, B. M.; Prusevich, A.; Gliden, S.; Magill, A.; Vorosmarty, C. J.

2007-12-01

Earth system scientists and managers have a continuously growing demand for a wide array of earth observations derived from various data sources including (a) modern satellite retrievals, (b) "in-situ" records, (c) various simulation outputs, and (d) assimilated data products combining model results with observational records. The sheer quantity of data, and formatting inconsistencies make it difficult for users to take full advantage of this important information resource. Thus the system could benefit from a thorough retooling of our current data processing procedures and infrastructure. Emerging technologies, like OPeNDAP and OGC map services, open standard data formats (NetCDF, HDF) data cataloging systems (NASA-Echo, Global Change Master Directory, etc.) are providing the basis for a new approach in data management and processing, where web- services are increasingly designed to serve computer-to-computer communications without human interactions and complex analysis can be carried out over distributed computer resources interconnected via cyber infrastructure. The UNH Earth System Data Collaborative is designed to utilize the aforementioned emerging web technologies to offer new means of access to earth system data. While the UNH Data Collaborative serves a wide array of data ranging from weather station data (Climate Portal) to ocean buoy records and ship tracks (Portsmouth Harbor Initiative) to land cover characteristics, etc. the underlaying data architecture shares common components for data mining and data dissemination via web-services. Perhaps the most unique element of the UNH Data Cooperative's IT infrastructure is its prototype modeling environment for regional ecosystem surveillance over the Northeast corridor, which allows the integration of complex earth system model components with the Cooperative's data services. While the complexity of the IT infrastructure to perform complex computations is continuously increasing, scientists are often forced to spend considerable amount of time to solve basic data management and preprocessing tasks and deal with low level computational design problems like parallelization of model codes. Our modeling infrastructure is designed to take care the bulk of the common tasks found in complex earth system models like I/O handling, computational domain and time management, parallel execution of the modeling tasks, etc. The modeling infrastructure allows scientists to focus on the numerical implementation of the physical processes on a single computational objects(typically grid cells) while the framework takes care of the preprocessing of input data, establishing of the data exchange between computation objects and the execution of the science code. In our presentation, we will discuss the key concepts of our modeling infrastructure. We will demonstrate integration of our modeling framework with data services offered by the UNH Earth System Data Collaborative via web interfaces. We will layout the road map to turn our prototype modeling environment into a truly community framework for wide range of earth system scientists and environmental managers.

48 CFR 303.203 - Reporting suspected violations of the Gratuities clause.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-10-01

... AND HUMAN SERVICES GENERAL IMPROPER BUSINESS PRACTICES AND PERSONAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST Contractor... turn report the matter to the OGC Ethics Division for disposition. The OGC Ethics Division shall...

48 CFR 303.203 - Reporting suspected violations of the Gratuities clause.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-10-01

... AND HUMAN SERVICES GENERAL IMPROPER BUSINESS PRACTICES AND PERSONAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST Contractor... turn report the matter to the OGC Ethics Division for disposition. The OGC Ethics Division shall...

48 CFR 303.203 - Reporting suspected violations of the Gratuities clause.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-10-01

... AND HUMAN SERVICES GENERAL IMPROPER BUSINESS PRACTICES AND PERSONAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST Contractor... turn report the matter to the OGC Ethics Division for disposition. The OGC Ethics Division shall...

48 CFR 303.203 - Reporting suspected violations of the Gratuities clause.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-10-01

... AND HUMAN SERVICES GENERAL IMPROPER BUSINESS PRACTICES AND PERSONAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST Contractor... turn report the matter to the OGC Ethics Division for disposition. The OGC Ethics Division shall...

48 CFR 303.203 - Reporting suspected violations of the Gratuities clause.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-10-01

... AND HUMAN SERVICES GENERAL IMPROPER BUSINESS PRACTICES AND PERSONAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST Contractor... turn report the matter to the OGC Ethics Division for disposition. The OGC Ethics Division shall...

The CLIMB Geoportal - A web-based dissemination and documentation platform for hydrological modelling data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Blaschek, Michael; Gerken, Daniel; Ludwig, Ralf; Duttmann, Rainer

2015-04-01

Geoportals are important elements of spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) that are strongly based on GIS-related web services. These services are basically meant for distributing, documenting and visualizing (spatial) data in a standardized manner; an important but challenging task especially in large scientific projects with a high number of data suppliers and producers from various countries. This presentation focuses on introducing the free and open-source based geoportal solution developed within the research project CLIMB (Climate Induced Changes on the Hydrology of Mediterranean Basins, www.climb-fp7.eu) that serves as the central platform for interchanging project-related spatial data and information. In this collaboration, financed by the EU-FP7-framework and coordinated at the LMU Munich, 21 partner institutions from nine European and non-European countries were involved. The CLIMB Geoportal (lgi-climbsrv.geographie.uni-kiel.de) stores and provides spatially distributed data about the current state and future changes of the hydrological conditions within the seven CLIMB test sites around the Mediterranean. Hydrological modelling outcome - validated by the CLIMB partners - is offered to the public in forms of Web Map Services (WMS), whereas downloading the underlying data itself through Web Coverage Services (WCS) is possible for registered users only. A selection of common indicators such as discharge, drought index as well as uncertainty measures including their changes over time were used in different spatial resolution. Besides map information, the portal enables the graphical display of time series of selected variables calculated by the individual models applied within the CLIMB-project. The implementation of the CLIMB Geoportal is finally based on version 2.0c5 of the open source geospatial content management system GeoNode. It includes a GeoServer instance for providing the OGC-compliant web services and comes with a metadata catalog (pycsw) as well as a built-in WebGIS-client based on GeoExt (GeoExplorer). PostgreSQL enhanced by PostGIS in versions 9.2.1/2.0.1 serves as database backend for all base data of the study sites and for the time series of relevant hydrological indicators. Spatial model results in raster-format are stored file-based as GeoTIFFs. Due to the high number of model outputs, the generation of metadata (xml) and graphical rendering instructions (sld) associated with each single layer of the WMS has been done automatically using the statistical software R. Additional applications that have been programmed during the project period include a Java-based interface for comfortable download of climate data that was initially needed as input data in hydrological modeling as well as a tool for displaying time series of selected risk indicators which is directly integrated into the portal structure implemented using Python (Django) and JavaScript. The presented CLIMB Geoportal shows that relevant results of even large international research projects involving many partners and varying national standards in data handling, can be effectively disseminated to stakeholders, policy makers and other interested parties. Thus, it is a successful example of using free and open-source software for providing long-term visibility and access to data produced within a particular (environmental) research project.

Investigating Geosparql Requirements for Participatory Urban Planning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mohammadi, E.; Hunter, A. J. S.

2015-06-01

We propose that participatory GIS (PGIS) activities including participatory urban planning can be made more efficient and effective if spatial reasoning rules are integrated with PGIS tools to simplify engagement for public contributors. Spatial reasoning is used to describe relationships between spatial entities. These relationships can be evaluated quantitatively or qualitatively using geometrical algorithms, ontological relations, and topological methods. Semantic web services utilize tools and methods that can facilitate spatial reasoning. GeoSPARQL, introduced by OGC, is a spatial reasoning standard used to make declarations about entities (graphical contributions) that take the form of a subject-predicate-object triple or statement. GeoSPARQL uses three basic methods to infer topological relationships between spatial entities, including: OGC's simple feature topology, RCC8, and the DE-9IM model. While these methods are comprehensive in their ability to define topological relationships between spatial entities, they are often inadequate for defining complex relationships that exist in the spatial realm. Particularly relationships between urban entities, such as those between a bus route, the collection of associated bus stops and their overall surroundings as an urban planning pattern. In this paper we investigate common qualitative spatial reasoning methods as a preliminary step to enhancing the capabilities of GeoSPARQL in an online participatory GIS framework in which reasoning is used to validate plans based on standard patterns that can be found in an efficient/effective urban environment.

Implementation and Evaluation of Four Interoperable Open Standards for the Internet of Things

PubMed Central

Jazayeri, Mohammad Ali; Liang, Steve H. L.; Huang, Chih-Yuan

2015-01-01

Recently, researchers are focusing on a new use of the Internet called the Internet of Things (IoT), in which enabled electronic devices can be remotely accessed over the Internet. As the realization of IoT concept is still in its early stages, manufacturers of Internet-connected devices and IoT web service providers are defining their proprietary protocols based on their targeted applications. Consequently, IoT becomes heterogeneous in terms of hardware capabilities and communication protocols. Addressing these heterogeneities by following open standards is a necessary step to communicate with various IoT devices. In this research, we assess the feasibility of applying existing open standards on resource-constrained IoT devices. The standard protocols developed in this research are OGC PUCK over Bluetooth, TinySOS, SOS over CoAP, and OGC SensorThings API. We believe that by hosting open standard protocols on IoT devices, not only do the devices become self-describable, self-contained, and interoperable, but innovative applications can also be easily developed with standardized interfaces. In addition, we use memory consumption, request message size, response message size, and response latency to benchmark the efficiency of the implemented protocols. In all, this research presents and evaluates standard-based solutions to better understand the feasibility of applying existing standards to the IoT vision. PMID:26402683

Optimizability of OGC Standards Implementations - a Case Study

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Misev, D.; Baumann, P.

2012-04-01

Why do we shop at Amazon? Because they have a unique offering that is nowhere else available? Certainly not. Rather, Amazon offers (i) simple, yet effective search; (ii) very simple payment; (iii) extremely rapid delivery. This is how scientific services will be distinguished in future: not for their data holding (there will be manifold choice), but for their service quality. We are facing the transition from data stewardship to service stewardship. One of the OGC standards which particularly enables flexible retrieval is the Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS). It defines a high-level query language on large, multi-dimensional raster data, such as 1D timeseries, 2D EO imagery, 3D x/y/t image time series and x/y/z geophysical data, 4D x/y/z/t climate and ocean data. We have implemented WCPS based on an Array Database Management System, rasdaman, which is available in open source. In this demonstration, we study WCPS queries on 2D, 3D, and 4D data sets. Particular emphasis is placed on the computational load queries generate in such on-demand processing and filtering. We look at different techniques and their impact on performance, such as adaptive storage partitioning, query rewriting, and just-in-time compilation. Results show that there is significant potential for effective server-side optimization once a query language is sufficiently high-level and declarative.

A Web-Based Interactive Mapping System of State Wide School Performance: Integrating Google Maps API Technology into Educational Achievement Data

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Kening; Mulvenon, Sean W.; Stegman, Charles; Anderson, Travis

2008-01-01

Google Maps API (Application Programming Interface), released in late June 2005 by Google, is an amazing technology that allows users to embed Google Maps in their own Web pages with JavaScript. Google Maps API has accelerated the development of new Google Maps based applications. This article reports a Web-based interactive mapping system…

The GeoDataPortal: A Standards-based Environmental Modeling Data Access and Manipulation Toolkit

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Blodgett, D. L.; Kunicki, T.; Booth, N.; Suftin, I.; Zoerb, R.; Walker, J.

2010-12-01

Environmental modelers from fields of study such as climatology, hydrology, geology, and ecology rely on many data sources and processing methods that are common across these disciplines. Interest in inter-disciplinary, loosely coupled modeling and data sharing is increasing among scientists from the USGS, other agencies, and academia. For example, hydrologic modelers need downscaled climate change scenarios and land cover data summarized for the watersheds they are modeling. Subsequently, ecological modelers are interested in soil moisture information for a particular habitat type as predicted by the hydrologic modeler. The USGS Center for Integrated Data Analytics Geo Data Portal (GDP) project seeks to facilitate this loose model coupling data sharing through broadly applicable open-source web processing services. These services simplify and streamline the time consuming and resource intensive tasks that are barriers to inter-disciplinary collaboration. The GDP framework includes a catalog describing projects, models, data, processes, and how they relate. Using newly introduced data, or sources already known to the catalog, the GDP facilitates access to sub-sets and common derivatives of data in numerous formats on disparate web servers. The GDP performs many of the critical functions needed to summarize data sources into modeling units regardless of scale or volume. A user can specify their analysis zones or modeling units as an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard Web Feature Service (WFS). Utilities to cache Shapefiles and other common GIS input formats have been developed to aid in making the geometry available for processing via WFS. Dataset access in the GDP relies primarily on the Unidata NetCDF-Java library’s common data model. Data transfer relies on methods provided by Unidata’s Thematic Real-time Environmental Data Distribution System Data Server (TDS). TDS services of interest include the Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol (OPeNDAP) standard for gridded time series, the OGC’s Web Coverage Service for high-density static gridded data, and Unidata’s CDM-remote for point time series. OGC WFS and Sensor Observation Service (SOS) are being explored as mechanisms to serve and access static or time series data attributed to vector geometry. A set of standardized XML-based output formats allows easy transformation into a wide variety of “model-ready” formats. Interested users will have the option of submitting custom transformations to the GDP or transforming the XML output as a post-process. The GDP project aims to support simple, rapid development of thin user interfaces (like web portals) to commonly needed environmental modeling-related data access and manipulation tools. Standalone, service-oriented components of the GDP framework provide the metadata cataloging, data subset access, and spatial-statistics calculations needed to support interdisciplinary environmental modeling.

Dynamic reusable workflows for ocean science

USGS Publications Warehouse

Signell, Richard; Fernandez, Filipe; Wilcox, Kyle

2016-01-01

Digital catalogs of ocean data have been available for decades, but advances in standardized services and software for catalog search and data access make it now possible to create catalog-driven workflows that automate — end-to-end — data search, analysis and visualization of data from multiple distributed sources. Further, these workflows may be shared, reused and adapted with ease. Here we describe a workflow developed within the US Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) which automates the skill-assessment of water temperature forecasts from multiple ocean forecast models, allowing improved forecast products to be delivered for an open water swim event. A series of Jupyter Notebooks are used to capture and document the end-to-end workflow using a collection of Python tools that facilitate working with standardized catalog and data services. The workflow first searches a catalog of metadata using the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Catalog Service for the Web (CSW), then accesses data service endpoints found in the metadata records using the OGC Sensor Observation Service (SOS) for in situ sensor data and OPeNDAP services for remotely-sensed and model data. Skill metrics are computed and time series comparisons of forecast model and observed data are displayed interactively, leveraging the capabilities of modern web browsers. The resulting workflow not only solves a challenging specific problem, but highlights the benefits of dynamic, reusable workflows in general. These workflows adapt as new data enters the data system, facilitate reproducible science, provide templates from which new scientific workflows can be developed, and encourage data providers to use standardized services. As applied to the ocean swim event, the workflow exposed problems with two of the ocean forecast products which led to improved regional forecasts once errors were corrected. While the example is specific, the approach is general, and we hope to see increased use of dynamic notebooks across the geoscience domains.

Multifunctional Web Enabled Ocean Sensor Systems for the Monitoring of a Changing Ocean

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pearlman, Jay; Castro, Ayoze; Corrandino, Luigi; del Rio, Joaquin; Delory, Eric; Garello, Rene; Heuermann, Rudinger; Martinez, Enoc; Pearlman, Francoise; Rolin, Jean-Francois; Toma, Daniel; Waldmann, Christoph; Zielinski, Oliver

2016-04-01

As stated in the 2010 "Ostend Declaration", a major challenge in the coming years is the development of a truly integrated and sustainably funded European Ocean Observing System for supporting major policy initiatives such as the Integrated Maritime Policy and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. This will be achieved with more long-term measurements of key parameters supported by a new generation of sensors whose costs and reliability will enable broad and consistent observations. Within the NeXOS project, a framework including new sensors capabilities and interface software has been put together that embraces the key technical aspects needed to improve the temporal and spatial coverage, resolution and quality of marine observations. The developments include new, low-cost, compact and integrated sensors with multiple functionalities that will allow for the measurements useful for a number of objectives, ranging from more precise monitoring and modeling of the marine environment to an improved assessment of fisheries. The project is entering its third year and will be demonstrating initial capabilities of optical and acoustic sensor prototypes that will become available for a number of platforms. For fisheries management, there is also a series of sensors that support an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (EAF). The greatest capabilities for comprehensive operations will occur when these sensors can be integrated into a multisensory capability on a single platform or multiply interconnected and coordinated platforms. Within NeXOS the full processing steps starting from the sensor signal all the way up to distributing collected environmental information will be encapsulated into standardized new state of the art Smart Sensor Interface and Web components to provide both improved integration and a flexible interface for scientists to control sensor operation. The use of the OGC SWE (Sensor Web Enablement) set of standards like OGC PUCK and SensorML at the instrument to platform integration phase will provide standard mechanisms for a truly plug'n'work connection. Through this, NeXOS Instruments will maintain within themselves specific information about how a platform (buoy controller, AUV controller, Observatory controller) has to configure and communicate with the instrument without the platform needing previous knowledge about the instrument. This mechanism is now being evaluated in real platforms like a Slocum Glider from Teledyne Web research, SeaExplorer Glider from Alseamar, Provor Float from NKE, and others including non commercial platforms like Obsea seafloor cabled observatory. The latest developments in the NeXOS sensors and the integration into an observation system will be discussed, addressing demonstration plans both for a variety of platforms and scientific objectives supporting marine management.

Quality Metadata Management for Geospatial Scientific Workflows: from Retrieving to Assessing with Online Tools

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Leibovici, D. G.; Pourabdollah, A.; Jackson, M.

2011-12-01

Experts and decision-makers use or develop models to monitor global and local changes of the environment. Their activities require the combination of data and processing services in a flow of operations and spatial data computations: a geospatial scientific workflow. The seamless ability to generate, re-use and modify a geospatial scientific workflow is an important requirement but the quality of outcomes is equally much important [1]. Metadata information attached to the data and processes, and particularly their quality, is essential to assess the reliability of the scientific model that represents a workflow [2]. Managing tools, dealing with qualitative and quantitative metadata measures of the quality associated with a workflow, are, therefore, required for the modellers. To ensure interoperability, ISO and OGC standards [3] are to be adopted, allowing for example one to define metadata profiles and to retrieve them via web service interfaces. However these standards need a few extensions when looking at workflows, particularly in the context of geoprocesses metadata. We propose to fill this gap (i) at first through the provision of a metadata profile for the quality of processes, and (ii) through providing a framework, based on XPDL [4], to manage the quality information. Web Processing Services are used to implement a range of metadata analyses on the workflow in order to evaluate and present quality information at different levels of the workflow. This generates the metadata quality, stored in the XPDL file. The focus is (a) on the visual representations of the quality, summarizing the retrieved quality information either from the standardized metadata profiles of the components or from non-standard quality information e.g., Web 2.0 information, and (b) on the estimated qualities of the outputs derived from meta-propagation of uncertainties (a principle that we have introduced [5]). An a priori validation of the future decision-making supported by the outputs of the workflow once run, is then provided using the meta-propagated qualities, obtained without running the workflow [6], together with the visualization pointing out the need to improve the workflow with better data or better processes on the workflow graph itself. [1] Leibovici, DG, Hobona, G Stock, K Jackson, M (2009) Qualifying geospatial workfow models for adaptive controlled validity and accuracy. In: IEEE 17th GeoInformatics, 1-5 [2] Leibovici, DG, Pourabdollah, A (2010a) Workflow Uncertainty using a Metamodel Framework and Metadata for Data and Processes. OGC TC/PC Meetings, September 2010, Toulouse, France [3] OGC (2011) www.opengeospatial.org [4] XPDL (2008) Workflow Process Definition Interface - XML Process Definition Language.Workflow Management Coalition, Document WfMC-TC-1025, 2008 [5] Leibovici, DG Pourabdollah, A Jackson, M (2011) Meta-propagation of Uncertainties for Scientific Workflow Management in Interoperable Spatial Data Infrastructures. In: Proceedings of the European Geosciences Union (EGU2011), April 2011, Austria [6] Pourabdollah, A Leibovici, DG Jackson, M (2011) MetaPunT: an Open Source tool for Meta-Propagation of uncerTainties in Geospatial Processing. In: Proceedings of OSGIS2011, June 2011, Nottingham, UK

GeoSciML v3.0 - a significant upgrade of the CGI-IUGS geoscience data model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Raymond, O.; Duclaux, G.; Boisvert, E.; Cipolloni, C.; Cox, S.; Laxton, J.; Letourneau, F.; Richard, S.; Ritchie, A.; Sen, M.; Serrano, J.-J.; Simons, B.; Vuollo, J.

2012-04-01

GeoSciML version 3.0 (http://www.geosciml.org), released in late 2011, is the latest version of the CGI-IUGS* Interoperability Working Group geoscience data interchange standard. The new version is a significant upgrade and refactoring of GeoSciML v2 which was released in 2008. GeoSciML v3 has already been adopted by several major international interoperability initiatives, including OneGeology, the EU INSPIRE program, and the US Geoscience Information Network, as their standard data exchange format for geoscience data. GeoSciML v3 makes use of recently upgraded versions of several Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and ISO data transfer standards, including GML v3.2, SWE Common v2.0, and Observations and Measurements v2 (ISO 19156). The GeoSciML v3 data model has been refactored from a single large application schema with many packages, into a number of smaller, but related, application schema modules with individual namespaces. This refactoring allows the use and future development of modules of GeoSciML (eg; GeologicUnit, GeologicStructure, GeologicAge, Borehole) in smaller, more manageable units. As a result of this refactoring and the integration with new OGC and ISO standards, GeoSciML v3 is not backwardly compatible with previous GeoSciML versions. The scope of GeoSciML has been extended in version 3.0 to include new models for geomorphological data (a Geomorphology application schema), and for geological specimens, geochronological interpretations, and metadata for geochemical and geochronological analyses (a LaboratoryAnalysis-Specimen application schema). In addition, there is better support for borehole data, and the PhysicalProperties model now supports a wider range of petrophysical measurements. The previously used CGI_Value data type has been superseded in favour of externally governed data types provided by OGC's SWE Common v2 and GML v3.2 data standards. The GeoSciML v3 release includes worked examples of best practice in delivering geochemical analytical data using the Observations and Measurements (ISO19156) and SWE Common v2 models. The GeoSciML v3 data model does not include vocabularies to support the data model. However, it does provide a standard pattern to reference controlled vocabulary concepts using HTTP-URIs. The international GeoSciML community has developed distributed RDF-based geoscience vocabularies that can be accessed by GeoSciML web services using the standard pattern recommended in GeoSciML v3. GeoSciML v3 is the first version of GeoSciML that will be accompanied by web service validation tools using Schematron rules. For example, these validation tools may check for compliance of a web service to a particular profile of GeoSciML, or for logical consistency of data content that cannot be enforced by the application schemas. This validation process will support accreditation of GeoSciML services and a higher degree of semantic interoperability. * International Union of Geological Sciences Commission for Management and Application of Geoscience Information (CGI-IUGS)

Programs and Projects of the Office of General Counsel (OGC)

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

The Office of General Counsel (OGC) attorneys work with EPA headquarters and regional offices to provide legal support for the issuance of permits, the approval of state environmental programs, and the initiation and litigation of enforcement actions.

78 FR 9721 - Privacy Act of 1974; New System of Records, Office of General Counsel E-Discovery Management...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-02-11

... massive emails, word processing documents, PDF files, spreadsheets, presentations, database entries, and....pdf . PURPOSES: OGC-EDMS provides OGC with a method to initiate, track, and manage the collection...

Autonomous Mission Operations for Sensor Webs

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Underbrink, A.; Witt, K.; Stanley, J.; Mandl, D.

2008-12-01

We present interim results of a 2005 ROSES AIST project entitled, "Using Intelligent Agents to Form a Sensor Web for Autonomous Mission Operations", or SWAMO. The goal of the SWAMO project is to shift the control of spacecraft missions from a ground-based, centrally controlled architecture to a collaborative, distributed set of intelligent agents. The network of intelligent agents intends to reduce management requirements by utilizing model-based system prediction and autonomic model/agent collaboration. SWAMO agents are distributed throughout the Sensor Web environment, which may include multiple spacecraft, aircraft, ground systems, and ocean systems, as well as manned operations centers. The agents monitor and manage sensor platforms, Earth sensing systems, and Earth sensing models and processes. The SWAMO agents form a Sensor Web of agents via peer-to-peer coordination. Some of the intelligent agents are mobile and able to traverse between on-orbit and ground-based systems. Other agents in the network are responsible for encapsulating system models to perform prediction of future behavior of the modeled subsystems and components to which they are assigned. The software agents use semantic web technologies to enable improved information sharing among the operational entities of the Sensor Web. The semantics include ontological conceptualizations of the Sensor Web environment, plus conceptualizations of the SWAMO agents themselves. By conceptualizations of the agents, we mean knowledge of their state, operational capabilities, current operational capacities, Web Service search and discovery results, agent collaboration rules, etc. The need for ontological conceptualizations over the agents is to enable autonomous and autonomic operations of the Sensor Web. The SWAMO ontology enables automated decision making and responses to the dynamic Sensor Web environment and to end user science requests. The current ontology is compatible with Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) Sensor Model Language (SensorML) concepts and structures. The agents are currently deployed on the U.S. Naval Academy MidSTAR-1 satellite and are actively managing the power subsystem on-orbit without the need for human intervention.

The Westfield River Watershed Interactive Atlas: mapping recreation data on the web

Treesearch

Robert S. Bristow; Steven Riberdy

2002-01-01

Imagine searching the web to create a map to your house. You could use one of the many Internet mapping sites like MapBlast™ or MapQuest™ to create such a map. But maybe you wish to get a map of trails for the Grand Canyon. The National Park Service web site could serve that need. Or you may wish to get a map to show you the way from the Orlando...

SSE-GIS v1.03 Web Mapping Application Now Available

Atmospheric Science Data Center

2018-03-16

SSE-GIS v1.03 Web Mapping Application Now Available Wednesday, July 6, 2016 ... you haven’t already noticed the link to the new SSE-GIS web application on the SSE homepage entitled “GIS Web Mapping Applications and Services”, we invite you to visit the site. ...

National Geothermal Data System: State Geological Survey Contributions to Date

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Patten, K.; Allison, M. L.; Richard, S. M.; Clark, R.; Love, D.; Coleman, C.; Caudill, C.; Matti, J.; Musil, L.; Day, J.; Chen, G.

2012-12-01

In collaboration with the Association of American State Geologists the Arizona Geological Survey is leading the effort to bring legacy geothermal data to the U.S. Department of Energy's National Geothermal Data System (NGDS). NGDS is a national, sustainable, distributed, interoperable network of data and service (application) providers entering its final stages of development. Once completed the geothermal industry, the public, and policy makers will have access to consistent and reliable data, which in turn, reduces the amount of staff time devoted to finding, retrieving, integrating, and verifying information. With easier access to information, the high cost and risk of geothermal power projects (especially exploration drilling) is reduced. This presentation focuses on the scientific and data integration methodology as well as State Geological Survey contributions to date. The NGDS is built using the U.S. Geoscience Information Network (USGIN) data integration framework to promote interoperability across the Earth sciences community and with other emerging data integration and networking efforts. Core to the USGIN concept is that of data provenance; by allowing data providers to maintain and house their data. After concluding the second year of the project, we have nearly 800 datasets representing over 2 million data points from the state geological surveys. A new AASG specific search catalog based on popular internet search formats enables end users to more easily find and identify geothermal resources in a specific region. Sixteen states, including a consortium of Great Basin states, have initiated new field data collection for submission to the NGDS. The new field data includes data from at least 21 newly drilled thermal gradient holes in previously unexplored areas. Most of the datasets provided to the NGDS are being portrayed as Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Services (WMS) and Web Feature Services (WFS), meaning that the data is compatible with a variety of visualization software. Web services are ideal for the NGDS data for a number of reasons including that they preserve data ownership in that they are read only and new services can be deployed to meet new requirements without modifying existing applications.

Resource Needs and Pedagogical Value of Web Mapping for Spatial Thinking

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Manson, Steven; Shannon, Jerry; Eria, Sami; Kne, Len; Dyke, Kevin; Nelson, Sara; Batra, Lalit; Bonsal, Dudley; Kernik, Melinda; Immich, Jennifer; Matson, Laura

2014-01-01

Web mapping involves publishing and using maps via the Internet, and can range from presenting static maps to offering dynamic data querying and spatial analysis. Web mapping is seen as a promising way to support development of spatial thinking in the classroom but there are unanswered questions about how this promise plays out in reality. This…

Usability Evaluation of Public Web Mapping Sites

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, C.

2014-04-01

Web mapping sites are interactive maps that are accessed via Webpages. With the rapid development of Internet and Geographic Information System (GIS) field, public web mapping sites are not foreign to people. Nowadays, people use these web mapping sites for various reasons, in that increasing maps and related map services of web mapping sites are freely available for end users. Thus, increased users of web mapping sites led to more usability studies. Usability Engineering (UE), for instance, is an approach for analyzing and improving the usability of websites through examining and evaluating an interface. In this research, UE method was employed to explore usability problems of four public web mapping sites, analyze the problems quantitatively and provide guidelines for future design based on the test results. Firstly, the development progress for usability studies were described, and simultaneously several usability evaluation methods such as Usability Engineering (UE), User-Centered Design (UCD) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) were generally introduced. Then the method and procedure of experiments for the usability test were presented in detail. In this usability evaluation experiment, four public web mapping sites (Google Maps, Bing maps, Mapquest, Yahoo Maps) were chosen as the testing websites. And 42 people, who having different GIS skills (test users or experts), gender (male or female), age and nationality, participated in this test to complete the several test tasks in different teams. The test comprised three parts: a pretest background information questionnaire, several test tasks for quantitative statistics and progress analysis, and a posttest questionnaire. The pretest and posttest questionnaires focused on gaining the verbal explanation of their actions qualitatively. And the design for test tasks targeted at gathering quantitative data for the errors and problems of the websites. Then, the results mainly from the test part were analyzed. The success rate from different public web mapping sites was calculated and compared, and displayed by the means of diagram. And the answers from questionnaires were also classified and organized in this part. Moreover, based on the analysis, this paper expands the discussion about the layout, map visualization, map tools, search logic and etc. Finally, this paper closed with some valuable guidelines and suggestions for the design of public web mapping sites. Also, limitations for this research stated in the end.

Harvesting implementation for the GI-cat distributed catalog

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Boldrini, Enrico; Papeschi, Fabrizio; Bigagli, Lorenzo; Mazzetti, Paolo

2010-05-01

GI-cat framework implements a distributed catalog service supporting different international standards and interoperability arrangements in use by the geoscientific community. The distribution functionality in conjunction with the mediation functionality allows to seamlessly query remote heterogeneous data sources, including OGC Web Services - e.e. OGC CSW, WCS, WFS and WMS, community standards such as UNIDATA THREDDS/OPeNDAP, SeaDataNet CDI (Common Data Index), GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) services and OpenSearch engines. In the GI-cat modular architecture a distributor component carry out the distribution functionality by query delegation to the mediator components (one for each different data source). Each of these mediator components is able to query a specific data source and convert back the results by mapping of the foreign data model to the GI-cat internal one, based on ISO 19139. In order to cope with deployment scenarios in which local data is expected, an harvesting approach has been experimented. The new strategy comes in addition to the consolidated distributed approach, allowing the user to switch between a remote and a local search at will for each federated resource; this extends GI-cat configuration possibilities. The harvesting strategy is designed in GI-cat by the use at the core of a local cache component, implemented as a native XML database and based on eXist. The different heterogeneous sources are queried for the bulk of available data; this data is then injected into the cache component after being converted to the GI-cat data model. The query and conversion steps are performed by the mediator components that were are part of the GI-cat framework. Afterward each new query can be exercised against local data that have been stored in the cache component. Considering both advantages and shortcomings that affect harvesting and query distribution approaches, it comes out that a user driven tuning is required to take the best of them. This is often related to the specific user scenarios to be implemented. GI-cat proved to be a flexible framework to address user need. The GI-cat configurator tool was updated to make such a tuning possible: each data source can be configured to enable either harvesting or query distribution approaches; in the former case an appropriate harvesting interval can be set.

Common Approach to Geoprocessing of Uav Data across Application Domains

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Percivall, G. S.; Reichardt, M.; Taylor, T.

2015-08-01

UAVs are a disruptive technology bringing new geographic data and information to many application domains. UASs are similar to other geographic imagery systems so existing frameworks are applicable. But the diversity of UAVs as platforms along with the diversity of available sensors are presenting challenges in the processing and creation of geospatial products. Efficient processing and dissemination of the data is achieved using software and systems that implement open standards. The challenges identified point to the need for use of existing standards and extending standards. Results from the use of the OGC Sensor Web Enablement set of standards are presented. Next steps in the progress of UAVs and UASs may follow the path of open data, open source and open standards.

An automated and integrated framework for dust storm detection based on ogc web processing services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xiao, F.; Shea, G. Y. K.; Wong, M. S.; Campbell, J.

2014-11-01

Dust storms are known to have adverse effects on public health. Atmospheric dust loading is also one of the major uncertainties in global climatic modelling as it is known to have a significant impact on the radiation budget and atmospheric stability. The complexity of building scientific dust storm models is coupled with the scientific computation advancement, ongoing computing platform development, and the development of heterogeneous Earth Observation (EO) networks. It is a challenging task to develop an integrated and automated scheme for dust storm detection that combines Geo-Processing frameworks, scientific models and EO data together to enable the dust storm detection and tracking processes in a dynamic and timely manner. This study develops an automated and integrated framework for dust storm detection and tracking based on the Web Processing Services (WPS) initiated by Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). The presented WPS framework consists of EO data retrieval components, dust storm detecting and tracking component, and service chain orchestration engine. The EO data processing component is implemented based on OPeNDAP standard. The dust storm detecting and tracking component combines three earth scientific models, which are SBDART model (for computing aerosol optical depth (AOT) of dust particles), WRF model (for simulating meteorological parameters) and HYSPLIT model (for simulating the dust storm transport processes). The service chain orchestration engine is implemented based on Business Process Execution Language for Web Service (BPEL4WS) using open-source software. The output results, including horizontal and vertical AOT distribution of dust particles as well as their transport paths, were represented using KML/XML and displayed in Google Earth. A serious dust storm, which occurred over East Asia from 26 to 28 Apr 2012, is used to test the applicability of the proposed WPS framework. Our aim here is to solve a specific instance of a complex EO data and scientific model integration problem by using a framework and scientific workflow approach together. The experimental result shows that this newly automated and integrated framework can be used to give advance near real-time warning of dust storms, for both environmental authorities and public. The methods presented in this paper might be also generalized to other types of Earth system models, leading to improved ease of use and flexibility.

International Virtual Observatory System for Water Resources Information

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Leinenweber, Lewis; Bermudez, Luis

2013-04-01

Sharing, accessing, and integrating hydrologic and climatic data have been identified as a critical need for some time. The current state of data portals, standards, technologies, activities, and expertise can be leverage to develop an initial operational capability for a virtual observatory system. This system will allow to link observations data with stream networks and models, and to solve semantic inconsistencies among communities. Prototyping a virtual observatory system is an inter-disciplinary, inter-agency and international endeavor. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) within the OGC Interoperability Program provides the process and expertise to run such collaborative effort. The OGC serves as a global forum for the collaboration of developers and users of spatial data products and services, and to advance the development of international standards for geospatial interoperability. The project coordinated by OGC that is advancing an international virtual observatory system for water resources information is called Climatology-Hydrology Information Sharing Pilot, Phase 1 (CHISP-1). It includes observations and forecasts in the U.S. and Canada levering current networks and capabilities. It is designed to support the following use cases: 1) Hydrologic modeling for historical and near-future stream flow and groundwater conditions. Requires the integration of trans-boundary stream flow and groundwater well data, as well as national river networks (US NHD and Canada NHN) from multiple agencies. Emphasis will be on time series data and real-time flood monitoring. 2) Modeling and assessment of nutrient load into the lakes. Requires accessing water-quality data from multiple agencies and integrating with stream flow information for calculating loads. Emphasis on discrete sampled water quality observations, linking those to specific NHD stream reaches and catchments, and additional metadata for sampled data. The key objectives of these use cases are: 1) To link observations data to the stream network, enabling queries of conditions upstream from a given location to return all relevant gages and well locations. This is currently not practical with the data sources available. 2) To bridge differences in semantics across information models and processes used by the various data producers, to improve the hydrologic and water quality modeling capabilities. Other expected benefits to be derived from this project include: - Leverage a large body of existing data holdings and related activities of multiple agencies in the US and Canada. - Influence data and metadata standards used internationally for web-based information sharing, through multiple agency cooperation and OGC standards setting process. - Reduction of procurement risk through partnership-based development of an initial operating capability verses the cost for building a fully operational system using a traditional "waterfall approach". - Identification and clarification of what is possible, and of the key technical and non-technical barriers to continued progress in sharing and integrating hydrologic and climatic information. - Promote understanding and strengthen ties within the hydro-climatic community. This is anticipated to be the first phase of a multi-phase project, with future work on forecasting the hydrologic consequences of extreme weather events, and enabling more sophisticated water quality modeling.

48 CFR 801.602-75 - Review requirements-OGC.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-10-01

... 48 Federal Acquisition Regulations System 5 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Review requirements-OGC. 801.602-75 Section 801.602-75 Federal Acquisition Regulations System DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS GENERAL DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS ACQUISITION REGULATION SYSTEM Career Development, Contracting...

48 CFR 801.602-75 - Review requirements-OGC.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-10-01

... 48 Federal Acquisition Regulations System 5 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Review requirements-OGC. 801.602-75 Section 801.602-75 Federal Acquisition Regulations System DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS GENERAL DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS ACQUISITION REGULATION SYSTEM Career Development, Contracting...

48 CFR 801.602-75 - Review requirements-OGC.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-10-01

... 48 Federal Acquisition Regulations System 5 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Review requirements-OGC. 801.602-75 Section 801.602-75 Federal Acquisition Regulations System DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS GENERAL DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS ACQUISITION REGULATION SYSTEM Career Development, Contracting...

48 CFR 801.602-75 - Review requirements-OGC.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-10-01

... 48 Federal Acquisition Regulations System 5 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Review requirements-OGC. 801.602-75 Section 801.602-75 Federal Acquisition Regulations System DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS GENERAL DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS ACQUISITION REGULATION SYSTEM Career Development, Contracting...

48 CFR 801.602-75 - Review requirements-OGC.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-10-01

... 48 Federal Acquisition Regulations System 5 2014-10-01 2014-10-01 false Review requirements-OGC. 801.602-75 Section 801.602-75 Federal Acquisition Regulations System DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS GENERAL DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS ACQUISITION REGULATION SYSTEM Career Development, Contracting...

The OGC Innovation Program Testbeds - Advancing Architectures for Earth and Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bermudez, L. E.; Percivall, G.; Simonis, I.; Serich, S.

2017-12-01

The OGC Innovation Program provides a collaborative agile process for solving challenging science problems and advancing new technologies. Since 1999, 100 initiatives have taken place, from multi-million dollar testbeds to small interoperability experiments. During these initiatives, sponsors and technology implementers (including academia and private sector) come together to solve problems, produce prototypes, develop demonstrations, provide best practices, and advance the future of standards. This presentation will provide the latest system architectures that can be used for Earth and space systems as a result of the OGC Testbed 13, including the following components: Elastic cloud autoscaler for Earth Observations (EO) using a WPS in an ESGF hybrid climate data research platform. Accessibility of climate data for the scientist and non-scientist users via on demand models wrapped in WPS. Standards descriptions for containerize applications to discover processes on the cloud, including using linked data, a WPS extension for hybrid clouds and linking to hybrid big data stores. OpenID and OAuth to secure OGC Services with built-in Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) infrastructures leveraging GeoDRM patterns. Publishing and access of vector tiles, including use of compression and attribute options reusing patterns from WMS, WMTS and WFS. Servers providing 3D Tiles and streaming of data, including Indexed 3d Scene Layer (I3S), CityGML and Common DataBase (CDB). Asynchronous Services with advanced pushed notifications strategies, with a filter language instead of simple topic subscriptions, that can be use across OGC services. Testbed 14 will continue advancing topics like Big Data, security, and streaming, as well as making easier to use OGC services (e.g. RESTful APIs). The Call for Participation will be issued in December and responses are due on mid January 2018.

The OGC Innovation Program Testbeds - Advancing Architectures for Earth and Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bermudez, L. E.; Percivall, G.; Simonis, I.; Serich, S.

2016-12-01

The OGC Innovation Program provides a collaborative agile process for solving challenging science problems and advancing new technologies. Since 1999, 100 initiatives have taken place, from multi-million dollar testbeds to small interoperability experiments. During these initiatives, sponsors and technology implementers (including academia and private sector) come together to solve problems, produce prototypes, develop demonstrations, provide best practices, and advance the future of standards. This presentation will provide the latest system architectures that can be used for Earth and space systems as a result of the OGC Testbed 13, including the following components: Elastic cloud autoscaler for Earth Observations (EO) using a WPS in an ESGF hybrid climate data research platform. Accessibility of climate data for the scientist and non-scientist users via on demand models wrapped in WPS. Standards descriptions for containerize applications to discover processes on the cloud, including using linked data, a WPS extension for hybrid clouds and linking to hybrid big data stores. OpenID and OAuth to secure OGC Services with built-in Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) infrastructures leveraging GeoDRM patterns. Publishing and access of vector tiles, including use of compression and attribute options reusing patterns from WMS, WMTS and WFS. Servers providing 3D Tiles and streaming of data, including Indexed 3d Scene Layer (I3S), CityGML and Common DataBase (CDB). Asynchronous Services with advanced pushed notifications strategies, with a filter language instead of simple topic subscriptions, that can be use across OGC services. Testbed 14 will continue advancing topics like Big Data, security, and streaming, as well as making easier to use OGC services (e.g. RESTful APIs). The Call for Participation will be issued in December and responses are due on mid January 2018.

Using Web Maps to Analyze the Construction of Global Scale Cognitive Maps

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pingel, Thomas J.

2018-01-01

Game-based Web sites and applications are changing the ways in which students learn the world map. In this study, a Web map-based digital learning tool was used as a study aid for a university-level geography course in order to examine the way in which global scale cognitive maps are constructed. A network analysis revealed that clicks were…

Prototype of Partial Cutting Tool of Geological Map Images Distributed by Geological Web Map Service

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nonogaki, S.; Nemoto, T.

2014-12-01

Geological maps and topographical maps play an important role in disaster assessment, resource management, and environmental preservation. These map information have been distributed in accordance with Web services standards such as Web Map Service (WMS) and Web Map Tile Service (WMTS) recently. In this study, a partial cutting tool of geological map images distributed by geological WMTS was implemented with Free and Open Source Software. The tool mainly consists of two functions: display function and cutting function. The former function was implemented using OpenLayers. The latter function was implemented using Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL). All other small functions were implemented by PHP and Python. As a result, this tool allows not only displaying WMTS layer on web browser but also generating a geological map image of intended area and zoom level. At this moment, available WTMS layers are limited to the ones distributed by WMTS for the Seamless Digital Geological Map of Japan. The geological map image can be saved as GeoTIFF format and WebGL format. GeoTIFF is one of the georeferenced raster formats that is available in many kinds of Geographical Information System. WebGL is useful for confirming a relationship between geology and geography in 3D. In conclusion, the partial cutting tool developed in this study would contribute to create better conditions for promoting utilization of geological information. Future work is to increase the number of available WMTS layers and the types of output file format.

The NERC Vocabulary Server: Version 2.0

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Leadbetter, A. M.; Lowry, R. K.

2012-12-01

The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Vocabulary Server (NVS) has been used to publish controlled vocabularies of terms relevant to marine environmental sciences since 2006 (version 0) with version 1 being introduced in 2007. It has been used for - metadata mark-up with verifiable content - populating dynamic drop down lists - semantic cross-walk between metadata schemata - so-called smart search - and the semantic enablement of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Processing Services in the NERC Data Grid and the European Commission SeaDataNet, Geo-Seas, and European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) projects. The NVS is based on the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) model. SKOS is based on the "concept", which it defines as a "unit of thought", that is an idea or notion such as "oil spill". Following a version change for SKOS in 2009 there was a desire to upgrade the NVS to incorporate the changes. This version of SKOS introduces the ability to aggregate concepts in both collections and schemes. The design of version 2 of the NVS uses both types of aggregation: schemes for the discovery of content through hierarchical thesauri and collections for the publication and addressing of content. Other desired changes from version 1 of the NVS included: - the removal of the potential for multiple identifiers for the same concept to ensure consistent addressing of concepts - the addition of content and technical governance information in the payload documents to provide an audit trail to users of NVS content - the removal of XML snippets from concept definitions in order to correctly validate XML serializations of the SKOS - the addition of the ability to map into external knowledge organization systems in order to extend the knowledge base - a more truly RESTful approach URL access to the NVS to make the development of applications on top of the NVS easier - and support for multiple human languages to increase the user base of the NVS Version 2 of the NVS (NVS2.0) underpins the semantic layer for the Open Service Network for Marine Environmental Data (NETMAR) project, funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme. Within NETMAR, NVS2.0 has been used for: - semantic validation of inputs to chained OGC Web Processing Services - smart discovery of data and services - integration of data from distributed nodes of the International Coastal Atlas Network Since its deployment, NVS2.0 has been adopted within the European SeaDataNet community's software products which has significantly increased the usage of the NVS2.0 Application Programming Interace (API), as illustrated in Table 1. Here we present the results of upgrading the NVS to version 2 and show applications which have been built on top of the NVS2.0 API, including a SPARQL endpoint and a hierarchical catalogue of oceanographic hardware.Table 1. NVS2.0 API usage by month from 467 unique IP addressest;

The Future of Web Maps in Next Generation Textbooks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

DiBiase, D.; Prasad, S.

2014-12-01

The reformation of the "Object Formerly Known as Textbook" (coined by the Chronicle of Higher Education) toward a digital future is underway. Emerging nextgen texts look less like electronic books ("ebooks") and more like online courseware. In addition to text and illustrations, nextgen textbooks for STEM subjects are likely to combine quizzes, grade management tools, support for social learning, and interactive media including web maps. Web maps are interactive, multi-scale, online maps that enable teachers and learners to explore, interrogate, and mash up the wide variety of map layers available in the cloud. This presentation will show how web maps coupled with interactive quizzes enable students' purposeful explorations and interpretations of spatial patterns related to humankind's interactions with the earth. Attendees will also learn about Esri's offer to donate ArcGIS Online web mapping subscriptions to every U.S. school as part of the President Obama's ConnectED initiative.

Displaying R spatial statistics on Google dynamic maps with web applications created by Rwui

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Background The R project includes a large variety of packages designed for spatial statistics. Google dynamic maps provide web based access to global maps and satellite imagery. We describe a method for displaying directly the spatial output from an R script on to a Google dynamic map. Methods This is achieved by creating a Java based web application which runs the R script and then displays the results on the dynamic map. In order to make this method easy to implement by those unfamiliar with programming Java based web applications, we have added the method to the options available in the R Web User Interface (Rwui) application. Rwui is an established web application for creating web applications for running R scripts. A feature of Rwui is that all the code for the web application being created is generated automatically so that someone with no knowledge of web programming can make a fully functional web application for running an R script in a matter of minutes. Results Rwui can now be used to create web applications that will display the results from an R script on a Google dynamic map. Results may be displayed as discrete markers and/or as continuous overlays. In addition, users of the web application may select regions of interest on the dynamic map with mouse clicks and the coordinates of the region of interest will automatically be made available for use by the R script. Conclusions This method of displaying R output on dynamic maps is designed to be of use in a number of areas. Firstly it allows statisticians, working in R and developing methods in spatial statistics, to easily visualise the results of applying their methods to real world data. Secondly, it allows researchers who are using R to study health geographics data, to display their results directly onto dynamic maps. Thirdly, by creating a web application for running an R script, a statistician can enable users entirely unfamiliar with R to run R coded statistical analyses of health geographics data. Fourthly, we envisage an educational role for such applications. PMID:22998945

Displaying R spatial statistics on Google dynamic maps with web applications created by Rwui.

PubMed

Newton, Richard; Deonarine, Andrew; Wernisch, Lorenz

2012-09-24

The R project includes a large variety of packages designed for spatial statistics. Google dynamic maps provide web based access to global maps and satellite imagery. We describe a method for displaying directly the spatial output from an R script on to a Google dynamic map. This is achieved by creating a Java based web application which runs the R script and then displays the results on the dynamic map. In order to make this method easy to implement by those unfamiliar with programming Java based web applications, we have added the method to the options available in the R Web User Interface (Rwui) application. Rwui is an established web application for creating web applications for running R scripts. A feature of Rwui is that all the code for the web application being created is generated automatically so that someone with no knowledge of web programming can make a fully functional web application for running an R script in a matter of minutes. Rwui can now be used to create web applications that will display the results from an R script on a Google dynamic map. Results may be displayed as discrete markers and/or as continuous overlays. In addition, users of the web application may select regions of interest on the dynamic map with mouse clicks and the coordinates of the region of interest will automatically be made available for use by the R script. This method of displaying R output on dynamic maps is designed to be of use in a number of areas. Firstly it allows statisticians, working in R and developing methods in spatial statistics, to easily visualise the results of applying their methods to real world data. Secondly, it allows researchers who are using R to study health geographics data, to display their results directly onto dynamic maps. Thirdly, by creating a web application for running an R script, a statistician can enable users entirely unfamiliar with R to run R coded statistical analyses of health geographics data. Fourthly, we envisage an educational role for such applications.

The use of interactive graphical maps for browsing medical/health Internet information resources

PubMed Central

Boulos, Maged N Kamel

2003-01-01

As online information portals accumulate metadata descriptions of Web resources, it becomes necessary to develop effective ways for visualising and navigating the resultant huge metadata repositories as well as the different semantic relationships and attributes of described Web resources. Graphical maps provide a good method to visualise, understand and navigate a world that is too large and complex to be seen directly like the Web. Several examples of maps designed as a navigational aid for Web resources are presented in this review with an emphasis on maps of medical and health-related resources. The latter include HealthCyberMap maps , which can be classified as conceptual information space maps, and the very abstract and geometric Visual Net maps of PubMed (for demos). Information resources can be also organised and navigated based on their geographic attributes. Some of the maps presented in this review use a Kohonen Self-Organising Map algorithm, and only HealthCyberMap uses a Geographic Information System to classify Web resource data and render the maps. Maps based on familiar metaphors taken from users' everyday life are much easier to understand. Associative and pictorial map icons that enable instant recognition and comprehension are preferred to geometric ones and are key to successful maps for browsing medical/health Internet information resources. PMID:12556244

Exosomes derived from human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells protect against cisplatin-induced ovarian granulosa cell stress and apoptosis in vitro.

PubMed

Sun, Liping; Li, Dong; Song, Kun; Wei, Jianlu; Yao, Shu; Li, Zhao; Su, Xuantao; Ju, Xiuli; Chao, Lan; Deng, Xiaohui; Kong, Beihua; Li, Li

2017-05-31

Human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (huMSCs) can treat primary ovarian insufficiency (POI) related to ovarian granulosa cell (OGC) apoptosis caused by cisplatin chemotherapy. Exosomes are a class of membranous vesicles with diameters of 30-200 nm that are constitutively released by eukaryotic cells. Exosomes mediate local cell-to-cell communication by transferring microRNAs and proteins. In the present study, we demonstrated the effects of exosomes derived from huMSCs (huMSC-EXOs) on a cisplatin-induced OGC model in vitro and discussed the preliminary mechanisms involved in these effects. We successfully extracted huMSC-EXOs from huMSC culture supernatant and observed the effective uptake of exosomes by cells with fluorescent staining. Using flow cytometry (with annexin-V/PI labelling), we found that huMSC-EXOs increased the number of living cells. Western blotting showed that the expression of Bcl-2 and caspase-3 were upregulated, whilst the expression of Bax, cleaved caspase-3 and cleaved PARP were downregulated to protect OGCs. These results suggest that huMSC-EXOs can be used to prevent and treat chemotherapy-induced OGC apoptosis in vitro. Therefore, this work provides insight and further evidence of stem cell function and indicates that huMSC-EXOs protect OGCs from cisplatin-induced injury in vitro.

Implications of Web Mercator and its Use in Online Mapping

USGS Publications Warehouse

Battersby, Sarah E.; Finn, Michael P.; Usery, E. Lynn; Yamamoto, Kristina H.

2014-01-01

Online interactive maps have become a popular means of communicating with spatial data. In most online mapping systems, Web Mercator has become the dominant projection. While the Mercator projection has a long history of discussion about its inappropriateness for general-purpose mapping, particularly at the global scale, and seems to have been virtually phased out for general-purpose global-scale print maps, it has seen a resurgence in popularity in Web Mercator form. This article theorizes on how Web Mercator came to be widely used for online maps and what this might mean in terms of data display, technical aspects of map generation and distribution, design, and cognition of spatial patterns. The authors emphasize details of where the projection excels and where it does not, as well as some of its advantages and disadvantages for cartographic communication, and conclude with some research directions that may help to develop better solutions to the problem of projections for general-purpose, multi-scale Web mapping.

IntegratedMap: a Web interface for integrating genetic map data.

PubMed

Yang, Hongyu; Wang, Hongyu; Gingle, Alan R

2005-05-01

IntegratedMap is a Web application and database schema for storing and interactively displaying genetic map data. Its Web interface includes a menu for direct chromosome/linkage group selection, a search form for selection based on mapped object location and linkage group displays. An overview display provides convenient access to the full range of mapped and anchored object types with genetic locus details, such as numbers, types and names of mapped/anchored objects displayed in a compact scrollable list box that automatically updates based on selected map location and object type. Also, multilinkage group and localized map views are available along with links that can be configured for integration with other Web resources. IntegratedMap is implemented in C#/ASP.NET and the package, including a MySQL schema creation script, is available from http://cggc.agtec.uga.edu/Data/download.asp

Restful Implementation of Catalogue Service for Geospatial Data Provenance

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jiang, L. C.; Yue, P.; Lu, X. C.

2013-10-01

Provenance, also known as lineage, is important in understanding the derivation history of data products. Geospatial data provenance helps data consumers to evaluate the quality and reliability of geospatial data. In a service-oriented environment, where data are often consumed or produced by distributed services, provenance could be managed by following the same service-oriented paradigm. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW) is used for the registration and query of geospatial data provenance by extending ebXML Registry Information Model (ebRIM). Recent advance of the REpresentational State Transfer (REST) paradigm has shown great promise for the easy integration of distributed resources. RESTful Web Service aims to provide a standard way for Web clients to communicate with servers based on REST principles. The existing approach for provenance catalogue service could be improved by adopting the RESTful design. This paper presents the design and implementation of a catalogue service for geospatial data provenance following RESTful architecture style. A middleware named REST Converter is added on the top of the legacy catalogue service to support a RESTful style interface. The REST Converter is composed of a resource request dispatcher and six resource handlers. A prototype service is developed to demonstrate the applicability of the approach.

Geospatial Visualization of Scientific Data Through Keyhole Markup Language

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wernecke, J.; Bailey, J. E.

2008-12-01

The development of virtual globes has provided a fun and innovative tool for exploring the surface of the Earth. However, it has been the paralleling maturation of Keyhole Markup Language (KML) that has created a new medium and perspective through which to visualize scientific datasets. Originally created by Keyhole Inc., and then acquired by Google in 2004, in 2007 KML was given over to the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). It became an OGC international standard on 14 April 2008, and has subsequently been adopted by all major geobrowser developers (e.g., Google, Microsoft, ESRI, NASA) and many smaller ones (e.g., Earthbrowser). By making KML a standard at a relatively young stage in its evolution, developers of the language are seeking to avoid the issues that plagued the early World Wide Web and development of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). The popularity and utility of Google Earth, in particular, has been enhanced by KML features such as the Smithsonian volcano layer and the dynamic weather layers. Through KML, users can view real-time earthquake locations (USGS), view animations of polar sea-ice coverage (NSIDC), or read about the daily activities of chimpanzees (Jane Goodall Institute). Perhaps even more powerful is the fact that any users can create, edit, and share their own KML, with no or relatively little knowledge of manipulating computer code. We present an overview of the best current scientific uses of KML and a guide to how scientists can learn to use KML themselves.

The VERCE Science Gateway: Enabling User Friendly HPC Seismic Wave Simulations.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Casarotti, E.; Spinuso, A.; Matser, J.; Leong, S. H.; Magnoni, F.; Krause, A.; Garcia, C. R.; Muraleedharan, V.; Krischer, L.; Anthes, C.

2014-12-01

The EU-funded project VERCE (Virtual Earthquake and seismology Research Community in Europe) aims to deploy technologies which satisfy the HPC and data-intensive requirements of modern seismology.As a result of VERCE official collaboration with the EU project SCI-BUS, access to computational resources, like local clusters and international infrastructures (EGI and PRACE), is made homogeneous and integrated within a dedicated science gateway based on the gUSE framework. In this presentation we give a detailed overview on the progress achieved with the developments of the VERCE Science Gateway, according to a use-case driven implementation strategy. More specifically, we show how the computational technologies and data services have been integrated within a tool for Seismic Forward Modelling, whose objective is to offer the possibility to performsimulations of seismic waves as a service to the seismological community.We will introduce the interactive components of the OGC map based web interface and how it supports the user with setting up the simulation. We will go through the selection of input data, which are either fetched from federated seismological web services, adopting community standards, or provided by the users themselves by accessing their own document data store. The HPC scientific codes can be selected from a number of waveform simulators, currently available to the seismological community as batch tools or with limited configuration capabilities in their interactive online versions.The results will be staged out via a secure GridFTP transfer to a VERCE data layer managed by iRODS. The provenance information of the simulation will be automatically cataloged by the data layer via NoSQL techonologies.Finally, we will show the example of how the visualisation output of the gateway could be enhanced by the connection with immersive projection technology at the Virtual Reality and Visualisation Centre of Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ).

An Architecture for Automated Fire Detection Early Warning System Based on Geoprocessing Service Composition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Samadzadegan, F.; Saber, M.; Zahmatkesh, H.; Joze Ghazi Khanlou, H.

2013-09-01

Rapidly discovering, sharing, integrating and applying geospatial information are key issues in the domain of emergency response and disaster management. Due to the distributed nature of data and processing resources in disaster management, utilizing a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to take advantages of workflow of services provides an efficient, flexible and reliable implementations to encounter different hazardous situation. The implementation specification of the Web Processing Service (WPS) has guided geospatial data processing in a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) platform to become a widely accepted solution for processing remotely sensed data on the web. This paper presents an architecture design based on OGC web services for automated workflow for acquisition, processing remotely sensed data, detecting fire and sending notifications to the authorities. A basic architecture and its building blocks for an automated fire detection early warning system are represented using web-based processing of remote sensing imageries utilizing MODIS data. A composition of WPS processes is proposed as a WPS service to extract fire events from MODIS data. Subsequently, the paper highlights the role of WPS as a middleware interface in the domain of geospatial web service technology that can be used to invoke a large variety of geoprocessing operations and chaining of other web services as an engine of composition. The applicability of proposed architecture by a real world fire event detection and notification use case is evaluated. A GeoPortal client with open-source software was developed to manage data, metadata, processes, and authorities. Investigating feasibility and benefits of proposed framework shows that this framework can be used for wide area of geospatial applications specially disaster management and environmental monitoring.

Spatial data standards meet meteorological data - pushing the boundaries

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wagemann, Julia; Siemen, Stephan; Lamy-Thepaut, Sylvie

2017-04-01

The data archive of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) holds around 120 PB of data and is world's largest archive of meteorological data. This information is of great value for many Earth Science disciplines, but the complexity of the data (up to five dimensions and different time axis domains) and its native data format GRIB, while being an efficient archive format, limits the overall data uptake especially from users outside the MetOcean domain. ECMWF's MARS WebAPI is a very efficient and flexible system for expert users to access and retrieve meteorological data, though challenging for users outside the MetOcean domain. With the help of web-based standards for data access and processing, ECMWF wants to make more than 1 PB of meteorological and climate data easier accessible to users across different Earth Science disciplines. As climate data provider for the H2020 project EarthServer-2, ECMWF explores the feasibility to give on-demand access to it's MARS archive via the OGC standard interface Web Coverage Service (WCS). Despite the potential a WCS for climate and meteorological data offers, the standards-based modelling of meteorological and climate data entails many challenges and reveals the boundaries of the current Web Coverage Service 2.0 standard. Challenges range from valid semantic data models for meteorological data to optimal and efficient data structures for a scalable web service. The presentation reviews the applicability of the current Web Coverage Service 2.0 standard to meteorological and climate data and discusses challenges that are necessary to overcome in order to achieve real interoperability and to ensure the conformant sharing and exchange of meteorological data.

Grid Enabled Geospatial Catalogue Web Service

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Chen, Ai-Jun; Di, Li-Ping; Wei, Ya-Xing; Liu, Yang; Bui, Yu-Qi; Hu, Chau-Min; Mehrotra, Piyush

2004-01-01

Geospatial Catalogue Web Service is a vital service for sharing and interoperating volumes of distributed heterogeneous geospatial resources, such as data, services, applications, and their replicas over the web. Based on the Grid technology and the Open Geospatial Consortium (0GC) s Catalogue Service - Web Information Model, this paper proposes a new information model for Geospatial Catalogue Web Service, named as GCWS which can securely provides Grid-based publishing, managing and querying geospatial data and services, and the transparent access to the replica data and related services under the Grid environment. This information model integrates the information model of the Grid Replica Location Service (RLS)/Monitoring & Discovery Service (MDS) with the information model of OGC Catalogue Service (CSW), and refers to the geospatial data metadata standards from IS0 19115, FGDC and NASA EOS Core System and service metadata standards from IS0 191 19 to extend itself for expressing geospatial resources. Using GCWS, any valid geospatial user, who belongs to an authorized Virtual Organization (VO), can securely publish and manage geospatial resources, especially query on-demand data in the virtual community and get back it through the data-related services which provide functions such as subsetting, reformatting, reprojection etc. This work facilitates the geospatial resources sharing and interoperating under the Grid environment, and implements geospatial resources Grid enabled and Grid technologies geospatial enabled. It 2!so makes researcher to focus on science, 2nd not cn issues with computing ability, data locztic, processir,g and management. GCWS also is a key component for workflow-based virtual geospatial data producing.

An open, interoperable, transdisciplinary approach to a point cloud data service using OGC standards and open source software.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Steer, Adam; Trenham, Claire; Druken, Kelsey; Evans, Benjamin; Wyborn, Lesley

2017-04-01

High resolution point clouds and other topology-free point data sources are widely utilised for research, management and planning activities. A key goal for research and management users is making these data and common derivatives available in a way which is seamlessly interoperable with other observed and modelled data. The Australian National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) stores point data from a range of disciplines, including terrestrial and airborne LiDAR surveys, 3D photogrammetry, airborne and ground-based geophysical observations, bathymetric observations and 4D marine tracers. These data are stored alongside a significant store of Earth systems data including climate and weather, ecology, hydrology, geoscience and satellite observations, and available from NCI's National Environmental Research Data Interoperability Platform (NERDIP) [1]. Because of the NERDIP requirement for interoperability with gridded datasets, the data models required to store these data may not conform to the LAS/LAZ format - the widely accepted community standard for point data storage and transfer. The goal for NCI is making point data discoverable, accessible and useable in ways which allow seamless integration with earth observation datasets and model outputs - in turn assisting researchers and decision-makers in the often-convoluted process of handling and analyzing massive point datasets. With a use-case of providing a web data service and supporting a derived product workflow, NCI has implemented and tested a web-based point cloud service using the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Processing Service [2] as a transaction handler between a web-based client and server-side computing tools based on a native Linux operating system. Using this model, the underlying toolset for driving a data service is flexible and can take advantage of NCI's highly scalable research cloud. Present work focusses on the Point Data Abstraction Library (PDAL) [3] as a logical choice for efficiently handling LAS/LAZ based point workflows, and native HDF5 libraries for handling point data kept in HDF5-based structures (eg NetCDF4, SPDlib [4]). Points stored in database tables (eg postgres-pointcloud [5]) will be considered as testing continues. Visualising and exploring massive point datasets in a web browser alongside multiple datasets has been demonstrated by the entwine-3D tiles project [6]. This is a powerful interface which enables users to investigate and select appropriate data, and is also being investigated as a potential front-end to a WPS-based point data service. In this work we show preliminary results for a WPS-based point data access system, in preparation for demonstration at FOSS4G 2017, Boston (http://2017.foss4g.org/) [1] http://nci.org.au/data-collections/nerdip/ [2] http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wps [3] http://www.pdal.io [4] http://www.spdlib.org/doku.php [5] https://github.com/pgpointcloud/pointcloud [6] http://cesium.entwine.io

Development of spatial density maps based on geoprocessing web services: application to tuberculosis incidence in Barcelona, Spain.

PubMed

Dominkovics, Pau; Granell, Carlos; Pérez-Navarro, Antoni; Casals, Martí; Orcau, Angels; Caylà, Joan A

2011-11-29

Health professionals and authorities strive to cope with heterogeneous data, services, and statistical models to support decision making on public health. Sophisticated analysis and distributed processing capabilities over geocoded epidemiological data are seen as driving factors to speed up control and decision making in these health risk situations. In this context, recent Web technologies and standards-based web services deployed on geospatial information infrastructures have rapidly become an efficient way to access, share, process, and visualize geocoded health-related information. Data used on this study is based on Tuberculosis (TB) cases registered in Barcelona city during 2009. Residential addresses are geocoded and loaded into a spatial database that acts as a backend database. The web-based application architecture and geoprocessing web services are designed according to the Representational State Transfer (REST) principles. These web processing services produce spatial density maps against the backend database. The results are focused on the use of the proposed web-based application to the analysis of TB cases in Barcelona. The application produces spatial density maps to ease the monitoring and decision making process by health professionals. We also include a discussion of how spatial density maps may be useful for health practitioners in such contexts. In this paper, we developed web-based client application and a set of geoprocessing web services to support specific health-spatial requirements. Spatial density maps of TB incidence were generated to help health professionals in analysis and decision-making tasks. The combined use of geographic information tools, map viewers, and geoprocessing services leads to interesting possibilities in handling health data in a spatial manner. In particular, the use of spatial density maps has been effective to identify the most affected areas and its spatial impact. This study is an attempt to demonstrate how web processing services together with web-based mapping capabilities suit the needs of health practitioners in epidemiological analysis scenarios.

Development of spatial density maps based on geoprocessing web services: application to tuberculosis incidence in Barcelona, Spain

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Background Health professionals and authorities strive to cope with heterogeneous data, services, and statistical models to support decision making on public health. Sophisticated analysis and distributed processing capabilities over geocoded epidemiological data are seen as driving factors to speed up control and decision making in these health risk situations. In this context, recent Web technologies and standards-based web services deployed on geospatial information infrastructures have rapidly become an efficient way to access, share, process, and visualize geocoded health-related information. Methods Data used on this study is based on Tuberculosis (TB) cases registered in Barcelona city during 2009. Residential addresses are geocoded and loaded into a spatial database that acts as a backend database. The web-based application architecture and geoprocessing web services are designed according to the Representational State Transfer (REST) principles. These web processing services produce spatial density maps against the backend database. Results The results are focused on the use of the proposed web-based application to the analysis of TB cases in Barcelona. The application produces spatial density maps to ease the monitoring and decision making process by health professionals. We also include a discussion of how spatial density maps may be useful for health practitioners in such contexts. Conclusions In this paper, we developed web-based client application and a set of geoprocessing web services to support specific health-spatial requirements. Spatial density maps of TB incidence were generated to help health professionals in analysis and decision-making tasks. The combined use of geographic information tools, map viewers, and geoprocessing services leads to interesting possibilities in handling health data in a spatial manner. In particular, the use of spatial density maps has been effective to identify the most affected areas and its spatial impact. This study is an attempt to demonstrate how web processing services together with web-based mapping capabilities suit the needs of health practitioners in epidemiological analysis scenarios. PMID:22126392

Participating in the Geospatial Web: Collaborative Mapping, Social Networks and Participatory GIS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rouse, L. Jesse; Bergeron, Susan J.; Harris, Trevor M.

In 2005, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! released free Web mapping applications that opened up digital mapping to mainstream Internet users. Importantly, these companies also released free APIs for their platforms, allowing users to geo-locate and map their own data. These initiatives have spurred the growth of the Geospatial Web and represent spatially aware online communities and new ways of enabling communities to share information from the bottom up. This chapter explores how the emerging Geospatial Web can meet some of the fundamental needs of Participatory GIS projects to incorporate local knowledge into GIS, as well as promote public access and collaborative mapping.

Physical Webbing: Collaborative Kinesthetic Three-Dimensional Mind Maps[R

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Williams, Marian H.

2012-01-01

Mind Mapping has predominantly been used by individuals or collaboratively in groups as a paper-based or computer-generated learning strategy. In an effort to make Mind Mapping kinesthetic, collaborative, and three-dimensional, an innovative pedagogical strategy, termed Physical Webbing, was devised. In the Physical Web activity, groups…

Linked Data: what does it offer Earth Sciences?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cox, Simon; Schade, Sven

2010-05-01

'Linked Data' is a current buzz-phrase promoting access to various forms of data on the internet. It starts from the two principles that have underpinned the architecture and scalability of the World Wide Web: 1. Universal Resource Identifiers - using the http protocol which is supported by the DNS system. 2. Hypertext - in which URIs of related resources are embedded within a document. Browsing is the key mode of interaction, with traversal of links between resources under control of the client. Linked Data also adds, or re-emphasizes: • Content negotiation - whereby the client uses http headers to tell the service what representation of a resource is acceptable, • Semantic Web principles - formal semantics for links, following the RDF data model and encoding, and • The 'mashup' effect - in which original and unexpected value may emerge from reuse of data, even if published in raw or unpolished form. Linked Data promotes typed links to all kinds of data, so is where the semantic web meets the 'deep web', i.e. resources which may be accessed using web protocols, but are in representations not indexed by search engines. Earth sciences are data rich, but with a strong legacy of specialized formats managed and processed by disconnected applications. However, most contemporary research problems require a cross-disciplinary approach, in which the heterogeneity resulting from that legacy is a significant challenge. In this context, Linked Data clearly has much to offer the earth sciences. But, there are some important questions to answer. What is a resource? Most earth science data is organized in arrays and databases. A subset useful for a particular study is usually identified by a parameterized query. The Linked Data paradigm emerged from the world of documents, and will often only resolve data-sets. It is impractical to create even nested navigation resources containing links to all potentially useful objects or subsets. From the viewpoint of human user interfaces, the browse metaphor, which has been such an important part of the success of the web, must be augmented with other interaction mechanisms, including query. What are the impacts on search and metadata? Hypertext provides links selected by the page provider. However, science should endeavor to be exhaustive in its use of data. Resource discovery through links must be supplemented by more systematic data discovery through search. Conversely, the crawlers that generate search indexes must be fed by resource providers (a) serving navigation pages with links to every dataset (b) adding enough 'metadata' (semantics) on each link to effectively populate the indexes. Linked Data makes this easier due to its integration with semantic web technologies, including structured vocabularies. What is the relation between structured data and Linked Data? Linked Data has focused on web-pages (primarily HTML) for human browsing, and RDF for semantics, assuming that other representations are opaque. However, this overlooks the wealth of XML data on the web, some of which is structured according to XML Schemas that provide semantics. Technical applications can use content-negotiation to get a structured representation, and exploit its semantics. Particularly relevant for earth sciences are data representations based on OGC Geography Markup Language (GML), such as GeoSciML, O&M and MOLES. GML was strongly influenced by RDF, and typed links are intrinsic: xlink:href plays the role that rdf:resource does in RDF representations. Services which expose GML-formatted resources (such as OGC Web Feature Service) are a prototype of Linked Data. Giving credit where it is due. Organizations investing in data collection may be reluctant to publish the raw data prior to completing an initial analysis. To encourage early data publication the system must provide suitable incentives, and citation analysis must recognize the increasing diversity of publication routes and forms. Linked Data makes it easier to include rich citation information when data is both published and used.

Current Efforts in European Projects to Facilitate the Sharing of Scientific Observation Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bredel, Henning; Rieke, Matthes; Maso, Joan; Jirka, Simon; Stasch, Christoph

2017-04-01

This presentation is intended to provide an overview of currently ongoing efforts in European projects to facilitate and promote the interoperable sharing of scientific observation data. This will be illustrated through two examples: a prototypical portal developed in the ConnectinGEO project for matching available (in-situ) data sources to the needs of users and a joint activity of several research projects to harmonise the usage of the OGC Sensor Web Enablement standards for providing access to marine observation data. ENEON is an activity initiated by the European ConnectinGEO project to coordinate in-situ Earth observation networks with the aim to harmonise the access to observations, improve discoverability, and identify/close gaps in European earth observation data resources. In this context, ENEON commons has been developed as a supporting Web portal for facilitating discovery, access, re-use and creation of knowledge about observations, networks, and related activities (e.g. projects). The portal is based on developments resulting from the European WaterInnEU project and has been extended to cover the requirements for handling knowledge about in-situ earth observation networks. A first prototype of the portal was completed in January 2017 which offers functionality for interactive discussion, information exchange and querying information about data delivered by different observation networks. Within this presentation, we will introduce the presented prototype and initiate a discussion about potential future work directions. The second example concerns the harmonisation of data exchange in the marine domain. There are many organisation who operate ocean observatories or data archives. In recent years, the application of the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) technology has become more and more popular to increase the interoperability between marine observation networks. However, as the SWE standards were intentionally designed in a domain independent manner, there are still a significant degrees of freedom how the same information could be handled in the SWE framework. Thus, further domain-specific agreements are necessary to describe more precisely, how SWE standards shall be applied in specific contexts. Within this presentation we will report the current status of the marine SWE profiles initiative which has the aim to develop guidance and recommendations for the application of SWE standards for ocean observation data. This initiative which is supported by projects such as NeXOS, FixO3, ODIP 2, BRIDGES and SeaDataCloud has already lead to first results, which will be introduced in the proposed presentation. In summary we will introduce two different building blocks how earth observation networks can be coordinated to ensure better discoverability through intelligent portal solutions and to ensure a common, interoperable exchange of the collected data through dedicated domain profiles of Sensor Web standard.

Off-great-circle paths in transequatorial propagation: 2. Nonmagnetic-field-aligned reflections

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tsunoda, Roland T.; Maruyama, Takashi; Tsugawa, Takuya; Yokoyama, Tatsuhiro; Ishii, Mamoru; Nguyen, Trang T.; Ogawa, Tadahiko; Nishioka, Michi

2016-11-01

There is considerable evidence that plasma structure in nighttime equatorial F layer develops from large-scale wave structure (LSWS) in bottomside F layer. However, crucial details of how this process proceeds, from LSWS to equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs), remain to be sorted out. A major obstacle to success is the paucity of measurements that provide a space-time description of the bottomside F layer over a broad geographical region. The transequatorial propagation (TEP) experiment is one of few methods that can do so. New findings using a TEP experiment, between Shepparton (SHP), Australia, and Oarai (ORI), Japan, are presented in two companion papers. In Paper 1 (P1), (1) off-great-circle (OGC) paths are described in terms of discrete and diffuse types, (2) descriptions of OGC paths are generalized from a single-reflection to a multiple-reflection process, and (3) discrete type is shown to be associated with an unstructured but distorted upwelling, whereas the diffuse type is shown to be associated with EPBs. In Paper 2 (P2), attention is placed on differences in east-west (EW) asymmetry, found between OGC paths from the SHP-ORI experiment and those from another near-identical TEP experiment. Differences are reconciled by allowing three distinct sources for the EW asymmetries: (1) reflection properties within an upwelling (see P1), (2) OGC paths that depend on magnetic declination of geomagnetic field (B), and (3) OGC paths supported by non-B-aligned reflectors at latitudes where inclination of B is finite.

YouGenMap: a web platform for dynamic multi-comparative mapping and visualization of genetic maps

Treesearch

Keith Batesole; Kokulapalan Wimalanathan; Lin Liu; Fan Zhang; Craig S. Echt; Chun Liang

2014-01-01

Comparative genetic maps are used in examination of genome organization, detection of conserved gene order, and exploration of marker order variations. YouGenMap is an open-source web tool that offers dynamic comparative mapping capability of users' own genetic mapping between 2 or more map sets. Users' genetic map data and optional gene annotations are...

Electrical and Structural Characterization of Web Dendrite Crystals

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Schwuttke, G. H.; Koliwad, K.; Dumas, K. A.

1985-01-01

Minority carrier lifetime distributions in silicon web dendrites are measured. Emphasis is placed on measuring areal homogeneity of lifetime, show its dependency on structural defects, and its unique change during hot processing. The internal gettering action of defect layers present in web crystals and their relation to minority carrier lifetime distributions is discussed. Minority carrier lifetime maps of web dendrites obtained before and after high temperature heat treatment are compared to similar maps obtained from 100 mm diameter Czochralski silicon wafers. Such maps indicate similar or superior areal homogeneity of minority carrier lifetime in webs.

An ontology for sensor networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Compton, Michael; Neuhaus, Holger; Bermudez, Luis; Cox, Simon

2010-05-01

Sensors and networks of sensors are important ways of monitoring and digitizing reality. As the number and size of sensor networks grows, so too does the amount of data collected. Users of such networks typically need to discover the sensors and data that fit their needs without necessarily understanding the complexities of the network itself. The burden on users is eased if the network and its data are expressed in terms of concepts familiar to the users and their job functions, rather than in terms of the network or how it was designed. Furthermore, the task of collecting and combining data from multiple sensor networks is made easier if metadata about the data and the networks is stored in a format and conceptual models that is amenable to machine reasoning and inference. While the OGC's (Open Geospatial Consortium) SWE (Sensor Web Enablement) standards provide for the description and access to data and metadata for sensors, they do not provide facilities for abstraction, categorization, and reasoning consistent with standard technologies. Once sensors and networks are described using rich semantics (that is, by using logic to describe the sensors, the domain of interest, and the measurements) then reasoning and classification can be used to analyse and categorise data, relate measurements with similar information content, and manage, query and task sensors. This will enable types of automated processing and logical assurance built on OGC standards. The W3C SSN-XG (Semantic Sensor Networks Incubator Group) is producing a generic ontology to describe sensors, their environment and the measurements they make. The ontology provides definitions for the structure of sensors and observations, leaving the details of the observed domain unspecified. This allows abstract representations of real world entities, which are not observed directly but through their observable qualities. Domain semantics, units of measurement, time and time series, and location and mobility ontologies can be easily attached when instantiating the ontology for any particular sensors in a domain. After a review of previous work on the specification of sensors, the group is developing the ontology in conjunction with use case development. Part of the difficulty of such work is that relevant concepts from for example OGC standards and other ontologies must be identified and aligned and also placed in a consistent and logically correct way into the ontology. In terms of alignment with OGC's SWE, the ontology is intended to be able to model concepts from SensorML and O&M. Similar to SensorML and O&M, the ontology is based around concepts of systems, processes, and observations. It supports the description of the physical and processing structure of sensors. Sensors are not constrained to physical sensing devices: rather a sensor is anything that can estimate or calculate the value of a phenomenon, so a device or computational process or combination could play the role of a sensor. The representation of a sensor in the ontology links together what is measured (the domain phenomena), the sensor's physical and other properties and its functions and processing. Parts of the ontology are well aligned with SensorML and O&M, but parts are not, and the group is working to understand how differences from (and alignment with) the OGC standards affect the application of the ontology.

Combat Stories Map: A Historical Repository and After Action Tool for Capturing, Storing, and Analyzing Georeferenced Individual Combat Narratives

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-06-01

of technology and near-global Internet accessibility, a web -based program incorporating interactive maps to record personal combat experiences does...not exist. The Combat Stories Map addresses this deficiency. The Combat Stories Map is a web -based Geographic Information System specifically designed...iv THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK v ABSTRACT Despite the proliferation of technology and near-global Internet accessibility, a web

77 FR 49011 - Privacy Act of 1974; New System of Records, Office of General Counsel E-Discovery Management...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-08-15

... System of Records, Office of General Counsel E-Discovery Management System--Change in Final Effective... the OGC E-Discovery Management System until after the opportunity for further comment is provided to... intent to establish a new system of records for OGC's E-Discovery Management System (EDMS), a system...

Distributed spatial information integration based on web service

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tong, Hengjian; Zhang, Yun; Shao, Zhenfeng

2008-10-01

Spatial information systems and spatial information in different geographic locations usually belong to different organizations. They are distributed and often heterogeneous and independent from each other. This leads to the fact that many isolated spatial information islands are formed, reducing the efficiency of information utilization. In order to address this issue, we present a method for effective spatial information integration based on web service. The method applies asynchronous invocation of web service and dynamic invocation of web service to implement distributed, parallel execution of web map services. All isolated information islands are connected by the dispatcher of web service and its registration database to form a uniform collaborative system. According to the web service registration database, the dispatcher of web services can dynamically invoke each web map service through an asynchronous delegating mechanism. All of the web map services can be executed at the same time. When each web map service is done, an image will be returned to the dispatcher. After all of the web services are done, all images are transparently overlaid together in the dispatcher. Thus, users can browse and analyze the integrated spatial information. Experiments demonstrate that the utilization rate of spatial information resources is significantly raised thought the proposed method of distributed spatial information integration.

Distributed spatial information integration based on web service

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tong, Hengjian; Zhang, Yun; Shao, Zhenfeng

2009-10-01

Spatial information systems and spatial information in different geographic locations usually belong to different organizations. They are distributed and often heterogeneous and independent from each other. This leads to the fact that many isolated spatial information islands are formed, reducing the efficiency of information utilization. In order to address this issue, we present a method for effective spatial information integration based on web service. The method applies asynchronous invocation of web service and dynamic invocation of web service to implement distributed, parallel execution of web map services. All isolated information islands are connected by the dispatcher of web service and its registration database to form a uniform collaborative system. According to the web service registration database, the dispatcher of web services can dynamically invoke each web map service through an asynchronous delegating mechanism. All of the web map services can be executed at the same time. When each web map service is done, an image will be returned to the dispatcher. After all of the web services are done, all images are transparently overlaid together in the dispatcher. Thus, users can browse and analyze the integrated spatial information. Experiments demonstrate that the utilization rate of spatial information resources is significantly raised thought the proposed method of distributed spatial information integration.

Map-IT! A Web-Based GIS Tool for Watershed Science Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Curtis, David H.; Hewes, Christopher M.; Lossau, Matthew J.

This paper describes the development of a prototypic, Web-accessible GIS solution for K-12 science education and citizen-based watershed monitoring. The server side consists of ArcView IMS running on an NT workstation. The client is built around MapCafe. The client interface, which runs through a standard Web browser, supports standard MapCafe…

Web-GIS approach for integrated analysis of heterogeneous georeferenced data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Okladnikov, Igor; Gordov, Evgeny; Titov, Alexander; Shulgina, Tamara

2014-05-01

Georeferenced datasets are currently actively used for modeling, interpretation and forecasting of climatic and ecosystem changes on different spatial and temporal scales [1]. Due to inherent heterogeneity of environmental datasets as well as their huge size (up to tens terabytes for a single dataset) a special software supporting studies in the climate and environmental change areas is required [2]. Dedicated information-computational system for integrated analysis of heterogeneous georeferenced climatological and meteorological data is presented. It is based on combination of Web and GIS technologies according to Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards, and involves many modern solutions such as object-oriented programming model, modular composition, and JavaScript libraries based on GeoExt library (http://www.geoext.org), ExtJS Framework (http://www.sencha.com/products/extjs) and OpenLayers software (http://openlayers.org). The main advantage of the system lies in it's capability to perform integrated analysis of time series of georeferenced data obtained from different sources (in-situ observations, model results, remote sensing data) and to combine the results in a single map [3, 4] as WMS and WFS layers in a web-GIS application. Also analysis results are available for downloading as binary files from the graphical user interface or can be directly accessed through web mapping (WMS) and web feature (WFS) services for a further processing by the user. Data processing is performed on geographically distributed computational cluster comprising data storage systems and corresponding computational nodes. Several geophysical datasets represented by NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis II, JMA/CRIEPI JRA-25 Reanalysis, ECMWF ERA-40 Reanalysis, ECMWF ERA Interim Reanalysis, MRI/JMA APHRODITE's Water Resources Project Reanalysis, DWD Global Precipitation Climatology Centre's data, GMAO Modern Era-Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, reanalysis of Monitoring atmospheric composition and climate (MACC) Collaborated Project, NOAA-CIRES Twentieth Century Global Reanalysis Version II, NCEP Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR), meteorological observational data for the territory of the former USSR for the 20th century, results of modeling by global and regional climatological models, and others are available for processing by the system. The Web-GIS information-computational system for heterogeneous geophysical data analysis provides specialists involved into multidisciplinary research projects with reliable and practical instruments for integrated research of climate and ecosystems changes on global and regional scales. With its help even an unskilled in programming user is able to process and visualize multidimensional observational and model data through unified web-interface using a common graphical web-browser. This work is partially supported by SB RAS project VIII.80.2.1, RFBR grant #13-05-12034, grant #14-05-00502, and integrated project SB RAS #131. References 1. Gordov E.P., Lykosov V.N., Krupchatnikov V.N., Okladnikov I.G., Titov A.G., Shulgina T.M. Computational and information technologies for monitoring and modeling of climate changes and their consequences. - Novosibirsk: Nauka, Siberian branch, 2013. - 195 p. (in Russian) 2. Felice Frankel, Rosalind Reid. Big data: Distilling meaning from data // Nature. Vol. 455. N. 7209. P. 30. 3. T.M. Shulgina, E.P. Gordov, I.G. Okladnikov, A.G., Titov, E.Yu. Genina, N.P. Gorbatenko, I.V. Kuzhevskaya, A.S. Akhmetshina. Software complex for a regional climate change analysis. // Vestnik NGU. Series: Information technologies. 2013. Vol. 11. Issue 1. P. 124-131 (in Russian). 4. I.G. Okladnikov, A.G. Titov, T.M. Shulgina, E.P. Gordov, V.Yu. Bogomolov, Yu.V. Martynova, S.P. Suschenko, A.V. Skvortsov. Software for analysis and visualization of climate change monitoring and forecasting data // Numerical methods and programming, 2013. Vol. 14. P. 123-131 (in Russian).

Web Mapping for Promoting Interaction and Collaboration in Community Land Planning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Veenendaal, B.; Dhliwayo, M.

2013-10-01

There is an inherent advantage of geographic information Systems (GIS) and mapping in facilitating dialogue between experts and non-experts during land use plan development. Combining visual mapping information and effective user interaction can result in considerable benefits for developing countries like Botswana. Although the adoption of information and communication technologies has lagged behind that for developed countries, initiatives by the Botswana government in providing suitable information infrastructures, including internet and web based communications, are enabling multiple users to interact and collaborate in community land planning. A web mapping application was developed for the Maun Development Plan (MDP) in the Okavango Delta region in Botswana. It was designed according to requirements of land planners and managers and implemented using ArcGIS Viewer for Flex. Land planners and managers from two organisations in Maun involved in the development of the MDP were asked to evaluate the web mapping tools. This paper describes the results of implementation and some preliminary results of the web mapping evaluation.

Dissemination of satellite-based river discharge and flood data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kettner, A. J.; Brakenridge, G. R.; van Praag, E.; de Groeve, T.; Slayback, D. A.; Cohen, S.

2014-12-01

In collaboration with NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center and the European Commission Joint Research Centre, the Dartmouth Flood Observatory (DFO) daily measures and distributes: 1) river discharges, and 2) near real-time flood extents with a global coverage. Satellite-based passive microwave sensors and hydrological modeling are utilized to establish 'remote-sensing based discharge stations', and observed time series cover 1998 to the present. The advantages over in-situ gauged discharges are: a) easy access to remote or due to political reasons isolated locations, b) relatively low maintenance costs to maintain a continuous observational record, and c) the capability to obtain measurements during floods, hazardous conditions that often impair or destroy in-situ stations. Two MODIS instruments aboard the NASA Terra and Aqua satellites provide global flood extent coverage at a spatial resolution of 250m. Cloud cover hampers flood extent detection; therefore we ingest 6 images (the Terra and Aqua images of each day, for three days), in combination with a cloud shadow filter, to provide daily global flood extent updates. The Flood Observatory has always made it a high priority to visualize and share its data and products through its website. Recent collaborative efforts with e.g. GeoSUR have enhanced accessibility of DFO data. A web map service has been implemented to automatically disseminate geo-referenced flood extent products into client-side GIS software. For example, for Latin America and the Caribbean region, the GeoSUR portal now displays current flood extent maps, which can be integrated and visualized with other relevant geographical data. Furthermore, the flood state of satellite-observed river discharge sites are displayed through the portal as well. Additional efforts include implementing Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards to incorporate Water Markup Language (WaterML) data exchange mechanisms to further facilitate the distribution of the satellite gauged river discharge time series.

Using a Metro Map Metaphor for Organizing Web-Based Learning Resources.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bang, Tove; Gronbaek, Kaj; Hansen, Per Steen

This paper briefly describes the WebNize system and how it applies a Metro Map metaphor for organizing guided tours in Web based resources. Then, experiences in using the Metro Map based tours in a Knowledge Sharing project at the library at Aarhus School of Business (ASB) in Denmark, are discussed. The Library has been involved in establishing a…

Tiled vector data model for the geographical features of symbolized maps.

PubMed

Li, Lin; Hu, Wei; Zhu, Haihong; Li, You; Zhang, Hang

2017-01-01

Electronic maps (E-maps) provide people with convenience in real-world space. Although web map services can display maps on screens, a more important function is their ability to access geographical features. An E-map that is based on raster tiles is inferior to vector tiles in terms of interactive ability because vector maps provide a convenient and effective method to access and manipulate web map features. However, the critical issue regarding rendering tiled vector maps is that geographical features that are rendered in the form of map symbols via vector tiles may cause visual discontinuities, such as graphic conflicts and losses of data around the borders of tiles, which likely represent the main obstacles to exploring vector map tiles on the web. This paper proposes a tiled vector data model for geographical features in symbolized maps that considers the relationships among geographical features, symbol representations and map renderings. This model presents a method to tailor geographical features in terms of map symbols and 'addition' (join) operations on the following two levels: geographical features and map features. Thus, these maps can resolve the visual discontinuity problem based on the proposed model without weakening the interactivity of vector maps. The proposed model is validated by two map data sets, and the results demonstrate that the rendered (symbolized) web maps present smooth visual continuity.

77 FR 74266 - Review of National Environmental Policy Act Categorical Exclusion Survey Posted on DOT/FHWA Web Site

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-12-13

... of National Environmental Policy Act Categorical Exclusion Survey Posted on DOT/FHWA Web Site AGENCY... review is now available on the FHWA Web site, http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/map21 , and FTA Web site, http://www.fta.dot.gov/map21 . DATES: These reports were posted on the Web site on December 7, 2012...

75 FR 80808 - Proposed Consent Decree, Clean Air Act Citizen Suit

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-12-23

... number EPA-HQ- OGC-2010-1060, online at http://www.regulations.gov (EPA's preferred method); by e-mail to... Center, EPA West, Room 3334, 1301 Constitution Ave., NW., Washington, DC, between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m... No. EPA-HQ-OGC-2010-1060) contains a copy of the proposed consent decree. The official public docket...

Squamous cell carcinoma of the uterine cervix associated with osteoclast-like giant cells: A case report and review of the literature.

PubMed

Yu, Guohua; Lin, Chunhua; Wang, Wei; Han, Yekun; Qu, Guimei; Zhang, Tingguo

2014-10-01

Squamous cell carcinoma is a common malignant tumor of the uterine cervix. The present study reports the case of squamous cell carcinoma of the uterine cervix with osteoclast-like giant cells (OGCs) in an 84-year-old female who had suffered from irregular vaginal bleeding for one month. Colposcopy was performed and a cauliflower-like mass was identified in the front lip of the uterine cervix. Biopsy was then performed, and the tumor was found to be composed of epithelial cell nests, ranging in size. The neoplastic cells exhibited unclear boundaries and eosinophilic cytoplasm. Additionally, the nuclei were atypical and mitosis was observed. Among the epithelial nests, there were numerous OGCs with abundant eosinophilic cytoplasm, as well as multinucleation with bland nuclei. By immunohistochemical staining, the epithelial cells were positive for cytokeratin, while negative for CD68 and vimentin. By contrast, the immunophenotype of the OGCs was the exact opposite. Based on the histological characters, a diagnosis of squamous cell carcinoma of the uterine cervix associated with OGCs was made. Considering the age of the patient, radiotherapy was administered. The patient succumbed to brain metastasis of the tumor after eight months of follow-up.

Python Winding Itself Around Datacubes: How to Access Massive Multi-Dimensional Arrays in a Pythonic Way

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Merticariu, Vlad; Misev, Dimitar; Baumann, Peter

2017-04-01

While python has developed into the lingua franca in Data Science there is often a paradigm break when accessing specialized tools. In particular for one of the core data categories in science and engineering, massive multi-dimensional arrays, out-of-memory solutions typically employ their own, different models. We discuss this situation on the example of the scalable open-source array engine, rasdaman ("raster data manager") which offers access to and processing of Petascale multi-dimensional arrays through an SQL-style array query language, rasql. Such queries are executed in the server on a storage engine utilizing adaptive array partitioning and based on a processing engine implementing a "tile streaming" paradigm to allow processing of arrays massively larger than server RAM. The rasdaman QL has acted as blueprint for forthcoming ISO Array SQL and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) geo analytics language, Web Coverage Processing Service, adopted in 2008. Not surprisingly, rasdaman is OGC and INSPIRE Reference Implementation for their "Big Earth Data" standards suite. Recently, rasdaman has been augmented with a python interface which allows to transparently interact with the database (credits go to Siddharth Shukla's Master Thesis at Jacobs University). Programmers do not need to know the rasdaman query language, as the operators are silently transformed, through lazy evaluation, into queries. Arrays delivered are likewise automatically transformed into their python representation. In the talk, the rasdaman concept will be illustrated with the help of large-scale real-life examples of operational satellite image and weather data services, and sample python code.

Designing Crop Simulation Web Service with Service Oriented Architecture Principle

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chinnachodteeranun, R.; Hung, N. D.; Honda, K.

2015-12-01

Crop simulation models are efficient tools for simulating crop growth processes and yield. Running crop models requires data from various sources as well as time-consuming data processing, such as data quality checking and data formatting, before those data can be inputted to the model. It makes the use of crop modeling limited only to crop modelers. We aim to make running crop models convenient for various users so that the utilization of crop models will be expanded, which will directly improve agricultural applications. As the first step, we had developed a prototype that runs DSSAT on Web called as Tomorrow's Rice (v. 1). It predicts rice yields based on a planting date, rice's variety and soil characteristics using DSSAT crop model. A user only needs to select a planting location on the Web GUI then the system queried historical weather data from available sources and expected yield is returned. Currently, we are working on weather data connection via Sensor Observation Service (SOS) interface defined by Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). Weather data can be automatically connected to a weather generator for generating weather scenarios for running the crop model. In order to expand these services further, we are designing a web service framework consisting of layers of web services to support compositions and executions for running crop simulations. This framework allows a third party application to call and cascade each service as it needs for data preparation and running DSSAT model using a dynamic web service mechanism. The framework has a module to manage data format conversion, which means users do not need to spend their time curating the data inputs. Dynamic linking of data sources and services are implemented using the Service Component Architecture (SCA). This agriculture web service platform demonstrates interoperability of weather data using SOS interface, convenient connections between weather data sources and weather generator, and connecting various services for running crop models for decision support.

A Common Metadata System for Marine Data Portals

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wosniok, C.; Breitbach, G.; Lehfeldt, R.

2012-04-01

Processing and allocation of marine datasets depend on the nature of the data resulting from field campaigns, continuous monitoring and numerical modeling. Two research and development projects in northern Germany manage different types of marine data. Due to different data characteristics and institutional frameworks separate data portals are required. This paper describes the integration of distributed marine data in Germany. The Marine Data Infrastructure of Germany (MDI-DE) supports public authorities in the German coastal zone with the implementation of European directives like INSPIRE or the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. This is carried out through setting up standardized web services within a network of participating coastal agencies and the installation of a common data portal (http://www.mdi-de.org), which integrates distributed marine data concerning coastal engineering, coastal water protection and nature conservation in an interoperable and harmonized manner for administrative and scientific purposes as well as for information of the general public. The Coastal Observation System for Northern and Arctic Seas (COSYNA) aims at developing and testing analysis systems for the operational synoptic description of the environmental status of the North Sea and of Arctic coastal waters. This is done by establishing a network of monitoring facilities and the provision of its data in near-real-time. In situ measurements with poles, ferry boxes, and buoys, together with remote sensing measurements, and the data assimilation of these data into simulation results enables COSYNA to provide pre-operational 'products', that are beyond the present routinely applied techniques in observation and modelling. The data allocation in near-real-time requires thoroughly executed data validation, which is processed on the fly before data is passed on to the COSYNA portal (http://kofserver2.hzg.de/codm/). Both projects apply OGC standards such as Web Mapping Service (WMS), Web Feature Service (WFS) and Sensor Observation Service (SOS), which ensures interoperability and extensibility. In addition, metadata as crucial components for searching and finding information in large data infrastructures is provided via the Catalogue Web Service (CS-W). MDI-DE and COSYNA rely on the metadata information system for marine metadata NOKIS, which reflects a metadata profile tailored for marine data according to the specifications of German coastal authorities. In spite of this common software base, interoperability between the two data collections requires constant alignments of the diverse data processed by the two portals. While monitoring data in the MDI-DE is currently rather campaign-based, COSYNA has to fit constantly evolving time series into metadata sets. With all data following the same metadata profile, we now reach full interoperability between the different data collections. The distributed marine information system provides options to search, find and visualise the harmonised results from continuous monitoring, field campaigns, numerical modeling and other data in one web client.

eWaterCycle visualisation. combining the strength of NetCDF and Web Map Service: ncWMS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hut, R.; van Meersbergen, M.; Drost, N.; Van De Giesen, N.

2016-12-01

As a result of the eWatercycle global hydrological forecast we have created Cesium-ncWMS, a web application based on ncWMS and Cesium. ncWMS is a server side application capable of reading any NetCDF file written using the Climate and Forecasting (CF) conventions, and making the data available as a Web Map Service(WMS). ncWMS automatically determines available variables in a file, and creates maps colored according to map data and a user selected color scale. Cesium is a Javascript 3D virtual Globe library. It uses WebGL for rendering, which makes it very fast, and it is capable of displaying a wide variety of data types such as vectors, 3D models, and 2D maps. The forecast results are automatically uploaded to our web server running ncWMS. In turn, the web application can be used to change the settings for color maps and displayed data. The server uses the settings provided by the web application, together with the data in NetCDF to provide WMS image tiles, time series data and legend graphics to the Cesium-NcWMS web application. The user can simultaneously zoom in to the very high resolution forecast results anywhere on the world, and get time series data for any point on the globe. The Cesium-ncWMS visualisation combines a global overview with local relevant information in any browser. See the visualisation live at forecast.ewatercycle.org

Use of ebRIM-based CSW with sensor observation services for registry and discovery of remote-sensing observations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Nengcheng; Di, Liping; Yu, Genong; Gong, Jianya; Wei, Yaxing

2009-02-01

Recent advances in Sensor Web geospatial data capture, such as high-resolution in satellite imagery and Web-ready data processing and modeling technologies, have led to the generation of large numbers of datasets from real-time or near real-time observations and measurements. Finding which sensor or data complies with criteria such as specific times, locations, and scales has become a bottleneck for Sensor Web-based applications, especially remote-sensing observations. In this paper, an architecture for use of the integration Sensor Observation Service (SOS) with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Catalogue Service-Web profile (CSW) is put forward. The architecture consists of a distributed geospatial sensor observation service, a geospatial catalogue service based on the ebXML Registry Information Model (ebRIM), SOS search and registry middleware, and a geospatial sensor portal. The SOS search and registry middleware finds the potential SOS, generating data granule information and inserting the records into CSW. The contents and sequence of the services, the available observations, and the metadata of the observations registry are described. A prototype system is designed and implemented using the service middleware technology and a standard interface and protocol. The feasibility and the response time of registry and retrieval of observations are evaluated using a realistic Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) SOS scenario. Extracting information from SOS requires the same execution time as record generation for CSW. The average data retrieval response time in SOS+CSW mode is 17.6% of that of the SOS-alone mode. The proposed architecture has the more advantages of SOS search and observation data retrieval than the existing sensor Web enabled systems.

Web-based Visualization and Query of semantically segmented multiresolution 3D Models in the Field of Cultural Heritage

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Auer, M.; Agugiaro, G.; Billen, N.; Loos, L.; Zipf, A.

2014-05-01

Many important Cultural Heritage sites have been studied over long periods of time by different means of technical equipment, methods and intentions by different researchers. This has led to huge amounts of heterogeneous "traditional" datasets and formats. The rising popularity of 3D models in the field of Cultural Heritage in recent years has brought additional data formats and makes it even more necessary to find solutions to manage, publish and study these data in an integrated way. The MayaArch3D project aims to realize such an integrative approach by establishing a web-based research platform bringing spatial and non-spatial databases together and providing visualization and analysis tools. Especially the 3D components of the platform use hierarchical segmentation concepts to structure the data and to perform queries on semantic entities. This paper presents a database schema to organize not only segmented models but also different Levels-of-Details and other representations of the same entity. It is further implemented in a spatial database which allows the storing of georeferenced 3D data. This enables organization and queries by semantic, geometric and spatial properties. As service for the delivery of the segmented models a standardization candidate of the OpenGeospatialConsortium (OGC), the Web3DService (W3DS) has been extended to cope with the new database schema and deliver a web friendly format for WebGL rendering. Finally a generic user interface is presented which uses the segments as navigation metaphor to browse and query the semantic segmentation levels and retrieve information from an external database of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI).

Next generation of weather generators on web service framework

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chinnachodteeranun, R.; Hung, N. D.; Honda, K.; Ines, A. V. M.

2016-12-01

Weather generator is a statistical model that synthesizes possible realization of long-term historical weather in future. It generates several tens to hundreds of realizations stochastically based on statistical analysis. Realization is essential information as a crop modeling's input for simulating crop growth and yield. Moreover, they can be contributed to analyzing uncertainty of weather to crop development stage and to decision support system on e.g. water management and fertilizer management. Performing crop modeling requires multidisciplinary skills which limit the usage of weather generator only in a research group who developed it as well as a barrier for newcomers. To improve the procedures of performing weather generators as well as the methodology to acquire the realization in a standard way, we implemented a framework for providing weather generators as web services, which support service interoperability. Legacy weather generator programs were wrapped in the web service framework. The service interfaces were implemented based on an international standard that was Sensor Observation Service (SOS) defined by Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). Clients can request realizations generated by the model through SOS Web service. Hierarchical data preparation processes required for weather generator are also implemented as web services and seamlessly wired. Analysts and applications can invoke services over a network easily. The services facilitate the development of agricultural applications and also reduce the workload of analysts on iterative data preparation and handle legacy weather generator program. This architectural design and implementation can be a prototype for constructing further services on top of interoperable sensor network system. This framework opens an opportunity for other sectors such as application developers and scientists in other fields to utilize weather generators.

Advances in a distributed approach for ocean model data interoperability

USGS Publications Warehouse

Signell, Richard P.; Snowden, Derrick P.

2014-01-01

An infrastructure for earth science data is emerging across the globe based on common data models and web services. As we evolve from custom file formats and web sites to standards-based web services and tools, data is becoming easier to distribute, find and retrieve, leaving more time for science. We describe recent advances that make it easier for ocean model providers to share their data, and for users to search, access, analyze and visualize ocean data using MATLAB® and Python®. These include a technique for modelers to create aggregated, Climate and Forecast (CF) metadata convention datasets from collections of non-standard Network Common Data Form (NetCDF) output files, the capability to remotely access data from CF-1.6-compliant NetCDF files using the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Observation Service (SOS), a metadata standard for unstructured grid model output (UGRID), and tools that utilize both CF and UGRID standards to allow interoperable data search, browse and access. We use examples from the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS®) Coastal and Ocean Modeling Testbed, a project in which modelers using both structured and unstructured grid model output needed to share their results, to compare their results with other models, and to compare models with observed data. The same techniques used here for ocean modeling output can be applied to atmospheric and climate model output, remote sensing data, digital terrain and bathymetric data.

The EarthServer Federation: State, Role, and Contribution to GEOSS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Merticariu, Vlad; Baumann, Peter

2016-04-01

The intercontinental EarthServer initiative has established a European datacube platform with proven scalability: known databases exceed 100 TB, and single queries have been split across more than 1,000 cloud nodes. Its service interface being rigorously based on the OGC "Big Geo Data" standards, Web Coverage Service (WCS) and Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS), a series of clients can dock into the services, ranging from open-source OpenLayers and QGIS over open-source NASA WorldWind to proprietary ESRI ArcGIS. Datacube fusion in a "mix and match" style is supported by the platform technolgy, the rasdaman Array Database System, which transparently federates queries so that users simply approach any node of the federation to access any data item, internally optimized for minimal data transfer. Notably, rasdaman is part of GEOSS GCI. NASA is contributing its Web WorldWind virtual globe for user-friendly data extraction, navigation, and analysis. Integrated datacube / metadata queries are contributed by CITE. Current federation members include ESA (managed by MEEO sr.l.), Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF), Australia's National Computational Infrastructure, and Jacobs University (adding in Planetary Science). Further data centers have expressed interest in joining. We present the EarthServer approach, discuss its underlying technology, and illustrate the contribution this datacube platform can make to GEOSS.

The Virtual Geophysics Laboratory (VGL): Scientific Workflows Operating Across Organizations and Across Infrastructures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cox, S. J.; Wyborn, L. A.; Fraser, R.; Rankine, T.; Woodcock, R.; Vote, J.; Evans, B.

2012-12-01

The Virtual Geophysics Laboratory (VGL) is web portal that provides geoscientists with an integrated online environment that: seamlessly accesses geophysical and geoscience data services from the AuScope national geoscience information infrastructure; loosely couples these data to a variety of gesocience software tools; and provides large scale processing facilities via cloud computing. VGL is a collaboration between CSIRO, Geoscience Australia, National Computational Infrastructure, Monash University, Australian National University and the University of Queensland. The VGL provides a distributed system whereby a user can enter an online virtual laboratory to seamlessly connect to OGC web services for geoscience data. The data is supplied in open standards formats using international standards like GeoSciML. A VGL user uses a web mapping interface to discover and filter the data sources using spatial and attribute filters to define a subset. Once the data is selected the user is not required to download the data. VGL collates the service query information for later in the processing workflow where it will be staged directly to the computing facilities. The combination of deferring data download and access to Cloud computing enables VGL users to access their data at higher resolutions and to undertake larger scale inversions, more complex models and simulations than their own local computing facilities might allow. Inside the Virtual Geophysics Laboratory, the user has access to a library of existing models, complete with exemplar workflows for specific scientific problems based on those models. For example, the user can load a geological model published by Geoscience Australia, apply a basic deformation workflow provided by a CSIRO scientist, and have it run in a scientific code from Monash. Finally the user can publish these results to share with a colleague or cite in a paper. This opens new opportunities for access and collaboration as all the resources (models, code, data, processing) are shared in the one virtual laboratory. VGL provides end users with access to an intuitive, user-centered interface that leverages cloud storage and cloud and cluster processing from both the research communities and commercial suppliers (e.g. Amazon). As the underlying data and information services are agnostic of the scientific domain, they can support many other data types. This fundamental characteristic results in a highly reusable virtual laboratory infrastructure that could also be used for example natural hazards, satellite processing, soil geochemistry, climate modeling, agriculture crop modeling.

Incorpoaration of Geosensor Networks Into Internet of Things for Environmental Monitoring

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Habibi, R.; Alesheikh, A. A.

2015-12-01

Thanks to the recent advances of miniaturization and the falling costs for sensors and also communication technologies, Internet specially, the number of internet-connected things growth tremendously. Moreover, geosensors with capability of generating high spatial and temporal resolution data, measuring a vast diversity of environmental data and automated operations provide powerful abilities to environmental monitoring tasks. Geosensor nodes are intuitively heterogeneous in terms of the hardware capabilities and communication protocols to take part in the Internet of Things scenarios. Therefore, ensuring interoperability is an important step. With this respect, the focus of this paper is particularly on incorporation of geosensor networks into Internet of things through an architecture for monitoring real-time environmental data with use of OGC Sensor Web Enablement standards. This approach and its applicability is discussed in the context of an air pollution monitoring scenario.

Web-based network analysis and visualization using CellMaps

PubMed Central

Salavert, Francisco; García-Alonso, Luz; Sánchez, Rubén; Alonso, Roberto; Bleda, Marta; Medina, Ignacio; Dopazo, Joaquín

2016-01-01

Summary: CellMaps is an HTML5 open-source web tool that allows displaying, editing, exploring and analyzing biological networks as well as integrating metadata into them. Computations and analyses are remotely executed in high-end servers, and all the functionalities are available through RESTful web services. CellMaps can easily be integrated in any web page by using an available JavaScript API. Availability and Implementation: The application is available at: http://cellmaps.babelomics.org/ and the code can be found in: https://github.com/opencb/cell-maps. The client is implemented in JavaScript and the server in C and Java. Contact: jdopazo@cipf.es Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. PMID:27296979

Web-based network analysis and visualization using CellMaps.

PubMed

Salavert, Francisco; García-Alonso, Luz; Sánchez, Rubén; Alonso, Roberto; Bleda, Marta; Medina, Ignacio; Dopazo, Joaquín

2016-10-01

: CellMaps is an HTML5 open-source web tool that allows displaying, editing, exploring and analyzing biological networks as well as integrating metadata into them. Computations and analyses are remotely executed in high-end servers, and all the functionalities are available through RESTful web services. CellMaps can easily be integrated in any web page by using an available JavaScript API. The application is available at: http://cellmaps.babelomics.org/ and the code can be found in: https://github.com/opencb/cell-maps The client is implemented in JavaScript and the server in C and Java. jdopazo@cipf.es Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press.

Evaluation of flood hazard maps in print and web mapping services as information tools in flood risk communication

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hagemeier-Klose, M.; Wagner, K.

2009-04-01

Flood risk communication with the general public and the population at risk is getting increasingly important for flood risk management, especially as a precautionary measure. This is also underlined by the EU Flood Directive. The flood related authorities therefore have to develop adjusted information tools which meet the demands of different user groups. This article presents the formative evaluation of flood hazard maps and web mapping services according to the specific requirements and needs of the general public using the dynamic-transactional approach as a theoretical framework. The evaluation was done by a mixture of different methods; an analysis of existing tools, a creative workshop with experts and laymen and an online survey. The currently existing flood hazard maps or web mapping services or web GIS still lack a good balance between simplicity and complexity with adequate readability and usability for the public. Well designed and associative maps (e.g. using blue colours for water depths) which can be compared with past local flood events and which can create empathy in viewers, can help to raise awareness, to heighten the activity and knowledge level or can lead to further information seeking. Concerning web mapping services, a linkage between general flood information like flood extents of different scenarios and corresponding water depths and real time information like gauge levels is an important demand by users. Gauge levels of these scenarios are easier to understand than the scientifically correct return periods or annualities. The recently developed Bavarian web mapping service tries to integrate these requirements.

Oceanotron, Scalable Server for Marine Observations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Loubrieu, T.; Bregent, S.; Blower, J. D.; Griffiths, G.

2013-12-01

Ifremer, French marine institute, is deeply involved in data management for different ocean in-situ observation programs (ARGO, OceanSites, GOSUD, ...) or other European programs aiming at networking ocean in-situ observation data repositories (myOcean, seaDataNet, Emodnet). To capitalize the effort for implementing advance data dissemination services (visualization, download with subsetting) for these programs and generally speaking water-column observations repositories, Ifremer decided to develop the oceanotron server (2010). Knowing the diversity of data repository formats (RDBMS, netCDF, ODV, ...) and the temperamental nature of the standard interoperability interface profiles (OGC/WMS, OGC/WFS, OGC/SOS, OpeNDAP, ...), the server is designed to manage plugins: - StorageUnits : which enable to read specific data repository formats (netCDF/OceanSites, RDBMS schema, ODV binary format). - FrontDesks : which get external requests and send results for interoperable protocols (OGC/WMS, OGC/SOS, OpenDAP). In between a third type of plugin may be inserted: - TransformationUnits : which enable ocean business related transformation of the features (for example conversion of vertical coordinates from pressure in dB to meters under sea surface). The server is released under open-source license so that partners can develop their own plugins. Within MyOcean project, University of Reading has plugged a WMS implementation as an oceanotron frontdesk. The modules are connected together by sharing the same information model for marine observations (or sampling features: vertical profiles, point series and trajectories), dataset metadata and queries. The shared information model is based on OGC/Observation & Measurement and Unidata/Common Data Model initiatives. The model is implemented in java (http://www.ifremer.fr/isi/oceanotron/javadoc/). This inner-interoperability level enables to capitalize ocean business expertise in software development without being indentured to specific data formats or protocols. Oceanotron is deployed at seven European data centres for marine in-situ observations within myOcean. While additional extensions are still being developed, to promote new collaborative initiatives, a work is now done on continuous and distributed integration (jenkins, maven), shared reference documentation (on alfresco) and code and release dissemination (sourceforge, github).

SSE Announcement - New GIS Web Mapping Applications and Services

Atmospheric Science Data Center

2016-06-30

Dear SSE Users, We are excited to announce SSE-GIS v1.0.3 is now available! If you haven’t already noticed the link to the new SSE-GIS web application on the SSE homepage entitled “GIS Web Mapping ...

Collaborative Science Using Web Services and the SciFlo Grid Dataflow Engine

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wilson, B. D.; Manipon, G.; Xing, Z.; Yunck, T.

2006-12-01

The General Earth Science Investigation Suite (GENESIS) project is a NASA-sponsored partnership between the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, academia, and NASA data centers to develop a new suite of Web Services tools to facilitate multi-sensor investigations in Earth System Science. The goal of GENESIS is to enable large-scale, multi-instrument atmospheric science using combined datasets from the AIRS, MODIS, MISR, and GPS sensors. Investigations include cross-comparison of spaceborne climate sensors, cloud spectral analysis, study of upper troposphere-stratosphere water transport, study of the aerosol indirect cloud effect, and global climate model validation. The challenges are to bring together very large datasets, reformat and understand the individual instrument retrievals, co-register or re-grid the retrieved physical parameters, perform computationally-intensive data fusion and data mining operations, and accumulate complex statistics over months to years of data. To meet these challenges, we have developed a Grid computing and dataflow framework, named SciFlo, in which we are deploying a set of versatile and reusable operators for data access, subsetting, registration, mining, fusion, compression, and advanced statistical analysis. SciFlo leverages remote Web Services, called via Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) or REST (one-line) URLs, and the Grid Computing standards (WS-* &Globus Alliance toolkits), and enables scientists to do multi-instrument Earth Science by assembling reusable Web Services and native executables into a distributed computing flow (tree of operators). The SciFlo client &server engines optimize the execution of such distributed data flows and allow the user to transparently find and use datasets and operators without worrying about the actual location of the Grid resources. In particular, SciFlo exploits the wealth of datasets accessible by OpenGIS Consortium (OGC) Web Mapping Servers & Web Coverage Servers (WMS/WCS), and by Open Data Access Protocol (OpenDAP) servers. The scientist injects a distributed computation into the Grid by simply filling out an HTML form or directly authoring the underlying XML dataflow document, and results are returned directly to the scientist's desktop. Once an analysis has been specified for a chunk or day of data, it can be easily repeated with different control parameters or over months of data. Recently, the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) Federation sponsored a collaborative activity in which several ESIP members advertised their respective WMS/WCS and SOAP services, developed some collaborative science scenarios for atmospheric and aerosol science, and then choreographed services from multiple groups into demonstration workflows using the SciFlo engine and a Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) workflow engine. For several scenarios, the same collaborative workflow was executed in three ways: using hand-coded scripts, by executing a SciFlo document, and by executing a BPEL workflow document. We will discuss the lessons learned from this activity, the need for standardized interfaces (like WMS/WCS), the difficulty in agreeing on even simple XML formats and interfaces, and further collaborations that are being pursued.

Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Precipitation Data and Services for Research and Applications

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Liu, Zhong; Ostrenga, Dana; Teng, William; Kempler, Steven

2012-01-01

Precipitation is a critical component of the Earth's hydrological cycle. Launched on 27 November 1997, TRMM is a joint U.S.-Japan satellite mission to provide the first detailed and comprehensive data set of the four-dimensional distribution of rainfall and latent heating over vastly under-sampled tropical and subtropical oceans and continents (40 S - 40 N). Over the past 14 years, TRMM has been a major data source for meteorological, hydrological and other research and application activities around the world. The purpose of this short article is to inform that the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) provides TRMM archive and near-real-time precipitation data sets and services for research and applications. TRMM data consist of orbital data from TRMM instruments at the sensor s resolution, gridded data at a range of spatial and temporal resolutions, subsets, ground-based instrument data, and ancillary data. Data analysis, display, and delivery are facilitated by the following services: (1) Mirador (data search and access); (2) TOVAS (TRMM Online Visualization and Analysis System); (3) OPeNDAP (Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol); (4) GrADS Data Server (GDS); and (5) Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS) for the GIS community. Precipitation data application services are available to support a wide variety of applications around the world. Future plans include enhanced and new services to address data related issues from the user community. Meanwhile, the GES DISC is preparing for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission which is scheduled for launch in 2014.

Transformation of HDF-EOS metadata from the ECS model to ISO 19115-based XML

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wei, Yaxing; Di, Liping; Zhao, Baohua; Liao, Guangxuan; Chen, Aijun

2007-02-01

Nowadays, geographic data, such as NASA's Earth Observation System (EOS) data, are playing an increasing role in many areas, including academic research, government decisions and even in people's every lives. As the quantity of geographic data becomes increasingly large, a major problem is how to fully make use of such data in a distributed, heterogeneous network environment. In order for a user to effectively discover and retrieve the specific information that is useful, the geographic metadata should be described and managed properly. Fortunately, the emergence of XML and Web Services technologies greatly promotes information distribution across the Internet. The research effort discussed in this paper presents a method and its implementation for transforming Hierarchical Data Format (HDF)-EOS metadata from the NASA ECS model to ISO 19115-based XML, which will be managed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Catalogue Services—Web Profile (CSW). Using XML and international standards rather than domain-specific models to describe the metadata of those HDF-EOS data, and further using CSW to manage the metadata, can allow metadata information to be searched and interchanged more widely and easily, thus promoting the sharing of HDF-EOS data.

PolarHub: A Global Hub for Polar Data Discovery

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, W.

2014-12-01

This paper reports the outcome of a NSF project in developing a large-scale web crawler PolarHub to discover automatically the distributed polar dataset in the format of OGC web services (OWS) in the cyberspace. PolarHub is a machine robot; its goal is to visit as many webpages as possible to find those containing information about polar OWS, extract this information and store it into the backend data repository. This is a very challenging task given huge data volume of webpages on the Web. Three unique features was introduced in PolarHub to make it distinctive from earlier crawler solutions: (1) a multi-task, multi-user, multi-thread support to the crawling tasks; (2) an extensive use of thread pool and Data Access Object (DAO) design patterns to separate persistent data storage and business logic to achieve high extendibility of the crawler tool; (3) a pattern-matching based customizable crawling algorithm to support discovery of multi-type geospatial web services; and (4) a universal and portable client-server communication mechanism combining a server-push and client pull strategies for enhanced asynchronous processing. A series of experiments were conducted to identify the impact of crawling parameters to the overall system performance. The geographical distribution pattern of all PolarHub identified services is also demonstrated. We expect this work to make a major contribution to the field of geospatial information retrieval and geospatial interoperability, to bridge the gap between data provider and data consumer, and to accelerate polar science by enhancing the accessibility and reusability of adequate polar data.

GI-conf: A configuration tool for the GI-cat distributed catalog

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Papeschi, F.; Boldrini, E.; Bigagli, L.; Mazzetti, P.

2009-04-01

In this work we present a configuration tool for the GI-cat. In an Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) framework, GI-cat implements a distributed catalog service providing advanced capabilities, such as: caching, brokering and mediation functionalities. GI-cat applies a distributed approach, being able to distribute queries to the remote service providers of interest in an asynchronous style, and notifies the status of the queries to the caller implementing an incremental feedback mechanism. Today, GI-cat functionalities are made available through two standard catalog interfaces: the OGC CSW ISO and CSW Core Application Profiles. However, two other interfaces are under testing: the CIM and the EO Extension Packages of the CSW ebRIM Application Profile. GI-cat is able to interface a multiplicity of discovery and access services serving heterogeneous Earth and Space Sciences resources. They include international standards like the OGC Web Services -i.e. OGC CSW, WCS, WFS and WMS, as well as interoperability arrangements (i.e. community standards) such as: UNIDATA THREDDS/OPeNDAP, SeaDataNet CDI (Common Data Index), GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) services, and SibESS-C infrastructure services. GI-conf implements user-friendly configuration tool for GI-cat. This is a GUI application that employs a visual and very simple approach to configure both the GI-cat publishing and distribution capabilities, in a dynamic way. The tool allows to set one or more GI-cat configurations. Each configuration consists of: a) the catalog standards interfaces published by GI-cat; b) the resources (i.e. services/servers) to be accessed and mediated -i.e. federated. Simple icons are used for interfaces and resources, implementing a user-friendly visual approach. The main GI-conf functionalities are: • Interfaces and federated resources management: user can set which interfaces must be published; besides, she/he can add a new resource, update or remove an already federated resource. • Multiple configuration management: multiple GI-cat configurations can be defined; every configuration identifies a set of published interfaces and a set of federated resources. Configurations can be edited, added, removed, exported, and even imported. • HTML report creation: an HTML report can be created, showing the current active GI-cat configuration, including the resources that are being federated and the published interface endpoints. The configuration tool is shipped with GI-cat and can be used to configure the service after its installation is completed.

Synergetic effect of Ti 3+ and oxygen doping on enhancing photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic properties of TiO 2/g-C 3N 4 heterojunctions

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Li, Kai; Huang, Zhenyu; Zeng, Xiaoqiao

To improve the utilization of visible light and reduce photogenerated electron/hole recombination, Ti 3+ self-doped TiO 2/oxygen-doped graphitic carbon nitride (Ti 3+-TiO 2/O-g-C 3N 4) heterojunctions were prepared via hydrothermal treatment of a mixture of g-C 3N 4 and titanium oxohydride sol obtained from the reaction of TiH 2 with H 2O 2. In this way, exfoliated O-g-C 3N 4 and Ti 3+-TiO 2 nanoparticles were obtained. Simultaneously, strong bonding was formed between Ti 3+-TiO 2 nanoparticles and exfoliated O-g-C 3N 4 during the hydrothermal process. Charge transfer and recombination processes were characterized by transient photocurrent responses, electrochemical impedance test,more » and photoluminescence spectroscopy. The photocatalytic performances were investigated through rhodamine B degradation test under an irradiation source based on 30 W cold visible-light-emitting diode. The highest visible-light photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic activities were observed from the heterojunction with 1:2 mass ratio of Ti 3+-TiO 2 to O-g-C 3N 4. The photodegradation reaction rate constant based on this heterojuction is 0.0356 min -1, which is 3.87 and 4.56 times higher than those of pristine Ti 3+-TiO 2 and pure g-C 3N 4, respectively. Here, the remarkably high photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic performances of the heterojunctions are mainly attributed to the synergetic effect of efficient photogenerated electron-hole separation, decreased electron transfer resistance from interfacial chemical hydroxy residue bonds, and oxidizing groups originating from Ti 3+-TiO 2 and O-g-C 3N 4.« less

Synergetic Effect of Ti3+ and Oxygen Doping on Enhancing Photoelectrochemical and Photocatalytic Properties of TiO2/g-C3N4 Heterojunctions.

PubMed

Li, Kai; Huang, Zhenyu; Zeng, Xiaoqiao; Huang, Baibiao; Gao, Shanmin; Lu, Jun

2017-04-05

To improve the utilization of visible light and reduce photogenerated electron/hole recombination, Ti 3+ self-doped TiO 2 /oxygen-doped graphitic carbon nitride (Ti 3+ -TiO 2 /O-g-C 3 N 4 ) heterojunctions were prepared via hydrothermal treatment of a mixture of g-C 3 N 4 and titanium oxohydride sol obtained from the reaction of TiH 2 with H 2 O 2 . In this way, exfoliated O-g-C 3 N 4 and Ti 3+ -TiO 2 nanoparticles were obtained. Simultaneously, strong bonding was formed between Ti 3+ -TiO 2 nanoparticles and exfoliated O-g-C 3 N 4 during the hydrothermal process. Charge transfer and recombination processes were characterized by transient photocurrent responses, electrochemical impedance test, and photoluminescence spectroscopy. The photocatalytic performances were investigated through rhodamine B degradation test under an irradiation source based on 30 W cold visible-light-emitting diode. The highest visible-light photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic activities were observed from the heterojunction with 1:2 mass ratio of Ti 3+ -TiO 2 to O-g-C 3 N 4 . The photodegradation reaction rate constant based on this heterojuction is 0.0356 min -1 , which is 3.87 and 4.56 times higher than those of pristine Ti 3+ -TiO 2 and pure g-C 3 N 4 , respectively. The remarkably high photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic performances of the heterojunctions are mainly attributed to the synergetic effect of efficient photogenerated electron-hole separation, decreased electron transfer resistance from interfacial chemical hydroxy residue bonds, and oxidizing groups originating from Ti 3+ -TiO 2 and O-g-C 3 N 4 .

Synergetic effect of Ti 3+ and oxygen doping on enhancing photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic properties of TiO 2/g-C 3N 4 heterojunctions

DOE PAGES

Li, Kai; Huang, Zhenyu; Zeng, Xiaoqiao; ...

2017-03-07

To improve the utilization of visible light and reduce photogenerated electron/hole recombination, Ti 3+ self-doped TiO 2/oxygen-doped graphitic carbon nitride (Ti 3+-TiO 2/O-g-C 3N 4) heterojunctions were prepared via hydrothermal treatment of a mixture of g-C 3N 4 and titanium oxohydride sol obtained from the reaction of TiH 2 with H 2O 2. In this way, exfoliated O-g-C 3N 4 and Ti 3+-TiO 2 nanoparticles were obtained. Simultaneously, strong bonding was formed between Ti 3+-TiO 2 nanoparticles and exfoliated O-g-C 3N 4 during the hydrothermal process. Charge transfer and recombination processes were characterized by transient photocurrent responses, electrochemical impedance test,more » and photoluminescence spectroscopy. The photocatalytic performances were investigated through rhodamine B degradation test under an irradiation source based on 30 W cold visible-light-emitting diode. The highest visible-light photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic activities were observed from the heterojunction with 1:2 mass ratio of Ti 3+-TiO 2 to O-g-C 3N 4. The photodegradation reaction rate constant based on this heterojuction is 0.0356 min -1, which is 3.87 and 4.56 times higher than those of pristine Ti 3+-TiO 2 and pure g-C 3N 4, respectively. Here, the remarkably high photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic performances of the heterojunctions are mainly attributed to the synergetic effect of efficient photogenerated electron-hole separation, decreased electron transfer resistance from interfacial chemical hydroxy residue bonds, and oxidizing groups originating from Ti 3+-TiO 2 and O-g-C 3N 4.« less

EnviroAtlas National Layers Master Web Service

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

This EnviroAtlas web service supports research and online mapping activities related to EnviroAtlas (https://www.epa.gov/enviroatlas). This web service includes layers depicting EnviroAtlas national metrics mapped at the 12-digit HUC within the conterminous United States. This dataset was produced by the US EPA to support research and online mapping activities related to EnviroAtlas. EnviroAtlas (https://www.epa.gov/enviroatlas) allows the user to interact with a web-based, easy-to-use, mapping application to view and analyze multiple ecosystem services for the contiguous United States. The dataset is available as downloadable data (https://edg.epa.gov/data/Public/ORD/EnviroAtlas) or as an EnviroAtlas map service. Additional descriptive information about each attribute in this dataset can be found in its associated EnviroAtlas Fact Sheet (https://www.epa.gov/enviroatlas/enviroatlas-fact-sheets).

ActionMap: A web-based software that automates loci assignments to framework maps.

PubMed

Albini, Guillaume; Falque, Matthieu; Joets, Johann

2003-07-01

Genetic linkage computation may be a repetitive and time consuming task, especially when numerous loci are assigned to a framework map. We thus developed ActionMap, a web-based software that automates genetic mapping on a fixed framework map without adding the new markers to the map. Using this tool, hundreds of loci may be automatically assigned to the framework in a single process. ActionMap was initially developed to map numerous ESTs with a small plant mapping population and is limited to inbred lines and backcrosses. ActionMap is highly configurable and consists of Perl and PHP scripts that automate command steps for the MapMaker program. A set of web forms were designed for data import and mapping settings. Results of automatic mapping can be displayed as tables or drawings of maps and may be exported. The user may create personal access-restricted projects to store raw data, settings and mapping results. All data may be edited, updated or deleted. ActionMap may be used either online or downloaded for free (http://moulon.inra.fr/~bioinfo/).

ActionMap: a web-based software that automates loci assignments to framework maps

PubMed Central

Albini, Guillaume; Falque, Matthieu; Joets, Johann

2003-01-01

Genetic linkage computation may be a repetitive and time consuming task, especially when numerous loci are assigned to a framework map. We thus developed ActionMap, a web-based software that automates genetic mapping on a fixed framework map without adding the new markers to the map. Using this tool, hundreds of loci may be automatically assigned to the framework in a single process. ActionMap was initially developed to map numerous ESTs with a small plant mapping population and is limited to inbred lines and backcrosses. ActionMap is highly configurable and consists of Perl and PHP scripts that automate command steps for the MapMaker program. A set of web forms were designed for data import and mapping settings. Results of automatic mapping can be displayed as tables or drawings of maps and may be exported. The user may create personal access-restricted projects to store raw data, settings and mapping results. All data may be edited, updated or deleted. ActionMap may be used either online or downloaded for free (http://moulon.inra.fr/~bioinfo/). PMID:12824426

Smart "geomorphological" map browsing - a tale about geomorphological maps and the internet

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Geilhausen, M.; Otto, J.-C.

2012-04-01

With the digital production of geomorphological maps, the dissemination of research outputs now extends beyond simple paper products. Internet technologies can contribute to both, the dissemination of geomorphological maps and access to geomorphologic data and help to make geomorphological knowledge available to a greater public. Indeed, many national geological surveys employ end-to-end digital workflows from data capture in the field to final map production and dissemination. This paper deals with the potential of web mapping applications and interactive, portable georeferenced PDF maps for the distribution of geomorphological information. Web mapping applications such as Google Maps have become very popular and widespread and increased the interest and access to mapping. They link the Internet with GIS technology and are a common way of presenting dynamic maps online. The GIS processing is performed online and maps are visualised in interactive web viewers characterised by different capabilities such as zooming, panning or adding further thematic layers, with the map refreshed after each task. Depending on the system architecture and the components used, advanced symbology, map overlays from different applications and sources and their integration into a Desktop GIS are possible. This interoperability is achieved through the use of international open standards that include mechanisms for the integration and visualisation of information from multiple sources. The portable document format (PDF) is commonly used for printing and is a standard format that can be processed by many graphic software and printers without loss of information. A GeoPDF enables the sharing of geospatial maps and data in PDF documents. Multiple, independent map frames with individual spatial reference systems are possible within a GeoPDF, for example, for map overlays or insets. Geospatial functionality of a GeoPDF includes scalable map display, layer visibility control, access to attribute data, coordinate queries and spatial measurements. The full functionality of GeoPDFs requires free and user-friendly plug-ins for PDF readers and GIS software. A GeoPDF enables fundamental GIS functionality turning the formerly static PDF map into an interactive, portable georeferenced PDF map. GeoPDFs are easy to create and provide an interesting and valuable way to disseminate geomorphological maps. Our motivation to engage with the online distribution of geomorphological maps originates in the increasing number of web mapping applications available today indicating that the Internet has become a medium for displaying geographical information in rich forms and user-friendly interfaces. So, why not use the Internet to distribute geomorphological maps and enhance their practical application? Web mapping and dynamic PDF maps can play a key role in the movement towards a global dissemination of geomorphological information. This will be exemplified by live demonstrations of i.) existing geomorphological WebGIS applications, ii.) data merging from various sources using web map services, and iii.) free to download GeoPDF maps during the presentations.

The Namibia Early Flood Warning System, A CEOS Pilot Project

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mandl, Daniel; Frye, Stuart; Cappelaere, Pat; Sohlberg, Robert; Handy, Matthew; Grossman, Robert

2012-01-01

Over the past year few years, an international collaboration has developed a pilot project under the auspices of Committee on Earth Observation Satellite (CEOS) Disasters team. The overall team consists of civilian satellite agencies. For this pilot effort, the development team consists of NASA, Canadian Space Agency, Univ. of Maryland, Univ. of Colorado, Univ. of Oklahoma, Ukraine Space Research Institute and Joint Research Center(JRC) for European Commission. This development team collaborates with regional , national and international agencies to deliver end-to-end disaster coverage. In particular, the team in collaborating on this effort with the Namibia Department of Hydrology to begin in Namibia . However, the ultimate goal is to expand the functionality to provide early warning over the South Africa region. The initial collaboration was initiated by United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs and CEOS Working Group for Information Systems and Services (WGISS). The initial driver was to demonstrate international interoperability using various space agency sensors and models along with regional in-situ ground sensors. In 2010, the team created a preliminary semi-manual system to demonstrate moving and combining key data streams and delivering the data to the Namibia Department of Hydrology during their flood season which typically is January through April. In this pilot, a variety of moderate resolution and high resolution satellite flood imagery was rapidly delivered and used in conjunction with flood predictive models in Namibia. This was collected in conjunction with ground measurements and was used to examine how to create a customized flood early warning system. During the first year, the team made use of SensorWeb technology to gather various sensor data which was used to monitor flood waves traveling down basins originating in Angola, but eventually flooding villages in Namibia. The team made use of standardized interfaces such as those articulated under the Open Cloud Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) set of web services was good [1][2]. However, it was discovered that in order to make a system like this functional, there were many performance issues. Data sets were large and located in a variety of location behind firewalls and had to be accessed across open networks, so security was an issue. Furthermore, the network access acted as bottleneck to transfer map products to where they are needed. Finally, during disasters, many users and computer processes act in parallel and thus it was very easy to overload the single string of computers stitched together in a virtual system that was initially developed. To address some of these performance issues, the team partnered with the Open Cloud Consortium (OCC) who supplied a Computation Cloud located at the University of Illinois at Chicago and some manpower to administer this Cloud. The Flood SensorWeb [3] system was interfaced to the Cloud to provide a high performance user interface and product development engine. Figure 1 shows the functional diagram of the Flood SensorWeb. Figure 2 shows some of the functionality of the Computation Cloud that was integrated. A significant portion of the original system was ported to the Cloud and during the past year, technical issues were resolved which included web access to the Cloud, security over the open Internet, beginning experiments on how to handle surge capacity by using the virtual machines in the cloud in parallel, using tiling techniques to render large data sets as layers on map, interfaces to allow user to customize the data processing/product chain and other performance enhancing techniques. The conclusion reached from the effort and this presentation is that defining the interoperability standards in a small fraction of the work. For example, once open web service standards were defined, many users could not make use of the standards due to security restrictions. Furthermore, once an interoperable sysm is functional, then a surge of users can render a system unusable, especially in the disaster domain.

Implementation of a near-real time cross-border web-mapping platform on airborne particulate matter (PM) concentration with open-source software

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Knörchen, Achim; Ketzler, Gunnar; Schneider, Christoph

2015-01-01

Although Europe has been growing together for the past decades, cross-border information platforms on environmental issues are still scarce. With regard to the establishment of a web-mapping tool on airborne particulate matter (PM) concentration for the Euregio Meuse-Rhine located in the border region of Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, this article describes the research on methodical and technical backgrounds implementing such a platform. An open-source solution was selected for presenting the data in a Web GIS (OpenLayers/GeoExt; both JavaScript-based), applying other free tools for data handling (Python), data management (PostgreSQL), geo-statistical modelling (Octave), geoprocessing (GRASS GIS/GDAL) and web mapping (MapServer). The multilingual, made-to-order online platform provides access to near-real time data on PM concentration as well as additional background information. In an open data section, commented configuration files for the Web GIS client are being made available for download. Furthermore, all geodata generated by the project is being published under public domain and can be retrieved in various formats or integrated into Desktop GIS as Web Map Services (WMS).

Facilitating Scientific Collaboration and Education with Easy Access Web Maps Using the AGAP Antarctic Geophysical Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Abdi, A.

2012-12-01

Science and science education benefit from easy access to data yet often geophysical data sets are large, complex and difficult to share. The difficulty in sharing data and imagery easily inhibits both collaboration and the use of real data in educational applications. The dissemination of data products through web maps serves a very efficient and user-friendly method for students, the public and the science community to gain insights and understanding from data. Few research groups provide direct access to their data, let alone map-based visualizations. By building upon current GIS infrastructure with web mapping technologies, like ArcGIS Server, scientific groups, institutions and agencies can enhance the value of their GIS investments. The advantages of web maps to serve data products are many; existing web-mapping technology allows complex GIS analysis to be shared across the Internet, and can be easily scaled from a few users to millions. This poster highlights the features of an interactive web map developed at the Polar Geophysics Group at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University that provides a visual representation of, and access to, data products that resulted from the group's recently concluded AGAP project (http://pgg.ldeo.columbia.edu). The AGAP project collected more than 120,000 line km of new aerogeophysical data using two Twin Otter aircrafts. Data included ice penetrating radar, magnetometer, gravimeter and laser altimeter measurements. The web map is based upon ArcGIS Viewer for Flex, which is a configurable client application built on the ArcGIS API for Flex that works seamlessly with ArcGIS Server 10. The application can serve a variety of raster and vector file formats through the Data Interoperability for Server, which eliminates data sharing barriers across numerous file formats. The ability of the application to serve large datasets is only hindered by the availability of appropriate hardware. ArcGIS is a proprietary product, but there are a few data portals in the earth sciences that have a map interface using open access products such as MapServer and OpenLayers, the most notable being the NASA IceBridge Data Portal. Indeed, with the widespread availability of web mapping technology, the scientific community should advance towards this direction when disseminating their data.

FragFit: a web-application for interactive modeling of protein segments into cryo-EM density maps.

PubMed

Tiemann, Johanna K S; Rose, Alexander S; Ismer, Jochen; Darvish, Mitra D; Hilal, Tarek; Spahn, Christian M T; Hildebrand, Peter W

2018-05-21

Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is a standard method to determine the three-dimensional structures of molecular complexes. However, easy to use tools for modeling of protein segments into cryo-EM maps are sparse. Here, we present the FragFit web-application, a web server for interactive modeling of segments of up to 35 amino acids length into cryo-EM density maps. The fragments are provided by a regularly updated database containing at the moment about 1 billion entries extracted from PDB structures and can be readily integrated into a protein structure. Fragments are selected based on geometric criteria, sequence similarity and fit into a given cryo-EM density map. Web-based molecular visualization with the NGL Viewer allows interactive selection of fragments. The FragFit web-application, accessible at http://proteinformatics.de/FragFit, is free and open to all users, without any login requirements.

Image Maps in the World-Wide Web: The Uses and Limitations.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cochenour, John J.; And Others

A study of nine different image maps from World Wide Web home pages was conducted to evaluate their effectiveness in information display and access, relative to visual, navigational, and practical characteristics. Nine independent viewers completed 20-question surveys on the image maps, in which they evaluated the characteristics of the maps on a…

Effects of Multidimensional Concept Maps on Fourth Graders' Learning in Web-Based Computer Course

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huang, Hwa-Shan; Chiou, Chei-Chang; Chiang, Heien-Kun; Lai, Sung-Hsi; Huang, Chiun-Yen; Chou, Yin-Yu

2012-01-01

This study explores the effect of multidimensional concept mapping instruction on students' learning performance in a web-based computer course. The subjects consisted of 103 fourth graders from an elementary school in central Taiwan. They were divided into three groups: multidimensional concept map (MCM) instruction group, Novak concept map (NCM)…

Teachers' Perceptions of Esri Story Maps as Effective Teaching Tools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Strachan, Caitlin; Mitchell, Jerry

2014-01-01

The current study explores teachers' perceptions of Esri Story Maps as effective teaching tools. Story Maps are a relatively new web application created using Esri's cloud-based GIS platform, ArcGIS Online. They combine digitized, dynamic web maps with other story elements to help the creator effectively convey a message. The relative ease…

EarthServer: Visualisation and use of uncertainty as a data exploration tool

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Walker, Peter; Clements, Oliver; Grant, Mike

2013-04-01

The Ocean Science/Earth Observation community generates huge datasets from satellite observation. Until recently it has been difficult to obtain matching uncertainty information for these datasets and to apply this to their processing. In order to make use of uncertainty information when analysing "Big Data" we need both the uncertainty itself (attached to the underlying data) and a means of working with the combined product without requiring the entire dataset to be downloaded. The European Commission FP7 project EarthServer (http://earthserver.eu) is addressing the problem of accessing and ad-hoc analysis of extreme-size Earth Science data using cutting-edge Array Database technology. The core software (Rasdaman) and web services wrapper (Petascope) allow huge datasets to be accessed using Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard interfaces including the well established standards, Web Coverage Service (WCS) and Web Map Service (WMS) as well as the emerging standard, Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS). The WCPS standard allows the running of ad-hoc queries on any of the data stored within Rasdaman, creating an infrastructure where users are not restricted by bandwidth when manipulating or querying huge datasets. The ESA Ocean Colour - Climate Change Initiative (OC-CCI) project (http://www.esa-oceancolour-cci.org/), is producing high-resolution, global ocean colour datasets over the full time period (1998-2012) where high quality observations were available. This climate data record includes per-pixel uncertainty data for each variable, based on an analytic method that classifies how much and which types of water are present in a pixel, and assigns uncertainty based on robust comparisons to global in-situ validation datasets. These uncertainty values take two forms, Root Mean Square (RMS) and Bias uncertainty, respectively representing the expected variability and expected offset error. By combining the data produced through the OC-CCI project with the software from the EarthServer project we can produce a novel data offering that allows the use of traditional exploration and access mechanisms such as WMS and WCS. However the real benefits can be seen when utilising WCPS to explore the data . We will show two major benefits to this infrastructure. Firstly we will show that the visualisation of the combined chlorophyll and uncertainty datasets through a web based GIS portal gives users the ability to instantaneously assess the quality of the data they are exploring using traditional web based plotting techniques as well as through novel web based 3 dimensional visualisation. Secondly we will showcase the benefits available when combining these data with the WCPS standard. The uncertainty data can be utilised in queries using the standard WCPS query language. This allows selection of data either for download or use within the query, based on the respective uncertainty values as well as the possibility of incorporating both the chlorophyll data and uncertainty data into complex queries to produce additional novel data products. By filtering with uncertainty at the data source rather than the client we can minimise traffic over the network allowing huge datasets to be worked on with a minimal time penalty.

Research on ecological function zoning information system based on WebGIS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Jianxiong; Zhang, Gang

2007-06-01

With the development of information technology, application of WebGIS will make it possible to realize digitization and intellectualization in issuing and managing information of ecological function zoning. Firstly, this paper introduces the fundamental principles, basic methods and current situation of development and various support techniques about WebGIS. Secondly, the paper not only compares and analyzes the above methods but also discusses their applied prospect and feasibility in Web management. Finally, exemplified by Jiaozuo City, the paper puts forward an idea of design and a project of realization about the information system. In this research, the digital map and establishment of map database have been finished by MapInfo. Combining with some technical data of ecological environment of Jiaozuo City, the information of ecological environment resources is collected, stored, analyzed, calculated and displayed in the form of pictures and graphs on the WebGIS platform, which makes use of secondary development flat-MapXtreme for Java and some tools such as Java, JSP and JavaScript. Serve mode is adopted in the system which has realized the operating, inquiring of basic map and working out thematic map. By the finished system, it brings some references.

An integrated photogrammetric and spatial database management system for producing fully structured data using aerial and remote sensing images.

PubMed

Ahmadi, Farshid Farnood; Ebadi, Hamid

2009-01-01

3D spatial data acquired from aerial and remote sensing images by photogrammetric techniques is one of the most accurate and economic data sources for GIS, map production, and spatial data updating. However, there are still many problems concerning storage, structuring and appropriate management of spatial data obtained using these techniques. According to the capabilities of spatial database management systems (SDBMSs); direct integration of photogrammetric and spatial database management systems can save time and cost of producing and updating digital maps. This integration is accomplished by replacing digital maps with a single spatial database. Applying spatial databases overcomes the problem of managing spatial and attributes data in a coupled approach. This management approach is one of the main problems in GISs for using map products of photogrammetric workstations. Also by the means of these integrated systems, providing structured spatial data, based on OGC (Open GIS Consortium) standards and topological relations between different feature classes, is possible at the time of feature digitizing process. In this paper, the integration of photogrammetric systems and SDBMSs is evaluated. Then, different levels of integration are described. Finally design, implementation and test of a software package called Integrated Photogrammetric and Oracle Spatial Systems (IPOSS) is presented.

Mining Specific and General Features in Both Positive and Negative Relevance Feedback. QUT E-Discovery Lab at the TREC󈧍 Relevance Feedback Track

DTIC Science & Technology

2009-11-01

relevance feedback algo- rithm. Four methods, εMap [1], MapA , P10A, and StatAP [2], were used in the track to measure the performance of Phase 2 runs...εMap and StatAP were applied to the runs us- ing the testing set of only ClueWeb09 Category-B, whereas MapA and P10A were applied to those using the...whole ClueWeb09 English set. Because our experiments were based on only ClueWeb09 Category-B, measuring our per- formance by MapA and P10A might not

Bcl-2 is a novel interacting partner for the 2-oxoglutarate carrier and a key regulator of mitochondrial glutathione

PubMed Central

Wilkins, Heather M.; Marquardt, Kristin; Lash, Lawrence H.; Linseman, Daniel A.

2011-01-01

Despite making up only a minor fraction of the total cellular glutathione, recent studies indicate that the mitochondrial glutathione pool is essential for cell survival. Selective depletion of mitochondrial glutathione is sufficient to sensitize cells to mitochondrial oxidative stress (MOS)1 and intrinsic apoptosis. Glutathione is synthesized exclusively in the cytoplasm and must be actively transported into mitochondria. Therefore, regulation of mitochondrial glutathione transport is a key factor in maintaining the antioxidant status of mitochondria. Bcl-2 is resident in the outer mitochondrial membrane where it acts as a central regulator of the intrinsic apoptotic cascade. In addition, Bcl-2 displays an antioxidant-like function that has been linked experimentally to the regulation of cellular glutathione content. We have previously demonstrated a novel interaction between recombinant Bcl-2 and reduced glutathione (GSH) which was antagonized by either Bcl-2 homology-3 domain (BH3) mimetics or a BH3-only protein, recombinant Bim. These previous findings prompted us to investigate if this novel Bcl-2/GSH interaction might play a role in regulating mitochondrial glutathione transport. Incubation of primary cultures of cerebellar granule neurons (CGNs) with the BH3 mimetic, HA14-1, induced MOS and caused specific depletion of the mitochondrial glutathione pool. Bcl-2 was co-immunoprecipitated with GSH following chemical cross-linking in CGNs and this Bcl-2/GSH interaction was antagonized by pre-incubation with HA14-1. Moreover, both HA14-1 and recombinant Bim inhibited GSH transport into isolated rat brain mitochondria. To further investigate a possible link between Bcl-2 function and mitochondrial glutathione transport, we next examined if Bcl-2 associated with the 2-oxoglutarate carrier (OGC), an inner mitochondrial membrane protein known to transport glutathione in liver and kidney. Following co-transfection of CHO cells, Bcl-2 was co-immunoprecipitated with OGC and this novel interaction was significantly enhanced by glutathione monoethylester (GSH-MEE). Similarly, recombinant Bcl-2 interacted with recombinant OGC in the presence of GSH. Bcl-2 and OGC co-transfection in CHO cells significantly increased the mitochondrial glutathione pool. Finally, the ability of Bcl-2 to protect CHO cells from apoptosis induced by hydrogen peroxide was significantly attenuated by the OGC inhibitor phenylsuccinate. These data suggest that GSH binding by Bcl-2 enhances its affinity for the OGC. Bcl-2 and OGC appear to act in a coordinated manner to increase the mitochondrial glutathione pool and enhance resistance of cells to oxidative stress. We conclude that regulation of mitochondrial glutathione transport is a principal mechanism by which Bcl-2 suppresses MOS. PMID:22115789

Improving Land Cover Mapping: a Mobile Application Based on ESA Sentinel 2 Imagery

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Melis, M. T.; Dessì, F.; Loddo, P.; La Mantia, C.; Da Pelo, S.; Deflorio, A. M.; Ghiglieri, G.; Hailu, B. T.; Kalegele, K.; Mwasi, B. N.

2018-04-01

The increasing availability of satellite data is a real value for the enhancement of environmental knowledge and land management. Possibilities to integrate different source of geo-data are growing and methodologies to create thematic database are becoming very sophisticated. Moreover, the access to internet services and, in particular, to web mapping services is well developed and spread either between expert users than the citizens. Web map services, like Google Maps or Open Street Maps, give the access to updated optical imagery or topographic maps but information on land cover/use - are not still provided. Therefore, there are many failings in the general utilization -non-specialized users- and access to those maps. This issue is particularly felt where the digital (web) maps could form the basis for land use management as they are more economic and accessible than the paper maps. These conditions are well known in many African countries where, while the internet access is becoming open to all, the local map agencies and their products are not widespread.

An Intelligent Web-Based System for Diagnosing Student Learning Problems Using Concept Maps

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Acharya, Anal; Sinha, Devadatta

2017-01-01

The aim of this article is to propose a method for development of concept map in web-based environment for identifying concepts a student is deficient in after learning using traditional methods. Direct Hashing and Pruning algorithm was used to construct concept map. Redundancies within the concept map were removed to generate a learning sequence.…

Newly Released TRMM Version 7 Products, Other Precipitation Datasets and Data Services at NASA GES DISC

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Liu, Zhong; Ostrenga, D.; Teng, W. L.; Trivedi, Bhagirath; Kempler, S.

2012-01-01

The NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) is home of global precipitation product archives, in particular, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) products. TRMM is a joint U.S.-Japan satellite mission to monitor tropical and subtropical (40 S - 40 N) precipitation and to estimate its associated latent heating. The TRMM satellite provides the first detailed and comprehensive dataset on the four dimensional distribution of rainfall and latent heating over vastly undersampled tropical and subtropical oceans and continents. The TRMM satellite was launched on November 27, 1997. TRMM data products are archived at and distributed by GES DISC. The newly released TRMM Version 7 consists of several changes including new parameters, new products, meta data, data structures, etc. For example, hydrometeor profiles in 2A12 now have 28 layers (14 in V6). New parameters have been added to several popular Level-3 products, such as, 3B42, 3B43. Version 2.2 of the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) dataset has been added to the TRMM Online Visualization and Analysis System (TOVAS; URL: http://disc2.nascom.nasa.gov/Giovanni/tovas/), allowing online analysis and visualization without downloading data and software. The GPCP dataset extends back to 1979. Version 3 of the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) monitoring product has been updated in TOVAS as well. The product provides global gauge-based monthly rainfall along with number of gauges per grid. The dataset begins in January 1986. To facilitate data and information access and support precipitation research and applications, we have developed a Precipitation Data and Information Services Center (PDISC; URL: http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/precipitation). In addition to TRMM, PDISC provides current and past observational precipitation data. Users can access precipitation data archives consisting of both remote sensing and in-situ observations. Users can use these data products to conduct a wide variety of activities, including case studies, model evaluation, uncertainty investigation, etc. To support Earth science applications, PDISC provides users near-real-time precipitation products over the Internet. At PDISC, users can access tools and software. Documentation, FAQ and assistance are also available. Other capabilities include: 1) Mirador (http://mirador.gsfc.nasa.gov/), a simplified interface for searching, browsing, and ordering Earth science data at NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC). Mirador is designed to be fast and easy to learn; 2)TOVAS; 3) NetCDF data download for the GIS community; 4) Data via OPeNDAP (http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/services/opendap/). The OPeNDAP provides remote access to individual variables within datasets in a form usable by many tools, such as IDV, McIDAS-V, Panoply, Ferret and GrADS; 5) The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS) (http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/services/wxs_ogc.shtml). The WMS is an interface that allows the use of data and enables clients to build customized maps with data coming from a different network.

Newly Released TRMM Version 7 Products, GPCP Version 2.2 Precipitation Dataset and Data Services at NASA GES DISC

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ostrenga, D.; Liu, Z.; Teng, W. L.; Trivedi, B.; Kempler, S.

2011-12-01

The NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) is home of global precipitation product archives, in particular, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) products. TRMM is a joint U.S.-Japan satellite mission to monitor tropical and subtropical (40deg S - 40deg N) precipitation and to estimate its associated latent heating. The TRMM satellite provides the first detailed and comprehensive dataset on the four dimensional distribution of rainfall and latent heating over vastly undersampled tropical and subtropical oceans and continents. The TRMM satellite was launched on November 27, 1997. TRMM data products are archived at and distributed by GES DISC. The newly released TRMM Version 7 consists of several changes including new parameters, new products, meta data, data structures, etc. For example, hydrometeor profiles in 2A12 now have 28 layers (14 in V6). New parameters have been added to several popular Level-3 products, such as, 3B42, 3B43. Version 2.2 of the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) dataset has been added to the TRMM Online Visualization and Analysis System (TOVAS; URL: http://disc2.nascom.nasa.gov/Giovanni/tovas/), allowing online analysis and visualization without downloading data and software. The GPCP dataset extends back to 1979. Results of basic intercomparison between the new and the previous versions of both TRMM and GPCP will be presented to help understand changes in data product characteristics. To facilitate data and information access and support precipitation research and applications, we have developed a Precipitation Data and Information Services Center (PDISC; URL: http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/precipitation). In addition to TRMM, PDISC provides current and past observational precipitation data. Users can access precipitation data archives consisting of both remote sensing and in-situ observations. Users can use these data products to conduct a wide variety of activities, including case studies, model evaluation, uncertainty investigation, etc. To support Earth science applications, PDISC provides users near-real-time precipitation products over the Internet. At PDISC, users can access tools and software. Documentation, FAQ and assistance are also available. Other capabilities include: 1) Mirador (http://mirador.gsfc.nasa.gov/), a simplified interface for searching, browsing, and ordering Earth science data at NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC). Mirador is designed to be fast and easy to learn; 2)TOVAS; 3) NetCDF data download for the GIS community; 4) Data via OPeNDAP (http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/services/opendap/). The OPeNDAP provides remote access to individual variables within datasets in a form usable by many tools, such as IDV, McIDAS-V, Panoply, Ferret and GrADS; 5) The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS) (http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/services/wxs_ogc.shtml). The WMS is an interface that allows the use of data and enables clients to build customized maps with data coming from a different network. More details along with examples will be presented.

Establishing a National 3d Geo-Data Model for Building Data Compliant to Citygml: Case of Turkey

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ates Aydar, S.; Stoter, J.; Ledoux, H.; Demir Ozbek, E.; Yomralioglu, T.

2016-06-01

This paper presents the generation of the 3D national building geo-data model of Turkey, which is compatible with the international OGC CityGML Encoding Standard. We prepare an ADE named CityGML-TRKBIS.BI that is produced by extending existing thematic modules of CityGML according to TRKBIS needs. All thematic data groups in TRKBIS geo-data model have been remodelled in order to generate the national large scale 3D geo-data model for Turkey. Specific attention has been paid to data groups that have different class structure according to related CityGML data themes such as building data model. Current 2D geo-information model for building data theme of Turkey (TRKBIS.BI) was established based on INSPIRE specifications for building (Core 2D and Extended 2D profiles), ISO/TC 211 standards and OGC web services. New version of TRKBIS.BI which is established according to semantic and geometric rules of CityGML will represent 2D-2.5D and 3D objects. After a short overview on generic approach, this paper describes extending CityGML building data theme according to TRKBIS.BI through several steps. First, building models of both standards were compared according to their data structure, classes and attributes. Second, CityGML building model was extended with respect to TRKBIS needs and CityGML-TRKBIS Building ADE was established in UML. This study provides new insights into 3D applications in Turkey. The generated 3D geo-data model for building thematic class will be used as a common exchange format that meets 2D, 2.5D and 3D implementation needs at national level.

Components for Maintaining and Publishing Earth Science Vocabularies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cox, S. J. D.; Yu, J.

2014-12-01

Shared vocabularies are an important aid to geoscience data interoperability. Many organizations maintain useful vocabularies, with Geologic Surveys having a particularly long history of vocabulary and lexicon development. However, the mode of publication is heterogeneous, ranging from PDFs and HTML web pages, spreadsheets and CSV, through various user-interfaces and APIs. Update and maintenance ranges from tightly-governed and externally opaque, through various community processes, all the way to crowd-sourcing ('folksonomies'). A general expectation, however, is for greater harmonization and vocabulary re-use. In order to be successful this requires (a) standardized content formalization and APIs (b) transparent content maintenance and versioning. We have been trialling a combination of software dealing with registration, search and linking. SKOS is designed for formalizing multi-lingual, hierarchical vocabularies, and has been widely adopted in earth and environmental sciences. SKOS is an RDF vocabulary, for which SPARQL is the standard low-level API. However, for interoperability between SKOS vocabulary sources, a SKOS-based API (i.e. based on the SKOS predicates prefLabel, broader, narrower, etc) is required. We have developed SISSvoc for this purpose, and used it to deploy a number of vocabularies on behalf of the IUGS, ICS, NERC, OGC, the Australian Government, and CSIRO projects. SISSvoc Search provides simple search UI on top of one or more SISSvoc sources. Content maintenance is composed of many elements, including content-formalization, definition-update, and mappings to related vocabularies. Typically there is a degree of expert judgement required. In order to provide confidence in users, two requirements are paramount: (i) once published, a URI that denotes a vocabulary item must remain dereferenceable; (ii) the history and status of the content denoted by a URI must be available. These requirements match the standard 'registration' paradigm which is implemented in the Linked Data Registry, which is currently used by WMO and the UK Environment Agency for publication of vocabularies. Together, these components provide a powerful and flexible system for providing earth science vocabularies for the community, consistent with semantic web and linked-data principles.

Development of a Dynamic Web Mapping Service for Vegetation Productivity Using Earth Observation and in situ Sensors in a Sensor Web Based Approach

PubMed Central

Kooistra, Lammert; Bergsma, Aldo; Chuma, Beatus; de Bruin, Sytze

2009-01-01

This paper describes the development of a sensor web based approach which combines earth observation and in situ sensor data to derive typical information offered by a dynamic web mapping service (WMS). A prototype has been developed which provides daily maps of vegetation productivity for the Netherlands with a spatial resolution of 250 m. Daily available MODIS surface reflectance products and meteorological parameters obtained through a Sensor Observation Service (SOS) were used as input for a vegetation productivity model. This paper presents the vegetation productivity model, the sensor data sources and the implementation of the automated processing facility. Finally, an evaluation is made of the opportunities and limitations of sensor web based approaches for the development of web services which combine both satellite and in situ sensor sources. PMID:22574019

An Integrated Approach for Accessing Multiple Datasets through LANCE

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Murphy, K. J.; Teague, M.; Conover, H.; Regner, K.; Beaumont, B.; Masuoka, E.; Vollmer, B.; Theobald, M.; Durbin, P.; Michael, K.; Boller, R. A.; Schmaltz, J. E.; Davies, D.; Horricks, K.; Ilavajhala, S.; Thompson, C. K.; Bingham, A.

2011-12-01

The NASA/GSFC Land Atmospheres Near-real time Capability for EOS (LANCE) provides imagery for approximately 40 data products from MODIS, AIRS, AMSR-E and OMI to support the applications community in the study of a variety of phenomena. Thirty-six of these products are available within 2.5 hours of observation at the spacecraft. The data set includes the population density data provided by the EOSDIS Socio-Economic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). The purpose of this paper is to describe the variety of tools that have been developed by LANCE to support user access to the imagery. The long-standing Rapid Response system has been integrated into LANCE and is a major vehicle for the distribution of the imagery to end users. There are presently approximately 10,000 anonymous users per month accessing these imagery. The products are grouped into 14 applications categories such as Smoke Plumes, Pollution, Fires, Agriculture and the selection of any category will make relevant subsets of the 40 products available as possible overlays in an interactive Web Client utilizing Web Mapping Service (WMS) to support user investigations (http://lance2.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/wms/). For example, selecting Severe Storms will include 6 products for MODIS, OMI, AIRS, and AMSR-E plus the SEDAC population density data. The client and WMS were developed using open-source technologies such as OpenLayers and MapServer and provides a uniform, browser-based access to data products. All overlays are downloadable in PNG, JPEG, or GeoTiff form up to 200MB per request. The WMS was beta-tested with the user community and substantial performance improvements were made through the use of such techniques as tile-caching. LANCE established a partnership with Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO DAAC) to develop an alternative presentation for the 40 data products known as the State of the Earth (SOTE). This provides a Google Earth-based interface to the products grouped in the same fashion as the WMS. The SOTE servers stream imagery and data in the OGC KML format and these feeds can be visualized through the Google Earth browser plug-in. SOTE provides visualization through a virtual globe environment by allowing users to interact with the globe via zooming, rotating, and tilting. In addition, SOTE also allows adding custom KML feeds. LANCE also provides datacasting feeds to facilitate user access to imagery for the 40 products and the related HDF-EOS products (available in a variety of formats). These XML-based data feeds contain data attribute and geolocation information, and metadata including an identification of the related application category. Users can subscribe to any feeds through the LANCE web site and use the PO DAAC Feed Reader to filter and view the content. The WMS, SOTE, and datacasting tools can be accessed through http://lance.nasa.gov.

Interpolate with DIVA and view the products in OceanBrowser : what's up ?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Watelet, Sylvain; Barth, Alexander; Beckers, Jean-Marie; Troupin, Charles

2017-04-01

The Data-Interpolating Variational Analysis (DIVA) software is a statistical tool designed to reconstruct a continuous field from discrete measurements. This method is based on the numerical implementation of the Variational Inverse Model (VIM), which consists of a minimization of a cost function, allowing the choice of the analyzed field fitting at best the data sets without presenting unrealistic strong variations. The problem is solved efficiently using a finite-element method. This method, equivalent to the Optimal Interpolation, is particularly suited to deal with irregularly-spaced observations and produces outputs on a regular grid (2D, 3D or 4D). The results are stored in NetCDF files, the most widespread format in the earth sciences community. OceanBrowser is a web-service that allows one to visualize gridded fields on-line. Within the SeaDataNet and EMODNET (Chemical lot) projects, several national ocean data centers have created gridded climatologies of different ocean properties using the data analysis software DIVA. In order to give a common viewing service to those interpolated products, the GHER has developed OceanBrowser which is based on open standards from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), in particular Web Map Service (WMS) and Web Feature Service (WFS). These standards define a protocol for describing, requesting and querying two-dimensional maps at a given depth and time. DIVA and OceanBrowser are both softwares tools which are continuously upgraded and distributed for free through frequent version releases. The development is funded by the EMODnet and SeaDataNet projects and include many discussions and feedback from the users community. Here, we present two recent major upgrades. First, we have implemented a "customization" of DIVA analyses following the sea bottom, using the bottom depth gradient as a new source of information. The weaker the slope of the bottom ocean, the higher the correlation length. This correlation length being associated with the propagation of the information, it is therefore harder to interpolate through bottom topographic "barriers" such as the continental slope and easier to do it in the perpendicular direction. Although realistic for most applications, this behaviour can always be disabled by the user. Second, we have added some combined products in OceanBrowser, covering all European seas at once. Based on the analyses performed by the other EMODnet partners using DIVA on five zones (Atlantic, North Sea, Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea), we have computed a single European product for five variables : ammonium, chlorophyll-a, dissolved oxygen concentration, phosphate and silicate. At boundaries, a smooth filter was used to remove possible discrepancies between regional analyses. Our European combined product is available for all seasons and several depths. This is the first step towards the use of a common reference field for all European seas when running DIVA.

Using Satellite-Based Earth Science Data in a Public Health Decision-Support System to Track and Forecast Pollen Events

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hudspeth, W. B.; Budge, A.

2013-12-01

There is widespread recognition within the public health community that ongoing changes in climate are expected to increasingly pose threats to human health. Environmentally induced health risks to populations with respiratory illnesses are a growing concern globally. Of particular concern are dust and smoke events carrying PM2.5 and PM10 particle sizes, ozone, and pollen. There is considerable interest in documenting the precise linkages between changing patterns in the climate and how these shifts impact the prevalence of respiratory illnesses. The establishment of these linkages can drive the development of early warning and forecasting systems to alert health care professionals of impending air-quality events. As a component of a larger NASA-funded project on Integration of Airborne Dust Prediction Systems and Vegetation Phenology to Track Pollen for Asthma Alerts in Public Health Decision Support Systems, the Earth Data Analysis Center (EDAC) at the University of New Mexico, is developing web-based visualization and analysis services for forecasting pollen concentration data. This decision-support system, New Mexico's Environmental Public Health Tracking System (NMEPHTS), funded by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Environmental Public Health Tracking Network (EPHTN), aims to improve health awareness and services by linking health effects data with levels and frequency of environmental exposure. The forecast of atmospheric events with high pollen concentrations has employed a modified version of the DREAM (Dust Regional Atmospheric Model, a verified model for atmospheric dust transport modeling. In this application, PREAM (Pollen Regional Atmospheric Model) models pollen emission using a MODIS-derived phenology of Juniperus spp. communities. Model outputs are verified and validated with ground-based records of pollen release timing and quantities. Outputs of the PREAM model are post-processed and archived in EDAC's Geographic Storage, Transformation, and Retrieval Engine (GStore) database. The GStore geospatial services platform provides general purpose web services based upon the REST service model, and is capable of data discovery, access, and publication functions, metadata delivery functions, data transformation, and auto-generated OGC services for those data products that can support those services. These services are in turn ingested by New Mexico's EPHTN where end users in the public health community can then assess environmental-pubic health data associations. Advances in web mapping and related technologies open new doors for data providers and users that can deliver data and information in near-real time. In the public health community these technologies are being used to enhance disease and syndromic surveillance systems, visualize environmentally-related events such as pollen and dust events, and to provide focused mapping and analysis capabilities on the desktop. Here we present the current results of the project, and will focus on the challenges encountered in providing reliable and accurate forecast of pollen concentrations, as well as the experience of integrating output results and services into end user applications that can provide timely and meaningful alerts and forecasts.

Sharing environmental models: An Approach using GitHub repositories and Web Processing Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Stasch, Christoph; Nuest, Daniel; Pross, Benjamin

2016-04-01

The GLUES (Global Assessment of Land Use Dynamics, Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Ecosystem Services) project established a spatial data infrastructure for scientific geospatial data and metadata (http://geoportal-glues.ufz.de), where different regional collaborative projects researching the impacts of climate and socio-economic changes on sustainable land management can share their underlying base scenarios and datasets. One goal of the project is to ease the sharing of computational models between institutions and to make them easily executable in Web-based infrastructures. In this work, we present such an approach for sharing computational models relying on GitHub repositories (http://github.com) and Web Processing Services. At first, model providers upload their model implementations to GitHub repositories in order to share them with others. The GitHub platform allows users to submit changes to the model code. The changes can be discussed and reviewed before merging them. However, while GitHub allows sharing and collaborating of model source code, it does not actually allow running these models, which requires efforts to transfer the implementation to a model execution framework. We thus have extended an existing implementation of the OGC Web Processing Service standard (http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wps), the 52°North Web Processing Service (http://52north.org/wps) platform to retrieve all model implementations from a git (http://git-scm.com) repository and add them to the collection of published geoprocesses. The current implementation is restricted to models implemented as R scripts using WPS4R annotations (Hinz et al.) and to Java algorithms using the 52°North WPS Java API. The models hence become executable through a standardized Web API by multiple clients such as desktop or browser GIS and modelling frameworks. If the model code is changed on the GitHub platform, the changes are retrieved by the service and the processes will be updated accordingly. The admin tool of the 52°North WPS was extended to support automated retrieval and deployment of computational models from GitHub repositories. Once the R code is available in the GitHub repo, the contained process can be easily deployed and executed by simply defining the GitHub repository URL in the WPS admin tool. We illustrate the usage of the approach by sharing and running a model for land use system archetypes developed by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ, see Vaclavik et al.). The original R code was extended and published in the 52°North WPS using both, public and non-public datasets (Nüst et al., see also https://github.com/52North/glues-wps). Hosting the analysis in a Git repository now allows WPS administrators, client developers, and modelers to easily work together on new versions or completely new web processes using the powerful GitHub collaboration platform. References: Hinz, M. et. al. (2013): Spatial Statistics on the Geospatial Web. In: The 16th AGILE International Conference on Geographic Information Science, Short Papers. http://www.agile-online.org/Conference_Paper/CDs/agile_2013/Short_Papers/SP_S3.1_Hinz.pdf Nüst, D. et. al.: (2015): Open and reproducible global land use classification. In: EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts . Vol. 17. European Geophysical Union, 2015, p. 9125, http://meetingorganizer.copernicus. org/EGU2015/EGU2015- 9125.pdf Vaclavik, T., et. al. (2013): Mapping global land system archetypes. Global Environmental Change 23(6): 1637-1647. Online available: October 9, 2013, DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.09.004

Web processing service for climate impact and extreme weather event analyses. Flyingpigeon (Version 1.0)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hempelmann, Nils; Ehbrecht, Carsten; Alvarez-Castro, Carmen; Brockmann, Patrick; Falk, Wolfgang; Hoffmann, Jörg; Kindermann, Stephan; Koziol, Ben; Nangini, Cathy; Radanovics, Sabine; Vautard, Robert; Yiou, Pascal

2018-01-01

Analyses of extreme weather events and their impacts often requires big data processing of ensembles of climate model simulations. Researchers generally proceed by downloading the data from the providers and processing the data files ;at home; with their own analysis processes. However, the growing amount of available climate model and observation data makes this procedure quite awkward. In addition, data processing knowledge is kept local, instead of being consolidated into a common resource of reusable code. These drawbacks can be mitigated by using a web processing service (WPS). A WPS hosts services such as data analysis processes that are accessible over the web, and can be installed close to the data archives. We developed a WPS named 'flyingpigeon' that communicates over an HTTP network protocol based on standards defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), to be used by climatologists and impact modelers as a tool for analyzing large datasets remotely. Here, we present the current processes we developed in flyingpigeon relating to commonly-used processes (preprocessing steps, spatial subsets at continent, country or region level, and climate indices) as well as methods for specific climate data analysis (weather regimes, analogues of circulation, segetal flora distribution, and species distribution models). We also developed a novel, browser-based interactive data visualization for circulation analogues, illustrating the flexibility of WPS in designing custom outputs. Bringing the software to the data instead of transferring the data to the code is becoming increasingly necessary, especially with the upcoming massive climate datasets.

Providing Geographic Datasets as Linked Data in Sdi

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hietanen, E.; Lehto, L.; Latvala, P.

2016-06-01

In this study, a prototype service to provide data from Web Feature Service (WFS) as linked data is implemented. At first, persistent and unique Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) are created to all spatial objects in the dataset. The objects are available from those URIs in Resource Description Framework (RDF) data format. Next, a Web Ontology Language (OWL) ontology is created to describe the dataset information content using the Open Geospatial Consortium's (OGC) GeoSPARQL vocabulary. The existing data model is modified in order to take into account the linked data principles. The implemented service produces an HTTP response dynamically. The data for the response is first fetched from existing WFS. Then the Geographic Markup Language (GML) format output of the WFS is transformed on-the-fly to the RDF format. Content Negotiation is used to serve the data in different RDF serialization formats. This solution facilitates the use of a dataset in different applications without replicating the whole dataset. In addition, individual spatial objects in the dataset can be referred with URIs. Furthermore, the needed information content of the objects can be easily extracted from the RDF serializations available from those URIs. A solution for linking data objects to the dataset URI is also introduced by using the Vocabulary of Interlinked Datasets (VoID). The dataset is divided to the subsets and each subset is given its persistent and unique URI. This enables the whole dataset to be explored with a web browser and all individual objects to be indexed by search engines.

Integrating semantic web technologies and geospatial catalog services for geospatial information discovery and processing in cyberinfrastructure

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Yue, Peng; Gong, Jianya; Di, Liping

Abstract A geospatial catalogue service provides a network-based meta-information repository and interface for advertising and discovering shared geospatial data and services. Descriptive information (i.e., metadata) for geospatial data and services is structured and organized in catalogue services. The approaches currently available for searching and using that information are often inadequate. Semantic Web technologies show promise for better discovery methods by exploiting the underlying semantics. Such development needs special attention from the Cyberinfrastructure perspective, so that the traditional focus on discovery of and access to geospatial data can be expanded to support the increased demand for processing of geospatial information andmore » discovery of knowledge. Semantic descriptions for geospatial data, services, and geoprocessing service chains are structured, organized, and registered through extending elements in the ebXML Registry Information Model (ebRIM) of a geospatial catalogue service, which follows the interface specifications of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Catalogue Services for the Web (CSW). The process models for geoprocessing service chains, as a type of geospatial knowledge, are captured, registered, and discoverable. Semantics-enhanced discovery for geospatial data, services/service chains, and process models is described. Semantic search middleware that can support virtual data product materialization is developed for the geospatial catalogue service. The creation of such a semantics-enhanced geospatial catalogue service is important in meeting the demands for geospatial information discovery and analysis in Cyberinfrastructure.« less

Optimizing Crawler4j using MapReduce Programming Model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Siddesh, G. M.; Suresh, Kavya; Madhuri, K. Y.; Nijagal, Madhushree; Rakshitha, B. R.; Srinivasa, K. G.

2017-06-01

World wide web is a decentralized system that consists of a repository of information on the basis of web pages. These web pages act as a source of information or data in the present analytics world. Web crawlers are used for extracting useful information from web pages for different purposes. Firstly, it is used in web search engines where the web pages are indexed to form a corpus of information and allows the users to query on the web pages. Secondly, it is used for web archiving where the web pages are stored for later analysis phases. Thirdly, it can be used for web mining where the web pages are monitored for copyright purposes. The amount of information processed by the web crawler needs to be improved by using the capabilities of modern parallel processing technologies. In order to solve the problem of parallelism and the throughput of crawling this work proposes to optimize the Crawler4j using the Hadoop MapReduce programming model by parallelizing the processing of large input data. Crawler4j is a web crawler that retrieves useful information about the pages that it visits. The crawler Crawler4j coupled with data and computational parallelism of Hadoop MapReduce programming model improves the throughput and accuracy of web crawling. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed solution achieves significant improvements with respect to performance and throughput. Hence the proposed approach intends to carve out a new methodology towards optimizing web crawling by achieving significant performance gain.

The UAH GeoIntegrator: A Web Mapping System for On-site Data Insertion and Viewing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

He, M.; Hardin, D.; Sever, T.; Irwin, D.

2005-12-01

There is a growing need in the scientific community to combine data colleted in the field with maps, imagery and other layered sources. For example, a biologist, who has collected pollination data during a field study, may want to see his data presented on a regional map. There are many commercial web mapping tools available, but they are expensive, and may require advanced computer knowledge to operate. Researchers from the Information Technology and Systems Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville are developing a web mapping system that will allow scientists to map their data in an easy way. This system is called the UAH GeoIntegrator. The UAH GeoIntegrator is built on top of three open-source components: the Apache web server, MapServer, and the Chameleon viewer. Chameleon allows developers to customize its map viewer interface by adding widgets. These widgets provide unique functionality focused to the specific needs of the researcher. The UAH GeoIntegrator utilizes a suite of widgets that bring new functionality focused on specific needs, to a typical web map viewer. Specifically, a common input text file format was defined and widgets developed to convert user's field collections into web map layers. These layers can then laid on top of other map layers to produce data products that are versatile, informative and easy to distribute via web services. The UAH GeoIntegrator is being developed as part of the SERVIR project. SERVIR (a Spanish acronym meaning to serve) is part of an international effort to preserve the remaining forested regions of Mesoamerica and to help establish sustainable development in the region. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration along with the World Bank, the United States Agency for International Development and the Central American Commission for Environment and Development are cooperating in this effort. The UAH GeoIntegrator is part of an advanced decision support system that will provide scientists, educators, and policy makers the capabilities needed to monitor and forecast ecological changes, respond to natural disasters, and better understand both natural and human induced effects in Mesoamerica. In this paper, the architecture of the system, data input format, and details of the suite of will be presented.

Appropriating Invention through Concept Maps in Writing for Multimedia and the Web

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bacabac, Florence Elizabeth

2015-01-01

As an alternative approach to web preproduction, I propose the use of concept maps for invention of website projects in business and professional writing courses. This mapping device approximates our students' initial site plans since rough ideas are formed based on a substantial exploratory technique. Incorporated in various disciplines, the…

Ontology Research and Development. Part 2 - A Review of Ontology Mapping and Evolving.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ding, Ying; Foo, Schubert

2002-01-01

Reviews ontology research and development, specifically ontology mapping and evolving. Highlights include an overview of ontology mapping projects; maintaining existing ontologies and extending them as appropriate when new information or knowledge is acquired; and ontology's role and the future of the World Wide Web, or Semantic Web. (Contains 55…

NaviCell Web Service for network-based data visualization.

PubMed

Bonnet, Eric; Viara, Eric; Kuperstein, Inna; Calzone, Laurence; Cohen, David P A; Barillot, Emmanuel; Zinovyev, Andrei

2015-07-01

Data visualization is an essential element of biological research, required for obtaining insights and formulating new hypotheses on mechanisms of health and disease. NaviCell Web Service is a tool for network-based visualization of 'omics' data which implements several data visual representation methods and utilities for combining them together. NaviCell Web Service uses Google Maps and semantic zooming to browse large biological network maps, represented in various formats, together with different types of the molecular data mapped on top of them. For achieving this, the tool provides standard heatmaps, barplots and glyphs as well as the novel map staining technique for grasping large-scale trends in numerical values (such as whole transcriptome) projected onto a pathway map. The web service provides a server mode, which allows automating visualization tasks and retrieving data from maps via RESTful (standard HTTP) calls. Bindings to different programming languages are provided (Python and R). We illustrate the purpose of the tool with several case studies using pathway maps created by different research groups, in which data visualization provides new insights into molecular mechanisms involved in systemic diseases such as cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. © The Author(s) 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

NaviCell Web Service for network-based data visualization

PubMed Central

Bonnet, Eric; Viara, Eric; Kuperstein, Inna; Calzone, Laurence; Cohen, David P. A.; Barillot, Emmanuel; Zinovyev, Andrei

2015-01-01

Data visualization is an essential element of biological research, required for obtaining insights and formulating new hypotheses on mechanisms of health and disease. NaviCell Web Service is a tool for network-based visualization of ‘omics’ data which implements several data visual representation methods and utilities for combining them together. NaviCell Web Service uses Google Maps and semantic zooming to browse large biological network maps, represented in various formats, together with different types of the molecular data mapped on top of them. For achieving this, the tool provides standard heatmaps, barplots and glyphs as well as the novel map staining technique for grasping large-scale trends in numerical values (such as whole transcriptome) projected onto a pathway map. The web service provides a server mode, which allows automating visualization tasks and retrieving data from maps via RESTful (standard HTTP) calls. Bindings to different programming languages are provided (Python and R). We illustrate the purpose of the tool with several case studies using pathway maps created by different research groups, in which data visualization provides new insights into molecular mechanisms involved in systemic diseases such as cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. PMID:25958393

Sensing Models and Sensor Network Architectures for Transport Infrastructure Monitoring in Smart Cities

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Simonis, Ingo

2015-04-01

Transport infrastructure monitoring and analysis is one of the focus areas in the context of smart cities. With the growing number of people moving into densely populated urban metro areas, precise tracking of moving people and goods is the basis for profound decision-making and future planning. With the goal of defining optimal extensions and modifications to existing transport infrastructures, multi-modal transport has to be monitored and analysed. This process is performed on the basis of sensor networks that combine a variety of sensor models, types, and deployments within the area of interest. Multi-generation networks, consisting of a number of sensor types and versions, are causing further challenges for the integration and processing of sensor observations. These challenges are not getting any smaller with the development of the Internet of Things, which brings promising opportunities, but is currently stuck in a type of protocol war between big industry players from both the hardware and network infrastructure domain. In this paper, we will highlight how the OGC suite of standards, with the Sensor Web standards developed by the Sensor Web Enablement Initiative together with the latest developments by the Sensor Web for Internet of Things community can be applied to the monitoring and improvement of transport infrastructures. Sensor Web standards have been applied in the past to pure technical domains, but need to be broadened now in order to meet new challenges. Only cross domain approaches will allow to develop satisfying transport infrastructure approaches that take into account requirements coming form a variety of sectors such as tourism, administration, transport industry, emergency services, or private people. The goal is the development of interoperable components that can be easily integrated within data infrastructures and follow well defined information models to allow robust processing.

Low-energy, low-budget sensor web enablement of an amateur weather station

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schmidt, G.; Herrnkind, S.; Klump, J.

2008-12-01

Sensor Web Enablement (OGC SWE) has developed in into a powerful concept with many potential applications in environmental monitoring and in other fields. This has spurred development of software applications for Sensor Observation Services (SOS), while the development of client applications still lags behind. Furthermore, the deployment of sensors in the field often places tight constraints on energy and bandwidth available for data capture and transmission. As a "proof of concept" we equipped an amateur weather station with low-budget, standard components to read the data from its base station and feed it into a sensor observation service using its standard web- service interface. We chose the weather station as an example because of its simple measured phenomena and its low data volume. As sensor observation service we chose the open source software package offered by the 52North consortium. Power consumption can be problematic when deploying a sensor platform in the field. Instead of a common PC we used a Network Storage Link Unit (NSLU2) with a Linux operating system, a configuration also known as "Debian SLUG". The power consumption of a "SLUG" is of the order of 2 to 5 Watt, compared to 40W in a small PC. The "SLUG" provides one ethernet and two USB ports, one used by its external USB hard-drive. This modular setup is open to modifications, for example the addition of a GSM modem for data transmission over a cellular telephone network. The simple setup, low price, low power consumption, and the low technological entry-level allow many potential uses of a "SLUG" in environmental sensor networks in research, education and citizen science. The use of a mature sensor observation service software allows an easy integration of monitoring networks with other web services.

The Geogenomic Mutational Atlas of Pathogens (GoMAP) Web System

PubMed Central

Sargeant, David P.; Hedden, Michael W.; Deverasetty, Sandeep; Strong, Christy L.; Alaniz, Izua J.; Bartlett, Alexandria N.; Brandon, Nicholas R.; Brooks, Steven B.; Brown, Frederick A.; Bufi, Flaviona; Chakarova, Monika; David, Roxanne P.; Dobritch, Karlyn M.; Guerra, Horacio P.; Levit, Kelvy S.; Mathew, Kiran R.; Matti, Ray; Maza, Dorothea Q.; Mistry, Sabyasachy; Novakovic, Nemanja; Pomerantz, Austin; Rafalski, Timothy F.; Rathnayake, Viraj; Rezapour, Noura; Ross, Christian A.; Schooler, Steve G.; Songao, Sarah; Tuggle, Sean L.; Wing, Helen J.; Yousif, Sandy; Schiller, Martin R.

2014-01-01

We present a new approach for pathogen surveillance we call Geogenomics. Geogenomics examines the geographic distribution of the genomes of pathogens, with a particular emphasis on those mutations that give rise to drug resistance. We engineered a new web system called Geogenomic Mutational Atlas of Pathogens (GoMAP) that enables investigation of the global distribution of individual drug resistance mutations. As a test case we examined mutations associated with HIV resistance to FDA-approved antiretroviral drugs. GoMAP-HIV makes use of existing public drug resistance and HIV protein sequence data to examine the distribution of 872 drug resistance mutations in ∼502,000 sequences for many countries in the world. We also implemented a broadened classification scheme for HIV drug resistance mutations. Several patterns for geographic distributions of resistance mutations were identified by visual mining using this web tool. GoMAP-HIV is an open access web application available at http://www.bio-toolkit.com/GoMap/project/ PMID:24675726

The Geogenomic Mutational Atlas of Pathogens (GoMAP) web system.

PubMed

Sargeant, David P; Hedden, Michael W; Deverasetty, Sandeep; Strong, Christy L; Alaniz, Izua J; Bartlett, Alexandria N; Brandon, Nicholas R; Brooks, Steven B; Brown, Frederick A; Bufi, Flaviona; Chakarova, Monika; David, Roxanne P; Dobritch, Karlyn M; Guerra, Horacio P; Levit, Kelvy S; Mathew, Kiran R; Matti, Ray; Maza, Dorothea Q; Mistry, Sabyasachy; Novakovic, Nemanja; Pomerantz, Austin; Rafalski, Timothy F; Rathnayake, Viraj; Rezapour, Noura; Ross, Christian A; Schooler, Steve G; Songao, Sarah; Tuggle, Sean L; Wing, Helen J; Yousif, Sandy; Schiller, Martin R

2014-01-01

We present a new approach for pathogen surveillance we call Geogenomics. Geogenomics examines the geographic distribution of the genomes of pathogens, with a particular emphasis on those mutations that give rise to drug resistance. We engineered a new web system called Geogenomic Mutational Atlas of Pathogens (GoMAP) that enables investigation of the global distribution of individual drug resistance mutations. As a test case we examined mutations associated with HIV resistance to FDA-approved antiretroviral drugs. GoMAP-HIV makes use of existing public drug resistance and HIV protein sequence data to examine the distribution of 872 drug resistance mutations in ∼ 502,000 sequences for many countries in the world. We also implemented a broadened classification scheme for HIV drug resistance mutations. Several patterns for geographic distributions of resistance mutations were identified by visual mining using this web tool. GoMAP-HIV is an open access web application available at http://www.bio-toolkit.com/GoMap/project/

a Map Mash-Up Application: Investigation the Temporal Effects of Climate Change on Salt Lake Basin

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kirtiloglu, O. S.; Orhan, O.; Ekercin, S.

2016-06-01

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate climate change effects that have been occurred at the beginning of the twenty-first century at the Konya Closed Basin (KCB) located in the semi-arid central Anatolian region of Turkey and particularly in Salt Lake region where many major wetlands located in and situated in KCB and to share the analysis results online in a Web Geographical Information System (GIS) environment. 71 Landsat 5-TM, 7-ETM+ and 8-OLI images and meteorological data obtained from 10 meteorological stations have been used at the scope of this work. 56 of Landsat images have been used for extraction of Salt Lake surface area through multi-temporal Landsat imagery collected from 2000 to 2014 in Salt lake basin. 15 of Landsat images have been used to make thematic maps of Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) in KCB, and 10 meteorological stations data has been used to generate the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), which was used in drought studies. For the purpose of visualizing and sharing the results, a Web GIS-like environment has been established by using Google Maps and its useful data storage and manipulating product Fusion Tables which are all Google's free of charge Web service elements. The infrastructure of web application includes HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Google Maps API V3 and Google Fusion Tables API technologies. These technologies make it possible to make effective "Map Mash-Ups" involving an embedded Google Map in a Web page, storing the spatial or tabular data in Fusion Tables and add this data as a map layer on embedded map. The analysing process and map mash-up application have been discussed in detail as the main sections of this paper.

Sensor Management for Applied Research Technologies (SMART)-On Demand Modeling (ODM) Project

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Goodman, M.; Blakeslee, R.; Hood, R.; Jedlovec, G.; Botts, M.; Li, X.

2006-01-01

NASA requires timely on-demand data and analysis capabilities to enable practical benefits of Earth science observations. However, a significant challenge exists in accessing and integrating data from multiple sensors or platforms to address Earth science problems because of the large data volumes, varying sensor scan characteristics, unique orbital coverage, and the steep learning curve associated with each sensor and data type. The development of sensor web capabilities to autonomously process these data streams (whether real-time or archived) provides an opportunity to overcome these obstacles and facilitate the integration and synthesis of Earth science data and weather model output. A three year project, entitled Sensor Management for Applied Research Technologies (SMART) - On Demand Modeling (ODM), will develop and demonstrate the readiness of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) capabilities that integrate both Earth observations and forecast model output into new data acquisition and assimilation strategies. The advancement of SWE-enabled systems (i.e., use of SensorML, sensor planning services - SPS, sensor observation services - SOS, sensor alert services - SAS and common observation model protocols) will have practical and efficient uses in the Earth science community for enhanced data set generation, real-time data assimilation with operational applications, and for autonomous sensor tasking for unique data collection.

OxfordGrid: a web interface for pairwise comparative map views.

PubMed

Yang, Hongyu; Gingle, Alan R

2005-12-01

OxfordGrid is a web application and database schema for storing and interactively displaying genetic map data in a comparative, dot-plot, fashion. Its display is composed of a matrix of cells, each representing a pairwise comparison of mapped probe data for two linkage groups or chromosomes. These are arranged along the axes with one forming grid columns and the other grid rows with the degree and pattern of synteny/colinearity between the two linkage groups manifested in the cell's dot density and structure. A mouse click over the selected grid cell launches an image map-based display for the selected cell. Both individual and linear groups of mapped probes can be selected and displayed. Also, configurable links can be used to access other web resources for mapped probe information. OxfordGrid is implemented in C#/ASP.NET and the package, including MySQL schema creation scripts, is available at ftp://cggc.agtec.uga.edu/OxfordGrid/.

Geovisualization in the HydroProg web map service

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Spallek, Waldemar; Wieczorek, Malgorzata; Szymanowski, Mariusz; Niedzielski, Tomasz; Swierczynska, Malgorzata

2016-04-01

The HydroProg system, built at the University of Wroclaw (Poland) in frame of the research project no. 2011/01/D/ST10/04171 financed by the National Science Centre of Poland, has been designed for computing predictions of river stages in real time on a basis of multimodelling. This experimental system works on the upper Nysa Klodzka basin (SW Poland) above the gauge in the town of Bardo, with the catchment area of 1744 square kilometres. The system operates in association with the Local System for Flood Monitoring of Klodzko County (LSOP), and produces hydrograph prognoses as well as inundation predictions. For presenting the up-to-date predictions and their statistics in the online mode, the dedicated real-time web map service has been designed. Geovisualisation in the HydroProg map service concerns: interactive maps of study area, interactive spaghetti hydrograms of water level forecasts along with observed river stages, animated images of inundation. The LSOP network offers a high spatial and temporal resolution of observations, as the length of the sampling interval is equal to 15 minutes. The main environmental elements related to hydrological modelling are shown on the main map. This includes elevation data (hillshading and hypsometric tints), rivers and reservoirs as well as catchment boundaries. Furthermore, we added main towns, roads as well as political and administrative boundaries for better map understanding. The web map was designed as a multi-scale representation, with levels of detail and zooming according to scales: 1:100 000, 1:250 000 and 1:500 000. Observations of water level in LSOP are shown on interactive hydrographs for each gauge. Additionally, predictions and some of their statistical characteristics (like prediction errors and Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency) are shown for selected gauges. Finally, predictions of inundation are presented on animated maps which have been added for four experimental sites. The HydroProg system is a strictly scientific project, but the web map service has been designed for all web users. The main objective of the paper is to present the design process of the web map service, following the cartographic and graphic principles.

The Effects of Web-Based and Face-to-Face Discussion on Computer Engineering Majors' Performance on the Karnaugh Map

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hung, Yen-Chu

2011-01-01

This study investigates the different effects of web-based and face-to-face discussion on computer engineering majors' performance using the Karnaugh map in digital logic design. Pretest and posttest scores for two treatment groups (web-based discussion and face-to-face discussion) and a control group were compared and subjected to covariance…

Using a Web-based GIS to Teach Problem-based Science in High School and College

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Metzger, E.; Lenkeit Meezan, , K. A.; Schmidt, C.; Taketa, R.; Carter, J.; Iverson, R.

2008-12-01

Foothill College has partnered with San Jose State University to bring GIS web mapping technology to the high school and college classroom. The project consists of two parts. In the first part, Foothill and San Jose State University have teamed up to offer classes on building and maintaining Web based Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Web-based GIS such as Google Maps, MapQuest and Yahoo Maps have become ubiquitous, and the skills to build and maintain these systems are in high demand from many employers. In the second part of the project, high school students will be able to learn about Web GIS as a real world tool used by scientists. The students in the Foothill College/San Jose State class will build their Web GIS using scientific data related to the San Francisco/San Joaquin Delta region, with a focus on watersheds, biodiversity and earthquake hazards. This project includes high school level curriculum development that will tie in to No Child Left Behind and National Curriculum Standards in both Science and Geography, and provide workshops for both pre-and in- service teachers in the use of Web GIS-driven course material in the high school classroom. The project will bring the work of professional scientists into any high school classroom with an internet connection; while simultaneously providing workforce training in high demand technology based jobs.

SMART characterisation of New Zealand's aquifers using fast and passive methods

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Klug, H.; Daughney, C.; Verhagen, F.; Westerhoff, R.; Ward, N. Dudley

2012-04-01

Groundwater resources account for about half of New Zealand's abstractive water needs and supplies about eighty per cent of all water used in the agricultural sector. Despite the importance of New Zealand's groundwater resources, we still lack essential information related to their basic properties such as volume, hydraulic properties, interaction with surface water, and water age. These measures are required to ensure sustainable management in order to avoid overexploitation of water resources and to circumvent water scarcity situations where humans and the economy will be stressed due to insufficient water supply. A newly established research collaboration between New Zealand and Europe aims to provide a methodological framework to characterise New Zealand's groundwater aquifers. The SMART project (www.smart-project.info) will rely on existing data sources of regional councils and research institutes and will develop novel measurement techniques that can be applied to large areas with little effort, little acquisition time, and minimal cost. The project aims to synthesise in situ measurements from sensor observation services, ambient noise seismic tomography, real-time fibre optic temperature sensing, novel age tracers, airborne geophysical surveying and satellite remote sensing techniques. Validation of direct and indirect groundwater information will be achieved through use of multiple methods in case study areas and by "ground-truthing" the new methods against existing data obtained from traditional methods (e.g. drilling, aquifer pump testing, river gauging). An important overarching part of the project is the quantification of uncertainty associated with all techniques to be employed. An online Sensor WebGIS prototype will provide the project results and other case study observations (e.g. temperature, precipitation, soil moisture) in as near real-time as possible. These datasets serve as a validation source for the satellite monitoring results and present an actual view on the status of the environment. The web portal will not only visualise near real-time (station based) point measurements but also process these datasets to spatially distributed maps on climatological parameters. The OGC compliant and open source based portal will be developed towards a 3D groundwater interface and inventory. This inventory will be tailored to stakeholder needs (e.g. open access, ease of use, and interoperability with existing systems) which have already been identified through stakeholder consultation processes. The portal prototype runs on a platform-independent web browser ensuring access and visibility to all stakeholders and decision makers at regional and national level.

Agricultural Census 2012: Publishing Mashable GIS Big Data Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mueller, R.

2014-12-01

The 2012 Agricultural Census was released by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) on May 2nd 2014; published on a quinquennial basis covering all facets of American production agriculture. The Agricultural Census is a comprehensive source of uniform published agricultural data for every state and county in the US. This is the first Agricultural Census that is disseminated with web mapping services using REST APIs. USDA developed an open GIS mashable web portal that depicts over 250 maps on Crops and Plants, Economics, Farms, Livestock and Animals, and Operators. These mapping services written in JavaScript replace the traditional static maps published as the Ag Atlas. Web users can now visualize, interact, query, and download the Agricultural Census data in a means not previously discoverable. Stakeholders will now be able to leverage this data for activities such as community planning, agribusiness location suitability analytics, availability of loans/funds, service center locations and staffing, and farm programs and policies. Additional sites serving compatible mashable USDA Big Data web services are as follows: The Food Environment Atlas, The Atlas of Rural and Small-Town America, The Farm Program Atlas, SNAP Data System, CropScape, and VegScape. All portals use a similar data organization scheme of "Categories" and "Maps" providing interactive mashable web services for agricultural stakeholders to exploit.

GENESIS SciFlo: Choreographing Interoperable Web Services on the Grid using a Semantically-Enabled Dataflow Execution Environment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wilson, B. D.; Manipon, G.; Xing, Z.

2007-12-01

The General Earth Science Investigation Suite (GENESIS) project is a NASA-sponsored partnership between the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, academia, and NASA data centers to develop a new suite of Web Services tools to facilitate multi-sensor investigations in Earth System Science. The goal of GENESIS is to enable large-scale, multi-instrument atmospheric science using combined datasets from the AIRS, MODIS, MISR, and GPS sensors. Investigations include cross-comparison of spaceborne climate sensors, cloud spectral analysis, study of upper troposphere-stratosphere water transport, study of the aerosol indirect cloud effect, and global climate model validation. The challenges are to bring together very large datasets, reformat and understand the individual instrument retrievals, co-register or re-grid the retrieved physical parameters, perform computationally-intensive data fusion and data mining operations, and accumulate complex statistics over months to years of data. To meet these challenges, we have developed a Grid computing and dataflow framework, named SciFlo, in which we are deploying a set of versatile and reusable operators for data access, subsetting, registration, mining, fusion, compression, and advanced statistical analysis. SciFlo leverages remote Web Services, called via Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) or REST (one-line) URLs, and the Grid Computing standards (WS-* & Globus Alliance toolkits), and enables scientists to do multi- instrument Earth Science by assembling reusable Web Services and native executables into a distributed computing flow (tree of operators). The SciFlo client & server engines optimize the execution of such distributed data flows and allow the user to transparently find and use datasets and operators without worrying about the actual location of the Grid resources. In particular, SciFlo exploits the wealth of datasets accessible by OpenGIS Consortium (OGC) Web Mapping Servers & Web Coverage Servers (WMS/WCS), and by Open Data Access Protocol (OpenDAP) servers. SciFlo also publishes its own SOAP services for space/time query and subsetting of Earth Science datasets, and automated access to large datasets via lists of (FTP, HTTP, or DAP) URLs which point to on-line HDF or netCDF files. Typical distributed workflows obtain datasets by calling standard WMS/WCS servers or discovering and fetching data granules from ftp sites; invoke remote analysis operators available as SOAP services (interface described by a WSDL document); and merge results into binary containers (netCDF or HDF files) for further analysis using local executable operators. Naming conventions (HDFEOS and CF-1.0 for netCDF) are exploited to automatically understand and read on-line datasets. More interoperable conventions, and broader adoption of existing converntions, are vital if we are to "scale up" automated choreography of Web Services beyond toy applications. Recently, the ESIP Federation sponsored a collaborative activity in which several ESIP members developed some collaborative science scenarios for atmospheric and aerosol science, and then choreographed services from multiple groups into demonstration workflows using the SciFlo engine and a Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) workflow engine. We will discuss the lessons learned from this activity, the need for standardized interfaces (like WMS/WCS), the difficulty in agreeing on even simple XML formats and interfaces, the benefits of doing collaborative science analysis at the "touch of a button" once services are connected, and further collaborations that are being pursued.

Developing a Metadata Infrastructure to facilitate data driven science gateway and to provide Inspire/GEMINI compliance for CLIPC

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mihajlovski, Andrej; Plieger, Maarten; Som de Cerff, Wim; Page, Christian

2016-04-01

The CLIPC project is developing a portal to provide a single point of access for scientific information on climate change. This is made possible through the Copernicus Earth Observation Programme for Europe, which will deliver a new generation of environmental measurements of climate quality. The data about the physical environment which is used to inform climate change policy and adaptation measures comes from several categories: satellite measurements, terrestrial observing systems, model projections and simulations and from re-analyses (syntheses of all available observations constrained with numerical weather prediction systems). These data categories are managed by different communities: CLIPC will provide a single point of access for the whole range of data. The CLIPC portal will provide a number of indicators showing impacts on specific sectors which have been generated using a range of factors selected through structured expert consultation. It will also, as part of the transformation services, allow users to explore the consequences of using different combinations of driving factors which they consider to be of particular relevance to their work or life. The portal will provide information on the scientific quality and pitfalls of such transformations to prevent misleading usage of the results. The CLIPC project will develop an end to end processing chain (indicator tool kit), from comprehensive information on the climate state through to highly aggregated decision relevant products. Indicators of climate change and climate change impact will be provided, and a tool kit to update and post process the collection of indicators will be integrated into the portal. The CLIPC portal has a distributed architecture, making use of OGC services provided by e.g., climate4impact.eu and CEDA. CLIPC has two themes: 1. Harmonized access to climate datasets derived from models, observations and re-analyses 2. A climate impact tool kit to evaluate, rank and aggregate indicators Key is the availability of standardized metadata, describing indicator data and services. This will enable standardization and interoperability between the different distributed services of CLIPC. To disseminate CLIPC indicator data, transformed data products to enable impacts assessments and climate change impact indicators a standardized meta-data infrastructure is provided. The challenge is that compliance of existing metadata to INSPIRE ISO standards and GEMINI standards needs to be extended to further allow the web portal to be generated from the available metadata blueprint. The information provided in the headers of netCDF files available through multiple catalogues, allow us to generate ISO compliant meta data which is in turn used to generate web based interface content, as well as OGC compliant web services such as WCS and WMS for front end and WPS interactions for the scientific users to combine and generate new datasets. The goal of the metadata infrastructure is to provide a blueprint for creating a data driven science portal, generated from the underlying: GIS data, web services and processing infrastructure. In the presentation we will present the results and lessons learned.

Using Mobile App Development Tools to Build a GIS Application

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mital, A.; Catchen, M.; Mital, K.

2014-12-01

Our group designed and built working web, android, and IOS applications using different mapping libraries as bases on which to overlay fire data from NASA. The group originally planned to make app versions for Google Maps, Leaflet, and OpenLayers. However, because the Leaflet library did not properly load on Android, the group focused efforts on the other two mapping libraries. For Google Maps, the group first designed a UI for the web app and made a working version of the app. After updating the source of fire data to one which also provided historical fire data, the design had to be modified to include the extra data. After completing a working version of the web app, the group used webview in android, a built in resource which allowed porting the web app to android without rewriting the code for android. Upon completing this, the group found Apple IOS devices had a similar capability, and so decided to add an IOS app to the project using a function similar to webview. Alongside this effort, the group began implementing an OpenLayers fire map using a simpler UI. This web app was completed fairly quickly relative to Google Maps; however, it did not include functionality such as satellite imagery or searchable locations. The group finished the project with a working android version of the Google Maps based app supporting API levels 14-19 and an OpenLayers based app supporting API levels 8-19, as well as a Google Maps based IOS app supporting both old and new screen formats. This project was implemented by high school and college students under an SGT Inc. STEM internship program

78 FR 14689 - Medicare Program; Extension of the Payment Adjustment for Low-volume Hospitals and the Medicare...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-03-07

... use of a Web-based mapping tool, such as MapQuest, as part of documenting that the hospital meets the... only through the Internet on the CMS Web site at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/AcuteInpatientPPS/01_overview...)'' hospitals with claims in the March 2012 update of the FY 2011 MedPAR file, is also available on the CMS Web...

Valorisation of Como Historical Cadastral Maps Through Modern Web Geoservices

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brovelli, M. A.; Minghini, M.; Zamboni, G.

2012-07-01

Cartographic cultural heritage preserved in worldwide archives is often stored in the original paper version only, thus restricting both the chances of utilization and the range of possible users. The Web C.A.R.T.E. system addressed this issue with regard to the precious cadastral maps preserved at the State Archive of Como. Aim of the project was to improve the visibility and accessibility of this heritage using the latest free and open source tools for processing, cataloguing and web publishing the maps. The resulting architecture should therefore assist the State Archive of Como in managing its cartographic contents. After a pre-processing consisting of digitization and georeferencing steps, maps were provided with metadata, compiled according to the current Italian standards and managed through an ad hoc version of the GeoNetwork Opensource geocatalog software. A dedicated MapFish-based webGIS client, with an optimized version also for mobile platforms, was built for maps publication and 2D navigation. A module for 3D visualization of cadastral maps was finally developed using the NASA World Wind Virtual Globe. Thanks to a temporal slidebar, time was also included in the system producing a 4D Graphical User Interface. The overall architecture was totally built with free and open source software and allows a direct and intuitive consultation of historical maps. Besides the notable advantage of keeping original paper maps intact, the system greatly simplifies the work of the State Archive of Como common users and together widens the same range of users thanks to the modernization of map consultation tools.

Eodataservice.org: Big Data Platform to Enable Multi-disciplinary Information Extraction from Geospatial Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Natali, S.; Mantovani, S.; Barboni, D.; Hogan, P.

2017-12-01

In 1999, US Vice-President Al Gore outlined the concept of `Digital Earth' as a multi-resolution, three-dimensional representation of the planet to find, visualise and make sense of vast amounts of geo- referenced information on physical and social environments, allowing to navigate through space and time, accessing historical and forecast data to support scientists, policy-makers, and any other user. The eodataservice platform (http://eodataservice.org/) implements the Digital Earth Concept: eodatasevice is a cross-domain platform that makes available a large set of multi-year global environmental collections allowing data discovery, visualization, combination, processing and download. It implements a "virtual datacube" approach where data stored on distributed data centers are made available via standardized OGC-compliant interfaces. Dedicated web-based Graphic User Interfaces (based on the ESA-NASA WebWorldWind technology) as well as web-based notebooks (e.g. Jupyter notebook), deskop GIS tools and command line interfaces can be used to access and manipulate the data. The platform can be fully customized on users' needs. So far eodataservice has been used for the following thematic applications: High resolution satellite data distribution Land surface monitoring using SAR surface deformation data Atmosphere, ocean and climate applications Climate-health applications Urban Environment monitoring Safeguard of cultural heritage sites Support to farmers and (re)-insurances in the agriculturés field In the current work, the EO Data Service concept is presented as key enabling technology; furthermore various examples are provided to demonstrate the high level of interdisciplinarity of the platform.

WebEQ: a web-GIS System to collect, display and query data for the management of the earthquake emergency in Central Italy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Carbone, Gianluca; Cosentino, Giuseppe; Pennica, Francesco; Moscatelli, Massimiliano; Stigliano, Francesco

2017-04-01

After the strong earthquakes that hit central Italy in recent months, the Center for Seismic Microzonation and its applications (CentroMS) was commissioned by the Italian Department of Civil Protection to conduct the study of seismic microzonation of the territories affected by the earthquake of August 24, 2016. As part of the activities of microzonation, IGAG CNR has created WebEQ, a management tool of the data that have been acquired by all participants (i.e., more than twenty research institutes and university departments). The data collection was organized and divided into sub-areas, assigned to working groups with multidisciplinary expertise in geology, geophysics and engineering. WebEQ is a web-GIS System that helps all the subjects involved in the data collection activities, through tools aimed at data uploading and validation, and with a simple GIS interface to display, query and download geographic data. WebEQ is contributing to the creation of a large database containing geographical data, both vector and raster, from various sources and types: - Regional Technical Map em Geological and geomorphological maps em Data location maps em Maps of microzones homogeneous in seismic perspective and seismic microzonation maps em National strong motion network location. Data loading is done through simple input masks that ensure consistency with the database structure, avoiding possible errors and helping users to interact with the map through user-friendly tools. All the data are thematized through standardized symbologies and colors (Gruppo di lavoro MS 2008), in order to allow the easy interpretation by all users. The data download tools allow data exchange between working groups and the scientific community to benefit from the activities. The seismic microzonation activities are still ongoing. WebEQ is enabling easy management of large amounts of data and will form a basis for the development of tools for the management of the upcoming seismic emergencies.

PUBLISHING SPILL IMPACT MAPS OVER THE WEB

EPA Science Inventory

This paper discusses the implementaiton of a web-based map publishing technology within a USEPA GIS laboratory. A sophisticated spill travel prediction model for the Ohio River has been installed within the GIS laboratory, and is used by personnel from the NRMRL. The spill simul...

Concept Mapping Your Web Searches: A Design Rationale and Web-Enabled Application

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Y.-J.

2004-01-01

Although it has become very common to use World Wide Web-based information in many educational settings, there has been little research on how to better search and organize Web-based information. This paper discusses the shortcomings of Web search engines and Web browsers as learning environments and describes an alternative Web search environment…

Effective electron-density map improvement and structure validation on a Linux multi-CPU web cluster: The TB Structural Genomics Consortium Bias Removal Web Service.

PubMed

Reddy, Vinod; Swanson, Stanley M; Segelke, Brent; Kantardjieff, Katherine A; Sacchettini, James C; Rupp, Bernhard

2003-12-01

Anticipating a continuing increase in the number of structures solved by molecular replacement in high-throughput crystallography and drug-discovery programs, a user-friendly web service for automated molecular replacement, map improvement, bias removal and real-space correlation structure validation has been implemented. The service is based on an efficient bias-removal protocol, Shake&wARP, and implemented using EPMR and the CCP4 suite of programs, combined with various shell scripts and Fortran90 routines. The service returns improved maps, converted data files and real-space correlation and B-factor plots. User data are uploaded through a web interface and the CPU-intensive iteration cycles are executed on a low-cost Linux multi-CPU cluster using the Condor job-queuing package. Examples of map improvement at various resolutions are provided and include model completion and reconstruction of absent parts, sequence correction, and ligand validation in drug-target structures.

G2S: a web-service for annotating genomic variants on 3D protein structures.

PubMed

Wang, Juexin; Sheridan, Robert; Sumer, S Onur; Schultz, Nikolaus; Xu, Dong; Gao, Jianjiong

2018-06-01

Accurately mapping and annotating genomic locations on 3D protein structures is a key step in structure-based analysis of genomic variants detected by recent large-scale sequencing efforts. There are several mapping resources currently available, but none of them provides a web API (Application Programming Interface) that supports programmatic access. We present G2S, a real-time web API that provides automated mapping of genomic variants on 3D protein structures. G2S can align genomic locations of variants, protein locations, or protein sequences to protein structures and retrieve the mapped residues from structures. G2S API uses REST-inspired design and it can be used by various clients such as web browsers, command terminals, programming languages and other bioinformatics tools for bringing 3D structures into genomic variant analysis. The webserver and source codes are freely available at https://g2s.genomenexus.org. g2s@genomenexus.org. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

A SOA broker solution for standard discovery and access services: the GI-cat framework

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Boldrini, Enrico

2010-05-01

GI-cat ideal users are data providers or service providers within the geoscience community. The former have their data already available through an access service (e.g. an OGC Web Service) and would have it published through a standard catalog service, in a seamless way. The latter would develop a catalog broker and let users query and access different geospatial resources through one or more standard interfaces and Application Profiles (AP) (e.g. OGC CSW ISO AP, CSW ebRIM/EO AP, etc.). GI-cat actually implements a broker components (i.e. a middleware service) which carries out distribution and mediation functionalities among "well-adopted" catalog interfaces and data access protocols. GI-cat also publishes different discovery interfaces: the OGC CSW ISO and ebRIM Application Profiles (the latter coming with support for the EO and CIM extension packages) and two different OpenSearch interfaces developed in order to explore Web 2.0 possibilities. An extended interface is also available to exploit all available GI-cat features, such as interruptible incremental queries and queries feedback. Interoperability tests performed in the context of different projects have also pointed out the importance to enforce compatibility with existing and wide-spread tools of the open source community (e.g. GeoNetwork and Deegree catalogs), which was then achieved. Based on a service-oriented framework of modular components, GI-cat can effectively be customized and tailored to support different deployment scenarios. In addition to the distribution functionality an harvesting approach has been lately experimented, allowing the user to switch between a distributed and a local search giving thus more possibilities to support different deployment scenarios. A configurator tool is available in order to enable an effective high level configuration of the broker service. A specific geobrowser was also naturally developed, for demonstrating the advanced GI-cat functionalities. This client, called GI-go, is an example of the possible applications which may be built on top of the GI-cat broker component. GI-go allows discovering and browsing of the available datasets, retrieving and evaluating their description and performing distributed queries according to any combination of the following criteria: geographic area, temporal interval, topic of interest (free-text and/or keyword selection are allowed) and data source (i.e. where, when, what, who). The results set of a query (e.g. datasets metadata) are then displayed in an incremental way leveraging the asynchronous interactions approach implemented by GI-cat. This feature allows the user to access the intermediate query results. Query interruption and feedback features are also provided to the user. Alternatively, user may perform a browsing task by selecting a catalog resource from the current configuration and navigate through its aggregated and/or leaf datasets. In both cases datasets metadata, expressed according to ISO 19139 (and also Dublin Core and ebRIM if available), are displayed for download, along with a resource portrayal and actual data access (when this is meaningful and possible). The GI-cat distributed catalog service has been successfully deployed and experimented in the framework of different projects and initiative, including the SeaDataNet FP6 project, GEOSS IP3 (Interoperability Process Pilot Project), GEOSS AIP-2 (Architectural Implementation Project - Phase 2), FP7 GENESI-DR, CNR GIIDA, FP7 EUROGEOSS and ESA HMA project.

Web Map Services (WMS) Global Mosaic

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Percivall, George; Plesea, Lucian

2003-01-01

The WMS Global Mosaic provides access to imagery of the global landmass using an open standard for web mapping. The seamless image is a mosaic of Landsat 7 scenes; geographically-accurate with 30 and 15 meter resolutions. By using the OpenGIS Web Map Service (WMS) interface, any organization can use the global mosaic as a layer in their geospatial applications. Based on a trade study, an implementation approach was chosen that extends a previously developed WMS hosting a Landsat 5 CONUS mosaic developed by JPL. The WMS Global Mosaic supports the NASA Geospatial Interoperability Office goal of providing an integrated digital representation of the Earth, widely accessible for humanity's critical decisions.

Official crime data versus collaborative crime mapping at a Brazilian city

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brito, P. L.; Jesus, E. G. V.; Sant'Ana, R. M. S.; Martins, C.; Delgado, J. P. M.; Fernandes, V. O.

2014-11-01

In July of 2013 a group of undergraduate students from the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil, published a collaborative web map called "Where I Was Robbed". Their initial efforts in publicizing their web map were restricted to announce it at a local radio as a tool of social interest. In two months the map had almost 10.000 reports, 155 reports per day and people from more the 350 cities had already reported a crime. The present study consists in an investigation about this collaborative web map spatial correlation to official robbery data registered at the Secretary of Public Safety database, for the city of Salvador, Bahia. Kernel density estimator combined with map algebra was used to the investigation. Spatial correlations with official robbery data for the city of Salvador were not found initially, but after standardizing collaborative data and mining official registers, both data pointed at very similar areas as the main hot spots for pedestrian robbery. Both areas are located at two of the most economical active areas of the city, although web map crimes reports were more concentrated in an area with higher income population. This results and discussions indicates that this collaborative application is been used mainly by mid class and upper class parcel of the city population, but can still provide significant information on public safety priority areas. Therefore, extended divulgation, on local papers, radio and TV, of the collaborative crime map application and partnership with official agencies are strongly recommended.

NaviCom: a web application to create interactive molecular network portraits using multi-level omics data.

PubMed

Dorel, Mathurin; Viara, Eric; Barillot, Emmanuel; Zinovyev, Andrei; Kuperstein, Inna

2017-01-01

Human diseases such as cancer are routinely characterized by high-throughput molecular technologies, and multi-level omics data are accumulated in public databases at increasing rate. Retrieval and visualization of these data in the context of molecular network maps can provide insights into the pattern of regulation of molecular functions reflected by an omics profile. In order to make this task easy, we developed NaviCom, a Python package and web platform for visualization of multi-level omics data on top of biological network maps. NaviCom is bridging the gap between cBioPortal, the most used resource of large-scale cancer omics data and NaviCell, a data visualization web service that contains several molecular network map collections. NaviCom proposes several standardized modes of data display on top of molecular network maps, allowing addressing specific biological questions. We illustrate how users can easily create interactive network-based cancer molecular portraits via NaviCom web interface using the maps of Atlas of Cancer Signalling Network (ACSN) and other maps. Analysis of these molecular portraits can help in formulating a scientific hypothesis on the molecular mechanisms deregulated in the studied disease. NaviCom is available at https://navicom.curie.fr. © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press.

Participatory GIS in design of the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology campus web map and spatial analysis of campus area quality

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Blachowski, Jan; Łuczak, Jakub; Zagrodnik, Paulina

2018-01-01

Public participation geographic information system (GIS) and participatory mapping data collection methods are means that enhance capacity in generating, managing, and communicating spatial information in various fields ranging from local planning to environmental management. In this study these methods have been used in two ways. The first one, to gather information on the additional functionality of campus web map expected by its potential users, i.e. students, staff and visitors, through web based survey. The second, to collect geographically referenced information on campus areas that are liked and disliked in a geo-survey carried out with ArcGIS Online GeoForm Application. The results of the first survey were used to map facilities such as: bicycle infrastructure, building entrances, wheelchair accessible infrastructure and benches. The results of the second one, to analyse the most and the least attractive parts of the campus with heat and hot spot analyses in GIS. In addition, the answers have been studied with regard to the visual and functional aspects of campus area raised in the survey. The thematic layers developed in the results of field mapping and geoprocessing of geosurvey data were included in the campus web map project. The paper describes the applied methodology of data collection, processing, analysis, interpretation and geovisualisation.

Caching strategies for improving performance of web-based Geographic applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, M.; Brodzik, M.; Collins, J. A.; Lewis, S.; Oldenburg, J.

2012-12-01

The NASA Operation IceBridge mission collects airborne remote sensing measurements to bridge the gap between NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) mission and the upcoming ICESat-2 mission. The IceBridge Data Portal from the National Snow and Ice Data Center provides an intuitive web interface for accessing IceBridge mission observations and measurements. Scientists and users usually do not have knowledge about the individual campaigns but are interested in data collected in a specific place. We have developed a high-performance map interface to allow users to quickly zoom to an area of interest and see any Operation IceBridge overflights. The map interface consists of two layers: the user can pan and zoom on the base map layer; the flight line layer that overlays the base layer provides all the campaign missions that intersect with the current map view. The user can click on the flight campaigns and download the data as needed. The OpenGIS® Web Map Service Interface Standard (WMS) provides a simple HTTP interface for requesting geo-registered map images from one or more distributed geospatial databases. Web Feature Service (WFS) provides an interface allowing requests for geographical features across the web using platform-independent calls. OpenLayers provides vector support (points, polylines and polygons) to build a WMS/WFS client for displaying both layers on the screen. Map Server, an open source development environment for building spatially enabled internet applications, is serving the WMS and WFS spatial data to OpenLayers. Early releases of the portal displayed unacceptably poor load time performance for flight lines and the base map tiles. This issue was caused by long response times from the map server in generating all map tiles and flight line vectors. We resolved the issue by implementing various caching strategies on top of the WMS and WFS services, including the use of Squid (www.squid-cache.org) to cache frequently-used content. Our presentation includes the architectural design of the application, and how we use OpenLayers, WMS and WFS with Squid to build a responsive web application capable of efficiently displaying geospatial data to allow the user to quickly interact with the displayed information. We describe the design, implementation and performance improvement of our caching strategies, and the tools and techniques developed to assist our data caching strategies.

The Adversarial Route Analysis Tool: A Web Application

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Casson, William H. Jr.

2012-08-02

The Adversarial Route Analysis Tool is a type of Google maps for adversaries. It's a web-based Geospatial application similar to Google Maps. It helps the U.S. government plan operations that predict where an adversary might be. It's easily accessible and maintainble and it's simple to use without much training.

Effects of Web-Based Support for the Construction of Competence Maps

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stoof, Angela; Martens, Rob L.; van Merrienboer, Jeroen J. G.

2006-01-01

Educationalists experience difficulties with the construction of competence maps that describe final attainment levels of educational programs. Web-based support was developed with three supportive aids: A construction kit, a phenomenarium, and an information bank. Each supportive aid was expected to improve perceived process and product quality…

PROPAGATOR: a synchronous stochastic wildfire propagation model with distributed computation engine

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

D´Andrea, M.; Fiorucci, P.; Biondi, G.; Negro, D.

2012-04-01

PROPAGATOR is a stochastic model of forest fire spread, useful as a rapid method for fire risk assessment. The model is based on a 2D stochastic cellular automaton. The domain of simulation is discretized using a square regular grid with cell size of 20x20 meters. The model uses high-resolution information such as elevation and type of vegetation on the ground. Input parameters are wind direction, speed and the ignition point of fire. The simulation of fire propagation is done via a stochastic mechanism of propagation between a burning cell and a non-burning cell belonging to its neighbourhood, i.e. the 8 adjacent cells in the rectangular grid. The fire spreads from one cell to its neighbours with a certain base probability, defined using vegetation types of two adjacent cells, and modified by taking into account the slope between them, wind direction and speed. The simulation is synchronous, and takes into account the time needed by the burning fire to cross each cell. Vegetation cover, slope, wind speed and direction affect the fire-propagation speed from cell to cell. The model simulates several mutually independent realizations of the same stochastic fire propagation process. Each of them provides a map of the area burned at each simulation time step. Propagator simulates self-extinction of the fire, and the propagation process continues until at least one cell of the domain is burning in each realization. The output of the model is a series of maps representing the probability of each cell of the domain to be affected by the fire at each time-step: these probabilities are obtained by evaluating the relative frequency of ignition of each cell with respect to the complete set of simulations. Propagator is available as a module in the OWIS (Opera Web Interfaces) system. The model simulation runs on a dedicated server and it is remote controlled from the client program, NAZCA. Ignition points of the simulation can be selected directly in a high-resolution, three-dimensional graphical representation of the Italian territory within NAZCA. The other simulation parameters, namely wind speed and direction, number of simulations, computing grid size and temporal resolution, can be selected from within the program interface. The output of the simulation is showed in real-time during the simulation, and are also available off-line and on the DEWETRA system, a Web GIS-based system for environmental risk assessment, developed according to OGC-INSPIRE standards. The model execution is very fast, providing a full prevision for the scenario in few minutes, and can be useful for real-time active fire management and suppression.

Validating the usability of an interactive Earth Observation based web service for landslide investigation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Albrecht, Florian; Weinke, Elisabeth; Eisank, Clemens; Vecchiotti, Filippo; Hölbling, Daniel; Friedl, Barbara; Kociu, Arben

2017-04-01

Regional authorities and infrastructure maintainers in almost all mountainous regions of the Earth need detailed and up-to-date landslide inventories for hazard and risk management. Landslide inventories usually are compiled through ground surveys and manual image interpretation following landslide triggering events. We developed a web service that uses Earth Observation (EO) data to support the mapping and monitoring tasks for improving the collection of landslide information. The planned validation of the EO-based web service does not only cover the analysis of the achievable landslide information quality but also the usability and user friendliness of the user interface. The underlying validation criteria are based on the user requirements and the defined tasks and aims in the work description of the FFG project Land@Slide (EO-based landslide mapping: from methodological developments to automated web-based information delivery). The service will be validated in collaboration with stakeholders, decision makers and experts. Users are requested to test the web service functionality and give feedback with a web-based questionnaire by following the subsequently described workflow. The users will operate the web-service via the responsive user interface and can extract landslide information from EO data. They compare it to reference data for quality assessment, for monitoring changes and for assessing landslide-affected infrastructure. An overview page lets the user explore a list of example projects with resulting landslide maps and mapping workflow descriptions. The example projects include mapped landslides in several test areas in Austria and Northern Italy. Landslides were extracted from high resolution (HR) and very high resolution (VHR) satellite imagery, such as Landsat, Sentinel-2, SPOT-5, WorldView-2/3 or Pléiades. The user can create his/her own project by selecting available satellite imagery or by uploading new data. Subsequently, a new landslide extraction workflow can be initiated through the functionality that the web service provides: (1) a segmentation of the image into spectrally homogeneous objects, (2) a classification of the objects into landslide and non-landslide areas and (3) an editing tool for the manual refinement of extracted landslide boundaries. In addition, the user interface of the web service provides tools that enable the user (4) to perform a monitoring that identifies changes between landslide maps of different points in time, (5) to perform a validation of the landslide maps by comparing them to reference data, and (6) to perform an assessment of affected infrastructure by comparing the landslide maps to respective infrastructure data. After exploring the web service functionality, the users are asked to fill in the online validation protocol in form of a questionnaire in order to provide their feedback. Concerning usability, we evaluate how intuitive the web service functionality can be operated, how well the integrated help information guides the users, and what kind of background information, e.g. remote sensing concepts and theory, is necessary for a practitioner to fully exploit the value of EO data. The feedback will be used for improving the user interface and for the implementation of additional functionality.

A spatial information crawler for OpenGIS WFS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jiang, Jun; Yang, Chong-jun; Ren, Ying-chao

2008-10-01

The growth of the internet makes it non-trivial to search for the accuracy information efficiently. Topical crawler, which is aiming at a certain area, attracts more and more intention now because it can help people to find out what they need. Furthermore, with the OpenGIS WFS (Web Feature Service) Specification developed by OGC (Open GIS Consortium), much more geospatial data providers adopt this protocol to publish their data on the internet. In this case, a crawler which is aiming at the WFS servers can help people to find the geospatial data from WFS servers. In this paper, we propose a prototype system of a WFS crawler based on the OpenGIS WFS Specification. The crawler architecture, working principles, and detailed function of each component are introduced. This crawler is capable of discovering WFS servers dynamically, saving and updating the service contents of the servers. The data collect by the crawler can be supported to a geospatial data search engine as its data source.

Sensor Alerting Capability

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Henriksson, Jakob; Bermudez, Luis; Satapathy, Goutam

2013-04-01

There is a large amount of sensor data generated today by various sensors, from in-situ buoys to mobile underwater gliders. Providing sensor data to the users through standardized services, language and data model is the promise of OGC's Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) initiative. As the amount of data grows it is becoming difficult for data providers, planners and managers to ensure reliability of data and services and to monitor critical data changes. Intelligent Automation Inc. (IAI) is developing a net-centric alerting capability to address these issues. The capability is built on Sensor Observation Services (SOSs), which is used to collect and monitor sensor data. The alerts can be configured at the service level and at the sensor data level. For example it can alert for irregular data delivery events or a geo-temporal statistic of sensor data crossing a preset threshold. The capability provides multiple delivery mechanisms and protocols, including traditional techniques such as email and RSS. With this capability decision makers can monitor their assets and data streams, correct failures or be alerted about a coming phenomena.

Geospatial Brokering - Challenges and Future Directions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

White, C. E.

2012-12-01

An important feature of many brokers is to facilitate straightforward human access to scientific data while maintaining programmatic access to it for system solutions. Standards-based protocols are critical for this, and there are a number of protocols to choose from. In this discussion, we will present a web application solution that leverages certain protocols - e.g., OGC CSW, REST, and OpenSearch - to provide programmatic as well as human access to geospatial resources. We will also discuss managing resources to reduce duplication yet increase discoverability, federated search solutions, and architectures that combine human-friendly interfaces with powerful underlying data management. The changing requirements witnessed in brokering solutions over time, our recent experience participating in the EarthCube brokering hack-a-thon, and evolving interoperability standards provide insight to future technological and philosophical directions planned for geospatial broker solutions. There has been much change over the past decade, but with the unprecedented data collaboration of recent years, in many ways the challenges and opportunities are just beginning.

Browsing and Visualization of Linked Environmental Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nikolaou, Charalampos; Kyzirakos, Kostis; Bereta, Konstantina; Dogani, Kallirroi; Koubarakis, Manolis

2014-05-01

Linked environmental data has started to appear on the Web as environmental researchers make use of technologies such as ontologies, RDF, and SPARQL. Many of these datasets have an important geospatial and temporal dimension. The same is true also for the Web of data that is being rapidly populated not only with geospatial information, but also with temporal information. As the real-world entities represented in linked geospatial datasets evolve over time, the datasets themselves get updated and both the spatial and the temporal dimension of data become significant for users. For example, in the Earth Observation and Environment domains, data is constantly produced by satellite sensors and is associated with metadata containing, among others, temporal attributes, such as the time that an image was acquired. In addition, the acquisitions are considered to be valid for specific periods of time, for example until they get updated by new acquisitions. Satellite acquisitions might be utilized in applications such as the CORINE Land Cover programme operated by the European Environment Agency that makes available as a cartographic product the land cover of European areas. Periodically CORINE publishes the changes in the land cover of these areas in the form of changesets. Tools for exploiting the abundance of geospatial information have also started to emerge. However, these tools are designed for browsing a single data source, while in addition they cannot represent the temporal dimension. This is for two reasons: a) the lack of an implementation of a data model and a query language with temporal features covering the various semantics associated with the representation of time (e.g., valid and user-defined), and b) the lack of a standard temporal extension of RDF that would allow practitioners to utilize when publishing RDF data. Recently, we presented the temporal features of the data model stRDF, the query language stSPARQL, and their implementation in the geospatial RDF store Strabon (http://www.strabon.di.uoa.gr/) which, apart from querying geospatial information, can also be used to query both the valid time of a triple and user-defined time. With the aim of filling the aforementioned gaps and going beyond data exploration to map creation and sharing, we have designed and developed SexTant (http://sextant.di.uoa.gr/). SexTant can be used to produce thematic maps by layering spatiotemporal information which exists in a number of data sources ranging from standard SPARQL endpoints, to SPARQL endpoints following the standard GeoSPARQL defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) for the modelling and querying of geospatial information, and other well-adopted geospatial file formats, such as KML and GeoJSON. In this work, we pick some real use cases from the environment domain to showcase the usefulness of SexTant to the environmental studies of a domain expert by presenting its browsing and visualization capabilities using a number of environmental datasets that we have published as linked data and also other geospatial data sources publicly available on the Web, such as KML files.

Comparing cosmic web classifiers using information theory

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Leclercq, Florent; Lavaux, Guilhem; Wandelt, Benjamin

We introduce a decision scheme for optimally choosing a classifier, which segments the cosmic web into different structure types (voids, sheets, filaments, and clusters). Our framework, based on information theory, accounts for the design aims of different classes of possible applications: (i) parameter inference, (ii) model selection, and (iii) prediction of new observations. As an illustration, we use cosmographic maps of web-types in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to assess the relative performance of the classifiers T-WEB, DIVA and ORIGAMI for: (i) analyzing the morphology of the cosmic web, (ii) discriminating dark energy models, and (iii) predicting galaxy colors. Ourmore » study substantiates a data-supported connection between cosmic web analysis and information theory, and paves the path towards principled design of analysis procedures for the next generation of galaxy surveys. We have made the cosmic web maps, galaxy catalog, and analysis scripts used in this work publicly available.« less

Usability evaluation of cloud-based mapping tools for the display of very large datasets

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Stotz, Nicole Marie

The elasticity and on-demand nature of cloud services have made it easier to create web maps. Users only need access to a web browser and the Internet to utilize cloud based web maps, eliminating the need for specialized software. To encourage a wide variety of users, a map must be well designed; usability is a very important concept in designing a web map. Fusion Tables, a new product from Google, is one example of newer cloud-based distributed GIS services. It allows for easy spatial data manipulation and visualization, within the Google Maps framework. ESRI has also introduced a cloud based version of their software, called ArcGIS Online, built on Amazon's EC2 cloud. Utilizing a user-centered design framework, two prototype maps were created with data from the San Diego East County Economic Development Council. One map was built on Fusion Tables, and another on ESRI's ArcGIS Online. A usability analysis was conducted and used to compare both map prototypes in term so of design and functionality. Load tests were also ran, and performance metrics gathered on both map prototypes. The usability analysis was taken by 25 geography students, and consisted of time based tasks and questions on map design and functionality. Survey participants completed the time based tasks for the Fusion Tables map prototype quicker than those of the ArcGIS Online map prototype. While response was generally positive towards the design and functionality of both prototypes, overall the Fusion Tables map prototype was preferred. For the load tests, the data set was broken into 22 groups for a total of 44 tests. While the Fusion Tables map prototype performed more efficiently than the ArcGIS Online prototype, differences are almost unnoticeable. A SWOT analysis was conducted for each prototype. The results from this research point to the Fusion Tables map prototype. A redesign of this prototype would incorporate design suggestions from the usability survey, while some functionality would need to be dropped. This is a free product and would therefore be the best option if cost is an issue, but this map may not be supported in the future.

Enabling the development of Community Extensions to GI-cat - the SIB-ESS-C case study

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bigagli, L.; Meier, N.; Boldrini, E.; Gerlach, R.

2009-04-01

GI-cat is a Java software package that implements discovery and access services for disparate geospatial resources. An instance of GI-cat provides a single point of service for querying and accessing remote, as well as local, heterogeneous sources of geospatial information, either through standard interfaces, or taking advantage of GI-cat advanced features, such as incremental responses, query feedback, etc. GI-cat supports a number of de-iure and de-facto standards, but can also be extended to additional community catalog/inventory services, by defining appropriate mediation components. The GI-cat and the SIB-ESS-C development teams collaborated in the development of a mediator to the Siberian Earth Science System Cluster (SIB-ESS-C), a web-based infrastructure to support the communities of environmental and Earth System research in Siberia. This activity resulted in the identification of appropriate technologies and internal mechanisms supporting the development of GI-cat extensions, that are the object of this work. GI-cat is actually built up of a modular framework of SOA components, that can be variously arranged to fit the needs of a community of users. For example, a particular GI-cat instance may be configured to provide discovery functionalities onto an OGC WMS; or to adapt a THREDDS catalog to the standard OGC CSW interface; or to merge a number of CDI repositories into a single, more efficient catalog. The flexibility of GI-cat framework is achieved thanks to its design, that follows the Tree of Responsibility (ToR) pattern and the Uniform Pipe and Filter architectural style. This approach allows the building of software blocks that can be flexibly reused and composed in multiple ways. In fact, the components that make up any GI-cat configuration all implement two common interfaces (i.e. IChainNode and ICatalogService), that support chaining one component to another . Hence, it would suffice to implement those interfaces (plus an appropriate factory class: the mechanism used to create GI-cat components) to support a custom community catalog/inventory service in GI-cat. In general, all the terminal nodes of a GI-cat configuration chain are in charge of mediating between the GI-cat common interfaces and a backend, so we implemented a default behavior in an abstract class, termed Accessor, to be more easily subclassed. Moreover, we identified several typical backend scenarios and provided specialized Accessor subclasses, even simpler to implement. For example, in case of a coarse-grained backend service, that responds its data all at once, a specialized Accessor can retrieve the whole content the first time, and subsequently browse/query the local copy of the data. This was the approach followed for the development of SibesscAccessor. The SIB-ESS-C case study is also noticeable because it requires mediating between the relational and the semi-structured data models. In fact, SIB-ESS-C data are stored in a relational database, to provide performant access even to huge amounts of data. The SibesscAccessor is in charge of establishing a JDBC connection to the database, reading the data by means of SQL statements, creating Java objects according to the ISO 19115 data model, and marshalling the resulting information to an XML document. During the implementation of the SibesscAccessor, the mix of technologies and deployment environments and the geographical distribution of the development teams turned out to be important issues. To solve them, we relied on technologies and tools for collaborative software development: the Maven build system, the SVN version control system, the XPlanner project planning and tracking tool, and of course VOIP tools. Moreover, we shipped the Accessor Development Kit (ADK) Java library, containing the classes needed for extending GI-cat to custom community catalog/inventory services and other supporting material (documentation, best-practices, examples). The ADK is distributed as a Maven artifact, to simplify dependency management and ease the common tasks of testing, packaging, etc. The SibesscAccessor was the first custom addition to the set of GI-cat accessors. Later, also the so-called Standard Accessors library has been refactored onto the ADK. The SIB-ESS-C case study also gave us the opportunity to refine our policies for collaborative software development. Besides, several improvements were made to the overall GI-cat data model and framework. Finally, the SIB-ESS-C development team developed a GI-cat web client by means of Web 2.0 technologies (JavaScript, XML, HTML, CSS, etc.) The client can easily be integrated in any HTML context on any web page. The web GUI allows the user to define requests to GI-cat by entering parameter strings and/or selecting an area of interest on a map. The client sends its request to GI-cat via SOAP through HTTP-POST, parses GI-cat SOAP responses and presents user-friendly information on a web page.

Web GIS in practice VIII: HTML5 and the canvas element for interactive online mapping.

PubMed

Boulos, Maged N Kamel; Warren, Jeffrey; Gong, Jianya; Yue, Peng

2010-03-03

HTML5 is being developed as the next major revision of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), the core markup language of the World Wide Web. It aims at reducing the need for proprietary, plug-in-based rich Internet application (RIA) technologies such as Adobe Flash. The canvas element is part of HTML5 and is used to draw graphics using scripting (e.g., JavaScript). This paper introduces Cartagen, an open-source, vector-based, client-side framework for rendering plug-in-free, offline-capable, interactive maps in native HTML5 on a wide range of Web browsers and mobile phones. Cartagen was developed at MIT Media Lab's Design Ecology group. Potential applications of the technology as an enabler for participatory online mapping include mapping real-time air pollution, citizen reporting, and disaster response, among many other possibilities.

EnviroAtlas - Austin, TX - Demographics by Block Group Web Service

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

This EnviroAtlas web service supports research and online mapping activities related to EnviroAtlas (https://enviroatlas.epa.gov/EnviroAtlas). This EnviroAtlas dataset is a summary of key demographic groups for the EnviroAtlas community. This dataset was produced by the US EPA to support research and online mapping activities related to EnviroAtlas. EnviroAtlas (https://www.epa.gov/enviroatlas) allows the user to interact with a web-based, easy-to-use, mapping application to view and analyze multiple ecosystem services for the contiguous United States. The dataset is available as downloadable data (https://edg.epa.gov/data/Public/ORD/EnviroAtlas) or as an EnviroAtlas map service. Additional descriptive information about each attribute in this dataset can be found in its associated EnviroAtlas Fact Sheet (https://www.epa.gov/enviroatlas/enviroatlas-fact-sheets).

EnviroAtlas - Metrics for Austin, TX

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

This EnviroAtlas web service supports research and online mapping activities related to EnviroAtlas (https://enviroatlas.epa.gov/EnviroAtlas). The layers in this web service depict ecosystem services at the census block group level for the community of Austin, Texas. These layers illustrate the ecosystems and natural resources that are associated with clean air (https://enviroatlas.epa.gov/arcgis/rest/services/Communities/ESC_ATX_CleanAir/MapServer); clean and plentiful water (https://enviroatlas.epa.gov/arcgis/rest/services/Communities/ESC_ATX_CleanPlentifulWater/MapServer); natural hazard mitigation (https://enviroatlas.epa.gov/arcgis/rest/services/Communities/ESC_ATX_NaturalHazardMitigation/MapServer); climate stabilization (https://enviroatlas.epa.gov/arcgis/rest/services/Communities/ESC_ATX_ClimateStabilization/MapServer); food, fuel, and materials (https://enviroatlas.epa.gov/arcgis/rest/services/Communities/ESC_ATX_FoodFuelMaterials/MapServer); recreation, culture, and aesthetics (https://enviroatlas.epa.gov/arcgis/rest/services/Communities/ESC_ATX_RecreationCultureAesthetics/MapServer); and biodiversity conservation (https://enviroatlas.epa.gov/arcgis/rest/services/Communities/ESC_ATX_BiodiversityConservation/MapServer), and factors that place stress on those resources. EnviroAtlas allows the user to interact with a web-based, easy-to-use, mapping application to view and analyze multiple ecosystem services for the conterminous United States as well as de

GDR (Genome Database for Rosaceae): integrated web-database for Rosaceae genomics and genetics data

PubMed Central

Jung, Sook; Staton, Margaret; Lee, Taein; Blenda, Anna; Svancara, Randall; Abbott, Albert; Main, Dorrie

2008-01-01

The Genome Database for Rosaceae (GDR) is a central repository of curated and integrated genetics and genomics data of Rosaceae, an economically important family which includes apple, cherry, peach, pear, raspberry, rose and strawberry. GDR contains annotated databases of all publicly available Rosaceae ESTs, the genetically anchored peach physical map, Rosaceae genetic maps and comprehensively annotated markers and traits. The ESTs are assembled to produce unigene sets of each genus and the entire Rosaceae. Other annotations include putative function, microsatellites, open reading frames, single nucleotide polymorphisms, gene ontology terms and anchored map position where applicable. Most of the published Rosaceae genetic maps can be viewed and compared through CMap, the comparative map viewer. The peach physical map can be viewed using WebFPC/WebChrom, and also through our integrated GDR map viewer, which serves as a portal to the combined genetic, transcriptome and physical mapping information. ESTs, BACs, markers and traits can be queried by various categories and the search result sites are linked to the mapping visualization tools. GDR also provides online analysis tools such as a batch BLAST/FASTA server for the GDR datasets, a sequence assembly server and microsatellite and primer detection tools. GDR is available at http://www.rosaceae.org. PMID:17932055

A resource-oriented architecture for a Geospatial Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mazzetti, Paolo; Nativi, Stefano

2010-05-01

In this presentation we discuss some architectural issues on the design of an architecture for a Geospatial Web, that is an information system for sharing geospatial resources according to the Web paradigm. The success of the Web in building a multi-purpose information space, has raised questions about the possibility of adopting the same approach for systems dedicated to the sharing of more specific resources, such as the geospatial information, that is information characterized by spatial/temporal reference. To this aim an investigation on the nature of the Web and on the validity of its paradigm for geospatial resources is required. The Web was born in the early 90's to provide "a shared information space through which people and machines could communicate" [Berners-Lee 1996]. It was originally built around a small set of specifications (e.g. URI, HTTP, HTML, etc.); however, in the last two decades several other technologies and specifications have been introduced in order to extend its capabilities. Most of them (e.g. the SOAP family) actually aimed to transform the Web in a generic Distributed Computing Infrastructure. While these efforts were definitely successful enabling the adoption of service-oriented approaches for machine-to-machine interactions supporting complex business processes (e.g. for e-Government and e-Business applications), they do not fit in the original concept of the Web. In the year 2000, R. T. Fielding, one of the designers of the original Web specifications, proposes a new architectural style for distributed systems, called REST (Representational State Transfer), aiming to capture the fundamental characteristics of the Web as it was originally conceived [Fielding 2000]. In this view, the nature of the Web lies not so much in the technologies, as in the way they are used. Maintaining the Web architecture conform to the REST style would then assure the scalability, extensibility and low entry barrier of the original Web. On the contrary, systems using the same Web technologies and specifications but according to a different architectural style, despite their usefulness, should not be considered part of the Web. If the REST style captures the significant Web characteristics, then, in order to build a Geospatial Web it is necessary that its architecture satisfies all the REST constraints. One of them is of particular importance: the adoption of a Uniform Interface. It prescribes that all the geospatial resources must be accessed through the same interface; moreover according to the REST style this interface must satisfy four further constraints: a) identification of resources; b) manipulation of resources through representations; c) self-descriptive messages; and, d) hypermedia as the engine of application state. In the Web, the uniform interface provides basic operations which are meaningful for generic resources. They typically implement the CRUD pattern (Create-Retrieve-Update-Delete) which demonstrated to be flexible and powerful in several general-purpose contexts (e.g. filesystem management, SQL for database management systems, etc.). Restricting the scope to a subset of resources it would be possible to identify other generic actions which are meaningful for all of them. For example for geospatial resources, subsetting, resampling, interpolation and coordinate reference systems transformations functionalities are candidate functionalities for a uniform interface. However an investigation is needed to clarify the semantics of those actions for different resources, and consequently if they can really ascend the role of generic interface operation. Concerning the point a), (identification of resources), it is required that every resource addressable in the Geospatial Web has its own identifier (e.g. a URI). This allows to implement citation and re-use of resources, simply providing the URI. OPeNDAP and KVP encodings of OGC data access services specifications might provide a basis for it. Concerning point b) (manipulation of resources through representations), the Geospatial Web poses several issues. In fact, while the Web mainly handles semi-structured information, in the Geospatial Web the information is typically structured with several possible data models (e.g. point series, gridded coverages, trajectories, etc.) and encodings. A possibility would be to simplify the interchange formats, choosing to support a subset of data models and format(s). This is what actually the Web designers did choosing to define a common format for hypermedia (HTML), although the underlying protocol would be generic. Concerning point c), self-descriptive messages, the exchanged messages should describe themselves and their content. This would not be actually a major issue considering the effort put in recent years on geospatial metadata models and specifications. The point d), hypermedia as the engine of application state, is actually where the Geospatial Web would mainly differ from existing geospatial information sharing systems. In fact the existing systems typically adopt a service-oriented architecture, where applications are built as a single service or as a workflow of services. On the other hand, in the Geospatial Web, applications should be built following the path between interconnected resources. The link between resources should be made explicit as hyperlinks. The adoption of Semantic Web solutions would allow to define not only the existence of a link between two resources, but also the nature of the link. The implementation of a Geospatial Web would allow to build an information system with the same characteristics of the Web sharing its points-of-strength and weaknesses. The main advantages would be the following: • The user would interact with the Geospatial Web according to the well-known Web navigation paradigm. This would lower the barrier to the access to geospatial applications for non-specialists (e.g. the success of Google Maps and other Web mapping applications); • Successful Web and Web 2.0 applications - search engines, feeds, social network - could be integrated/replicated in the Geospatial Web; The main drawbacks would be the following: • The Uniform Interface simplifies the overall system architecture (e.g. no service registry, and service descriptors required), but moves the complexity to the data representation. Moreover since the interface must stay generic, it results really simple and therefore complex interactions would require several transfers. • In the geospatial domain one of the most valuable resources are processes (e.g. environmental models). How they can be modeled as resources accessed through the common interface is an open issue. Taking into account advantages and drawback it seems that a Geospatial Web would be useful, but its use would be limited to specific use-cases not covering all the possible applications. The Geospatial Web architecture could be partly based on existing specifications, while other aspects need investigation. References [Berners-Lee 1996] T. Berners-Lee, "WWW: Past, present, and future". IEEE Computer, 29(10), Oct. 1996, pp. 69-77. [Fielding 2000] Fielding, R. T. 2000. Architectural styles and the design of network-based software architectures. PhD Dissertation. Dept. of Information and Computer Science, University of California, Irvine

SEnviro: a sensorized platform proposal using open hardware and open standards.

PubMed

Trilles, Sergio; Luján, Alejandro; Belmonte, Óscar; Montoliu, Raúl; Torres-Sospedra, Joaquín; Huerta, Joaquín

2015-03-06

The need for constant monitoring of environmental conditions has produced an increase in the development of wireless sensor networks (WSN). The drive towards smart cities has produced the need for smart sensors to be able to monitor what is happening in our cities. This, combined with the decrease in hardware component prices and the increase in the popularity of open hardware, has favored the deployment of sensor networks based on open hardware. The new trends in Internet Protocol (IP) communication between sensor nodes allow sensor access via the Internet, turning them into smart objects (Internet of Things and Web of Things). Currently, WSNs provide data in different formats. There is a lack of communication protocol standardization, which turns into interoperability issues when connecting different sensor networks or even when connecting different sensor nodes within the same network. This work presents a sensorized platform proposal that adheres to the principles of the Internet of Things and theWeb of Things. Wireless sensor nodes were built using open hardware solutions, and communications rely on the HTTP/IP Internet protocols. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) SensorThings API candidate standard was used as a neutral format to avoid interoperability issues. An environmental WSN developed following the proposed architecture was built as a proof of concept. Details on how to build each node and a study regarding energy concerns are presented.

The application of geography markup language (GML) to the geological sciences

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lake, Ron

2005-11-01

GML 3.0 became an adopted specification of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) in January 2003, and is rapidly emerging as the world standard for the encoding, transport and storage of all forms of geographic information. This paper looks at the application of GML to one of the more challenging areas of automated geography, namely the geological sciences. Specific features of GML of interest to geologists are discussed and then illustrated through a series of geological case studies. We conclude the paper with a discussion of anticipated geological web services that GML will enable. GML is written in XML and makes use of XML Schema for extensibility. It can be used both to represent or model geographic objects and to transport them across the Internet. In this way it serves as the foundation for all manner of geographic web services. Unlike vertical application grammars such as LandXML, GML was intended to define geographic application languages, and hence is applicable to any geographic domain including forestry, environmental sciences, geology and oceanography. This paper provides a review of the basic features of GML that are fundamental to the geological sciences including geometry, coverages, observations, reference systems and temporality. These constructs are then employed in a series of simple geological case studies including structural geological description, surficial geology, representation of geological time scales, mineral occurrences, geohazards and geochemical reconnaissance.

SEnviro: A Sensorized Platform Proposal Using Open Hardware and Open Standards

PubMed Central

Trilles, Sergio; Luján, Alejandro; Belmonte, Óscar; Montoliu, Raúl; Torres-Sospedra, Joaquín; Huerta, Joaquín

2015-01-01

The need for constant monitoring of environmental conditions has produced an increase in the development of wireless sensor networks (WSN). The drive towards smart cities has produced the need for smart sensors to be able to monitor what is happening in our cities. This, combined with the decrease in hardware component prices and the increase in the popularity of open hardware, has favored the deployment of sensor networks based on open hardware. The new trends in Internet Protocol (IP) communication between sensor nodes allow sensor access via the Internet, turning them into smart objects (Internet of Things and Web of Things). Currently, WSNs provide data in different formats. There is a lack of communication protocol standardization, which turns into interoperability issues when connecting different sensor networks or even when connecting different sensor nodes within the same network. This work presents a sensorized platform proposal that adheres to the principles of the Internet of Things and the Web of Things. Wireless sensor nodes were built using open hardware solutions, and communications rely on the HTTP/IP Internet protocols. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) SensorThings API candidate standard was used as a neutral format to avoid interoperability issues. An environmental WSN developed following the proposed architecture was built as a proof of concept. Details on how to build each node and a study regarding energy concerns are presented. PMID:25756864

Utah Flooding Hazard: Raising Public Awareness through the Creation of Multidisciplinary Web-Based Maps

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Castleton, J.; Erickson, B.; Bowman, S. D.; Unger, C. D.

2014-12-01

The Utah Geological Survey's (UGS) Geologic Hazards Program has partnered with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to create geologically derived web-based flood hazard maps. Flooding in Utah communities has historically been one of the most damaging geologic hazards. The most serious floods in Utah have generally occurred in the Great Salt Lake basin, particularly in the Weber River drainage on the western slopes of the Wasatch Range, in areas of high population density. With a growing population of 2.9 million, the state of Utah is motivated to raise awareness about the potential for flooding. The process of increasing community resiliency to flooding begins with identification and characterization of flood hazards. Many small communities in areas experiencing rapid growth have not been mapped completely by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRM). Existing FIRM maps typically only consider drainage areas that are greater than one square mile in determining flood zones and do not incorporate geologic data, such as the presence of young, geologically active alluvial fans that indicate a high potential for debris flows and sheet flooding. Our new flood hazard mapping combines and expands on FEMA data by incorporating mapping derived from 1:24,000-scale UGS geologic maps, LiDAR data, digital elevation models, and historical aerial photography. Our flood hazard maps are intended to supplement the FIRM maps to provide local governments and the public with additional flood hazard information so they may make informed decisions, ultimately reducing the risk to life and property from flooding hazards. Flooding information must be widely available and easily accessed. One of the most effective ways to inform the public is through web-based maps. Web-based flood hazard maps will not only supply the public with the flood information they need, but also provides a platform to add additional geologic hazards to an easily accessible format.

QTIMaps: A Model to Enable Web Maps in Assessment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Navarrete, Toni; Santos, Patricia; Hernandez-Leo, Davinia; Blat, Josep

2011-01-01

Test-based e-Assessment approaches are mostly focused on the assessment of knowledge and not on that of other skills, which could be supported by multimedia interactive services. This paper presents the QTIMaps model, which combines the IMS QTI standard with web maps services enabling the computational assessment of geographical skills. We…

Using Web-Based GIS in Introductory Human Geography

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Songer, Lynn C.

2010-01-01

Advocates for using a geographic information system (GIS) in education assert that GIS improves student learning. However, studies to clarify the relationship between learning and using GIS are still needed. This study examines the effects of using Web-based GIS maps in place of paper maps on students' geography content knowledge and motivation…

Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing: New German Standards (din) Setting Quality Requirements of Products Generated by Digital Cameras, Pan-Sharpening and Classification

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Reulke, R.; Baltrusch, S.; Brunn, A.; Komp, K.; Kresse, W.; von Schönermark, M.; Spreckels, V.

2012-08-01

10 years after the first introduction of a digital airborne mapping camera in the ISPRS conference 2000 in Amsterdam, several digital cameras are now available. They are well established in the market and have replaced the analogue camera. A general improvement in image quality accompanied the digital camera development. The signal-to-noise ratio and the dynamic range are significantly better than with the analogue cameras. In addition, digital cameras can be spectrally and radiometrically calibrated. The use of these cameras required a rethinking in many places though. New data products were introduced. In the recent years, some activities took place that should lead to a better understanding of the cameras and the data produced by these cameras. Several projects, like the projects of the German Society for Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Geoinformation (DGPF) or EuroSDR (European Spatial Data Research), were conducted to test and compare the performance of the different cameras. In this paper the current DIN (Deutsches Institut fuer Normung - German Institute for Standardization) standards will be presented. These include the standard for digital cameras, the standard for ortho rectification, the standard for classification, and the standard for pan-sharpening. In addition, standards for the derivation of elevation models, the use of Radar / SAR, and image quality are in preparation. The OGC has indicated its interest in participating that development. The OGC has already published specifications in the field of photogrammetry and remote sensing. One goal of joint future work could be to merge these formerly independent developments and the joint development of a suite of implementation specifications for photogrammetry and remote sensing.

CRESST Human Performance Knowledge Mapping System

DTIC Science & Technology

2002-12-01

link subcategories. Semantica Evaluation copy unavailable Visual Mind M H No Cannot add relation labels. Smart Ideas H H No Easy to use. Linking in...Screen Users can access all top-level functions from the main screen shown in Figure 4. The design of the Web favored breadth over depth, which allows...based on whether their propositions match propositions in the expert map. LifeMap PC on the Web /Mac 0 http:/ /www2.ucsc.edu/-mlrg/mlrgtools.html This

Delivering integrated HAZUS-MH flood loss analyses and flood inundation maps over the Web.

PubMed

Hearn, Paul P; Longenecker, Herbert E; Aguinaldo, John J; Rahav, Ami N

2013-01-01

Catastrophic flooding is responsible for more loss of life and damages to property than any other natural hazard. Recently developed flood inundation mapping technologies make it possible to view the extent and depth of flooding on the land surface over the Internet; however, by themselves these technologies are unable to provide estimates of losses to property and infrastructure. The Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA's) HAZUS-MH software is extensively used to conduct flood loss analyses in the United States, providing a nationwide database of population and infrastructure at risk. Unfortunately, HAZUS-MH requires a dedicated Geographic Information System (GIS) workstation and a trained operator, and analyses are not adapted for convenient delivery over the Web. This article describes a cooperative effort by the US Geological Survey (USGS) and FEMA to make HAZUS-MH output GIS and Web compatible and to integrate these data with digital flood inundation maps in USGS's newly developed Inundation Mapping Web Portal. By running the computationally intensive HAZUS-MH flood analyses offline and converting the output to a Web-GIS compatible format, detailed estimates of flood losses can now be delivered to anyone with Internet access, thus dramatically increasing the availability of these forecasts to local emergency planners and first responders.

Delivering integrated HAZUS-MH flood loss analyses and flood inundation maps over the Web

USGS Publications Warehouse

Hearn,, Paul P.; Longenecker, Herbert E.; Aguinaldo, John J.; Rahav, Ami N.

2013-01-01

Catastrophic flooding is responsible for more loss of life and damages to property than any other natural hazard. Recently developed flood inundation mapping technologies make it possible to view the extent and depth of flooding on the land surface over the Internet; however, by themselves these technologies are unable to provide estimates of losses to property and infrastructure. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA's) HAZUS-MH software is extensively used to conduct flood loss analyses in the United States, providing a nationwide database of population and infrastructure at risk. Unfortunately, HAZUS-MH requires a dedicated Geographic Information System (GIS) workstation and a trained operator, and analyses are not adapted for convenient delivery over the Web. This article describes a cooperative effort by the US Geological Survey (USGS) and FEMA to make HAZUS-MH output GIS and Web compatible and to integrate these data with digital flood inundation maps in USGS’s newly developed Inundation Mapping Web Portal. By running the computationally intensive HAZUS-MH flood analyses offline and converting the output to a Web-GIS compatible format, detailed estimates of flood losses can now be delivered to anyone with Internet access, thus dramatically increasing the availability of these forecasts to local emergency planners and first responders.

Preliminary Geologic Map of the Laredo, Crystal City-Eagle Pass, San Antonio, and Del Rio 1 x 2 Quadrangles, Texas, and the Nuevo Laredo, Ciudad Acuna, Piedras Negras, and Nueva Rosita 1 x 2 Quadrangles, Mexico

USGS Publications Warehouse

Page, William R.; Berry, Margaret E.; VanSistine, D. Paco; Snyders, Scott R.

2009-01-01

The purpose of this map is to provide an integrated, bi-national geologic map dataset for display and analyses on an Arc Internet Map Service (IMS) dedicated to environmental health studies in the United States-Mexico border region. The IMS web site was designed by the US-Mexico Border Environmental Health Initiative project and collaborators, and the IMS and project web site address is http://borderhealth.cr.usgs.gov/. The objective of the project is to acquire, evaluate, analyze, and provide earth, biologic, and human health resources data within a GIS framework (IMS) to further our understanding of possible linkages between the physical environment and public health issues. The geologic map dataset is just one of many datasets included in the web site; other datasets include biologic, hydrologic, geographic, and human health themes.

Coupling flood forecasting and social media crowdsourcing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kalas, Milan; Kliment, Tomas; Salamon, Peter

2016-04-01

Social and mainstream media monitoring is being more and more recognized as valuable source of information in disaster management and response. The information on ongoing disasters could be detected in very short time and the social media can bring additional information to traditional data feeds (ground, remote observation schemes). Probably the biggest attempt to use the social media in the crisis management was the activation of the Digital Humanitarian Network by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in response to Typhoon Yolanda. The network of volunteers performing rapid needs & damage assessment by tagging reports posted to social media which were then used by machine learning classifiers as a training set to automatically identify tweets referring to both urgent needs and offers of help. In this work we will present the potential of coupling a social media streaming and news monitoring application ( GlobalFloodNews - www.globalfloodsystem.com) with a flood forecasting system (www.globalfloods.eu) and the geo-catalogue of the OGC services discovered in the Google Search Engine (WMS, WFS, WCS, etc.) to provide a full suite of information available to crisis management centers as fast as possible. In GlobalFloodNews we use advanced filtering of the real-time Twitter stream, where the relevant information is automatically extracted using natural language and signal processing techniques. The keyword filters are adjusted and optimized automatically using machine learning algorithms as new reports are added to the system. In order to refine the search results the forecasting system will be triggering an event-based search on the social media and OGC services relevant for crisis response (population distribution, critical infrastructure, hospitals etc.). The current version of the system makes use of USHAHIDI Crowdmap platform, which is designed to easily crowdsource information using multiple channels, including SMS, email, Twitter and the web we want to show the potential of monitoring floods at the global scale.

Design and Implement AN Interoperable Internet of Things Application Based on AN Extended Ogc Sensorthings Api Standard

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Huang, C. Y.; Wu, C. H.

2016-06-01

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an infrastructure that interconnects uniquely-identifiable devices using the Internet. By interconnecting everyday appliances, various monitoring and physical mashup applications can be constructed to improve people's daily life. However, IoT devices created by different manufacturers follow different proprietary protocols and cannot communicate with each other. This heterogeneity issue causes different products to be locked in multiple closed ecosystems that we call IoT silos. In order to address this issue, a common industrial solution is the hub approach, which implements connectors to communicate with IoT devices following different protocols. However, with the growing number of proprietary protocols proposed by device manufacturers, IoT hubs need to support and maintain a lot of customized connectors. Hence, we believe the ultimate solution to address the heterogeneity issue is to follow open and interoperable standard. Among the existing IoT standards, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) SensorThings API standard supports comprehensive conceptual model and query functionalities. The first version of SensorThings API mainly focuses on connecting to IoT devices and sharing sensor observations online, which is the sensing capability. Besides the sensing capability, IoT devices could also be controlled via the Internet, which is the tasking capability. While the tasking capability was not included in the first version of the SensorThings API standard, this research aims on defining the tasking capability profile and integrates with the SensorThings API standard, which we call the extended-SensorThings API in this paper. In general, this research proposes a lightweight JSON-based web service description, the "Tasking Capability Description", allowing device owners and manufacturers to describe different IoT device protocols. Through the extended- SensorThings API, users and applications can follow a coherent protocol to control IoT devices that use different communication protocols, which could consequently achieve the interoperable Internet of Things infrastructure.

EarthServer: Cross-Disciplinary Earth Science Through Data Cube Analytics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baumann, P.; Rossi, A. P.

2016-12-01

The unprecedented increase of imagery, in-situ measurements, and simulation data produced by Earth (and Planetary) Science observations missions bears a rich, yet not leveraged potential for getting insights from integrating such diverse datasets and transform scientific questions into actual queries to data, formulated in a standardized way.The intercontinental EarthServer [1] initiative is demonstrating new directions for flexible, scalable Earth Science services based on innovative NoSQL technology. Researchers from Europe, the US and Australia have teamed up to rigorously implement the concept of the datacube. Such a datacube may have spatial and temporal dimensions (such as a satellite image time series) and may unite an unlimited number of scenes. Independently from whatever efficient data structuring a server network may perform internally, users (scientist, planners, decision makers) will always see just a few datacubes they can slice and dice.EarthServer has established client [2] and server technology for such spatio-temporal datacubes. The underlying scalable array engine, rasdaman [3,4], enables direct interaction, including 3-D visualization, common EO data processing, and general analytics. Services exclusively rely on the open OGC "Big Geo Data" standards suite, the Web Coverage Service (WCS). Conversely, EarthServer has shaped and advanced WCS based on the experience gained. The first phase of EarthServer has advanced scalable array database technology into 150+ TB services. Currently, Petabyte datacubes are being built for ad-hoc and cross-disciplinary querying, e.g. using climate, Earth observation and ocean data.We will present the EarthServer approach, its impact on OGC / ISO / INSPIRE standardization, and its platform technology, rasdaman.References: [1] Baumann, et al. (2015) DOI: 10.1080/17538947.2014.1003106 [2] Hogan, P., (2011) NASA World Wind, Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computing for Geospatial Research & Applications ACM. [3] Baumann, Peter, et al. (2014) In Proc. 10th ICDM, 194-201. [4] Dumitru, A. et al. (2014) In Proc ACM SIGMOD Workshop on Data Analytics in the Cloud (DanaC'2014), 1-4.

Brokering technologies to realize the hydrology scenario in NSF BCube

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Boldrini, Enrico; Easton, Zachary; Fuka, Daniel; Pearlman, Jay; Nativi, Stefano

2015-04-01

In the National Science Foundation (NSF) BCube project an international team composed of cyber infrastructure experts, geoscientists, social scientists and educators are working together to explore the use of brokering technologies, initially focusing on four domains: hydrology, oceans, polar, and weather. In the hydrology domain, environmental models are fundamental to understand the behaviour of hydrological systems. A specific model usually requires datasets coming from different disciplines for its initialization (e.g. elevation models from Earth observation, weather data from Atmospheric sciences, etc.). Scientific datasets are usually available on heterogeneous publishing services, such as inventory and access services (e.g. OGC Web Coverage Service, THREDDS Data Server, etc.). Indeed, datasets are published according to different protocols, moreover they usually come in different formats, resolutions, Coordinate Reference Systems (CRSs): in short different grid environments depending on the original data and the publishing service processing capabilities. Scientists can thus be impeded by the burden of discovery, access and normalize the desired datasets to the grid environment required by the model. These technological tasks of course divert scientists from their main, scientific goals. The use of GI-axe brokering framework has been experimented in a hydrology scenario where scientists needed to compare a particular hydrological model with two different input datasets (digital elevation models): - the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) dataset, v.2. - the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) dataset, v.3. These datasets were published by means of Hyrax Server technology, which can provide NetCDF files at their original resolution and CRS. Scientists had their model running on ArcGIS, so the main goal was to import the datasets using the available ArcPy library and have EPSG:4326 with the same resolution grid as the reference system, so that model outputs could be compared. ArcPy however is able to access only GeoTIff datasets that are published by a OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS). The GI-axe broker has then been deployed between the client application and the data providers. It has been configured to broker the two different Hyrax service endpoints and republish the data content through a WCS interface for the use of the ArcPy library. Finally, scientists were able to easily run the model, and to concentrate on the comparison of the different results obtained according to the selected input dataset. The use of a third party broker to perform such technological tasks has also shown to have the potential advantage of increasing the repeatability of a study among different researchers.

Towards Big Earth Data Analytics: The EarthServer Approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baumann, Peter

2013-04-01

Big Data in the Earth sciences, the Tera- to Exabyte archives, mostly are made up from coverage data whereby the term "coverage", according to ISO and OGC, is defined as the digital representation of some space-time varying phenomenon. Common examples include 1-D sensor timeseries, 2-D remote sensing imagery, 3D x/y/t image timeseries and x/y/z geology data, and 4-D x/y/z/t atmosphere and ocean data. Analytics on such data requires on-demand processing of sometimes significant complexity, such as getting the Fourier transform of satellite images. As network bandwidth limits prohibit transfer of such Big Data it is indispensable to devise protocols allowing clients to task flexible and fast processing on the server. The EarthServer initiative, funded by EU FP7 eInfrastructures, unites 11 partners from computer and earth sciences to establish Big Earth Data Analytics. One key ingredient is flexibility for users to ask what they want, not impeded and complicated by system internals. The EarthServer answer to this is to use high-level query languages; these have proven tremendously successful on tabular and XML data, and we extend them with a central geo data structure, multi-dimensional arrays. A second key ingredient is scalability. Without any doubt, scalability ultimately can only be achieved through parallelization. In the past, parallelizing code has been done at compile time and usually with manual intervention. The EarthServer approach is to perform a samentic-based dynamic distribution of queries fragments based on networks optimization and further criteria. The EarthServer platform is comprised by rasdaman, an Array DBMS enabling efficient storage and retrieval of any-size, any-type multi-dimensional raster data. In the project, rasdaman is being extended with several functionality and scalability features, including: support for irregular grids and general meshes; in-situ retrieval (evaluation of database queries on existing archive structures, avoiding data import and, hence, duplication); the aforementioned distributed query processing. Additionally, Web clients for multi-dimensional data visualization are being established. Client/server interfaces are strictly based on OGC and W3C standards, in particular the Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS) which defines a high-level raster query language. We present the EarthServer project with its vision and approaches, relate it to the current state of standardization, and demonstrate it by way of large-scale data centers and their services using rasdaman.

Design and Evaluation of an Open Web Platform Cartography Lab Curriculum

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sack, Carl M.; Roth, Robert E.

2017-01-01

Recent shifts in web map technology away from proprietary software and toward development on the Open Web Platform have increased the number and complexity of technical skills needed to do cartography on the Web. Web-based cartography curricula likewise must be adapted to prepare geography, cartography, and GIS students with the skills needed to…

PepMapper: a collaborative web tool for mapping epitopes from affinity-selected peptides.

PubMed

Chen, Wenhan; Guo, William W; Huang, Yanxin; Ma, Zhiqiang

2012-01-01

Epitope mapping from affinity-selected peptides has become popular in epitope prediction, and correspondingly many Web-based tools have been developed in recent years. However, the performance of these tools varies in different circumstances. To address this problem, we employed an ensemble approach to incorporate two popular Web tools, MimoPro and Pep-3D-Search, together for taking advantages offered by both methods so as to give users more options for their specific purposes of epitope-peptide mapping. The combined operation of Union finds as many associated peptides as possible from both methods, which increases sensitivity in finding potential epitopic regions on a given antigen surface. The combined operation of Intersection achieves to some extent the mutual verification by the two methods and hence increases the likelihood of locating the genuine epitopic region on a given antigen in relation to the interacting peptides. The Consistency between Intersection and Union is an indirect sufficient condition to assess the likelihood of successful peptide-epitope mapping. On average from 27 tests, the combined operations of PepMapper outperformed either MimoPro or Pep-3D-Search alone. Therefore, PepMapper is another multipurpose mapping tool for epitope prediction from affinity-selected peptides. The Web server can be freely accessed at: http://informatics.nenu.edu.cn/PepMapper/

Web GIS in practice VIII: HTML5 and the canvas element for interactive online mapping

PubMed Central

2010-01-01

HTML5 is being developed as the next major revision of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), the core markup language of the World Wide Web. It aims at reducing the need for proprietary, plug-in-based rich Internet application (RIA) technologies such as Adobe Flash. The canvas element is part of HTML5 and is used to draw graphics using scripting (e.g., JavaScript). This paper introduces Cartagen, an open-source, vector-based, client-side framework for rendering plug-in-free, offline-capable, interactive maps in native HTML5 on a wide range of Web browsers and mobile phones. Cartagen was developed at MIT Media Lab's Design Ecology group. Potential applications of the technology as an enabler for participatory online mapping include mapping real-time air pollution, citizen reporting, and disaster response, among many other possibilities. PMID:20199681

Standardized mappings--a framework to combine different semantic mappers into a standardized web-API.

PubMed

Neuhaus, Philipp; Doods, Justin; Dugas, Martin

2015-01-01

Automatic coding of medical terms is an important, but highly complicated and laborious task. To compare and evaluate different strategies a framework with a standardized web-interface was created. Two UMLS mapping strategies are compared to demonstrate the interface. The framework is a Java Spring application running on a Tomcat application server. It accepts different parameters and returns results in JSON format. To demonstrate the framework, a list of medical data items was mapped by two different methods: similarity search in a large table of terminology codes versus search in a manually curated repository. These mappings were reviewed by a specialist. The evaluation shows that the framework is flexible (due to standardized interfaces like HTTP and JSON), performant and reliable. Accuracy of automatically assigned codes is limited (up to 40%). Combining different semantic mappers into a standardized Web-API is feasible. This framework can be easily enhanced due to its modular design.

Citizen Observatories: A Standards Based Architecture

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Simonis, Ingo

2015-04-01

A number of large-scale research projects are currently under way exploring the various components of citizen observatories, e.g. CITI-SENSE (http://www.citi-sense.eu), Citclops (http://citclops.eu), COBWEB (http://cobwebproject.eu), OMNISCIENTIS (http://www.omniscientis.eu), and WeSenseIt (http://www.wesenseit.eu). Common to all projects is the motivation to develop a platform enabling effective participation by citizens in environmental projects, while considering important aspects such as security, privacy, long-term storage and availability, accessibility of raw and processed data and its proper integration into catalogues and international exchange and collaboration systems such as GEOSS or INSPIRE. This paper describes the software architecture implemented for setting up crowdsourcing campaigns using standardized components, interfaces, security features, and distribution capabilities. It illustrates the Citizen Observatory Toolkit, a software suite that allows defining crowdsourcing campaigns, to invite registered and unregistered participants to participate in crowdsourcing campaigns, and to analyze, process, and visualize raw and quality enhanced crowd sourcing data and derived products. The Citizen Observatory Toolkit is not a single software product. Instead, it is a framework of components that are built using internationally adopted standards wherever possible (e.g. OGC standards from Sensor Web Enablement, GeoPackage, and Web Mapping and Processing Services, as well as security and metadata/cataloguing standards), defines profiles of those standards where necessary (e.g. SWE O&M profile, SensorML profile), and implements design decisions based on the motivation to maximize interoperability and reusability of all components. The toolkit contains tools to set up, manage and maintain crowdsourcing campaigns, allows building on-demand apps optimized for the specific sampling focus, supports offline and online sampling modes using modern cell phones with built-in sensing technologies, automates the upload of the raw data, and handles conflation services to match quality requirements and analysis challenges. The strict implementation of all components using internationally adopted standards ensures maximal interoperability and reusability of all components. The Citizen Observatory Toolkit is currently developed as part of the COBWEB research project. COBWEB is partially funded by the European Programme FP7/2007-2013 under grant agreement n° 308513; part of the topic ENV.2012.6.5-1 "Developing community based environmental monitoring and information systems using innovative and novel earth observation applications.

The VERCE Science Gateway: enabling user friendly seismic waves simulations across European HPC infrastructures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Spinuso, Alessandro; Krause, Amy; Ramos Garcia, Clàudia; Casarotti, Emanuele; Magnoni, Federica; Klampanos, Iraklis A.; Frobert, Laurent; Krischer, Lion; Trani, Luca; David, Mario; Leong, Siew Hoon; Muraleedharan, Visakh

2014-05-01

The EU-funded project VERCE (Virtual Earthquake and seismology Research Community in Europe) aims to deploy technologies which satisfy the HPC and data-intensive requirements of modern seismology. As a result of VERCE's official collaboration with the EU project SCI-BUS, access to computational resources, like local clusters and international infrastructures (EGI and PRACE), is made homogeneous and integrated within a dedicated science gateway based on the gUSE framework. In this presentation we give a detailed overview on the progress achieved with the developments of the VERCE Science Gateway, according to a use-case driven implementation strategy. More specifically, we show how the computational technologies and data services have been integrated within a tool for Seismic Forward Modelling, whose objective is to offer the possibility to perform simulations of seismic waves as a service to the seismological community. We will introduce the interactive components of the OGC map based web interface and how it supports the user with setting up the simulation. We will go through the selection of input data, which are either fetched from federated seismological web services, adopting community standards, or provided by the users themselves by accessing their own document data store. The HPC scientific codes can be selected from a number of waveform simulators, currently available to the seismological community as batch tools or with limited configuration capabilities in their interactive online versions. The results will be staged out from the HPC via a secure GridFTP transfer to a VERCE data layer managed by iRODS. The provenance information of the simulation will be automatically cataloged by the data layer via NoSQL techonologies. We will try to demonstrate how data access, validation and visualisation can be supported by a general purpose provenance framework which, besides common provenance concepts imported from the OPM and the W3C-PROV initiatives, also offers an extensible metadata archive including community and user defined metadata and annotations. Finally, we will show how the VERCE Gateway platform will allow the customisation of pre and post processing phases of the simulation workflows, thanks to the availability of a registry of processing elements (PEs,) which are easily developed and maintained by the seismologists.

Sensor web enablement in a network of low-energy, low-budget amateur weather stations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Herrnkind, S.; Klump, J.; Schmidt, G.

2009-04-01

Sensor Web Enablement (OGC SWE) has developed in into a powerful concept with many potential applications in environmental monitoring and in other fields. This has spurred development of software applications for Sensor Observation Services (SOS), while the development of client applications still lags behind. Furthermore, the deployment of sensors in the field often places tight constraints on energy and bandwidth available for data capture and transmission. As a „proof of concept" we equipped amateur weather stations with low-budget, standard components to read the data from its base station and feed the weather observation data into the sensor observation service using its standard web-service interface. We chose amateur weather station as an example because of the simplicity of measured phenomena and low data volume. As sensor observation service we chose the open source software package offered by the 52°North consortium. Furthermore, we investigated registry services for sensors and measured phenomena. When deploying a sensor platform in the field, power consumption can be an issue. Instead of common PCs we used Network Storage Link Units (NSLU2) with a Linux operating system, also known as "Debian SLUG". The power consumption of a "SLUG" is of the order of 1W, compared to 40W in a small PC. The "SLUG" provides one ethernet and two USB ports, one used by its external USB hard-drive. This modular set-up is open to modifications, for example the addition of a GSM modem for data transmission over a cellular telephone network. The simple set-up, low price, low power consumption, and the low technological entry-level allow many potential uses of a "SLUG" in environmental sensor networks in research, education and citizen science. The use of a mature sensor observation service software allows an easy integration of monitoring networks with other web services.

Incorporating Quality Control Information in the Sensor Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Devaraju, Anusuriya; Kunkel, Ralf; Bogena, Heye

2013-04-01

The rapid development of sensing technologies had led to the creation of large amounts of heterogeneous environmental observations. The Sensor Web provides a wider access to sensors and observations via common protocols and specifications. Observations typically go through several levels of quality control, and aggregation before they are made available to end-users. Raw data are usually inspected, and related quality flags are assigned. Data are gap-filled, and errors are removed. New data series may also be derived from one or more corrected data sets. Until now, it is unclear how these kinds of information can be captured in the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) framework. Apart from the quality measures (e.g., accuracy, precision, tolerance, or confidence), the levels of observational series, the changes applied, and the methods involved must be specified. It is important that this kind of quality control information is well described and communicated to end-users to allow for a better usage and interpretation of data products. In this paper, we describe how quality control information can be incorporated into the SWE framework. Concerning this, first, we introduce the TERENO (TERrestrial ENvironmental Observatories), an initiative funded by the large research infrastructure program of the Helmholtz Association in Germany. The main goal of the initiative is to facilitate the study of long-term effects of climate and land use changes. The TERENO Online Data RepOsitORry (TEODOOR) is a software infrastructure that supports acquisition, provision, and management of observations within TERENO via SWE specifications and several other OGC web services. Next, we specify changes made to the existing observational data model to incorporate quality control information. Here, we describe the underlying TERENO data policy in terms of provision and maintenance issues. We present data levels, and their implementation within TEODOOR. The data levels are adapted from those used by other similar systems such as CUAHSI, EarthScope and WMO. Finally, we outline recommendations for future work.

Data Publishing and Sharing Via the THREDDS Data Repository

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wilson, A.; Caron, J.; Davis, E.; Baltzer, T.

2007-12-01

The terms "Team Science" and "Networked Science" have been coined to describe a virtual organization of researchers tied via some intellectual challenge, but often located in different organizations and locations. A critical component to these endeavors is publishing and sharing of content, including scientific data. Imagine pointing your web browser to a web page that interactively lets you upload data and metadata to a repository residing on a remote server, which can then be accessed by others in a secure fasion via the web. While any content can be added to this repository, it is designed particularly for storing and sharing scientific data and metadata. Server support includes uploading of data files that can subsequently be subsetted, aggregrated, and served in NetCDF or other scientific data formats. Metadata can be associated with the data and interactively edited. The THREDDS Data Repository (TDR) is a server that provides client initiated, on demand, location transparent storage for data of any type that can then be served by the THREDDS Data Server (TDS). The TDR provides functionality to: * securely store and "own" data files and associated metadata * upload files via HTTP and gridftp * upload a collection of data as single file * modify and restructure repository contents * incorporate metadata provided by the user * generate additional metadata programmatically * edit individual metadata elements The TDR can exist separately from a TDS, serving content via HTTP. Also, it can work in conjunction with the TDS, which includes functionality to provide: * access to data in a variety of formats via -- OPeNDAP -- OGC Web Coverage Service (for gridded datasets) -- bulk HTTP file transfer * a NetCDF view of datasets in NetCDF, OPeNDAP, HDF-5, GRIB, and NEXRAD formats * serving of very large volume datasets, such as NEXRAD radar * aggregation into virtual datasets * subsetting via OPeNDAP and NetCDF Subsetting services This talk will discuss TDR/TDS capabilities as well as how users can install this software to create their own repositories.

A Pragmatic Approach to Sustainable Interoperability for the Web 2.0 World

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wright, D. J.; Sankaran, S.

2015-12-01

In the geosciences, interoperability is a fundamental requirement. Members of various standards organizations such as the OGC and ISO-TC 211 have done yeomen services to promote a standards-centric approach to manage the interoperability challenges that organizations face today. The specific challenges that organizations face when adopting interoperability patterns are very many. One approach, that of mandating the use of specific standards has been reasonably successful. But scientific communities, as with all others, ultimately want their solutions to be widely accepted and used. And to this end there is a crying need to explore all possible interoperability patterns without restricting the choices to mandated standards. Standards are created by a slow and deliberative process that sometimes takes a long time to come to fruition and therefore sometime feel to fall short of user expectations. It seems therefore that organizations are left with a series of perceived orthogonal requirements when they want to pursue interoperability. They want a robust but agile solution, a mature approach that also needs to satisfy latest technology trends and so on. Sustainable interoperability patterns need to be forward looking and should choose the patterns and paradigms of the Web 2.0 generation. To this end, the key is to choose platform technologies that embrace multiple interoperability mechanisms that are built on fundamental "open" principles and which align with popular mainstream patterns. We seek to explore data-, metadata- and web service-related interoperability patterns through the prism of building solutions that encourage strong implementer and end-user engagement, improved usability and scalability considerations, and appealing developer frameworks that can grow the audience. The path to tread is not new, and the geocommunity only needs to observe and align its end goals with current Web 2.0 patterns to realize all the benefits that today we all take for granted as part of our everyday use of technology.

High-Performance Tiled WMS and KML Web Server

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Plesea, Lucian

2007-01-01

This software is an Apache 2.0 module implementing a high-performance map server to support interactive map viewers and virtual planet client software. It can be used in applications that require access to very-high-resolution geolocated images, such as GIS, virtual planet applications, and flight simulators. It serves Web Map Service (WMS) requests that comply with a given request grid from an existing tile dataset. It also generates the KML super-overlay configuration files required to access the WMS image tiles.

Global Land Survey Impervious Mapping Project Web Site

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

DeColstoun, Eric Brown; Phillips, Jacqueline

2014-01-01

The Global Land Survey Impervious Mapping Project (GLS-IMP) aims to produce the first global maps of impervious cover at the 30m spatial resolution of Landsat. The project uses Global Land Survey (GLS) Landsat data as its base but incorporates training data generated from very high resolution commercial satellite data and using a Hierarchical segmentation program called Hseg. The web site contains general project information, a high level description of the science, examples of input and output data, as well as links to other relevant projects.

Tracking the fate of watershed nitrogen: The “N-Sink” Web Tool and Two Case Studies

EPA Science Inventory

This product describes the application of a web-based decision support tool, N-Sink, in two case study watersheds. N-Sink is a customized ArcMap© program that provides maps of N sourcesand sinks within a watershed, and estimates the delivery efficiency of N movement from sou...

Visual Links in the World-Wide Web: The Uses and Limitations of Image Maps.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cochenour, John J.; And Others

As information delivery systems on the Internet increasingly evolve into World Wide Web browsers, understanding key graphical elements of the browser interface is critical to the design of effective information display and access tools. Image maps are one such element, and this document describes a pilot study that collected, reviewed, and…

The Geospatial Web and Local Geographical Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harris, Trevor M.; Rouse, L. Jesse; Bergeron, Susan J.

2010-01-01

Recent innovations in the Geospatial Web represent a paradigm shift in Web mapping by enabling educators to explore geography in the classroom by dynamically using a rapidly growing suite of impressive online geospatial tools. Coupled with access to spatial data repositories and User-Generated Content, the Geospatial Web provides a powerful…

Publication of sensor data in the long-term environmental monitoring infrastructure TERENO

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Stender, V.; Schroeder, M.; Klump, J. F.

2014-12-01

Terrestrial Environmental Observatories (TERENO) is an interdisciplinary and long-term research project spanning an Earth observation network across Germany. It includes four test sites within Germany from the North German lowlands to the Bavarian Alps and is operated by six research centers of the Helmholtz Association. TERENO Northeast is one of the sub-observatories of TERENO and is operated by the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ in Potsdam. This observatory investigates geoecological processes in the northeastern lowland of Germany by collecting large amounts of environmentally relevant data. The success of long-term projects like TERENO depends on well-organized data management, data exchange between the partners involved and on the availability of the captured data. Data discovery and dissemination are facilitated not only through data portals of the regional TERENO observatories but also through a common spatial data infrastructure TEODOOR (TEreno Online Data repOsitORry). TEODOOR bundles the data, provided by the different web services of the single observatories, and provides tools for data discovery, visualization and data access. The TERENO Northeast data infrastructure integrates data from more than 200 instruments and makes data available through standard web services. TEODOOR accesses the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) interfaces offered by the regional observatories. In addition to the SWE interface, TERENO Northeast also publishes time series of environmental sensor data through the online research data publication platform DataCite. The metadata required by DataCite are created in an automated process by extracting information from the SWE SensorML to create ISO 19115 compliant metadata. The GFZ data management tool kit panMetaDocs is used to register Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) and preserve file based datasets. In addition to DOI, the International Geo Sample Numbers (IGSN) is used to uniquely identify research specimens.

Engineering web maps with gradual content zoom based on streaming vector data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Huang, Lina; Meijers, Martijn; Šuba, Radan; van Oosterom, Peter

2016-04-01

Vario-scale data structures have been designed to support gradual content zoom and the progressive transfer of vector data, for use with arbitrary map scales. The focus to date has been on the server side, especially on how to convert geographic data into the proposed vario-scale structures by means of automated generalisation. This paper contributes to the ongoing vario-scale research by focusing on the client side and communication, particularly on how this works in a web-services setting. It is claimed that these functionalities are urgently needed, as many web-based applications, both desktop and mobile, require gradual content zoom, progressive transfer and a high performance level. The web-client prototypes developed in this paper make it possible to assess the behaviour of vario-scale data and to determine how users will actually see the interactions. Several different options of web-services communication architectures are possible in a vario-scale setting. These options are analysed and tested with various web-client prototypes, with respect to functionality, ease of implementation and performance (amount of transmitted data and response times). We show that the vario-scale data structure can fit in with current web-based architectures and efforts to standardise map distribution on the internet. However, to maximise the benefits of vario-scale data, a client needs to be aware of this structure. When a client needs a map to be refined (by means of a gradual content zoom operation), only the 'missing' data will be requested. This data will be sent incrementally to the client from a server. In this way, the amount of data transferred at one time is reduced, shortening the transmission time. In addition to these conceptual architecture aspects, there are many implementation and tooling design decisions at play. These will also be elaborated on in this paper. Based on the experiments conducted, we conclude that the vario-scale approach indeed supports gradual content zoom and the progressive web transfer of vector data. This is a big step forward in making vector data at arbitrary map scales available to larger user groups.

EU-FP7-iMARS: analysis of Mars multi-resolution images using auto-coregistration, data mining and crowd source techniques: A Status Report

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Muller, Jan-Peter; Sidiropoulos, Panagiotis; Tao, Yu; Gwinner, Klaus; Willner, Konrad; Fanara, Lida; Waehlisch, Marita; Walter, Sebastian; Schreiner, Bjoern; Steikert, Ralf; Ivanov, Anton B.; Cantini, Federico; Wardlaw, Jessica; Sprinks, James Christopher; Giordano, Michele; Kim, Jungrack; Houghton, Robert; Bamford, Steven

2016-10-01

There has been a revolution in 3D surface imaging of Mars over the last 12 years with systematic stereoscopy from HRSC and the production for almost 50% of the Martian surface of DTMs and ORIs. The iMars project has been exploiting this unique set of 3D products as a basemap to co-register NASA imagery going back to the 1970s. DLR have produced 3D HRSC mosaic products for large regions with c. 100 individual strips/region (MC-11E/W). UCL have developed an automated processing chain for CTX and HiRISE 3D processing to densify this global HRSC dataset with DTMs down to 18m and 75cm respectively [1]. A fully Automated Co-Registration and Orthorectification (ACRO) system has been developed at UCL and applied to the production of around 8,000 images co-registered to a HRSC pixel (typically 12.5m) and orthorectified to HRSC DTMs of 50-150m spacing [2]. These images are viewable through an OGC-compliant webGIS developed at FUB including tools for viewing sequences over the same area [3]. Corresponding MARSIS and SHARAD data can be viewed through the QGIS plugin available [4]. An automated data mining system is being developed at UCL [5] for change detection to search and classify features in images going back to Viking Orbiter of IFoV ≤100m. In parallel, a citizen science project at Nottingham University [6] is defining training samples for classification of change features and eventually for verification of change [7]. Scientific applications include change mapping over the SPRC [8], mass movements near the North Pole [9]; dark streaks [10] CRISM mapping of mineralogy of dust in the SPRC "Swiss cheese" layers [11] and mapping of dune movement [12]. [1] Tao, Y. & J.-P. Muller LPSC16-2074; [2] Gwinner, K. et al. EPSC15-672; [3] van Gasselt, S. et al. EPSC14-693; [4] Ivanov, A. & Cantini, F. EPSC16; [5] Sidiropoulos, P. & J.-P. Muller EPSC16; [6] Sprinks et al. EPSC16; [7] Wardlaw et al. EPSC16; [8] Putri et al., EPSC16;[9] Fanara, L. et al. EPSC 16; [10] Schreiner, B. et al., EPSC16; [11] Campbell, J.et al., EPSC16;[12] Kim, J-R., et al., EPSC16 AcknowledgementsThis research has received funding from the EU's FP7 Programme under iMars 607379. Partial support is also provided from the STFC Grant ST/K000977/1

An in situ mediator-free route to fabricate Cu2O/g-C3N4 type-II heterojunctions for enhanced visible-light photocatalytic H2 generation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ji, Cong; Yin, Su-Na; Sun, Shasha; Yang, Shengyang

2018-03-01

Cu2O nanoparticles doped g-C3N4 are synthesized via an in situ method and investigated in detail by IR techniques, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, ultraviolet visible diffuse reflection spectroscopy, and photoluminescence spectroscopy. The as-prepared Cu2O/g-C3N4 hybrids demonstrate enhanced photocatalytic activity toward hydrogen generation compared to pure bulk g-C3N4, the effect of Cu2O content on the rate of visible light photocatalytic hydrogen evolution reveals the optimal hydrogen evolution rate can reach 33.2 μmol h-1 g-1, which is about 4 times higher that of pure g-C3N4. The enhanced photocatalytic activity can be attributed to the improved separation and transfer of photogenerated electron-hole pairs at the intimate interface between g-C3N4 and Cu2O. A possible photocatalytic mechanism of the Cu2O/g-C3N4 composite is also discussed. This mediator-free in situ chemical doping strategy developed in this work will contribute to the achievement of other multicomponent photocatalysts.

Multigraph: Interactive Data Graphs on the Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Phillips, M. B.

2010-12-01

Many aspects of geophysical science involve time dependent data that is often presented in the form of a graph. Considering that the web has become a primary means of communication, there are surprisingly few good tools and techniques available for presenting time-series data on the web. The most common solution is to use a desktop tool such as Excel or Matlab to create a graph which is saved as an image and then included in a web page like any other image. This technique is straightforward, but it limits the user to one particular view of the data, and disconnects the graph from the data in a way that makes updating a graph with new data an often cumbersome manual process. This situation is somewhat analogous to the state of mapping before the advent of GIS. Maps existed only in printed form, and creating a map was a laborious process. In the last several years, however, the world of mapping has experienced a revolution in the form of web-based and other interactive computer technologies, so that it is now commonplace for anyone to easily browse through gigabytes of geographic data. Multigraph seeks to bring a similar ease of access to time series data. Multigraph is a program for displaying interactive time-series data graphs in web pages that includes a simple way of configuring the appearance of the graph and the data to be included. It allows multiple data sources to be combined into a single graph, and allows the user to explore the data interactively. Multigraph lets users explore and visualize "data space" in the same way that interactive mapping applications such as Google Maps facilitate exploring and visualizing geography. Viewing a Multigraph graph is extremely simple and intuitive, and requires no instructions. Creating a new graph for inclusion in a web page involves writing a simple XML configuration file and requires no programming. Multigraph can read data in a variety of formats, and can display data from a web service, allowing users to "surf" through large data sets, downloading only those the parts of the data that are needed for display. Multigraph is currently in use on several web sites including the US Drought Portal (www.drought.gov), the NOAA Climate Services Portal (www.climate.gov), the Climate Reference Network (www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn), NCDC's State of the Climate Report (www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc), and the US Forest Service's Forest Change Assessment Viewer (ews.forestthreats.org/NPDE/NPDE.html). More information about Multigraph is available from the web site www.multigraph.org. Interactive Graph of Global Temperature Anomalies from ClimateWatch Magazine (http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/2009/articles/climate-change-global-temperature)

Acquiring geographical data with web harvesting

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dramowicz, K.

2016-04-01

Many websites contain very attractive and up to date geographical information. This information can be extracted, stored, analyzed and mapped using web harvesting techniques. Poorly organized data from websites are transformed with web harvesting into a more structured format, which can be stored in a database and analyzed. Almost 25% of web traffic is related to web harvesting, mostly while using search engines. This paper presents how to harvest geographic information from web documents using the free tool called the Beautiful Soup, one of the most commonly used Python libraries for pulling data from HTML and XML files. It is a relatively easy task to process one static HTML table. The more challenging task is to extract and save information from tables located in multiple and poorly organized websites. Legal and ethical aspects of web harvesting are discussed as well. The paper demonstrates two case studies. The first one shows how to extract various types of information about the Good Country Index from the multiple web pages, load it into one attribute table and map the results. The second case study shows how script tools and GIS can be used to extract information from one hundred thirty six websites about Nova Scotia wines. In a little more than three minutes a database containing one hundred and six liquor stores selling these wines is created. Then the availability and spatial distribution of various types of wines (by grape types, by wineries, and by liquor stores) are mapped and analyzed.

An Offline-Online Android Application for Hazard Event Mapping Using WebGIS Open Source Technologies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Olyazadeh, Roya; Jaboyedoff, Michel; Sudmeier-Rieux, Karen; Derron, Marc-Henri; Devkota, Sanjaya

2016-04-01

Nowadays, Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) plays an important role in better understanding and managing disaster risk reduction around the world. National and local government, NGOs and other stakeholders are increasingly seeking and producing data on hazards. Most of the hazard event inventories and land use mapping are based on remote sensing data, with little ground truthing, creating difficulties depending on the terrain and accessibility. Open Source WebGIS tools offer an opportunity for quicker and easier ground truthing of critical areas in order to analyse hazard patterns and triggering factors. This study presents a secure mobile-map application for hazard event mapping using Open Source WebGIS technologies such as Postgres database, Postgis, Leaflet, Cordova and Phonegap. The objectives of this prototype are: 1. An Offline-Online android mobile application with advanced Geospatial visualisation; 2. Easy Collection and storage of events information applied services; 3. Centralized data storage with accessibility by all the service (smartphone, standard web browser); 4. Improving data management by using active participation in hazard event mapping and storage. This application has been implemented as a low-cost, rapid and participatory method for recording impacts from hazard events and includes geolocation (GPS data and Internet), visualizing maps with overlay of satellite images, viewing uploaded images and events as cluster points, drawing and adding event information. The data can be recorded in offline (Android device) or online version (all browsers) and consequently uploaded through the server whenever internet is available. All the events and records can be visualized by an administrator and made public after approval. Different user levels can be defined to access the data for communicating the information. This application was tested for landslides in post-earthquake Nepal but can be used for any other type of hazards such as flood, avalanche, etc. Keywords: Offline, Online, WebGIS Open source, Android, Hazard Event Mapping

Web Based Rapid Mapping of Disaster Areas using Satellite Images, Web Processing Service, Web Mapping Service, Frequency Based Change Detection Algorithm and J-iView

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bandibas, J. C.; Takarada, S.

2013-12-01

Timely identification of areas affected by natural disasters is very important for a successful rescue and effective emergency relief efforts. This research focuses on the development of a cost effective and efficient system of identifying areas affected by natural disasters, and the efficient distribution of the information. The developed system is composed of 3 modules which are the Web Processing Service (WPS), Web Map Service (WMS) and the user interface provided by J-iView (fig. 1). WPS is an online system that provides computation, storage and data access services. In this study, the WPS module provides online access of the software implementing the developed frequency based change detection algorithm for the identification of areas affected by natural disasters. It also sends requests to WMS servers to get the remotely sensed data to be used in the computation. WMS is a standard protocol that provides a simple HTTP interface for requesting geo-registered map images from one or more geospatial databases. In this research, the WMS component provides remote access of the satellite images which are used as inputs for land cover change detection. The user interface in this system is provided by J-iView, which is an online mapping system developed at the Geological Survey of Japan (GSJ). The 3 modules are seamlessly integrated into a single package using J-iView, which could rapidly generate a map of disaster areas that is instantaneously viewable online. The developed system was tested using ASTER images covering the areas damaged by the March 11, 2011 tsunami in northeastern Japan. The developed system efficiently generated a map showing areas devastated by the tsunami. Based on the initial results of the study, the developed system proved to be a useful tool for emergency workers to quickly identify areas affected by natural disasters.