Transcript Seamless Access to NASA Data from Operational Decision Support Systems

Seamless Access to NASA Data from Operational Decision Support Systems
GSFC Earth Sciences (GES)
Data and Information Services Center (DISC)
Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC)
[email protected]
William Teng1,2, Hualan Rui1,2, Naphtali Rishe3, Robert Tetrault4
(1NASA/GES DISC DAAC, 2 SSAI, 3Florida International Univ., 4USDA/FAS)
16th ESIP Federation Assembly Meeting, January 4-6, 2006
The amount and variety of information that can be extracted from NASA satellite data form a rich resource that is largely untapped by the applications user community. In part, this is because of the complexity and
cost of using such data. Many approaches, such as subsetting, have been taken to ameliorate this situation. Mostly, however, they have not sufficiently addressed the core needs of the applications community. The
latter is generally not interested in the data per se (e.g., how they are processed), but rather in the specific measurements (e.g., surface rain) from the data, which can be infused in some decision support system.
These measurements should ideally be seamlessly accessible. To rapidly bridge the gap between NASA information systems and services and the practical needs of the applications (and research) community, the
Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) has collaborated with the Florida International University High Performance Database Research Center (FIU HPDRC) and the U.S.
Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service (USDA FAS) to demonstrate the feasibility of making NASA data more easily and seamlessly accessible via the Web, from within the FIU’s TerraFly and the FAS’
Crop Explorer environments, respectively.
The USDA FAS works to improve foreign market access for U.S. products,
build new markets, improve the competitive position of U.S. agriculture in
the global marketplace, and provide food aid and technical assistance to
foreign countries. The FAS Crop Explorer provides near-real-time global
crop condition information based on satellite imagery and weather data.
Thematic maps of major crop growing regions depict vegetative vigor,
precipitation, temperature, and soil moisture. Time-series charts show
growing season data for specific agro-meteorological zones. Regional crop
calendars and crop area maps are also available for selected regions of
major agricultural significance.
The FIU HPDRC’s state-of-the-art TerraFly, developed in partnership with NASA,
has, since 1996, helped NASA fulfill its strategic remote sensing goals by
delivering accurate geospatial data and imagery to science research and
applications user communities. TerraFly is based on innovative semantic
database technologies for data management and a rich set of tools for
disseminating geospatial information via the Internet. TerraFly enables users to
“fly over” and manipulate the data retrieved from the database, which contains
textual, remotely-sensed, and vector data (graphical maps), via applets using any
standard Web browser (i.e., no specialized software is needed). TerraFly is
extremely popular with its diverse user communities (some 10,000 unique users
per day) and is a NASA 2004 Spinoff.
The GES DISC provides science data support for NASA Earth Science data,
including innovative ways to manage, archive, and distribute the data, customerfocused user support, and reusable services and tools, for a wide range of
science and applications users. Giovanni is one such tool for enhancing the
accessibility and usability of NASA data. It integrates various components to
support simple but powerful Web interfaces that allow users to perform
interactive visualization and analysis online without downloading any data. The
Giovanni family of instances currently provides this capability for data from
AIRS, MLS, MODIS, TOMS & OMI, TRMM, and UARS HALOE, as well agricultureand ocean color-related project data.
http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/agriculture/ais_sum.shtml
http://www.pecad.fas.usda.gov/cropexplorer/
Other Crop Explorer Data:
MODIS Images, Reservoir
Heights
AFWA (Air Force Weather Agency) Precipitation –
Daily gridded estimates by blending data from
SSM/I, GOES, Meteosat, and GMS; Real Time
Nephanalysis Cloud Model (RTNEPH); and WMO
stations. Decadal precipitation is summed from
daily values.
GES-DISC Interactive Online Visualization and Analysis Infrastructure
The Bridge between Data and Science
Other TerraFly Data: PRISM
Precipitation, USGS River
Gauge Data
http://terrafly.fiu.edu/
Giovanni Architecture
http://agdisc.gsfc.nasa.gov/Giovanni/archives.3B42_V6_dekad.shtml
Rainfall area plot and ASCII output for Central Africa, July 2005
TRMM precipitation
(NASA/Giovanni)
maps can be
seamlessly accessed
for comparison with
AFWA and WMO
precipitation data
used by USDA/FAS
analysts.
WMO (World Meteorological Organization)
Precipitation – Daily ground station data from
WMO Global Telecommunication System (GTS).
Decadal precipitation is summed from daily
values.
The Agricultural Information System (AIS) is part of
the NASA-funded Agriculture REASoN CAN project
to make NASA Earth Science data more accessible
and usable by the agricultural user community.
Ongoing work include developing agriculturerelated products, developing the AIS, and
integrating project results into existing operational
Decision Support Systems. The seamless access
to NASA TRMM data from within the USDA FAS
Crop Explorer is a major part of this project.
Giovanni can be customized to support new
parameters, such as available soil water,
growing season water surplus or deficit,
seasonal anomalies, and percent departure.
User clicks on a "details" button
in the GeoQuery output, which
hyperlinks to Giovanni and, in
this case, displays a month-todate TRMM plot.
From the Environmental Data
section of the PointData page, user
submits a TerraFly GeoQuery, "100
nearest TRMM cells where the daily
precipitation yesterday was between
148.98 and 160.41 mm," which, in
this case, returns 14 found records.
Crop Explorer analyst clicks on
“MPA Accumulated Rainfall Maps,”
which hyperlinks to Giovanni and
retrieves, for the same geographic
area and temporal period, a TRMM
accumulated rainfall plot with the
same color scale.
Relevant NASA Applications of National Priority:
Agricultural Efficiency, Disaster Management, Ecological
Forecasting, Homeland Security, and Public Health
Location of the sub-region in Argentina for the rain rate analyses.
Seamless Integration: a key to enhancing access to NASA
data from existing operational Decision Support Systems
User hyperlinks to a
TerraFly PointData
page, which shows
a NASA mosaic of
Landsat 5 imagery
overlain with the
names of roads,
cities, NASA PRISM
mean annual
precipitation model
(shaded areas), and
TRMM rainfall of the
previous day.
Giovanni user displays a TRMM accumulated
rainfall plot and clicks on the TerraFly deep link
for more information about the displayed area,
centered over the plot center, or over any
arbitrary user-clicked point within the plot.
Acknowledgments
This work is partially supported by NASA REASoN CAN 02-OES-01.
We acknowledge the contributions of our colleagues from the GES DISC:
Steve Kempler, Zhong Liu, Long Chiu, Chai Lim, and Steve Berrick.
Graphics support by Edee Ocampo.