IN13A-0894
Features and Futures of Scientific GIS
The early days of GIS were heavily influenced by the requirements of the Earth science community and solving Earth science problems. The requirements and capabilities of GIS software continue to evolve in step with trends of the computing industry. This paper will focus on industry trends and capabilities of GIS as a scientific tool for scientific analysis. Some of these capabilities include support of science data format of higher dimensionality, including 3D, time, and other possible dimensions, not just for visualization, but also query and analysis. This includes support for 3D dimensional analytical operators. Inherent support for time as a dimension, coordinate, or variable, with supported in both visualization and analysis. As well as acustomization framework that allows scientists to easily integrate their own analytical models, tools, and data formats.
IN13A-0895
GIS: It's Not About the Map
Geographic Information Systems have evolved considerably over the last decade and new focus areas have emerged. Data storage has evolved from proprietary file formats to spatial databases that integrate spatial objects and operators into the powerful foundation of relational databases. This has been accompanied by increased openness of geospatial tool source code and data, reflected in widely used open-source tools and international attention on geospatial standards for metadata, data, and services. The scientific community is playing an increasing role in partnerships supported by these standards and shared data. As these partnerships broaden more scientific data will be available to the geospatial community. NGDC is participating in these developments by integrating spatial databases and geospatial tools and services into our archive processes and access methods. http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/maps
IN13A-0896
Bridging OGC and Earth Science-based Data Access Protocols
The Coordinated Enhanced Observing Period "CEOP", an element of the World Climate Research Program initiated by GEWEX, has effectively demonstrated the importance of linking satellite and in situ measurements with model products from both global and regional Numerical Weather Predictions systems. To enhance their capacity to meet current and future project goals, CEOP scientists need the flexibility to readily acquire and use new satellite products, to reprocess for additional reference sites using varying gridded representations, and to have seamless access to these new products from within their existing analysis applications. Emerging GIS standards have the potential to help meet these requirements, but their existing analysis applications (e.g. GrADS) are often not GIS capable. On the other hand, many of these tools can access data through Earth science data access protocols such as Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol (OPeNDAP). Funded by NASA's Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science program, a prototype satellite data server has been developed to bridge these two types of protocols. The server integrates simple OPeNDAP data access, for integration into the scientist's existing suite of analysis tools, with OGC Web Coverage Servers on the backend to provide the processing capacity to handle the coordinate system transformations. The server incorporates handling of swath to grid coordinate transformations, quality screening information, implicit and explicit "time" dimensions, and mosaicking. Using a specific satellite product as the basis for discussion we"ll present the approach followed in the development effort to address these problems, and use an existing server implementation to demonstrate its capabilities.
IN13A-0897
Representing Satellite Swath Data in ArcGIS
A large set of Earth remote sensing data products are obtained from satellites in near-polar orbits. These satellites generate a massive amount of time-dependent data that could be effectively integrated into standard GIS environments. However, the swath does not fit any standard GIS data structures. A swath is effectively a raster as viewed from the coordinates of a moving spacecraft, with dimensions of along-track, cross-track, and in some cases a third vertical dimension. This suggests that an appropriate structure is a raster within a vector, where the vector is the outer envelope of the swath. This work describes a joint effort of JPL, ESRI, and U. Redlands to implement a prototype plug-in for swath data in ArcGIS.
IN13A-0898
A Geospatial Database that Supports Derivation of Climatological Features of Severe Weather
The Severe Weather Data Inventory (SWDI) at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) provides user access to archives of several datasets critical to the detection and evaluation of severe weather. These datasets include archives of: · NEXRAD Level-III point features describing general storm structure, hail, mesocyclone and tornado signatures · National Weather Service Storm Events Database · National Weather Service Local Storm Reports collected from storm spotters · National Weather Service Warnings · Lightning strikes from Vaisala's National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) SWDI archives all of these datasets in a spatial database that allows for convenient searching and subsetting. These data are accessible via the NCDC web site, Web Feature Services (WFS) or automated web services. The results of interactive web page queries may be saved in a variety of formats, including plain text, XML, Google Earth's KMZ, standards-based NetCDF and Shapefile. NCDC's Storm Risk Assessment Project (SRAP) uses data from the SWDI database to derive gridded climatology products that show the spatial distributions of the frequency of various events. SRAP also can relate SWDI events to other spatial data such as roads, population, watersheds, and other geographic, sociological, or economic data to derive products that are useful in municipal planning, emergency management, the insurance industry, and other areas where there is a need to quantify and qualify how severe weather patterns affect people and property. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/swdi
IN13A-0899
GIS Services, Visualization Products, and Interoperability at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center (NCDC)
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. http://gis.ncdc.noaa.gov/
IN13A-0900
ORNL DAAC WebGIS: A Web-based GIS System for Visualizing and Distributing Biogeochemical and Ecological Datasets
WebGIS is an Internet based technology that enables users to browse, query, and distribute spatial data using a standard web browser. It is an effective tool for providing users access to different types of geospatial data from within a web environment. The ORNL DAAC's WebGIS system is one such WebGIS system that utilizes web technology to enable users to visualize datasets relevant to biogeochemical dynamics. The ORNL DAAC's WebGIS is based on ESRI's ArcIMS and ArcSDE technology. Open Source technologies such as Minnesota Mapserver and Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) are also used in this WebGIS instance. Users can perform basic GIS operations from within a web environment and also download relevant datasets for their region of interest. ORNL DAAC's WebGIS provides user access to a number of landcover, biophysical, elevation, geopolitical and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) layers. Region specific datasets such as North American Carbon Program (NACP) datasets and global coverage datasets are distributed through the WebGIS. The ORNL DAAC's WebGIS also provides visualization and download of MODIS land product subsets for selected field sites. OGC standards such as Web Map Service (WMS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS) are supported within the ORNL DAAC's WebGIS instance. http://daac.ornl.gov/mapserver.shtml
IN13A-0901
Consilience of Geographic Information Systems and Earth Sciences
Cartographers and earth scientists solve problems differently, even though their domains and representations have similarities. In both cases, there are spatial domains, visual representation, huge data and continual visual and computational analysis. The cartographer's canvas is the earth's surface, naturally diverse in form, differentiated by man's uses, dominion and constructions. The diversity of resulting mixture of entities is daunting. However, while maps result from dynamic processes, they are not usually dynamic: although that is changing. Earth science plays in a four dimensional arena containing spatially and temporally continuous phenomena. Historically, ways and means to acquire, analyze, transform, model, and visualize four dimensional data have been limited. New polar orbiting smart sounders like AIRS and AMSU-A acquire high resolution, 3-dimensional retrievals of water vapor, temperature and trace gases. This puts pressure on the rest of the process to deliver the data in useable form. Satellites orbit relentlessly creating new instrument footprints and geophysical parameters, as the earth rotates. This creates a geometrical shape called "The Swath". The shape is geometrically straightforward. Just imagine wrapping a bowling ball with duct tape. However, it is new to cartographers because it is temporal: Nonetheless, a swath can be projected, and footprints and parameters can be transformed into cells, points, bins, objects, volume features and curtains (read layers). These entities are familiar to cartographers. However, fully incorporating time is a big challenge. That's where we are now. In a combined JPL/Redlands Institute/ESRI effort we use simulated visualization to probe ahead, but at the same time, prototype tools to enable basic interoperation between EOS data and ArcGIS: selecting AIRS/AMSU-A L2 granules and transforming them into point features and raster layers. We will move to modeling and visualization tools. (The presentation will contain some of our visualizations and descriptions.)
IN13A-0902
Heard on The Street: GIS-Guided Immersive 3D Models as an Augmented Reality for Team Collaboration
Grid computing can be configured to run physics simulations for spatially contiguous virtual 3D model spaces. Each cell is run by a single processor core simulating 1/16 square kilometer of surface and can contain up to 15,000 objects. In this work, a model of one urban block was constructed in the commercial 3D online digital world Second Life http://secondlife.com to prove concept that GIS data can guide the build of an accurate in-world model. Second Life simulators support terrain modeling at two-meter grid intervals. Access to the Second Life grid is worldwide if connections to the US-based servers are possible. This immersive 3D model allows visitors to explore the space at will, with physics simulated for object collisions, gravity, and wind forces about 40 times per second. Visitors view this world as renderings by their 3-D display card of graphic objects and raster textures that are streamed from the simulator grid to the Second Life client, based on that client's instantaneous field of view. Visitors to immersive 3D models experience a virtual world that engages their innate abilities to relate to the real immersive 3D world in which humans have evolved. These abilities enable far more complex and dynamic 3D environments to be quickly and accurately comprehended by more visitors than most non-immersive 3D environments. Objects of interest at ground surface and below can be walked around, possibly entered, viewed at arm's length or flown over at 500 meters above. Videos of renderings have been recorded (as machinima) to share a visit as part of public presentations. Key to this experience is that dozens of simultaneous visitors can experience the model at the same time, each exploring it at will and seeing (if not colliding with) one another---like twenty geology students on a virtual outcrop, where each student might fly if they chose to. This work modeled the downtown Berkeley, CA, transit station in the Second Life region "Gualala" near [170, 35, 35] (x,y,z meters). Visiting this model amounts to going inside a map, seeing oneself there, and seeing, gesturing with, and speaking to other visitors in the same space. The Second Life viewer client is free, and the model is hosted on a vast publicly accessible grid that as of 1 September 2007 is simulating 846 square kilometers and frequently has over 40,000 simultaneous users. For reference, this work uses less than 1/200,000 part of the total grid. For cost savings, GIS was used to construct the model at 1/3 scale so that some 35,000 square meters of Berkeley were modeled in less than 4000 square meters of simulator space. Our work in Second Life "Gualala" has shown that it is feasible to use real-life GIS data to guide the construction of a spatially accurate model that reflects the built surface and underground environment. Groups of visitors may position their proxy body, or avatars on the street corner and converse, greatly augmenting the experience of a conference call. Since each visitor controls their own camera position in real time, the model considerably augments a video conference call, and can permit individuals to manipulate 3D objects as part of a demonstration or discussion. http://secondlifegis.com
IN13A-0903
Finding Space in Second Life, NASA Education and Public Outreach in a 3D Metaverse
Second Life (SL) is a virtual 3D simulation or metaverse with almost eight million users worldwide. SL has seen explosive growth in the four years it has been available and hosts a number of educational and institutional "islands" or sims. Federal agencies with an SL presence include NASA and NOAA. There are several educational institutions and education specific sims in SL. At any one time there may be as many as 40,000 users on line. Users develop a persona and are seen on screen as a human figure or avatar. Avatars are able to move around the sim islands by walking or flying and move from island to island or remote locations by teleporting. While a big part of the Second Life experience deals with avatar interactions and exploring, there is an active community of builders who create the scenery, buildings, and other artifacts of the SL world including clothing and other personal items. SL builders start with basic shapes and through size manipulation on three axis and adding texture to the shapes create a myriad of objects—a 3D world. This paper will deal with the design and creation of exhibits halls for NASA's LRO/LCROSS mission slated for launch October 2008 and a NASA sponsored aeronautical engineering student challenge contest. The exhibit halls will be placed on the NASA sponsored Co-Lab sim and will feature models of the spacecraft and the instruments carried on board and student exhibits. There also will be storyboards with information about the mission and contest. Where appropriate there will be links to external websites for further information. The exhibits will be interactive to support the outreach efforts associated with the mission and the contest. Upon completion of the visit to the LRO/LCROSS hall participants will have the opportunity to visit a near by sandbox—SL parlance for a building area—to design and build a spacecraft from a suite of instruments provided for them depending on their area of interest. Real limitations such as mass, power, and cost will be included in the guidelines for building their spacecraft. http://www.secondlife.com
IN13A-0904
A 3D Immersive Fault Visualizer and Editor
Digital fault models are an important resource for the study of earthquake dynamics, fault-earthquake interactions and seismicity. Once digitized these fault models can be used in Finite Element Model (FEM) programs or earthquake simulations such as Virtual California (VC). However, these models are often difficult to create, requiring a substantial amount of time to generate the fault topology and compute the properties of the individual segments. To aid in the construction of such models we have developed an immersive virtual reality (VR) application to visualize and edit fault models. Our program is designed to run in a CAVE (walk-in VR environment), but also works in a wide range of other environments, including desktop systems and GeoWalls. It is being developed at the UC Davis W.M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in the Earth Sciences (KeckCAVES, http://www.keckcaves.org). Immersive VR environments are ideal for visualizing and manipulating three- dimensional data sets. Our program allows users to create new models or modify existing ones; for example by repositioning individual fault-segments, by changing the dip angle, or by modifying (or assigning) the value of a property associated with a particular fault segment (i.e. slip rate). With the addition of high resolution Digital Elevation Models (DEM) the user can accurately add new segments to an existing model or create a fault model entirely from scratch. Interactively created or modified models can be written to XML files at any time; from there the data may easily be converted into various formats required by the analysis software or simulation. We believe that the ease of interaction provided by VR technology is ideally suited to the problem of creating and editing digital fault models. Our software provides the user with an intuitive environment for visualizing and editing fault model data. This translates not only into less time spent creating fault models, but also enables the researcher to easily generate and maintain any number of models for use in ensemble analysis.