HR: 0800h
AN: IN51A-0111    [Abstracts]
TI: Geobrowser Enhanced Access of Real-Time Antarctic Data
AU: * Breen, P
EM: pbree@bas.ac.uk
AF: British Antarctic Survey, High Cross Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0ET, United Kingdom
AU: Judge, D
EM: david.judge1@virgin.net
AF: British Antarctic Survey, High Cross Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0ET, United Kingdom
AU: Cunningham, N
EM: njcu@bas.ac.uk
AF: British Antarctic Survey, High Cross Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0ET, United Kingdom
AU: Kirsch, P J
EM: pjki@bas.ac.uk
AF: British Antarctic Survey, High Cross Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0ET, United Kingdom
AB: A proof of principle project was initiated in the Fall of 2006 to develop a system enabling remote field station and ship borne data, collected in near real-time to be discovered, visualised and acquired through a web accessible framework. The two principal enabling drivers for this system were the recent improvements in communications with remote field stations and ships and the advent of low cost, easily accessible geobrowser technology providing the ability to visualise multiple, sometimes physically disparate datasets within a common interface. Strongly spatial in nature the oceanographic datasets suggested the incorporation of geobrowser (Google Earth) technology into this framework. A number of scientific benefits were identified by the project, these include the overall enhancing of the value of many of the datasets through their real-time contribution to forecasting models, satellite ground truthing and calibration of autonomous instrumentation. Improved efficacy of fieldwork led to rapid discovery of problems and the ability to deal with them promptly. The ability to correct or improve experiment parameters and increase capability of routine collection of high-quality data. In the past it may have been over a year before data arrived back at HQ potentially unusable, definitely unrepeatable and significantly reducing or delaying scientific output. The geobrowser interface provides the platform from which the spatial data is discovered, for example ship tracks and aspects of the physical oceanography such as sea surface temperature can be directly visualized. Importantly, ancillary and auxiliary information and metadata can be linked to the cruise data in a straightforward and accessible manner; scientists in Cambridge using a geobrowser were able to access and visualize cruise data from the Southern ocean 20 minutes after collection.
DE: 0525 Data management
DE: 0530 Data presentation and visualization
DE: 4500 OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL
SC: Earth and Space Science Informatics [IN]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting