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4.6 Underpinning Technologies for Oceanographic Data Sharing, Visualisation and Analysis: Review and Future Outlook
Lead author: Jon Blower (ESSC)
Author/co-authors: J.D. Blower1, F. Blanc2, P. Cornillon3, S.C. Hankin4, T. Loubrieu5
1 Environmental Systems Science Centre, University of Reading, Reading, UK
2 Space oceanography Division,CLS, Ramonville-St-Agne, France
3 Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, Narragansett, USA
4 Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, NOAA, Seattle,USA
5 IFREMER, Plouzane, France
Abstract
The GODAE project has spanned a decade of rapid technological development. The ever-increasing volume and diversity of oceanographic data produced by in-situ instruments, remote sensing platforms and computer simulations has driven the development of a number of innovative technologies that are essential for connecting scientists with the data that they need. This paper and presentation will discuss both the present technologies that are in use within the GODAE community, and emerging technologies that are being employed in the next generation of data systems.
The underlying approach to GODAE Data Services is a framework of tools based upon widely-shared standards and protocols. This agreement upon common approaches allows scientists to use data in a manner that frees them from the necessity to understand low-level details of file formats, structure or even the physical location of the data. Since the earliest days of GODAE, the Live Access Server (LAS) and the OPeNDAP data protocol have been central to this aim. The LAS allows scientists to visualize, subset and download data using only a web browser, and has recently evolved into a generalized "workflow engine" that allows more sophisticated data processing and intercomparison. The OPeNDAP protocol is used to access data and services (e.g. transformation services) and connects scientists directly to data feeds through the desktop analysis tools that are already familiar to them. OPeNDAP allows timeseries of data to be aggregated into "virtual datasets" that can be accessed over the Internet in the same way as if the user held the entire four-dimensional dataset on his or her own computer. The user can very easily extract specific parameters from the remote dataset and can also extract subsets in space and time. By agreeing upon common standards and conventions for describing data, and by encouraging data providers to provide common views of their data, complex datasets can be discovered, manipulated and understood with easy-to-use tools and web portals.
The last few years have seen the beginnings of convergence between the ocean science community and other communities that deal with geospatial data, such as government agencies, industry and the education sector. This has resulted in the emergence of new technologies, based upon Geographic Information Systems (GIS) that are being applied to combine oceanographic data with data from other sources using the Internet. The focus of these technologies is to enhance existing GODAE data systems by providing greater interoperability with data systems that are used outside the oceanographic community. This will allow ocean data to be more widely applied for the public good in applications such as fisheries management, search-and-rescue at sea and pollution mitigation. This paper and presentation will discuss the many challenges that still remain in the application of GIS technologies to four-dimensional, high-volume oceanographic data.
(Last Updated: 13-10-2008)