Unidata and NCAR activities to integrate scientific data systems and tools with GIS databases and services for education and research

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Unidata and NCAR activities to integrate
scientific data systems and tools with GIS
databases and services for education and research

• 12 October 2006
• AMS-AGU Heads Chairs Meeting
• Boulder, CO

Mohan Ramamurthy Unidata UCAR Office of Programs
Olga Wilhelmi NCAR
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McIDAS, GEMPAK IDV Tools of our Trade
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Why we need GIS integration? Science Drivers
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Flooding due to Tropical Storms
Tropical Storm Allison
Research studies on and emergency management of
hurricane-induced flooding involve integrating
data from atmospheric sciences, oceanography,
hydrology, geology, geography, and social
sciences.
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The Purpose A Summary

• Challenges of earth system science research
  community include
• integration of complex physical processes into
  weather forecast and climate system models
• understanding interactions between climate,
  environment, and society
• integrating social and environmental information
  with weather and climate
• It is important to make atmospheric science
  usable and data accessible to a wide community of
  users, including researchers, educators,
  practitioners and policy-makers

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Disparate Data ModelsDifferent Ways of Thinking
about Data

• To the GIS (solid earth and societal impacts)
  community, the world is
• A collection of static features (e.g., roads,
  lakes, plots of land) with geographic footprints
  on the Earth (surface).
• The features are discrete objects with attributes
  which can be stored and manipulated conveniently
  in a database.
• To the fluid Earth Sciences (atmosphere, oceans,
  and mantle) communities, the world is
• A set of parameters (e.g., pressure, temperature,
  wind speed) which vary as continuous functions in
  3-dimensional space and time.
• The behavior of the parameters in space and time
  is governed by a set of equations.
• Data are simply discrete points in the
  mathematical function space.

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Traditional GIS view
Features as points, lines, polygons
Attributes in DBMS tables
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Typical Visualization of Atmospheric Data
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An Approach to GIS integration
500 hPa chart on ArcGlobe
World File
QTUA11.tif
QTUA11.tfw
14861.3 -36.775 -5.697 -14922.7 -12838043.0 109277
34.5
QTUA11.aux

Projection
Solutions have been developed to bring other
types of data but challenges remain
Shipley et al.
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Taking Advantage of Web Services for Data System
Interoperability
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GALEON Objectives

• Use standardized web service between GIS and
  atmospheric/oceanographic clients and servers
• Determine suitability of WCS (Web Coverage
  Service) interface for serving traditional FES
  (Fluid Earth Sciences) datasets to GIS community
• Implement WCS gateway(s) to existing FES
  client/server community, based on
• netCDF (network Common Data Form),
• OPeNDAP (Open Project for Networked Data Access
  Protocol)
• THREDDS (THematic Real-time Environmental
  Distributed Data Services)

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PrimaryInterfaces
Underlying Interfaces
Local/RemoteServices
TDS A Collection of Services
TDS (THREDDS Data Server
Interface)
OGC WCS (Web Coverage Server)
File Formats
THREDDScatalog
NetCDF interface
OPeNDAP
OpenDAP
ADDE
netCDF via HTTP
IOsp
GRID
Jgoffs
GRIB
NetCDF
NetCDF
AREA
GINI
Station
NIDS
DMSP
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NetCDF support in ArcGIS

• In ArcGIS 9.2 netCDF data is accessed as
• Raster
• Feature
• Table
• Direct read
• Exports GIS data to netCDF

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Emerging Standards

• CF Version 2
• The next generation of the Climate and Forecast
  convention of netCDF
• GALEON
• OGC testbed project to evaluate netCDF
  suitability as a WCS well known binary.
• Common Data Model (CDM)
• A new API to access netCDF, HDF, GRIB, and
  OpenDAP through a single API.
• NcML
• NetCDF Markup Language, like GML for netCDF earth
  science data

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Integrated Data Viewer (IDV)-GIS Integration of
Aircraft Data
IDV can integrate information from Web Map
Servers and GIS shape files exchange products
with Google Earth
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Lightweight GIS Integration viaGoogle Earth
"Google Earth is just the most fantastic thing I
have ever seen
Jack Dangermond, Founder and President of ESRI
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Google Maps, Personal Meteorological Sensors, and
Hands-on Learning
Google Earth and Google Maps have unleashed a
revolution in light-weight GIS integration. They
have immense potential for enhancing geoscience
education and spatial awareness, but they lack
analytical capabilities
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GIS Climate Change Data Portal

• Distributing output from NCARs Global Climate
  Model (CCSM) in a GIS format (shapefile, text
  file)

http//www.gisClimateChange.org
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Users of GIS Climate Change Data Portal
Resource management
Biomass potential
Salmon conservation
Climate Change Education
Water Resources
Agriculture
Energy
Human Health

• Since February 2005 127K hits, 15K files
  downloaded, more than 1200 registered users from
  95 countries
• Many non-traditional users
• Challenge education about appropriate use of
  data

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Example Impacts of Climate Change
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Summary

• GIS-SIS integration is an important goal for
  Unidata and NCAR
• We are seeing steady progress in integration of
  GIS with atmospheric sciences, but many
  challenges remain
• Ongoing work in Unidata and NCAR GIS Initiative
  in developing international data standards, web
  services, and integration of atmospheric and
  geospatial data will result in better
  understanding of the Earth System and solving
  problems relevant to society

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Thank You!

• For more information
• http//www.gis.ucar.edu
• http//www.unidata.ucar.edu
• E-mail
• mohan_at_ucar.edu
• olgaw_at_ucar.edu