Libraries and application program interfaces (APIs) to assist the NASA EOS and the general earth science/geographic information system (GIS) visualization developer

摘要

Abstract: The NASA EOS Mission to Planet Earth (MTPE) will beboth an opportunity and a challenge to visualizationand analysis tool developers. The EOS Data andInformation System (EOSDIS) will gather, process, andarchive a terabyte (TB) of earth science data per day.Because of the size of the EOSDIS program and the sizeand diversity of the global change community, technicaldecisions and standards adopted by EOSDIS should have asignificant impact on the earth science, geographicinformation systems (GIS), and visualizationdevelopment communities as a whole. NASA is working toencourage and assist commercial and other outside tooldevelopers to create or refine visual analysis tools tomeet the demands of the large global change researchcommunity by providing necessary libraries andapplication program interfaces (API). In order tosimplify data ingest, EOSDIS has adopted thehierarchical data format (HDF) as a standard for most,if not all, EOS data. EOSDIS will provide developerswith standard APIs for accessing and understanding thewide variety of data and metadata within EOSDIS datasets. Many existing visualization tools have inadequatecapabilities for locating data within geographic andtemporal domains. Standards are being established andlibraries developed which will allow developers toprovide capabilities for navigating, geolocating, andprojecting both low-level orbital-swath data andprojected/gridded data within their tools. !10