servir - Capita

Transcription

servir - Capita

PROPOSED PARTICIPATION OF THE REGIONAL
VISUALIZATION & MONITORING SYSTEM (SERVIR)
INTO THE ARCHITECTURE IMPLEMENTATION PILOT OF
THE GLOBAL EARTH OBSERVATION SYSTEM OF
SYSTEMS (GEOSS)
Submitted to
Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Secretariat
By
Daniel E. Irwin
SERVIR Project Director
National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA)
May 2007
SERVIR GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot Proposal
1. OVERVIEW
This document has been prepared on behalf of the implementing agencies of the Regional
Visualization & Monitoring System (SERVIR), in response to the Call for Participation (CFP)
document issued in April 2007 by the Group on Earth Observations for the Architecture
Implementation Pilot of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems. An introduction to
SERVIR is first provided, followed by an outline of the proposed contributions of SERVIR to
the Architecture Implementation Pilot.
Figure 1: Main page of SERVIR’s Internet platform
Background
Established in early 2005 at the behest of the governments of Central America, SERVIR – the
Regional Visualization & Monitoring System – is implemented in Mesoamerica as a regional
platform for earth observation and forecasting. SERVIR is implemented jointly by NASA, the
Water Center for the Humid Tropics of Latin America (CATHALAC, in Spanish), the Central
American Commission for the Environment & Development (CCAD, in Spanish), the U.S.
Agency for International Development (USAID), the Nature Conservancy, the World Bank, and
other partner institutions. SERVIR provides open and bilingual access, via the World Wide Web,
to a variety of vector and satellite data, environmental visualizations, and decision-support
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products1 in the context of the Societal Benefit Areas outlined for the Global Earth Observation
System of Systems, GEOSS (see: http://www.servir.net and Figure 1 above).
Figure 2: SERVIR Inauguration in the Republic of Panama in February 2005 featuring
high-level representatives from NASA, CATHALAC, the CCAD, USAID and the
Government of Panama
With key support from USAID, SERVIR’s regional operational facility was established in
Panama at CATHALAC’s offices in 2005. A test bed and rapid prototyping facility is located in
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama. The environmental
informatics centers of the Central America’s respective Ministries of the Environment are the
system’s national nodes. The system functions in a bottom-up and top-down fashion, with
information flowing freely between national centers and the regional and test bed facilities. For
instance, remotely-sensed data is transmitted on a daily basis from a variety of U.S. Government
satellites to the various Ministries of the Environment. Country data are in turn combined with
these remotely-observed data for the taking of decisions (see Figure 3 following).
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As illustrated in Figure 1, the SERVIR Internet platform features four principal components: (i) satellite / vector
data, (ii) Internet mapping, (iii) decision support tools, and (iv) environmental visualizations.
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the Regional Visualization & Monitoring System
SERVIR
Mesoamerica’s Earth Observation
& Forecasting Platform
Terra
Aqua
Fires
Red Tides
Data ingest from
EDOS
EOS and Central
Land Cover / Use Change
LandSat MODIS
SRTM
AMSR-E
IKONOS ASTER
Test-bed at
NASA MSFC
Users
Web Interface
www.servir.net
Environmental
Monitoring & Decision
Support Products
Operational Node
at CATHALAC
Panama
Central American
Government agencies
NGOs, researchers
Impacts
Educators, etc.
Emergency Response
Policy Changes
Corridor Preservation
Thematic Species Preservation
Sustained Development
Areas
Improved livelihoods
Agriculture
Biodiversity
Climate
Ecosystems
Energy
Disasters
Health
Water
Weather
Figure 3: Schematic of SERVIR Operations
As a regional implementation of the GEOSS concept, SERVIR has provided Mesoamerica with a
first-of-its-kind automated, integrated, Internet-based system for near real-time monitoring and
forecasting of the environment. Additionally, with the support of USAID, plans are underway to
expand SERVIR globally.
With specific regard to the CFP, as neither SERVIR nor its implementing agencies serve as a
developer of software solutions, the main areas of the CFP that SERVIR can contribute to are (i)
the development of user scenarios in support of the GEO Societal Benefit Areas, and (ii) the
refinement of the GEOSS system architecture. How SERVIR can contribute to these activities is
described in the following section.
2. PROPOSED SERVIR CONTRIBUTIONS TO PILOT
The CFP (pp. 2-3) describes participation in the GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot as
including the following activities:
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1) Submission of potential GEO Web Portal solutions, to be made available for free
installation at multiple GEO member or participating organization locations, including,
potentially at or on behalf of the GEO Secretariat.
2) Submission of potential GEOSS Clearinghouse search facility solutions, to be made
available for free installation at multiple GEO member or participating organization
locations, including, potentially at or on behalf of the GEO Secretariat.
3) Registration of components and services hosted by the participating organization in
the GEOSS Registry to support access by the Clearinghouse and Portal, and that to
support demonstration of a set of user scenarios.
4) Participation in the development of a set of user scenarios that support the GEO
Societal Benefit Areas.
5) Participation in the refinement of the initial architecture in Annex B based upon the
pilot activities.
Regarding the submission of Web Portal or Clearinghouse solutions, it should be noted that
neither SERVIR nor its implementing agencies serve as a developer of software solutions,
although the system has certainly implemented software solutions with regard to both of these
themes. Although SERVIR can not provide Web Portal or Clearinghouse solutions to GEO
members / participating organizations, SERVIR’s experience in applying such solutions would
nonetheless be of use to this Pilot.
Experience Implementing Solutions
As noted in the Background section of this proposal, in seeking to deliver services to a spectrum
of users across Mesoamerica, SERVIR has sought, for instance, to integrate a variety of
components in its World Wide Web-based interface.
Access to Geographic Data
These include providing users with direct access to a large database of remotely sensed satellite
imagery, as well as to harmonized vector data provided by the Ministries of the Environment of
Mesoamerica. Datasets are provided as regional raster and vector mosaics which can be subset
and reprojected on the fly, so that a user in Guatemala, for instance, is able to download 90m
Shuttle Radar Topography Mission elevation data projected to UTM WGS84 Zone 15 for his
area of interest.
Remotely-sensed data available through SERVIR include:
AirSAR
JERS1
LandSat
MASTER
MODIS
SRTM
Regionally-harmonized national-level vector data available through SERVIR include:
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Administrative boundaries
Airports
Country boundaries
Ecosystems
Elevation contour lines
Holdridge Life-zones
Populated places
Ports
Protected areas
Road networks
Rivers
Water bodies
This service is primarily utilized by GIS / remote sensing specialists. In the first stage of
SERVIR’s implementation, a Java-based client called MesoStor was developed with the
University of Arkansas’ Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (Figure 4 below).
Figure 4: Java-based MesoStor client being loaded
As of June 2006, SERVIR has also made its geographic data content available using the Portal
Toolkit2 solution developed by the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI). The
implementation of the Portal Toolkit technology is known as the SERVIR Data Portal (Figure
5). The SERVIR Data Portal facilitates easy discovery of geographic content contained within
2
Notable implementation of the Portal Toolkit technology include the USA’s Geospatial One Stop and Norway’s
GeoNorge.
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SERVIR through use of simple keyword searches, and use of more advanced searches by
selecting geographic domains using a simple map viewer.
With regard to information sharing protocols for both the SERVIR Data Portal and its MesoStor
predecessor, all geographic content served through these means conform to FGDC metadata
standards. Implementation of ISO 19115 is being considered as SERVIR’s geographic domain
expands.
Figure 5: Interface for the SERVIR Data Portal
Web Mapping Applications
Users also have the option of viewing and generating maps using web-based interfaces for
mapping. These are implemented using both open source (e.g. Minnesota Mapserver) and
commercial solutions (e.g. ESRI’s ArcIMS ® / ArcGIS Server ® products – see Figure 6). Data
are served using conventional OGC standards for web mapping services (WMS). Implementation
of web feature services and web coverage services are being contemplated in the medium term.
In terms of the user audience for such services, these services can be used, for instance, by
students and educators who want to develop simple maps for reports.
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Figure 6: SERVIR Data Portal/ESRI ArcIMS-based Web Map Server application
integrating SST data being served by the University of South Florida’s Institute for Marine
Remote Sensing
Decision Support
SERVIR’s principal objective is to provide a virtual window on the land, sea and atmosphere of
Mesoamerica. In contrast to SERVIR’s provision of access to static datasets (through the
SERVIR Data Portal, for instance), users can also access near-real time and recent satellite data
captured by U.S. environmental satellites, and forecast products.
On a half-hourly basis, for instance, SERVIR provides access to the infrared, visible color and
water vapor-classified imagery from NOAA’s GOES-12 satellite.
On a daily basis, and in partnership with NASA’s MODIS Rapid Response System, SERVIR
provides daily 250m-1km resolution MODIS imagery and a number of derivatives, such as
chlorophyll concentration maps. Through partnership with the University of Maryland’s Fire
Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), users can also subscribe to daily
FIRMS fire alerts.
On a weekly basis, a partnership with NASA’s Terrestrial Observation & Prediction System
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(TOPS) provides data on trends in vegetation health, land surface temperature and other
variables.
In terms of forecasting, because Mesoamerica’s environment and economic development are
adversely affected by weather extremes, SERVIR also provides forecasts of up to 48-hours for
a variety of atmospheric variables, including precipitation, humidity, and surface temperatures.3
Decision support products are available in a variety of formats, from simple on-screen maps of
red tide events, to email alerts of fire events. One-hour nowcasts of the locations of
thunderstorm formation are also provided through SERVIR on an hourly basis, in partnership
with the Department of Atmospheric Sciences of the University of Alabama-Huntsville.
Figure 7: SERVIR Precipitation Forecast generated by MM5 model running out of the
SERVIR Operational Facility
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Weather forecasts are generated using both the Fifth-Generation NCAR / Penn State Mesoscale Model (MM5) and
the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) models, which are implemented at the SERVIR Operational Facility.
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Altogether, by leveraging the resources of a variety of data providers, SERVIR provides a single
access point for near-real time monitoring and forecasting of the atmosphere, and terrestrial and
marine resources of Mesoamerica. This seeks to facilitate the spectrum of decision-makers
across the region in answering the question, “What is the current / near-current state of the
environment in Mesoamerica?”
Figure 8: Panama’s President, Vice President, and Ministers of Health and Housing with
the Director of CATHALAC at the SERVIR Operational Facility at CATHALAC during a
flood event in late November 2006. SERVIR provided decision support during the event,
which caused the country approximately US $7 million in losses.
Even prior to the system’s formal inauguration in February 2005, SERVIR has provided key
decision support products during the various extreme events facing Mesoamerica. Examples of
event response include products developed during the following events:
Red tide event off the coast of El Salvador during June 2004
Flooding in Panama City, Panama in September 2004
Flooding of the Rio Sixaola (Costa Rica / Panama border) in January 2005
Hurricane Stan in Guatemala / El Salvador in October 2005
Flooding in northern Panama in November 2006 (see Figure 8 above)
Fires in the Petén, Guatemala and central Belize in May 2007
Event response has typically involved the acquisition of remotely-sensed data from optical and
radar sensors such as ASTER and RADARSAT, and the provision of value-added products to
the relevant response agencies in the affected countries (e.g. working with the Belize Forest
Department in the case of the Belize fires, and with Panama’s Civil Protection Agency and
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National Environmental Authority in the case of the November 2006 floods).
Environmental Visualizations
Environmental visualization tools such as virtual globes are effecting a widespread public
consumption of geographic information. Tools such as the popular Google Earth ® software are
spreading ‘geospatial literacy’ and piquing public interest in space-based observations. Threedimensional visualization tools are therefore increasingly important media for the wide
dissemination of information. Key SERVIR technical partner the Institute for the Application of
Geospatial Technology (IAGT) has customized NASA’s World Wind ® application to develop
SERVIR Viz, currently in its second implementation.
SERVIR Viz
features a
number of
GEOSSthemes buttons
Figure 9: Oblique view of ASTER imagery of the Chalillo Dam and Lake Chalillo in Belize,
draped over LandSat Imagery and SRTM Topography Data in SERVIR Viz
As seen in Figure 9 above, SERVIR Viz also provides users with one-click access to the GEOSSthemed decision support products, among other things. SERVIR Viz provides users without GIS
software or expertise with a powerful visualization tool which essentially contains the wealth of
content within the rest of the SERVIR portal. In addition to the GEOSS decision support tools,
with a few clicks, users can also, for instance, drape the downloadable vector data over the
virtual globe. The SERVIR Viz application was recently selected as one of the winning
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submissions to 2007’s International Digital Earth 3D Visualization Challenge, a contest
sponsored by ESRI, Google, NASA and GeoFusion.
Figure 10: SERVIR Viz splash screen
SERVIR Viz, like the World Wind ® application it is based off of, is open-source and can be
freely downloaded for the use of GEO Members and Participating Organizations from the URL:
http://servir.net/visualizations/servir_viz.html.
In summary, with respect to the provision of Web Portal and Clearinghouse solutions, while
SERVIR certainly does not qualify as a provider of such services, technical input can
nevertheless be provided within the framework of this Pilot with regard to the evaluation of such
services, as SERVIR has been implementing such services in Mesoamerica for over the past two
years. The following section describes SERVIR’s potential contributions to the Architecture
Implementation Pilot’s scenario development component.
Scenario Development
Regarding the CFP’s proposed “participation in the development of a set of user scenarios that
support the GEO Societal Benefit Areas,” SERVIR is prepared to participate in the development
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of such scenarios, from the perspective of the scenarios proposed in the CFP, and the
development of other decision support scenarios.
Specifically, SERVIR can participate in the proposed Pilot scenarios of (i) wildfires, (ii) tanker
oil spills, (iii) the local effects of climate change, and (iv) the Africa ecosystems & biodiversity
scenario.
SERVIR can also participate in the development of new scenarios (i.e. ones not proposed in the
Pilot) regarding (i) flooding, (ii) hurricane response, and (iii) land cover / land use change. As
noted in the section on decision support provided above, SERVIR has in the past provided
decision support products with regard to flooding and hurricane response. Scenarios can then be
developed to illustrate the chain of events regarding decision-making in response to such
phenomena. Pilots would focus specifically on stream-lining the process of decision support in
the event of floods and hurricanes, to be able to provide the relevant disaster response agencies
with timely access to relevant and fairly accurate information. This scenario development will
also provide the agencies participating in this Pilot with valuable experience regarding the interagency interactions and data flows that correspond to the period of emergency response.
Stemming from this scenario development, the documentation of the overall process will prove
useful as pilots that can be replicated in the events of actual extreme events, as they occur.
Additionally, SERVIR partner institutions have also worked to provide protected areas managers
in Mesoamerica with tools to assess the extent of deforestation and land use change. This
scenario could be focused on assessing recent land cover change trends, as well as on assessing
future threats to areas and strategies to be taken to avert future land cover conversion of areas
identified as priorities.
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3. DESCRIPTION OF RESPONDING ORGANIZATIONS
Implementation of the Regional Visualization & Monitoring System (SERVIR) is only made
possible by the key technical and financial resources provided both by the implementing
organizations heretofore listed in this document (e.g. NASA, CATHALAC, the CCAD, USAID,
TNC, World Bank)4, as well as a number of other organizations.5
With specific regard to the implementation of this Pilot, NASA and CATHALAC will serve as
the implementers of the proposed activities outlined in this document. Both institutions have
geospatial specialists and programmers on staff that will provide the human resources necessary
for the implementation of the Pilot activities. Descriptions of NASA and CATHALAC are
provided below:
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which was established in
1958, is the agency responsible for the public space program of the United States of
America. In response to a request from the Ministries of Environment of Central
America, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) initially conceived SERVIR,
establishing the system through support of a NASA REASoN/CAN project entitled “A
Regional Monitoring and Visualization System for Decision Support and Disaster
Management Applications for the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor and Beyond.”
SERVIR’s test bed and rapid prototyping facility is located at the NASA MSFC and
functions in coordination with the SERVIR regional operational facility located in
Panama. For more information on NASA, visit http://www.nasa.gov.
CATHALAC
Established as an autonomous organization in 1992, the Water Center for the Humid
Tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean (CATHALAC, in Spanish) is a regional
centre of excellence dedicated to promoting integrated water resources and environmental
management in Latin America & the Caribbean. CATHALAC’s mission is to facilitate
sustainable development for improvement of quality of life without jeopardizing future
generations. CATHALAC has worked for more than ten years on regional climate change
issues. Under a Memorandum of Understanding with the Central American Commission
for the Environment & Development, CATHALAC serves as the regional node for the
Mesoamerican Environmental Information System (SIAM, in Spanish). In February
2005, the operational facility for the Regional Visualization & Monitoring System
(SERVIR) was inaugurated at CATHALAC’s offices in Panama City, Panama. For more
information on CATHALAC, visit: http://www.cathalac.org.
With regard to the implementation of the proposed Pilot activities, Mr. Daniel Irwin of NASA
will serve as the Programmatic Contact while Mr. Francisco Delgado of CATHALAC will
4
The CCAD is a Participating Organization of the Group on Earth Observations, while NASA and USAID, for
instance, are members of the United States’ national committee for GEO. The USA is a member of GEO.
5
The URL http://servir.net/partners.html provides a more extensive list of SERVIR partner organizations.
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serve as the Technical Contact. Contact information for these two representatives is provided as
follows:
Daniel Irwin
SERVIR Project Director
National Aeronautics & Space Administration
Marshall Space Flight Center
320 Sparkman Drive
Huntsville, AL 35805
TEL: (256) 961-7945 / FAX: (256) 961-7723
Email: [email protected]
Francisco Delgado
Knowledge Management Specialist
Water Center for the Humid Tropics of
Latin America & the Caribbean (CATHALAC)
801 City of Knowledge
Panama City, Panama
TEL: (507) 317-3200 / FAX: (507) 317-3299
Email: [email protected]
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servir - Capita

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