CEDA develops visualisation service for the International Space Innovation Centre.

Coinciding with the launch the International Space Innovation Centre at Harwell Oxford, STFC RAL’s Centre for Environmental Data Archival deployed a new data visualisation service for Earth Observation data.

The Science Visualisation Service for Earth Observation (SVSeo) has been developed as a web based application to allow users in the new International Space Innovation Centre (ISIC) and the wider community to visualise and make use of Earth Observation data and climate model simulations. The application uses an OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) standard Web Map Service (WMS) to display datasets as maps in the visualisation client.

Users can visually explore large and complex environmental datasets from observations and models, view, step through and zoom in to gridded datasets on a map view, export images as figures and create animations. Different views can be easily overlaid, e.g. different parameters in the same data, or different datasets. The images and animations can be exported for viewing and manipulation on the ISIC videowall, on Google Earth or other viewing software.

The SVSeo displays datasets which are made available through the CEDA Centre for Environmental Data Archival (http://ceda.ac.uk) archives through the CEDA OGC Web Services framework COWS, but can include any remote data which are exposed via a WMS interface. The COWS server uses the GML application schema Climate Science Modelling Language (CSML) to describe the underlying datasets which are in netCDF data format compliant with CF (Climate and Forecasting) conventions.

The SVSeo can also be used at the ISIC facility in conjunction with a large videowall to create WMS-based animations on a virtual globe. You can also load multiple images simultaneously on synchronised virtual globes.

The International Space Innovation Centre (ISIC) is being established on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus (link opens in a new window). It will create a critical mass of space-related activities by linking existing distributed pockets of expertise in UK industry, academia and Government. This is being done in a setting that provides a unique concentration of facilities to support research, collaboration, operations and business growth promoting self sustainability. ISIC is a not-for-profit company with a range of public and private partners. ISIC was officially launched on Friday 6 May 2011 with an opening ceremony conducted by HRH Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and David Willetts, Minister for Universities and Science.

For further information on the visualisation software or ISIC visualisation facilities please contact: Dominic Lowe (dominic.lowe@stfc.ac.uk) or Jon Blower (j.d.blower@reading.ac.uk).

BADC Helpdesk 16th May 2011