Abstract
The Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) at the University of Kansas has collected approximately 1000 terabytes (TB) of radar depth sounding data over the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets since 1993 in an effort to map the thickness of the ice sheets and ultimately understand the impacts of climate change and sea level rise. In addition to data collection, the storage, management, and public distribution of the dataset are also primary roles of the CReSIS. The Open Polar Server (OPS) project developed a free and open source infrastructure to store, manage, analyze, and distribute the data collected by CReSIS in an effort to replace its current data storage and distribution approach. The OPS infrastructure includes a spatial database management system (DBMS), map and web server, JavaScript geoportal, and MATLAB application programming interface (API) for the inclusion of data created by the cryosphere community. Open source software including GeoServer, PostgreSQL, PostGIS, OpenLayers, ExtJS, GeoEXT and others are used to build a system that modernizes the CReSIS data distribution for the entire cryosphere community and creates a flexible platform for future development. Usability analysis demonstrates the OPS infrastructure provides an improved end user experience. In addition, interpolating glacier topography is provided as an application example of the system.
Highlights
Over the past 30 years, a global warming of 0.2 ̋C per decade has been detected [1]
Our research presents yet another example which shows that open source software and technologies could be used to develop a robust and integrative web application serving diverse geospatial data for the cryosphere research community based on the previous studies
Given the inadequacy of the systems readily available to Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) for data storage and distribution, the primary goal of the Open Polar Server (OPS) project is to develop a free and open source infrastructure capable of storing, managing, creating, analyzing, and distributing the datasets collected by CReSIS in a way that provides an improved experience for both end users and the primary producers of polar remote sensing data
Summary
Over the past 30 years, a global warming of 0.2 ̋C per decade has been detected [1]. It is important to develop and test open source web GIS applications with real-world large geospatial data. Our research presents yet another example which shows that open source software and technologies could be used to develop a robust and integrative web application serving diverse geospatial data for the cryosphere research community based on the previous studies. The primary goal of this work is to develop a free and open source infrastructure capable of storing, managing, creating, analyzing, and distributing the dataset collected by CReSIS in a way that provides an improved experience for both the users and primary producers of the data.
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