On-line data archives

©2001 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.Digital libraries and other large archives of electronically retrievable and manipulable material are becoming widespread in both commercial and scientific arenas. Advances in networking technologies have led to a greater proliferation of wide-area distributed data warehousing with associated data management challenges. We review tools and technologies for supporting distributed on-line data archives and explain our key concept of active data archives, in which data can be, processed on-demand before delivery. We are developing wide-area data warehousing software infrastructure for geographically distributed archives of large scientific data sets, such as satellite image data, that are stored hierarchically on disk arrays and tape silos and are accessed by a variety of scientific and decision support applications. Interoperability is a major issue for distributed data archives and requires standards for server interfaces and metadata. We review present activities and our contributions in developing such standards for different application areas.K. Hawick, P. Coddington, H. James, C. Patte

A real-time distributed analysis automation for hurricane surface wind observations

From 1993 until 1999, the Hurricane Research Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) produced real-time analyses of surface wind observations to help determine a storm\u27s wind intensity and extent. Limitations of the real-time analysis system included platform and filesystem dependency, lacking data integrity and feasibility for Internet deployment. In 2000, a new system was developed, built upon a Java prototype of a quality control graphical client interface for wind observations and an object-relational database. The objective was to integrate them in a distributed object approach with the legacy code responsible for the actual real-time wind analysis and image product generation. Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) was evaluated, but Java Remote Method Invocation (AMI) offered important advantages in terms of reuse and deployment. Even more substantial, though, were the efforts towards object-oriented redesign, implementation and testing of the quality control interface and its database performance interaction. As a result, a full-featured application can now be launched from the Web, potentially accessible by tropical cyclone forecast and warning centers worldwide

Forum Session at the First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC03)

The First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC) was held in Trento, December 15-18, 2003. The focus of the conference ---Service Oriented Computing (SOC)--- is the new emerging paradigm for distributed computing and e-business processing that has evolved from object-oriented and component computing to enable building agile networks of collaborating business applications distributed within and across organizational boundaries. Of the 181 papers submitted to the ICSOC conference, 10 were selected for the forum session which took place on December the 16th, 2003. The papers were chosen based on their technical quality, originality, relevance to SOC and for their nature of being best suited for a poster presentation or a demonstration. This technical report contains the 10 papers presented during the forum session at the ICSOC conference. In particular, the last two papers in the report ere submitted as industrial papers

Digital cockpits and decision support systems : design of technics and tools to extract and process data from heterogeneous databases

Tableau d'honneur de la Faculté des études supérieures et postdoctorales, 2006-200

Development of an interface for the conversion of geodata in a NetCDF data model and publication of this data by the use of the web application DChart, related to the CEOP-AEGIS project

The Tibetan Plateau with an extent of about 2,5 million square kilometers at an average altitude higher than 4,700 meters has a significant impact on the Asian monsoon and regulates with its snow and ice reserves the upstream headwaters of seven major south-east Asian rivers. Upon the water supply of these rivers depend over 1,4 billion people, the agriculture, the economics, and the entire ecosystem in this region. As the increasing number of floods and droughts show, these seasonal water reserves however are likely to be influenced by climate change, with negative effects for the downstream water supply and subsequently the food security. The international cooperation project CEOP-AEGIS – funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Program – aims as a result to improve the knowledge of the hydrology and meteorology of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau to further understand its role in climate, monsoon and increasing extreme meteorological events. Within the framework of this project, a large variety of earth observation datasets from remote sensing products, model outputs and in-situ ground station measurements are collected and evaluated. Any foreground products of CEOP-AEGIS will have to be made available to the scientific community by an online data repository which is a contribution to the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). The back-end of the CEOP-AEGIS Data Portal relies on a Dapper OPeNDAP web server that serves data stored in the NetCDF file format to a DChart client front-end as web-based user interface. Data from project partners are heterogeneous in its content, and also in its type of storage and metadata description. However NetCDF project output data and metadata has to be standardized and must follow international conventions to achieve a high level of interoperability. Out of these needs, the capabilities of NetCDF, OPeNDAP, Dapper and DChart were profoundly evaluated in order to take correct decisions for implementing a suitable and interoperable NetCDF data model for CEOP-AEGIS data that allows a maximum of compatibility and functionality to OPeNDAP and Dapper / DChart as well. This NetCDF implementation is part of a newly developed upstream data interface that converts and aggregates heterogeneous input data of project partners to standardized NetCDF datasets, so that they can be feed via OPeNDAP to the CEOP-AEGIS Data Portal based on the Dapper / DChart technology. A particular focus in the design of this data interface was set to an intermediate data and metadata representation that easily allows to modify its elements with the scope of achieving standardized NetCDF files in a simple way. Considering the extensive variety and amount of data within this project, it was essential to properly design a data interface that converts heterogeneous input data of project partners to standardized and aggregated NetCDF output files in order to ensure maximum compatibility and functionality within the CEOP-AEGIS Data Portal and subsequently interoperability within the scientific community.:Task of Diploma Thesis ii Declaration of academic honesty vii Abstract ix Acknowledgments xiii Dedication xv Table of Contents xvii List of Figures xxi List of Tables xxiii List of Listings xxv Nomenclature xxvii 1 Introduction 1 1.1 CEOP-AEGIS project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.2 Problem statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.3 Objective of this thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 1.4 Structure of this work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2 Theoretical foundations 13 2.1 NetCDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 2.1.1 Data models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 2.1.2 Datasets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.1.3 Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.1.4 Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.1.5 Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 2.1.6 NetCDF 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 2.1.7 NetCDF 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 2.1.8 Common Data Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 2.1.9 NetCDF libraries and APIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 2.1.10 NetCDF utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 2.1.11 NetCDF textual representations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 2.1.12 NetCDF conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 2.2 OPeNDAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 2.2.1 Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 2.2.2 OPeNDAP servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 2.2.3 OPeNDAP clients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 2.2.4 Data Access Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 2.2.5 OPeNDAP data models and data types . . . . . . . . . 49 2.2.6 OPeNDAP and NetCDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 2.3 Dapper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 2.3.1 Climate Data Portal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 2.3.2 System architecture and Dapper services . . . . . . . . 58 2.3.3 Data aggregation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 2.3.4 Supported conventions of Dapper . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 2.4 DChart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 2.4.1 Design goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 2.4.2 Functionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 2.4.3 System architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 2.5 Dapper and DChart configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 2.5.1 License and release notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 2.5.2 Dapper and DChart system requirements . . . . . . . . 67 3 Implementation 69 3.1 Scientific data types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 3.1.1 Gridded data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 3.1.2 In-situ data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 3.2 NetCDF for CEOP-AEGIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 3.2.1 CF Climate and Forecast Convention . . . . . . . . . . 73 3.2.2 Dapper In-situ Convention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 3.2.3 NetCDF implementation for CEOP-AEGIS . . . . . . 89 3.3 CEOP-AEGIS Data Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 3.3.1 Intermediate data model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 3.3.2 Data Interface dependencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 3.3.3 Data Interface usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 3.3.4 Data Interface modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 3.4 Final products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 4 Conclusion 111 4.1 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 4.2 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 4.3 Outlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 A Appendix 119 A.1 CD-ROM of project data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 A.2 Flood occurrence maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 A.2.1 Flood occurrence May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 A.2.2 Flood occurrence August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 A.3 CEOP-AEGIS Data Portal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 A.3.1 Capture image of CEOP-AEGIS Data Portal . . . . . . 125 A.3.2 Dapper configuration file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 A.3.3 DChart configuration file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 A.4 NetCDF data models for CEOP-AEGIS . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 A.4.1 Data model for gridded data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 A.4.2 Data model for in-situ data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 A.5 Upstream data interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 A.5.1 Data Interface and service chain . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 A.5.2 Data Interface data flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 A.5.3 Data Interface data flow 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 A.5.4 Data Interface modules and classes . . . . . . . . . . . 137 A.5.5 Data Interface NetCDF metadata file for gridded data 138 A.5.6 Data Interface NetCDF metadata file for in-situ data . 139 A.5.7 Data Interface coordinate metadata file for gridded data140 A.5.8 Data Interface coordinate metadata file for in-situ data 140 A.5.9 Data Interface UI main program . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 A.5.10 Data Interface UI GrADS component . . . . . . . . . . 142 A.5.11 Data Interface UI GDAL component . . . . . . . . . . 143 A.5.12 Data Interface UI CSV component . . . . . . . . . . . 144 A.5.13 Data Interface settings file for gridded data . . . . . . . 145 A.5.14 Data Interface settings file for in-situ data . . . . . . . 146 A.5.15 Data Interface batch file for data conversion via GrADS146 A.5.16 Data Interface batch file for data conversion via GDAL 147 A.5.17 Data Interface batch file for data conversion via CSV . 148 A.6 Pydoc documentation for upstream data interface . . . . . . . 149 A.6.1 grads_2Interface.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 A.6.2 gdal_2Interface.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 A.6.3 csv_2Interface.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 A.6.4 interface_Main.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 A.6.5 interface_Settings.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 A.6.6 interface_Control.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 A.6.7 interface_Model.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 A.6.8 interface_ModelUtilities.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 A.6.9 interface_Data.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 A.6.10 interface_ProcessingTools.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Bibliography 197 Index 205Das Hochplateau von Tibet mit einer Ausdehnung von 2.5 Millionen Quadratkilometer und einer durchschnittlichen Höhe von über 4 700 Meter beeinflusst wesentlich den asiatischen Monsun und reguliert mit seinen Schnee- und Eisreserven den Wasserhaushalt der Oberläufe der sieben wichtigsten Flüsse Südostasiens. Von diesem Wasserzufluss leben 1.4 Milliarden Menschen und hängt neben dem Ackerbau und der Wirtschaft das gesamte Ökosystem in dieser Gegend ab. Wie die zunehmende Zahl an Dürren und Überschwemmungen zeigt, sind diese jahreszeitlich beeinflussten Wasserreserven allen Anscheins nach vom Klimawandel betroffen, mit negativen Auswirkungen für die flussabwärts liegenden Stromgebiete und demzufolge die dortige Nahrungsmittelsicherheit. Das internationale Kooperationsprojekt CEOP-AEGIS – finanziert von der Europäischen Kommission unter dem Siebten Rahmenprogramm – hat sich deshalb zum Ziel gesetzt, die Hydrologie und Meteorologie dieses Hochplateaus weiter zu erforschen, um daraus seine Rolle in Bezug auf das Klima, den Monsun und den zunehmenden extremen Wetterereignissen tiefgreifender verstehen zu können. Im Rahmen dieses Projektes werden verschiedenartigste Erdbeobachtungsdaten von Fernerkundungssystemen, numerischen Simulationen und Bodenstationsmessungen gesammelt und ausgewertet. Sämtliche Endprodukte des CEOP-AEGIS Projektes werden der wissenschaftlichen Gemeinschaft auf Grundlage einer über das Internet erreichbaren Datenbank zugänglich gemacht, welche eine Zuarbeit zur Initiative GEOSS (Global Earth Observing System of Systems) ist. Hintergründig basiert das CEOP-AEGIS Datenportal auf einem Dapper OPeNDAP Internetserver, welcher die im NetCDF Dateiformat gespeicherten Daten der vordergründigen internetbasierten DChart Benutzerschnittstelle auf Grundlage des OPeNDAP Protokolls bereit stellt. Eingangsdaten von Partnern dieses Projektes sind heterogen nicht nur in Bezug ihres Dateninhalts, sondern auch in Anbetracht ihrer Datenhaltung und Metadatenbeschreibung. Die Daten- und Metadatenhaltung der im NetCDF Dateiformat gespeicherten Endprodukte dieses Projektes müssen jedoch auf einer standardisierten Basis internationalen Konventionen folgen, damit ein hoher Grad an Interoperabilität erreicht werden kann. In Anbetracht dieser Qualitätsanforderungen wurden die technischen Möglichkeiten von NetCDF, OPeNDAP, Dapper und DChart in dieser Diplomarbeit gründlich untersucht, damit auf Grundlage dieser Erkenntnisse eine korrekte Entscheidung bezüglich der Implementierung eines für CEOP-AEGIS Daten passenden und interoperablen NetCDF Datenmodels abgeleitet werden kann, das eine maximale Kompatibilität und Funktionalität mit OPeNDAP und Dapper / DChart sicher stellen soll. Diese NetCDF Implementierung ist Bestandteil einer neu entwickelten Datenschnittstelle, welche heterogene Daten von Projektpartnern in standardisierte NetCDF Datensätze konvertiert und aggregiert, sodass diese mittels OPeNDAP dem auf der Dapper / DChart Technologie basierendem Datenportal von CEOP-AEGIS zugeführt werden können. Einen besonderen Schwerpunkt bei der Entwicklung dieser Datenschnittstelle wurde auf eine intermediäre Daten- und Metadatenhaltung gelegt, welche mit der Zielsetzung von geringem Arbeitsaufwand die Modifizierung ihrer Elemente und somit die Erzeugung von standardisierten NetCDF Dateien auf eine einfache Art und Weise erlaubt. In Anbetracht der beträchtlichen und verschiedenartigsten Geodaten dieses Projektes war es schlussendlich wesentlich, eine hochwertige Datenschnittstelle zur Überführung heterogener Eingangsdaten von Projektpartnern in standardisierte und aggregierte NetCDF Ausgansdateien zu entwickeln, um damit eine maximale Kompatibilität und Funktionalität mit dem CEOP-AEGIS Datenportal und daraus folgend ein hohes Maß an Interoperabilität innerhalb der wissenschaftlichen Gemeinschaft erzielen zu können.:Task of Diploma Thesis ii Declaration of academic honesty vii Abstract ix Acknowledgments xiii Dedication xv Table of Contents xvii List of Figures xxi List of Tables xxiii List of Listings xxv Nomenclature xxvii 1 Introduction 1 1.1 CEOP-AEGIS project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.2 Problem statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.3 Objective of this thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 1.4 Structure of this work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2 Theoretical foundations 13 2.1 NetCDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 2.1.1 Data models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 2.1.2 Datasets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.1.3 Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.1.4 Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.1.5 Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 2.1.6 NetCDF 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 2.1.7 NetCDF 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 2.1.8 Common Data Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 2.1.9 NetCDF libraries and APIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 2.1.10 NetCDF utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 2.1.11 NetCDF textual representations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 2.1.12 NetCDF conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 2.2 OPeNDAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 2.2.1 Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 2.2.2 OPeNDAP servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 2.2.3 OPeNDAP clients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 2.2.4 Data Access Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 2.2.5 OPeNDAP data models and data types . . . . . . . . . 49 2.2.6 OPeNDAP and NetCDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 2.3 Dapper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 2.3.1 Climate Data Portal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 2.3.2 System architecture and Dapper services . . . . . . . . 58 2.3.3 Data aggregation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 2.3.4 Supported conventions of Dapper . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 2.4 DChart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 2.4.1 Design goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 2.4.2 Functionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 2.4.3 System architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 2.5 Dapper and DChart configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 2.5.1 License and release notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 2.5.2 Dapper and DChart system requirements . . . . . . . . 67 3 Implementation 69 3.1 Scientific data types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 3.1.1 Gridded data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 3.1.2 In-situ data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 3.2 NetCDF for CEOP-AEGIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 3.2.1 CF Climate and Forecast Convention . . . . . . . . . . 73 3.2.2 Dapper In-situ Convention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 3.2.3 NetCDF implementation for CEOP-AEGIS . . . . . . 89 3.3 CEOP-AEGIS Data Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 3.3.1 Intermediate data model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 3.3.2 Data Interface dependencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 3.3.3 Data Interface usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 3.3.4 Data Interface modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 3.4 Final products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 4 Conclusion 111 4.1 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 4.2 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 4.3 Outlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 A Appendix 119 A.1 CD-ROM of project data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 A.2 Flood occurrence maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 A.2.1 Flood occurrence May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 A.2.2 Flood occurrence August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 A.3 CEOP-AEGIS Data Portal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 A.3.1 Capture image of CEOP-AEGIS Data Portal . . . . . . 125 A.3.2 Dapper configuration file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 A.3.3 DChart configuration file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 A.4 NetCDF data models for CEOP-AEGIS . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 A.4.1 Data model for gridded data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 A.4.2 Data model for in-situ data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 A.5 Upstream data interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 A.5.1 Data Interface and service chain . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 A.5.2 Data Interface data flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 A.5.3 Data Interface data flow 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 A.5.4 Data Interface modules and classes . . . . . . . . . . . 137 A.5.5 Data Interface NetCDF metadata file for gridded data 138 A.5.6 Data Interface NetCDF metadata file for in-situ data . 139 A.5.7 Data Interface coordinate metadata file for gridded data140 A.5.8 Data Interface coordinate metadata file for in-situ data 140 A.5.9 Data Interface UI main program . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 A.5.10 Data Interface UI GrADS component . . . . . . . . . . 142 A.5.11 Data Interface UI GDAL component . . . . . . . . . . 143 A.5.12 Data Interface UI CSV component . . . . . . . . . . . 144 A.5.13 Data Interface settings file for gridded data . . . . . . . 145 A.5.14 Data Interface settings file for in-situ data . . . . . . . 146 A.5.15 Data Interface batch file for data conversion via GrADS146 A.5.16 Data Interface batch file for data conversion via GDAL 147 A.5.17 Data Interface batch file for data conversion via CSV . 148 A.6 Pydoc documentation for upstream data interface . . . . . . . 149 A.6.1 grads_2Interface.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 A.6.2 gdal_2Interface.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 A.6.3 csv_2Interface.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 A.6.4 interface_Main.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 A.6.5 interface_Settings.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 A.6.6 interface_Control.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 A.6.7 interface_Model.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 A.6.8 interface_ModelUtilities.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 A.6.9 interface_Data.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 A.6.10 interface_ProcessingTools.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Bibliography 197 Index 20

Thermal Protection System Imagery Inspection Management System -TIIMS

TIIMS is used during the inspection phases of every mission to provide quick visual feedback, detailed inspection data, and determination to the mission management team. This system consists of a visual Web page interface, an SQL database, and a graphical image generator. These combine to allow a user to ascertain quickly the status of the inspection process, and current determination of any problem zones. The TIIMS system allows inspection engineers to enter their determinations into a database and to link pertinent images and video to those database entries. The database then assigns criteria to each zone and tile, and via query, sends the information to a graphical image generation program. Using the official TIPS database tile positions and sizes, the graphical image generation program creates images of the current status of the orbiter, coloring zones, and tiles based on a predefined key code. These images are then displayed on a Web page using customized JAVA scripts to display the appropriate zone of the orbiter based on the location of the user's cursor. The close-up graphic and database entry for that particular zone can then be seen by selecting the zone. This page contains links into the database to access the images used by the inspection engineer when they make the determination entered into the database. Status for the inspection zones changes as determinations are refined and shown by the appropriate color code

Air-to-Air Surveillance for Future ATM Systems

This paper describes a prototype implementation of ADS-B in an air-to-air surveillance system. This air surveillance system was defined for an experimental project on future civilian air traffic management, which imposes new requirements over both air and ground surveillance systems. In this paper the relation between the different airborne and ground systems related to air surveillance is detailed, and the air surveillance and its algorithms are described. It is related with current ADS-B and TIS-B proposals, and defined as an extension of those systems. Finally, performance of the air surveillance is detailed, based on simulated scenarios, and some conclusions for future enhancements of ADS-B function are derived

A Framework To Model Complex Systems Via Distributed Simulation: A Case Study Of The Virtual Test Bed Simulation System Using the High Level Architecture

As the size, complexity, and functionality of systems we need to model and simulate con-tinue to increase, benefits such as interoperability and reusability enabled by distributed discrete-event simulation are becoming extremely important in many disciplines, not only military but also many engineering disciplines such as distributed manufacturing, supply chain management, and enterprise engineering, etc. In this dissertation we propose a distributed simulation framework for the development of modeling and the simulation of complex systems. The framework is based on the interoperability of a simulation system enabled by distributed simulation and the gateways which enable Com-mercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) simulation packages to interconnect to the distributed simulation engine. In the case study of modeling Virtual Test Bed (VTB), the framework has been designed as a distributed simulation to facilitate the integrated execution of different simulations, (shuttle process model, Monte Carlo model, Delay and Scrub Model) each of which is addressing differ-ent mission components as well as other non-simulation applications (Weather Expert System and Virtual Range). Although these models were developed independently and at various times, the original purposes have been seamlessly integrated, and interact with each other through Run-time Infrastructure (RTI) to simulate shuttle launch related processes. This study found that with the framework the defining properties of complex systems - interaction and emergence are realized and that the software life cycle models (including the spiral model and prototyping) can be used as metaphors to manage the complexity of modeling and simulation of the system. The system of systems (a complex system is intrinsically a system of systems ) continuously evolves to accomplish its goals, during the evolution subsystems co-ordinate with one another and adapt with environmental factors such as policies, requirements, and objectives. In the case study we first demonstrate how the legacy models developed in COTS simulation languages/packages and non-simulation tools can be integrated to address a compli-cated system of systems. We then describe the techniques that can be used to display the state of remote federates in a local federate in the High Level Architecture (HLA) based distributed simulation using COTS simulation packages

A Web-based flood forecasting system for Shuangpai region

Author name used in this publication: K. W. ChauAuthor name used in this publication: Chun-Tian Cheng2005-2006 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalAccepted ManuscriptPublishe

A teamwork-oriented air traffic control simulator

Air Traffic Control (ATC) is a complicated domain in which many specialists should collaborate and communicate with each other in order to guarantee safe and efficient air traffic. A significant number of air traffic control errors are associated with either faulty coordination between ATC actors, or a failure of some kind of team coordination. These errors are likely to increase in the future as aircraft density increases. Many researchers suggest that the introduction of team and teamwork concepts during the training phase of the ATC actors will be in help to reduce the amount of these errors. The objective of this research is to conceive, design, and implement a teamwork-oriented Air Traffic Control simulator that can be easily installed and used in ATC schools. The product of this thesis will be a complete software package that allows trainees in the different ATC specialties to work together in the same manner as they do "on-the-job" in order to collaboratively manage an air traffic situation. This type of simulator should allow air traffic control trainees to acquire more robust coordination skills and reduce the amount of traffic control errors caused by lack of teamwork in actual ATC training situations.http://archive.org/details/ateamworkoriente109452716Tunisian Air Force author.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited