inbul 2004
th R. Kirk
lable from
DIGITAL EARTH VISUALIZATION AND WEB-INTERFACE CAPABILITIES
UTILIZING 3-D GEOBROWSER TECHNOLOGY
T. W. Foresman
International Center for Remote Sensing Education, P.O. Box 18285, Baltimore, Maryland 21227 USA — foresman(@direcway.com
KEY WORDS: Three-dimensional, Visualization, Virtual Reality, Global-Environment-Databases, Archiving, Rendering, Web
based, GIS
ABSTRACT:
Since the early days of the first Earth monitoring satellite launches, the ability to distribute these important data resources to the
world community has been especially challenging. This chronic shortcoming of the remote sensing community is increasingly
viewed as a tragic situation for those addressing the rapid decline in ecosystem goods and services around the globe. Under CEOS
and the new ad hoc GEO community, a host of organizational and architectural constructs are being addressed; however, the
unwieldy nature of large intergovernmental organizations prohibits effective implementation scenarios that require environments
where rapid and innovative technological implementation can be pursued. 3-D Geobrowsers, an important enabling technology
originally identified with the Digital Earth community, are rapidly proving their value in the access and distribution of remote
sensing and GIS information. Developments of network spans, as proof-of-concept, are beginning to be implemented within the
global network. Priority remote sensing based applications using the Geobrowser technologies will begin to foster collaboration or
alliances, and critical alignment with the leading intergovernmental bodies will become paramount to manifest the promise of global
observation systems and the goals of the Millennium Declaration. An international Digital Earth group of technology developers has
been collaborating through a series of workshops on the fulfillment of 3-D Geobrowser for operational implementation towards the
ubiquitous and free access and web-based distribution technology for all nations and their citizens.
1. INTRODUCTION The USGS EROS Data Center was created along side the
Landsat satellite program to meet the archiving challenges of
1.1 A Community with Potential Landsat data. While providing the basic archiving functions
and the operating ‘protocols (which have witnessed many
A community that arose from the US NASA's now defunct changes over the years under different administrations) the
Digital Earth initiative has been achieving steady advances in EROS Data Center has not been able to provide global satellite
the development of highly intuitive and engaging three- coverage to the nations of the world. Instead, as a result of
dimensional visualization | graphic-user-interfaces (GUIs), shifting government priorities and policy conflicts as
commonly referred to as 3-D Geobrowsers. This loose commercialization and new sensor systems have been
confederation of like-minded developers has as a common goal launched, a patchwork of coverage and depth of coverage has
the implementation of web-based browsers that will directly emerged. By the end of the 20" century government scientists
access vast archives of global environmental databases were exploring ways to address these obvious shortcomings
(including both GIS and remote sensing) and render these and to incorporate, if possible, international strategies to align
information resources through Earth-based virtual reality the suite of sensor systems to create a truly international global
Software tool kits. Under the nascent mantel of the observing system.
International Society for Digital Earth, multinational members
of the development community have been negotiating on the 1.3 Intergovernmental Systems
operational principles of 3-D Geobrowsers from the
perspectives of a broad user community and the Under the leadership of CEOS a litany of thematic target
interoperability protocols of the growing global geo-spatial sensor observation systems have become part of a continuing
infrastructure. — This paper provides an overview of the agenda (e.g., IGOS, ITOS, et cetera (CEOS, 2004)). While
advances in 3-D Geobrowsers, leading members in the progress can be demonstrated in the deliberations of the rolling
development community, the global design considerations for agenda, operations and applications remain restricted to the
implementation, and the major challenges facing ubiquitous domains of large government, industry, or academic centers.
operations via the internet. Motivated in part by the Millennium Declaration and the series
of "findings" from the 1992 World Summit for Sustainable
1.2 US Satellite Archives Development, a new initiative was announced at last July's
Earth Observation Summit. The ad hoc intergovernmental
With the launch of ERTS 1 (subsequently renamed Landsat 1) Group on Earth Observations (GEO) was launched to develop
in July of 1972, a new era dawned on the community of a 10-year implementation plan to address the need for timely,
nations with the unprecedented synoptic and regular collection high-quality, long-term, global information as a basis for
of remotely sensed land surface data. Over thirty years ago, sound decision making and to enable the continuous
government agencies, industry, and academia began monitoring of the state of the Earth, to increase understanding
addressing the challenges presented by the Landsat series for of dynamic Earth processes, to enhance prediction of the Earth
collecting, processing, archiving, and distributing these system, and to further implement environmental treaty
unparalleled data sets for applications on mapping, monitoring, obligations. The plan will be presented at the third Earth
and modeling the Earth’s surface and life support systems. Observation Summit in February of 2005 (GEO, 2004). Based
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