5.2.2 The Ionia CD-Browser 
ESRIN has developed a tool called “CD-Browser’ for digital Quick Look consultation and product selection 
from CD-ROMs, (Melinotte and Arino, 1993, Arino et al., 1993). The AVHRR CD-Browser Ionia is a 
demonstration CD-ROM. ESA wishes to encourage and receive the maximum user community feedback on this 
demonstration before initiation of a routine CD-ROM Quick Look production service. The AVHRR Quick-Look 
images provided on this CD-ROM give a partial view of the ESA AVHRR SHARP data archive. This CD-ROM 
is available at the ESA Stand. 
CD-Browser is a generic image base consultation system specifically designed for CD-ROM. CD-Browser 
provides a complete service, from the Query definition to the generation of product Orders. CD-Browser uses 
“standards” formats, the Inventory Exchange Format (IEF) for the catalogue information and the Graphics 
Interchange Format (GIF) for the Quick look images. The AVHRR CD-Browser is the second member of the 
ESA CD-Browser family, OCEAN CD-Browser, dedicated to CZCS data, being the first realised (also available 
at the ESA stand). 
5.2.3 The Ionia Net Browser 
INTECS has developed for ESRIN an experimental Ionia Net-Browser sorftware using public domain system: the 
networked browser NCSA’s Mosaic (Andreessen, 1993). The cone of the NCSA Mosaic system is based on the 
World Wide Web, a distributed hypertext-based information system developed at CERN. As such NCSA Mosaic 
speaks a lot of common TCP/IP network porticoes, includin g HTTP, Gopher, FTP, and NNTP. The Quick Looks, 
Previews and Inventory information are integrated within NCSA’s Mosaic allowing their retrieval by simple 
click on the underlined word on phrase which is a hyperlink to another document anywhere in the network. 
NCSA’s Mosaic supports the GIF image formats as well as other standard formats. The ESRIN Internet World 
Wide Web address is: http://tracy.esrin.esa.it:5555/browse.html. 
5.3 Visibility of the “Global Land 1 km AVHRR Data Set” 
ESA/ESRIN is archiving since 1 April 1992 the data orf the “Global 1 km AVHRR Data Set” project The project 
has been reconducted for another year leading to a 30 months duration. (Buongiomo et al., 1993). This project is 
recognised by the scientific c omm unity to be the most important for ongoing global change studies, (Townsend 
et al., 1992). It is also recognised that access as soon as po>ssible to this data set is neeoied. 
ESA/ESRIN will be in a position to give access to this data set in April 1994. The visibility of the data set to 
users is assured through the generation orf the corresponding Quick look’s. Their collection on CD-ROMs with 
the appropriate software is to be completed by that date as well as their access through network. 
The tiesign of the “1km” CD-Browser and of the “1km” Net-Browser sorftware take into account the very 
positive comments received about the Ionia CD-ROM product. The requirements emitted by the initiators of this 
“1 km” data set and namely the global change researchers were driving the implementation of this service. 
5.3.1 The “1km” Quick Look Products 
In consultation with users, the Quick Look prooluct for this project has been identified as follow: colour 
composite in GIF format subsampled 6 km using the Ionia algorithm, (Arino and Melinotte, 1993 and Arino et 
al., 1993). The Quick Look size is based on the archived HRPT pass length, which is variable depenoling on its 
origin. The width is fixed to 462 pixels and takes into accomnl the satellite viewing angle so that each pixel is 
representative of an area orf 6x6 km. The maximum size orf this Quick Look is around 300 kilobytes. 
For processing time reasons active fires are not oietected, while coastlines, state boundaries and Latitude 
Longitude grid is not reported on the Quick Look products. Nevertheless, it is easy to locate the region of interest 
due to the length of the pass. 
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