Day: September 9, 2010

OGC seeks comments on NetCDF Climate and Forecast Data Encoding Standards

/ Matt Artz

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) members are seeking comments on OGC candidate standards Network Common Data Form (NetCDF) Core Encoding Standard, and NetCDF Binary Encoding Extension Standard – NetCDF Classic and 64-bit Offset Format.

NetCDF (network Common Data Form) can be used to communicate and store many kinds of multidimensional data, although it was originally developed for the Earth science community. The NetCDF data model is particularly well suited to providing data in forms familiar to atmospheric and oceanic scientists: namely, as sets of related arrays. NetCDF is self-documenting, which means it can associate various physical quantities (such as location, pressure and temperature) with spatio-temporal locations (such as points at specific latitudes, longitudes, vertical levels, and times). Climate and Forecast (CF) Metadata Conventions are often used in conjunction with NetCDF as a means of specifying the semantic information that promotes the processing and sharing of climate and forecast data created with the NetCDF API. The semantic metadata is conveyed internally within the NetCDF datasets.

NetCDF is developed, maintained and actively supported by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) (www.ucar.edu).  This standard has been formally recognized by US Government NASA and NOAA standards bodies. With the other OGC members listed below, UCAR has introduced NetCDF as a candidate OGC standard to encourage broader international use and greater interoperability among clients and servers interchanging data in binary form. This is the initial step in a longer-term plan for establishing CF-netCDF as an OGC standard for binary encoding. This will enable standard delivery of data in binary form via several OGC service interface standards, including the OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS), Web Feature Service (WFS), and Sensor Observation Service (SOS) Interface Standards.

The following organizations submitted these candidate standards to the OGC:

  • IMAA-CNR Italy
  • METEO-FRANCE
  • Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) UK
  • Northrop Grumman Corporation
  • University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)
  • US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

The candidate OGC standards and information about submitting comments on this document are available at http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/71. The public comment period closes on October 7, 2010.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 395 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

[Soource: OGC press release]

Call for Proposals: GSDI Small Grants Program

/ Matt Artz

“The Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) Association is dedicated to international cooperation and collaboration in support of local, national, and international spatial data infrastructure developments that would allow nations to better address social, economic, and environmental issues of pressing importance. We are committed to bringing about an infrastructure that will allow users globally to access spatial data at a variety of scales from multiple sources that ultimately will appear seamless to all users.  The GSDI Association supports the work of organizations to develop their own Spatial Data Innfrastructure (SDI) initiatives, nationally and regionally, and collaborates with local, national, and international organizations to ensure that spatial data, services, and metadata are accessible through interoperable standards-based services, systems, software, and products that operate in a web-enabled environment.   The success of the GSDI Association depends on the quality of its partnerships with public, private, academic, and non-governmental organizations. Through adoption of common, international standards, key architecture principles, and approaches for capacity building in developing countries, the GSDI initiatives also link national SDI efforts with the vision and goals of the Group on Earth Observation (GEO) and its Global Earth Observations System of Systems (GEOSS).”

Spatial Analysis of Urbanization in the Salt Lake Valley: An Urban Ecosystem Perspective

/ Matt Artz

Utah State University, Doctoral Dissertation, May 2010

John H. Lowry Jr.

“Because urban areas comprise a variety of biotic (e.g. people, trees) and abiotic (e.g. streets, water) components that interact and are often interdependent upon one another, it is helpful to study urban areas as urban ecosystems.

“Our goal in Chapter 2 is to measure and quantify the spatial and demographic structure of the urbanized portion of Salt Lake County, Utah. We use 18 metrics from four broad categories (density, centrality, accessibility, and neighborhood mix) to measure urban form for three age-based residential neighborhood types. Using analysis of variance (ANOVA) we test for differences in mean values for the 18 urban form metrics. We find measureable differences in the spatial and demographic characteristics of these neighborhoods, suggesting that the rate of urban sprawl in Salt Lake County has been holding steady, if not increasing, during the last 20 years.

“Chapter 3 seeks to better understand how spatial heterogeneity in urban tree canopy is related to household characteristics, urban form, and the geophysical landscape of residential neighborhoods. We consider neighborhood age a factor that moderates the relationship between these determinants of tree canopy, and the abundance of tree canopy observed. Using linear regression analysis with neighborhood age as interaction term, we assess the relationship between tree canopy and 15 determinants of tree canopy abundance at three neighborhood ages. We find that neighborhood age has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between several determinants of canopy cover and the abundance of canopy cover observed.

“While the urban forest provides many benefits to human well-being, it also consumes considerable quantities of water. An important question in Chapter 4 is to determine whether a growing urban forest increases overall residential irrigation demand, decreases demand, or has no apparent effect. Using a water demand model borrowed from agronomy, we estimate irrigation water demand based on the area of three residential landscape types and climatic factors. We project future residential water demand by generating residential landscape scenarios based on predicted urban forest canopy growth. We find that urban forest growth has the effect of stabilizing or potentially decreasing overall residential irrigation water demand.”

Algorithms for Spatial Analysis and Interpolation of Discrete Sets of Critical Infrastructure Hazard Data

/ Matt Artz

2nd International Conference on Information Technology (ICIT), Gdansk, Poland, 28-30 June 2010

Kulawiak, Marcin; Stepnowski, Andrzej

“The paper proposes several algorithms for interpolation and spatial filtering of discrete sets of Critical Infrastructure (CI) hazard data. The effectiveness of the algorithms has been exemplified on sample CI criticality results computed using the CARVER2™ vulnerability assessment tool for several infrastructures in the City of Gdansk. The results of this analysis are produced in the form of thematic layers designed for integration with the Web-Based Geographic Information System (Web-GIS) for Assessment and Visualization of Critical Infrastructure and its Hazards, built for the City of Gdansk by the Gdansk University of Technology. The presented algorithms further enhance the spatial analysis capabilities of the Web-GIS, offering an integrated solution for visual analysis of CI data as well as a team-enabled environment for examination and sharing such information among geographically distributed decision makers.”