RHoK 2.0 - Chicago/Project/OpenData

[edit] Chicago Project Tracking: OpenData

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[edit] Intro

RHoK Problem Definition URL: http://wiki.rhok.org/Open_Data Navigating disaster areas physical-no way to know what is open to travel on
*Note, this is not tagged for RHoK2.0 yet, but part of some of the general open data discussions.
Team Name: Team Number 5 (for now)
Team Members: Tom Besore, Michael Maranda, Ji Lucas, CM Lubinski, Miftachut Ekasetya, Matt Rocklin,
IRC Channel: (Using wave)
Other Collab: TBD
Other Info:

[edit] Project Status Tracking

Saturday, December 4, 2010. We are developing an application interface to access open mapping data. This will facilitate user selection and viewing of data which is useful in a number of contexts. Initially, we are focusing on data available from NASA's MODIS project (Specifically the Rapid Response Data at http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/) This project accesses data from the Terra and Aqua Spacecraft which cover the entire surface of the earth every one or two days. These near real time images are far more recent and relevant than other sources of imagery. Products available from these spacecraft include observations of land, water and the atmosphere. We identified this data set by reviewing http://www.nasa.gov/open/data.html. Review of this data reveals no existing and intuitive user interface. This is the problem we are attempting to solve: Implementation of a more efficient and intuitive interface to select and review this specific data imagery. This solution can be extrapolated to other data sets once our basic framework is in place.

1. With the help of our representative from NASA, we identified the Rapid Rsponse Data set.
2. We determined a way to access the data source.
3. We discussed what user elements would make this more intuitive and efficient.
4. We identified OpenLayers (http://www.openlayers.org) as a way to visualize this data on a web framework.
5. We analyzed several third party software packages as a means to streamline conversion of the MODIS data into our user web interface data.
6. At the present time we are attempting to find a better way to deal with very large image files.

Current Processing Stack

1. We have scripts (in Python) to automatically download images from the Rapidfire NASA repository. These GeoTiff images are quite large (~100MB)
2. We use geoserver to host a tile server which cuts up and provides 256x256 images on different zoom levels. This server is being hosted on a [www.slicehost.org slice server].
3. We access this tile server from a application hosted on Google App Engine
4. This application uses either openlayers or polymaps to visualize these tiles in a friendly manner.
5. We have some additional UI elements to ease the user-experience. GPS location is found if available and the map appropriately centered. It's also possible to enter a placename to recenter the map.

Product up: [1] This is a nice area around Pakistan floods [2]

[edit] Project Content

Using NASA Satellites-daily imagery as data-real time

Use this section to track all the info on your project work

[edit] Interested

MichaelMaranda @tropoloy