RealEarth: Bringing Meteorological and Atmospheric Science Imagery and Data to GIS

RealEarth is a data discovery and visualization platform developed at the Space Science and Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to support outreach and collaboration efforts of scientists. This presentation introduces RealEarth and shows how its data products can be used in GIS. What began as an effort to bring near real-time weather together with land remote sensing visualization in one intuitive map interface has expanded to offer time-series animation of aerial photography and early warning notifications for hazards and severe weather. The core infrastructure is comprised of 12 servers hosting 18 virtual machines (VMs), but its federated and modular architecture is extensible and scalable. New VMs are added regularly. Now over 550 imagery products are processed and available for display at any given time. It supports a robust API and several mobile apps for both iOS and Android.