An Interactive Hazard Mapping System

The Goddard Earth Sciences Distributed Active Archived Center (GES DAAC) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) initiated a number of projects to support research and application users in agriculture, ocean science, fishery, atmospheric, environmental and public health communities. The objectives of these projects are to provide easy and timely access to remotely sensing data, in situ observations, model output, using mature science and technology to address various health and environmental issues and to support early warning dissemination. There are a number of challenges. 1) Many existing data are in different formats and can only be displayed or analyzed in certain application software and on limited platforms. 2) In order for decision makers/researchers/analysts to use the data more efficiently, the system should have the capabilities of data integration, display and analysis. 3) Algorithms and models should be able to run and the results displayed and analyzed in the same system. 4) Areas of interest can be mapped and incorporated in the warnings/reports.

To meet these challenges, we propose to design an interactive hazard mapping system (IHMS) which will be capable of performing these tasks. The system can also be used for continuous monitoring of hazards and special events, such as an oil spill, volcanic eruption, forest fire, floods, etc., and issue warnings and reports when required. The system will provide a one-stop data shopping and analyses, thus allowing the users to concentrate on the event development and decision making.

The proposed system will:

1) integrate data from a variety of sources, e.g. from satellites sensors such as GOES, AVHRR, MODIS, in situ measurements such as public health data, model data, such as NCEP output; 2) perform format conversions between different data sets; 3) support network access of data sets from other sources (e.g., data to be compatible with OpenGIS); 4) display and/or animate data in the system; 5) perform overlays of rivers, political boundaris, terrain, and coastlines; 6) support perform image processing; 7) execute user provided algorithms and display the results; 8) run prediction/diagnostic models if necessary; 9) able to create meta data for quality control and case studies; 10) allow users to map/analyze the interested areas, make comments, and issue warnings.