Two WCS Implementations at the University of New Mexico, Earth Data Analysis Center

From Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP)

We've implemented two different approaches to WCS at EDAC: one using the THREDDS Data Server platform for automatic publication of a growing collection of meteorological and dust forecast products related to several NASA funded projects; and using Mapserver as the WCS engine for the New Mexico Resource Geographic Information System, currently in public beta, the geospatial data clearinghouse that EDAC maintains for the state of New Mexico.

NASA A.19 Model Interoperability Feasibility Study THREDDS WCS Implementation

As part of a larger project in which EDAC is working with researchers at George Mason University, we have established a TDS server that provides access to NWS and NOAA NOMADS Global Forecast System (GFS) model outputs that are used to provide initialization and boundary condition parameters for dust forecast model runs executed at George Mason University. The outputs of these model runs are then sent back to EDAC's servers for integration into the core OGC services hosted by TDS for use in further model execution for sub-regions of interest and for delivery to other users that may make use of the available products. THREDDS was selected for these services for the following reasons:

  • Automatic updating of available services based upon source data files contained in configured directories - i.e. the THREDDS catalog is automatically updated when new data are added to the source directories
  • Support for the GRIB1, GRIB2, and NetCDF file formats that are used for the GFS and DREAM Dust model output files.
  • Straightforward configuration for automated operation.

The THREDDS catalog established for the project may be found at: http://129.24.63.106:8080/thredds/catalog.html

Supported formats: GeoTIFF GeoTIFF_Float NetCDF3

New Mexico Resource Geographic Information System

In the development of the next release of the New Mexico Resource Geographic Information System (NM RGIS), EDAC's goal has been to have a core set of interoperability standards that are automatically enabled for all geospatial data products that are registered with the system. Just in the last two days (8/26/10), we have enabled our first WCS capability for the public beta of RGIS, with WCS automatically available for all raster data sets in the clearinghouse that have been properly "promoted" to the status of a geospatial data product. These services are automatically generated through a set of REST services that detect incoming OGC requests, and if the service configuration has already been cached uses the existing service configuration file, if the service configuration file does not already exist in the cache, and new Mapserver mapfile is created that defines the OGC services for the requested dataset. Mapserver provides the OGC service engine that ultimately handles incoming requests, with the REST service interfaces acting as a proxy for incoming requests.

Supported formats: GTiff, PNG, JPEG, GIF

Sample Requests

http://rgisbeta.unm.edu/datasets/90593/services/ogc/wcs?service=wcs&request=getcoverage&bbox=-108.629908020129,32.4960226013127,-108.557525327983,32.5664671781516&format=jpeg&width=500&height=500&CRS=EPSG:4326&coverage=n_3210828_sw_12_1_20090510

http://rgisbeta.unm.edu/datasets/27334/services/ogc/wcs?SERVICE=wcs&REQUEST=getcoverage&format=GTiff&width=8000&height=8000&bbox=-106.377546921328,36.1233887116554,-106.247560685654,36.2517880598711&CRS=EPSG:4326&coverage=36106-B3_DEM__27334