Remote Sensing Information Gateway (RSIG)

From Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP)
Revision as of 14:47, October 6, 2008 by Michael E. Brown (Michaele brown) (talk | contribs) (Removed CALIPSO and added two data sources not previously listed. Added RSIG home page. Other minor edits.)

The Remote Sensing Information Gateway (RSIG) is a tool for selecting, downloading, assembling, and visualizing atmospheric data. After the data has been assembled, it can be stored on the user’s workstation, if desired. RSIG is developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The RSIG application is operated by selecting from among fifteen or so variables available from the following data sources:

  • NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data
  • AIRNow data via the AIRNow Gateway
  • Air Quality System (AQS) data via the Air Quality Data Mart
  • EPA's Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model output
  • National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) biomass burning data
  • UVNet

More details on RSIG's data sources can be found at http://rtpmeta.epa.gov/portal/datainventory.html.

The application assembles the data from local files or by submitting requests over the Internet to data repositories at NASA, Sonoma Tech, etc. RSIG then presents a visualization of the data on a latitude-longitude map, automatically locating the data in the correct geographic position.

RSIG uses OGC-WCS-compliant servers/subsetter programs on remote sites such as NASA Goddard to aggregate and subset data files at the source - sending only the specified subset of data (variables, lon-lat box, time-range). Transmission volume over the Internet to the EPA is thereby greatly reduced (by three orders-of-magnitude) compared to the common approach of ftping numerous large files.

RSIG can write the subset of data to your local disk in the following formats:

  • Binary External Data Representation (XDR) format (simple, efficient)
  • NetCDF-COARDS format
  • NetCDF-IOAPI format (regridding the data to a CMAQ grid)
  • HDF (unsubsetted satellite files)
  • ASCII tab-delimited spreadsheet
  • MCMC (used for input into HB model)
  • PNG images
  • MPG movies
  • KMZ movies (for display in GoogleEarth and similar applications)

Access and Status

The RSIG application is in use and evolving with new features and additional data sources. The application can be accessed two ways:

  • EPA users (inside the EPA firewall) can access the RSIG home page at:

http://rtpmeta.epa.gov/portal/

Then RSIG can be accessed from the Environmental Science Connector link on the Portal.

Java Requirements

RSIG has a Web browser-based Java applet for interactive visualization. Therefore, RSIG carries the following Java requirements:

  • Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.4 or better
  • Configure Java memory larger than the default
  • a .java.policy file saved to your Home directory. The .java.policy file is a simple text file that ensures you can save data from the RSIG applet to your computer.

The RSIG web site (http://rtpmeta.epa.gov/portal/index.html) contains full information on setting-up Java for Linux, UNIX, Mac OS, and Windows systems.

Access to RSIG Data

In addition to the Web browser-based Java applet, RSIG has an OGC-WCS/WMS-compliant web server application to enable streaming access to RSIG's data and images. This can effectively automate access to any data that RSIG can access and deliver the data to your application in various formats.

If your application is running on an EPA computer inside the EPA firewall, then use http://rtpmeta.epa.gov/rsig/rsigserver For usage examples see http://rtpmeta.epa.gov/portal/webscripts.html For external users (outside the EPA network) use: http://badger.epa.gov/rsig/rsigserver with usage examples at: http://badger.epa.gov/rsig/webscripts.html

Sponsorship and Contacts

The RSIG application has been sponsored and managed by ORD’s National Exposure Research Lab (NERL). The Principal Investigator is Dr. Jim Szykman. The application is being developed by the EPA Environmental Modeling and Visualization Laboratory (EMVL).

  • Dr. Jim Szykman, EPA ORD james.j.szykman@nasa.gov 1-757-864-2709
  • Heidi Paulsen, paulsen.heidi@epa.gov, EPA NCC (919) 541-1834
  • For technical support contact the EPA EMVL (Lockheed Martin) developers:

Todd Plessel, plessel.todd@epa.gov, (919) 541-5500 or Matt Freeman, freeman.matt@epa.gov, (919) 541-4293.

See RSIG Data Summit Profile