We present a distributed system for storage, processing, three-dimensional visualisation and basic analysis of data from Earth-observing satellites. The database and the server have been designed for high performance and scalability, whereas the client is highly portable thanks to having been designed as a HTML5- and WebGL-based Web application. The system is based on the so-called MEAN stack, a modern replacement for LAMP which has steadily been gaining traction among high-performance Web applications. We demonstrate the performance of the system from the perspective of an user operating the client.
Finally, the German Satellite Data Archive (D-SDA) of the Earth Observation Center at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) @cite_3 at a glance seems to serve the same purpose as our system yet is backed by considerably more resources. There are, however, differences: it is tied to DLR infrastructure, keeps both data and metadata as files in storage rather than in a database, and most importantly follows considerably different philosophy --- its primary goal is to achieve long-term data preservation over more than 20 years with nearly exponentially growing data capacity, whereas our archive has been designed primarily to provide high-performance access to a fixed chunk of data. One could therefore imagine the two systems as complementary --- ours for rapid application-specific processing, D-SDA for long-term storage.
@cite_3
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The Earth Observation Center (EOC) at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) is the center of competence in Germany, providing expertise in earth observation research and development activities, as well as operational tasks for data reception, processing and archiving. We briefly present the German Satellite Data Archive (D-SDA) with systems and activities that make it possible to accomplish successful Long Term Data Preservation (LTDP) over more than 20 years with nearly exponentially growing data capacity. Tables, facts and figures exhibit the path taken at DLR to successfully establish the infrastructure for long term data preservation for Germany and Europe. Our experience is that that LTDP is manageable but requires following the evolution in technology, new usage scenarios and data policies. DLR is working on the continuous evolution of the flexible DIMS components, infrastructure and management services to serve the processing and archiving centers for the next generation earth observation satellites.