LinkWinds, a visual data analysis system and its application to remote sensed data

The Linked Windows Interactive Data System (LinkWinds) is a prototype visual data exploration system resulting from a NASA/JPL program of research into applying graphical methods for rapidly accessing, displaying and analyzing large multivariate multidisciplinary data sets. It is an integrated multi-application execution environment allowing the dynamic interconnection and control of multiple windows containing a variety of displays and manipulators through a data-linking paradigm. This paradigm is not only a powerful method for organizing large amounts of data for analysis, but leads to a highly intuitive, easy-to-learn user interface. The system, containing an expanding suite of non-domain specific applications, provides for the ingestion of a variety of database formats, and hard copy output of all displays. Remote networked workstations running LinkWinds may be interconnected for collaborative data exploration. The system is being developed in close collaboration with investigators in a variety of science disciplines using both archived and real-time data. The application of LinkWinds to optical and infrared multispectral geological images with accompanying elevation data will be discussed