High-Performance Computing Approaches for Using the WWW to Access a Large-Scale Environmental Dataset Repository

Real-time access to large scientific and heterogeneous environmental data has prompted the need for the development of tools allowing efficient data storage, data compression, interactive data browsing, data manipulation, data visualization, searching, and downloading. In this paper we discuss some of the implementation requirements involved in the design of large-scale environmental dataset repositories accessible over the Internet and the World Wide Web. We illustrate this process by discussing the Web tools being developed at the National Supercomputing Center for Energy and the Environment (NSCEE) for the North American Landscape Characterization (NALC) Data Repository Project. A distributed system has been designed and prototyped for delivery of NALC satellite images over the Internet. The NALC Internet Image Server (or SALICIN; anagram of NALCIIS) relieves many of the pains associated with selection and access to 60-m resolution multispectral satellite images of North America for study of human influence on and changes in the environment and ecology over 3 decades (70s, 80s, and 90s). The production image server will provide full data bands, thumbnail browse images (subsampled), and fly-by movies in mpeg and quicktime (not viewable from the CD-ROM).