IKHANA UAV Took Off
The Ikhana unmanned vehicle took-off from NASA-DFRC / Edwards AFB at 2:34:45 PM PDT. Mission is planned for nominal 17-hour mission to fires in ID / MT / WY. Hope you are following such on live video feed at CDE or CDE-Lite (access via WRAP website at http://geo.arc.nasa.gov/sge/WRAP).
Based on the filed flight-plan, we automatically generated targets of interests based on MODIS “hot pixels” with a 6nm corridor. Draper Laboratory optimized the targets based on predicted cloud coverage in the area.
As a result, ASTER and EO-1 were tasked to image CASTLE ROCK, Idaho. It will be interesting to get the raw data, process it and overlay it on the map with the UAV imagery…
The UAV will also be able to task EO-1 to take complementary imagery as needed.
The Geo-Web in action…
South African Power Lines
Fires in South Africa are threatening high voltage power lines. Using satellite information from TERRA and AQUA, we can get the “hot” pixels in that area.
Using a power grid layout, we determine the likelihood of fires threatening a particular line or within a 10km corridor along the power lines. This is used to automatically task EO-1 to obtain a hyperspectral image and more detailed information.
Processing of the data using workflows, gives us a 30m resolution and actual fire intensity in the area.
This is part of an international GEOSS pilot demonstration that will take place in Washington DC (Sept 10) and in Cape Town in October.
We are currently adding UAV support and other satellite assets such as the ASTER imager on TERRA and SPOT-5 to our Global Earth Observing Geo-Web using the standard OGC interfaces and a Resource Oriented Approach (ROA).
Wf-XML and a RESTFul Wf-Store
One requirement for GEOSS and OWS-5 is to seamlessly interface with several workflow engines (BPEL, OpenWFEru and SensorML). These workflows will have to be fully accessible as resources over the web and discoverable.
A lot of work has been done in that area by the Workflow Management Coalition Group (WfMC). Wf-XML 2.0 is the current XML-based protocol for run-time integration of process engines. Several issues are hindering the effort. SOAP 1.2 is still not supported by SOAP4R and the Ruby code generated from the WSDL file is questionable. And by the way, WSDL 2.0 has just been approved by the W3C.
Wf-XML relies on the OASIS Asynchronous Protocol (ASAP) which is still in draft form while the W3C is proposing WS-Addressing. If we are there, then might as well look at the WS-Notification group of specifications… grrrr! Does not look easy…
Plan B is to take a step back and look at a RESTful approach and consider workflows as web resources. It ought to be straighforward to create an entry for a workflow, add versionable definitions for that workflow and create instances to run. The proposed approach is to create a RESTful access to those collections and publish the services using the new Atom Publication Protocol.
These workflows ought to be searchable via an OpenSearch web service that would output atom feeds.
Notifications could happen using Twitter or any simlar Publish/Subscribe mechanism.
A simpler SOAP service could be implemented later on top of that architecture.
A WFS-Basic as a Geo-Atom Store 1
Here is the plan for a demo:
A Web Feature Server (WFS) in its basic incantation is really a store of geospatial collections that can be accessed using RESTful services.
Building Web Services the REST way has been a very hot topic in the Rails Community.
Rails 1.2 can quickly allow you to build such services and return xml or html on-demand. JSON or [Geo]-rss/atom could be returned as easily in a similar manner.
The idea here is to return a GeoAtom Feed that could follow a similar structure as GData with a namespace specific to that WFS and an additional extension for the geospatial component.
Discovering the meta-data should be feasible using a meta-data feed and probing a specific url.
This would give us many services to access the various collections and the meta-data. The whole package could be described using a service document as proposed in the Atom Publishing Protocol (APP) that would describe all the available services. This document itself would be available at a specific url.
Searching the WFS would be done via OpenSearch-Geo which is another REST service returning atom or KML feeds.
The goal is to implement this for the upcoming ESTO/AIST Fire Management demo this summer and support the GEOSS Pilot effort this fall. This is also in line with our participation into the OWS-5 Agile Geography testbed.
A Few Links:
A Global Search Engine For Geospatial Data
Great article From Sandra Upson in Spectrum Magazine.
“Making such work as simple as a Web search is the central objective of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), an endeavor taking its first baby steps this summer….Scientists inch toward a standardized, universal system…”
It is all about interoperability and working together :)
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