A. Balashov, A. Filonov, Institute for Cosmic Reseraches of the RAS

Abstracts:

DIGITAL LIBRARIES OF SPACE DATA: FROM INDIVIDUAL ARCHIVES TO SATELLITE COLLECTIONS INTEGRATION FOR EUROPEAN INFORMATION SYSTEM INFEO



Kudashev E.B., Balashov A.D., Filonov A.N.



Digital libraries of Remote Sensing use satellite data flows to deal with various problems of Remote Sensing posed by both scientific community and specific industrial needs. Already at the early stage of creating an Digital Library of Remote Sensing Data, it is essential to work out its adequate structure necessary for efficient data retrieval from the archive. The archive structure is elaborated based on the understanding of typical requests of potential archive users. The experience of functioning space archives shows that user requests primarily focus on data representation levels, the name of the project under which the data is obtained and the name of the sensor that provided the data. The archive should be divided into segments corresponding to different data representation (process) levels with each segment subdivided into data sets related to a certain project and instrument (sensor). Efficient organization of information resources and open access to spatially distributed experiment data are founded on the Web technology (access to data including data search and request).The development of satellite natural-resource information software targets the following problems: real time Earth Observation, thematic processing of Remote Sensing Data and filling in of the Digital Archive, geoecological monitoring of the environment, ecosystem condition evaluation through space techniques, access to hydrometeorological information from around the globe.

Appropriate metadata management systems are built to provide for the collection and distribution of experiment data and thematic processing results; while the archive is linked to the regional centers of geoecological monitoring via Internet. An important element is the elaboration of interface, archiving and network data exchange structures. This calls for the development of search engines and a remote interactive access regime for external users via Internet to catalogues of experiment data and processing results and the realization of the on-line access mode. Our Digital Library was devised and is functioning in on-line mode as fully interoperable system. INFEO users have no problems in the access to Digital Library as well as the latter easily exchanges data with the INFEO system. The principle of distributed data processing gains an ever-growing importance for satellite monitoring. Thus, the building of Digital Library of Space Research Institute as infrastructure of an access system to satellite data received and processed at different ground stations begins by setting up of a main server at a network location having developed telecommunications. At the same time, Russian remote users get access through Internet to satellite data obtained by INFEO monitoring centers. Further development of Digital Library as infrastructure of Remote Sensing satellite data electronic archives implies introduction of automatic user-oriented information selection as a result of enhanced information models of electronic collections coupled to upgraded techniques of user interaction with the archive’s information system. We have undertaken critical assessment of existing techniques of user interaction with archive information system.