IN002-06
The Open Source Field Campaign Explorer Enabling Interactive Data Visualization for Earth Science Communities

Monday, 7 December 2020: 07:20
Virtual
Ajinkya Kulkarni1, Yuling Wu1, Brian Ellingson1, Will Ellett1, Geoffrey T Stano2, Manil Maskey3 and Sara J Graves4, (1)University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, AL, United States, (2)University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, United States, (3)NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, MSFC, Huntsville, AL, United States, (4)Univ. of Alabama/Huntsville, Huntsville, AL, United States
Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
Increasingly, huge volumes of research data from various observation instruments and numerical models are being produced in an unprecedented pace at different data and research centers. Cloud storage and computing have become an inevitable trend in coping with and sharing this volume of data. At the Global Hydrology Resource Center (GHRC) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC), a joint venture between the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and NASA, we developed a framework for using cloud-native technologies for ingesting, cataloging, subsetting, downloading, and visualizing NASA Earth Science multi-instrument datasets, using many serverless technologies from the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform.

This same framework is also utilized in GHRC's Field Campaign Explorer (FCX), which has been successfully ported to AWS. The FCX is a web-based 3-dimensional interactive visualization tool designed for users (students, teachers, or researchers) to navigate, visualize, and explore datasets obtained from a field campaign with user-controlled display. In this presentation, we will look at a technical demo of FCX and show how the interactive display can be harnessed with user's mouse movement and how individual components (subsetting/selection) can be extracted for user's own research. Our demo is specifically focused on the data collected during GOES-R PLT Field Campaign due to the variety of satellite, ground-based, and airborne measurements.

As a web-based visualization tool, the FCX does not require download or installation of a graphic software package to use and can access data stored directly in the cloud. The open source nature makes it easy to share and modify for user's own research needs. Lightning research is a good example. The source codes are available for cloud or local-disk accessing/processing of the data from the Cloud Radar System (CRS), Lightning Mapping Arrays (LMAs), etc., which are commonly deployed in field campaigns. With little modification, one can use the FCX framework to display these types of data on his/her own computer.

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