ICEDS Web Portal

<body text="#D9D9D9" link="#FFFF00" vlink="#FFFF00" alink="#FFFF00" bgcolor="#181215"> <center style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> <table style="text-align: left; width: 100%;" border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="vertical-align: top;"><a href="http://www.ge.ucl.ac.uk"><img align="middle" style="border: 0px solid ; width: 65px; height: 63px;" alt="UCL logo" src="ucl.GIF"></a><br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"><img align="middle" alt="ICEDS banner image" src="iceds_banner.jpg" style="width: 485px; height: 48px;"></td> <td style="vertical-align: top; text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.esys.co.uk/"><img style="border: 0px solid ; width: 39px; height: 63px;" align="middle" alt="ESYS plc logo" src="esys.GIF"></a><br> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <br> </center> <h3 style="text-align: center; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Welcome to the Integrated CEOS European Data Server (ICEDS)<br> Non-frames website</span></h3> <p style="text-align: center; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">A demonstration service provided by University College London and ESYS plc, funded by the British National Space Centre, serving global SRTM data and Landsat data at full resolution for Africa and Europe.<br> </p> <h3 style="text-align: center; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><br> Introduction<br> </span></h3> <a style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;" href="http://www.esys.co.uk">ESYS plc</a><span style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> and the </span><a style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;" href="http://www.ge.ucl.ac.uk">Department of Geomatic Engineering</a><span style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> at </span><a style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;" href="http://www.ucl.ac.uk">University College London (UCL) </a><span style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">have been funded by the British National Space Centre (BNSC) to develop a web GIS service to serve global geographic data derived from remote sensing datasets. Funding was provided as part of the BNSC International Co-operation Programme 2 (ICP-2).</span><br style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> <p style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">Particular aims of the project were to:<br> </p> <ol style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> <li>use Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC, recently renamed from the OpenGIS Consortium) technologies for map and data serving;</li> <li>serve datasets for Europe and Africa, particularly Landsat TM and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) digital elevation model (DEM) data;</li> <li>provide a website giving access to the served data;</li> <li>provide software scripts, etc., and a document reporting the data processing and software set-up methods developed during the project.</li> </ol> <p style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">ICEDS was inspired in particular by the Committee on Earth Observing Satellites (CEOS) CEOS Landsat and SRTM Project (CLASP) proposal. An express intention of ICEDS (aim 4 in the list above) was therefore that the solution developed by ESYS and UCL should be redistributable, for example, to other CEOS members. This was taken to mean not only software scripts but also the methods developed by the project team to prepare the data and set up the server. In order to be compatible with aim 4, it was also felt that the use of Open Source, or at least “free-of-cost” software for the Web GIS serving was an essential component. After an initial survey of the Web GIS packages available at the time , the ICEDS team decided initially to use the Deegree package, a free software initiative founded by the GIS and Remote Sensing unit of the Department of Geography, University of Bonn , and lat/lon . The Red Spider web mapping software suite was also provided by IONIC Software – this is a commercial web mapping package but was provided <span style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> by IONIC for this project and was used in parallel to investigate the possibilities and limitations opened up by using a commercial package. <br> </p> <p style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">The final map server package adopted by the project was the University of Minnesota Map Server.<br> </p> <p style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">In developing the scope of the project with BNSC, and their representative at Qinetiq, Dr. Wyn Cudlip, it was noted that a number of servers had become or were due to be available serving geographic maps through the OGC Web Map Server (WMS) technology, for example, the <a href="http://onearth.jpl.nasa.gov">JPL OnEarth  service</a>. A WMS is designed to serve rendered maps as opposed to data. An objective within aim 1 of ICEDS (above) was therefore to look not only at WMS serving but to develop a Web Coverage Service (WCS), capable of serving extracts of coverages (here, 2D geographic raster data, such as 8-bit images or 16-bit DEMs) either for download or for application in a further processing chain.<br> <br> Aim 4 of the project, above, is the full documentation of the methods used in preparing the server. Three specific resources are available to download as a result::<br> </p> <ol style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> <li>the <a href="ICEDS_Guidelines_V2_7.pdf">Guidelines document</a>, providing a review of the processes to set up a service such as ICEDS (in the form of a 'cookbook') - <BR><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">UPDATED to version 2! (Dec. 2005)</span>;</li> <li>a <a href="ICEDS_scripts_v2.zip">ZIP file</a> containing the scripts developed to prepare data and configuration files to set up the ICEDS service (documented in the Guidelines document) - <BR><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">UPDATED to version 2! (Dec. 2005)</span>;<br> </li> <li>an index shapefile of the footprints of every tile of the global SRTM 3" dataset is <a href="http://iceds.ge.ucl.ac.uk/index.zip">available</a>;</li> <li>a <a href="ICEDS_final_presentation.pdf">presentation</a> describing the ICEDS service and its preparation.</li> </ol> <br style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> <hr style="width: 100%; height: 2px; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> <h3 style="text-align: center; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"><font color="Red">ICEDS Web GIS service</font></h3> <p style="text-align: center; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"><a href="http://iceds.ge.ucl.ac.uk/viewer/iceds/index.html"><img alt="Web interface screenshot" src="./screenshot_20051125_small.JPG" style="border: 2px solid ; width: 340px; height: 243px;"></a><br> </p> <p style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">There are three methods for accessing the ICEDS service:<br> </p> <ol style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> <li>through a <big><a href="http://iceds.ge.ucl.ac.uk/viewer/iceds/index.html">Web interface</a></big>, allowing you to browse the datasets held on ICEDS and served through Web Map Services (WMS - OGC map portrayal services);</li> <li>by direct connection to the WMS (using URLs of the form specified in the OGC WMS specifications document) to retrieve maps. <font color="red">NOTE: This requires a frames-capable browser, unlike the one you're using now. We suggest upgrading to the Mozilla / <A HREF="www.mozilla.com">Firefox</A> web browser.</Font>;</li> <li>by direct connection to the Web Coverage Services, WCSs (again, using URLs of the form specified in the OGC WCS specifications document) to retrieve extracts of datasets.<br> </li> </ol> <p style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">Direct connection to the WMS and WCS services requires a URL. The following URLs will each return an XML document describing the capabilities of the WMS and the WCS services respectively, and can form the basis of a connection (the details depend on your software):<br> </p> <ul style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> <li>WMS GetCapabilities URL:<br> <a href="http://iceds.ge.ucl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/icedswms?SERVICE=WMS&REQUEST=GetCapabilities">http://iceds.ge.ucl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/icedswms?SERVICE=WMS&REQUEST=GetCapabilities</a><br> </li> <li>WCS GetCapabilities URL:<br> <a href="http://iceds.ge.ucl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/icedswcs?SERVICE=WCS&REQUEST=GetCapabilities">http://iceds.ge.ucl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/icedswcs?SERVICE=WCS&REQUEST=GetCapabilities</a><br> </li> </ul> <p style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">This service has been built principally using the University of Minnesota Map Server to provide the Web Map Service and the Web Coverage Service. The Web interface was originally built using Ionic's Red Spider software and manually editted to give the current fomat. The team also experimented with using the Deegree map server - this has much to recommend it but was less well developed at the time that ICEDS was developed.<br> </p> <p style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">The principal datasets served in ICEDS at present are:<br> </p> <ul style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> <li>3 arcsecond (~90m) resolution SRTM DEM data for Europe, Africa and the Indian subcontinent</li> <ul> <li>Colour-coded and hill-shaded for presentation in the WMS - red pixels indicate no SRTM acquisition;</li> <li>DEM elevations in a signed 16-bit GeoTIFF in the WCS - 'missing' pixels filled by interpolation (mask available indicating gaps)<br> </li> </ul> <li>a mosaic of Landsat 5 TM imagery of Africa, provided by Nevin Bryant on the Cartographic Applications Group at JPL</li> <ul> <li>colour-composites of bands 1,2, 3, contrast enhanced at UCL at full-resolution, in WMS</li> <li>separate layers for bands 1, 2 and 3 in WCS - unenhanced beyond mosaicking.<br> </li> </ul> </ul> <span style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">The server also 'cascades' a number of other layers (i.e. reads them in from other servers and displays them as layers it can serve). These can be seen in the legend of the Web interface. Additional details on the datasets are available in the Guidelines document and on the <a href="http://iceds.ge.ucl.ac.uk/viewer/iceds/wms_appli/html/info.htm#layers">ICEDS help page</a>..</span><br style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> <br style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">Please note that the ICEDS server is a test service and may be down time to time for maintainance or upgrade.</span><br style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> <br style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> <p style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> </p> <hr style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">Comments to </span><a style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;" href="mailto:jmorley@ge.ucl.ac.uk">Jeremy Morley</a><span style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> or </span><a style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;" href="mailto:jpmuller@ge.ucl.ac.uk">Prof. Jan-Peter Muller</a><span style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> at UCL.</span><br style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">Last update to this page: 9th December 2005</span> </body>