CEOS WGISS Subgroups and Task Teams Meeting

April 20-24, 1998

Bernried, Germany

Paul Tildesley
CSIRO Marine Research

 

Welcome by WGISS chair, Takashi Moriyama (copy of overheads available)

In his opening address, Mr Moriyama outlined his plans for WGISS for the next 2 years. He expressed the view that the subgroups & task teams have valuable technical expertise and apply considerable effort to the development of tasks. He wishes to utilise these to achieve a greater impact of WGISS activities on future agency programs through the increased adoption of WGISS efforts.

Mr. Moriyama's objectives for the next 2 years are:

Achieving these objectives will require:

In choosing which strategic areas and which tasks to concentrate on, it is recognised that the WGISS funding agencies and their data users are the main customers.

Subgroups and task teams are well placed to recognise the areas of strategic importance and identify the future value of our efforts for programs.

The discussion session on Tuesday afternoon will discuss the current status of adoption of WG/TT efforts, the needs of next generation programs, and the CEOS-WGISS future focus. There is to be a WGISS and WG/TT chair strategy session on Thursday afternoon to develop input for the WGISS-6

Meeting in Frascati on May 13-15.

Introduction to the data subgroup ­ Gunter Schreier (copy of overheads available)

Subgroup will include presentations from the Global Mapping, Archive and Format task teams, agency reports and a discussion of future data subgroup activities.

CEOS was created by a G7 initiative with 3 subsections (see diagram in overheads)

CEOS-WGISS has 3 subgroups (data, access and networks) and the data subgroup has a number of current task teams (team leaders and their affiliations are shown in the overheads):

The previous Data subgroup meeting was in Stresa, Italy on 24-26 September 1997. A list of action items from that meeting was briefly discussed.

The previous WGISS meeting was in Bangalore, India. A list of action items from that meeting was briefly discussed.

The 10th CEOS Plenary (Canberra, 13-15 November 1996) accepted the recommendations from the Seattle ad-hoc meeting on an Integrated Global Observation Strategy (IGOS). The 6 proposed initial IGOS implementation projects selected by the Strategic Implementation Team are:

Lead agencies and points of contact are in the overheads.

CEOS WGISS in Ottawa was concerned with the IGOS activities (possible duplication of effort, should use WGISS developed systems & experience) and drafted a memorandum to be delivered to IGOS stating these concerns and offering support for technical infrastructure. There was an IGOS-WGISS-WGCV workshop in Ispra, Italy in March 1998 for the presentation of IGOS requirements and WGISS capabilities.

Gunther outlined CEOS activities with regard to developing countries (in particular CILS ­ CEOS Information Locator Service) and tried to get discussion of what projects at the working group, subgroup or task team level could attract the interest of or could help developing countries.

Gunther then talked about the current structure of the Data Subgroup and its task teams and the possibility of restructuring it to get better user interaction, to get better visibility of CEOS projects and to strengthen the technical standardisation work by closer interaction with other standardisation bodies. Some ideas on restructuring were presented in diagram form (see the overheads). Gunther seemed to be suggesting that all 3 subgroups (data, access and networks) be involved in implementation tasks.

The next meeting of the Data Subgroup will be in Boulder, Colorado on 21-25 September 1998.

Global Mapping Task Team ­ Mike Botts (University of Alabama at Huntsville)

Task team started in 1996, URL is http://vast.uah.edu/ceos/ceos.html. The task team is addressing the problem of there being no international recommendations or standards regarding map projections to allow presentation of global data in a manner suitable for data interchange or intercomparison. There is also the general problem that map projections used by projects are often not fully specified, often due to poor understanding of map projections. A major initiative of the task team is to write a book "Digital Mapping of Global Observation Data" to provide information on mapping to people working in the area. The chapters of the book are to be:

Part I.

1. Introduction to Global Mapping of Earth Observation data

2. Traditional Mapping Projections

3. Datum (vertical and horizontal)

4. Available Map Projection Algorithms and Software

5. Metadata for Map Projections

6. Distortions and Artifacts from Projection and Reprojection

7. Resampling and Interpolation Methods

8. Alternative Gridding Schemes

9. Multi-Dimensional Mapping ­ Time and 3D

10. On-Demand Mapping of Dynamic Sensor Data

Part II

1. Promising Directions

2. Recommendations for Global Mapping in the Next Decade

Appendix A ­ Current Use of Map Projections World Wide

Appendix B ­ Contents of CD-ROM

Mike Botts and Peter Muller will be the editors of the book. Volunteers are being sought to write chapters or parts of chapters (about half of the chapters have volunteers already, see handout sheet). There was some discussion of how to find a publisher, what to do about royalties and the need to slightly separate this exercise from CEOS activities (because of copyright and non-free constraint).

Iridium Presentation (I did not catch the name of the presenter)

Iridium is a satellite-based global telephone system. It is 10% owned by Motorola. It has (will have?) 15 business centres throughout the world with a communication centre in Washington, D.C. There are currently different standards for mobile phones through the world, with GSM in Europe and IS41 in the Americas. A common standard (UMTS) is coming. The terrestrial coverage will be 8-10% and the rest will be available for satellite communication.

Iridium has 6 polar orbital planes, at an altitude of 780 km, with a total of 66 satellites, each with a 7 year lifetime. One third of the fuel will be used at the end of a satellites life to steer the satellite into the atmosphere to burn up. There are 6 spare satellites in orbit, one per orbital plane.

An Iridium satellite is basically a flying GSM tower. It has 3 antennae with 16 beams each. It has a circular footprint of 4700 km at the equator, made up of 48 cells. Inter-satellite links are at 23Ghz.

63 of the 66 satellites are now in orbit. 1 or 2 are not working. A new satellite can be assembled and tested in 1 week. (I have subsequently seen the launch schedule for Vandenberg Air Force Base. It includes 2 launches of 5 Iridium satellites each in May 1998 and a further launch of Iridium satellites in June 1998. This does not seem to be consistent with the information above).

Handsets are made by Motorola and Kyocera. GSM handset plugs into a docking station for satellite communication. GSM handset is about 100 grams, about 400g with docking station.

Terrestrial systems are partners ­ Iridium helps them to cover the world.

Iridium need a direct connection between the handset and the satellite so the handset needs an antenna above the head. It folds out. Cannot use the handset inside of a building, you must go outside.

Can also use Iridium for a pager, either stand alone or with a phone. Messages up to 200 characters. Pager signal can be received inside a building (it is transmitted with a higher power).

Data and fax are 24Kbps links, voice is 3.5Kpbs.

Handset power is 0.82 watts, compared to 2 watts for GSM900, 1 watt for GSM1800.

Voice and pager start 23 September 1998.

Data and fax start early 1999 (up to June at worst).

Handset costs about $3000.

Call cost depends on distance but $2 - $10 per minute (based on competition).

AVHRR 1Km Project

This has been extended by NASA due to internal pressure and requests to overlap for 1 year with MODIS (AM1) and MERIS (EnviSat). Both of these projects are late ­ MERIS is expected in mid-2000.

GLOBE (Dave Clark ­ NOAA NGDC)

GLOBE is a project to create a global 1-km digital elevation map (DEM) by including the best available datasets and by encouraging specialists to participate in the production and review of the data. (See http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/seg/globsys/globe.html for information on GLOBE). GLOBE version 1.0 was completed in January 1998 and is currently in internal review by GLOBE participants. Should be available on CD-ROM by mid-1998.

ETOPO30 is the best available at present.

Shuttle Radar Terrain Mapping (SRTM) ­ spot validation of GLOBE using ERS1/2 interferometry (30 metres).

Kyoto / Montreal Protocol (Dave Clark ­ NOAA NGDC)

Images of fires in Indonesia and Brazil ­ fire detection using GOES, DMSP, POES. 75% of fires detected by each sensor are unique to that sensor. This is mostly due to time of overpass.

Overview of High-Resolution Imagery (R. Suresh, Ratheon STX contracted to NAA GSFC)

Suresh presented a list of planned earth observation satellites (see documentation). The list is incomplete and inaccurate due to the commercial nature of many satellites and the demise of some projects since the list was compiled. The increasing commercial nature of earth observation will have an impact on data interoperability.

Orbimage's strategy is to launch multiple satellites with fine resolution in order to get coverage.

Spot 4 & 5 will have vegetation bands with 1.125 km resolution.

EO-1 may be reconfigured to do some of what the Clark Project was supposed to do.

Radarsat-2 announced with 3m resolution.

SO the amount of information is rising fast and this raises these issues:

His conclusion ­ CEOS data subgroup needs to monitor the planned commercial launches. May need to encourage interaction between commercial data providers and others. Need to discuss and develop a plan for data interoperability.

The "CEOS Dossier" contains information on current and planned satellites.

Response to Suresh from Gunther Schreier

Current CEOS Dossier only recognises CEOS member satellites. A British company has a contract to update it every 2 years. It is available on the web for last year.

How to get an overview of planned systems

Subgroup on data recommendations to WGISS

consider establishing a CEOS member task team bringing together relevant CEOS (????) to create a forum for tracking commercial Earth Observation activities and give the commercial sector an interface to CEOS (there could be some political sensitivities here).

Global Datasets (Gunther Schreier)

Global AVHRR is a success

There are new opportunities for global datasets (MODIS, MERIS,) IGOS is active in this area (GOFS).

CEOS outreach activities (see Moriyama tomorrow) ­ any ideas for the year 2000?

NOAA Report (David Clark) (see documentation)

Recent NOAA initiatives include

1. AVHRR land

2. AVHRR Ocean

3. TOVS A

4. TOVS C1

5. TOVS C2

6. SSM/I Precipitation

7. SSM/I Atmospheric moisture

an interactive grid of graphics controlled by the user with a web browser for comparing and contrasting multiple data sets

DIAL (R. Suresh, Raytheon STX) (one page documentation)

CILS (Steve Foley, DERA) (see documentation)

 

Considerations to the future of WGISS (Takashi Moriyama, NASDA) (see documentation)

Mr. Moriyama wants to initiate a discussion on these areas:

Mr. Moriyama wanted any comments on these areas before WGISS-6.

Proposal for WGISS Task Team Contribution to IGOS

(structure diagrams included in documentation)

Archive Task Team (Lars Alm) (see documentation)

NASDA Agency report (Satoko Horiyama) (see documentation)

ESA Archive (Gian Maria Pinn) (see documentation)

Archive started 1975 with Landsat. Currently about 400Tb (SeaSat, MOS, Nimbus, AEM, Landsat, Tiros/NOAA, Spot, ERS-1/2, JERS-1, SeaStar, IRS-P3).

JPL ­ Alaska SAR Development Project (David Cuddy, JPL) (see documentation)

Norway ­ Archiving at Tromso (did not catch name of speaker)

Storage and Archival Manager File System (SAM-FS). (see documentation)

Discussion

Format Guidelines Task Team (Wyn Cutdlip, DERA)

Goal ­ to improve access to information on format systems and make recommendations on the use of formats (initially made formats but now looks at formats of others).

Objectives

1. issue & maintain a format guidelines ..

2. maintain a repository of CEOS format documentation.

Final draft (2) of format guidelines is currently undergoing agency review

see http://www.space.dera.gov.uk/

Access to Atmospheric data at DLR's ATMOS User Centre (see documentation).

Suggestion

Wyn Cudlip ­ challenge is to get the data into the users application.

DLR Research Effort

NASA Agency presentation (Vanessa Griffin) (see documentation)

Organisational changes:

Status of the Data and Information System

EOSDIS Federation

Mission Status

NASA Agency presentation continued (Ken McDonald)

JEST

Discussion of the role of "Science Outreach" office - actually is science interaction, talks to users etc to determine future requirements for system.

NASDA Agency report (Takeshi Sasada) (see documentation)

TRMM

ADEOS II

ADEOS-II Ground segment

EOIS

Centre for Earth Observation (CEO) (Michael Ketselidis) (see documentation)

On-line user access: from metadata to data.

 

New CEO activity - ASTRON (Applications on the Synergy of satellite Telecommunications, eaRth Observations & Navigation).

WGISS meeting Bangalore

Disaster Management

Data Subgroup restructuring - Gunther Schreier

 

NEXT MEETING - 21-25 September 1998. Boulder Colorado, USA.

Spring 1999 - Osaka, Japan.

Fall 1999 - to be determined.

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