Open Modular Interactive Mapping Technology
for Visualization of Geophysical Data on the Internet

Abstract

We present an open modular client-server technology for interactive visualization of maps and geophysical data over the Internet using GIS-servers, data web-services, and modular Java applets. The system architecture is illustrated by sample code and several examples from geophysical applications. The open program source may be downloaded via the Internet.³

Key words:
GIS, interactive cartography, web services, Java applet.

Introduction System requirements (problem statement) System design (proposed solution) Architecture of the distributed geophysical data visualization system Modular applet architecture Interaction between JavaScript and Java applet on the web page Applications Contour lines of geomagnetic field - main field Contour lines of geomagnetic field - variations Points with attributes for seismicity map Conclusion References

¹ Institute of Physics of the Earth / Geophysical Center Russian Acad. Sci.
² National Geophysical Data Center NOAA, USA
³ The work on this paper was partly supported by the RFBR Grant No. 04-07-90362

1. Introduction

Over the last few years the authors have been actively developing information technology support projects for geophysical and space physics applications, which involve such areas as interactive cartography and visualization of multidisciplinary scientific data via the Internet. To enumerate them in a chronological order:
1) An exchange and archiving of message flows from the national rapid earthquake determination services;
2) The Space Physics Interactive Data Resource (SPIDR), a distributed network of database clusters and application servers for archiving, visualization and modeling of solar-terrestrial physics data;
3) Investigation of Distributed Environmental Archives System (IDEAS) mining parallel database clusters for interactive search and visualization of events in environmental archives using fuzzy logic;
4) A web interface to tectonic deformations database made from GPS networks data;
5) The Space Weather Reanalysis (SWR), a parallel database cluster for interactive fuzzy search and visualization of space weather models.

In each of these projects we faced the recurring problem of needing combined interactive visualization over the Internet of maps made from geo-information systems, satellite images, and selected vector observations from geophysical databases, using a web-browser. Here we present our experience and developed software design patterns which address this problem.