TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL FOOTPRINT COVERAGES OF EARTH OBSERVATION DATA

This paper describes the Web Mapping Service (WMS) developed for the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) that portrays Earth Observation (EO) footprint coverages by sensor. The CEOS Working Group on Information Systems and Services (WGISS) Data Services Task Team serves as a forum for the exchange of technical information about Web-and Internet-related software technologies of interest to the EO community. This includes Web services in general and Web mapping services in particular. In order to facilitate the construction of interoperable service infrastructures, the Data Services Task Team closely observes and interacts with international standardization activities and test beds and makes the results available to CEOS parties and the EO community at large. This particular WMS allows EO researchers to determine if sufficient coverage of their area of interest is available from a specific sensor. The service supports regional or global spatial querying and provides extensive complementary information such as land cover, elevation, transportation networks, and feature names to assist in the investigation of study areas. This capability also allows spatial data gaps to be recognized immediately, which is a primary objective of the service. A temporal element is provided to permit researchers to compare their area of interest coverage by calendar year or season, which is especially useful in studies involving biologic features. The WMS service contains more than 1,000 footprint coverage files and allows for other organizations to link to and provide their own footprint coverage files, thus extending the value of the service to CEOS and the larger EO research community