Myra Bambacus

Spatial cloud computing: how can the geospatial sciences use and help shape cloud computing?

Abstract The geospatial sciences face grand information technology (IT) challenges in the twenty-first century: data intensity, computing intensity, concurrent access intensity and spatiotemporal intensity. These challenges require the readiness of a computing infrastructure that can: (1) better support discovery, access and utilization of data and data processing so as to relieve scientists and engineers of IT tasks and focus on scientific discoveries; (2) provide real-time IT resources to enable real-time applications, such as emergency response; (3) deal with access spikes; and (4) provide more reliable and scalable service for massive numbers of concurrent users to advance public knowledge. The emergence of cloud computing provides a potential solution with an elastic, on-demand computing platform to integrate – observation systems, parameter extracting algorithms, phenomena simulations, analytical visualization and decision support, and to provide social impact and user feedback – the essential elements of the geospatial sciences. We discuss the utilization of cloud computing to support the intensities of geospatial sciences by reporting from our investigations on how cloud computing could enable the geospatial sciences and how spatiotemporal principles, the kernel of the geospatial sciences, could be utilized to ensure the benefits of cloud computing. Four research examples are presented to analyze how to: (1) search, access and utilize geospatial data; (2) configure computing infrastructure to enable the computability of intensive simulation models; (3) disseminate and utilize research results for massive numbers of concurrent users; and (4) adopt spatiotemporal principles to support spatiotemporal intensive applications. The paper concludes with a discussion of opportunities and challenges for spatial cloud computing (SCC).

The Emerging Concepts and Applications of the Spatial Web Portal

Geospatial metadata, data, and services have been widely collected, developed and deployed in recent years. This flourishing of geospatial resources also added to the problem of geospatial heterogeneity. Interoperability research and implementation are needed for advancement in potential solutions to integrate and interoperate these widely dispersed geospatial resources. We propose the Spatial Web Portal architecture to integrate and interoperate geospatial resources. The architecture leverages web-based computing, spatial web services, and web fragments to integrate geospatial metadata, data, analysis, and presentation, through distributed portlets: (1) Spatial web services are adopted to interoperate geospatial components. (2) Web portals are adopted to integrate web pages from web fragments generated by portlets. (3) W3C recommendations are adopted to provide access to remote portlets delegating geospatial components. (4) Java community specifications are adopted to facilitate the development and distribution of portlets. NASA’s Earth Science Gateway (ESG) is designed and developed as an example to test the proposed architecture in sharing earth observations, simulations, and other geospatial resources. The proposed architecture and example system provide (a) a tested mechanism for interoperating geospatial resources at different levels, (b) an environment to test new interoperable concepts, and (c) a platform to support heterogeneous-geospatial-resource based applications of national and global significance, such as the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS) applications.

A service visualization tool for spatial web portal

This paper introduces the design and development of a client-side Graphical User Interface (GUI) for the NASA Spatial Web Portal. A spatial web portal is an entry point to spatial data and services within spatial platforms. The usability and efficiency of the entry point will decide the success of the entire system. This paper describes visualization and GUI designs and implementation for improving client performance. Abundant information about web service is tightly grouped into different floating windows for better information display. Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) technology is implemented to enhance visualization performance. The mirror world tools such as Google Maps, Bing Maps, and NASA World Wind provide new mechanism for spatial data discovery and visualization. We test how the methods utilized along with Bing Maps improve the performance of the NASA Spatial Web Portal.

Earth information exchange: sharing earth science information through interoperable approach and cyber infrastructure

Earth science data and information are generated, collected, and archived at geographically dispersed locations and computers by different organizations including government agencies, companies, and others. To leverage the legacy resources for discovering earth science information and knowledge, we need a convenient access to the resources in an integral and timely fashion. This paper presents a joint effort in developing the Earth Information Exchange, an earth science portal, to support this need by approaches based on interoperability and cyberinfrastructure. ESG, an interoperable portal, is used to provide interoperability support to accessing heterogeneous resources. GMU Grid, as part of the cyberinfrastructure, is utilized to support time-consuming preprocessing, modeling, decision support tools operation. Semantic search is utilized in bridging different domains for sharing cross domain information and knowledge and refining research results. The functions are integrated into the Earth Information Exchange developed by the partnership of National Aeronautics and Space Administration, The Federation of Earth Science Information Partnership, and George Mason University to support the objective for integral and timely exchange of earth science information. The on-going effort will also provide a spatial web portal to access and improve earth science information holdings at different government agencies, educational and research institutions, and Non Government Organizations (NGO).

Multi-organization — Multi-discipline effort developing a mitigation concept for planetary defense

There have been significant recent efforts in addressing mitigation approaches to neutralize Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHA). One such research effort was performed in 2015 by an integrated, inter-disciplinary team of asteroid scientists, energy deposition modeling scientists, payload engineers, orbital dynamicist engineers, spacecraft discipline engineers, and systems / architecture engineers from NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and the Department of Energy (DoE) / National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) laboratories (Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL) and Sandia National Laboratories). The study team collaborated with GSFCs Integrated Design Centers Mission Design Lab (MDL) which engaged a team of GSFC flight hardware discipline engineers to work with GSFC, LANL, and LLNL Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA)-related subject matter experts during a one-week intensive concept formulation study in an integrated concurrent engineering environment. This team has analyzed the first of several distinct study cases for a multi-year NASA research grant. This Case 1 study references the NEA named Bennu as the notional target due to the availability of a very detailed Design Reference Asteroid (DRA) model for its orbit and physical characteristics (courtesy of the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer [OSIRIS-REx] mission team). The research involved the formulation and optimization of spacecraft trajectories to intercept Bennu, overall mission and architecture concepts, and high-fidelity modeling of both kinetic impact (spacecraft collision to change a NEAs momentum and orbit) and nuclear detonation effects on Bennu, for purposes of deflecting Bennu.

An architecture for mitigating near earth object's impact to the earth

Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), like species extinction events, present a great threat to our home planet and human kind. The motivation of designing this architectural framework is the current lack of structured architecture for the process of detecting, characterizing and mitigating these NEO threats. Due to the recent establishment of the NASAs Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), it is critical to link the individual facilities conducting separate research with an objective of forming a clearly defined collaborative system based on data reporting and sharing. The architectural framework is designed for integrating the process of detecting, characterizing and mitigating NEO threats. The goal of designing the architecture is to organize current data and resources into useful information and correlate that information with the goals of the NEO mitigation study. The architectural framework will enable scientists, organizations, and decision makers to locate, identify and resolve semantic confusion, properties, facts, constraints and issues with potentially hazardous asteroids. Our major focus is to design the data and information flow that models the complete process from NEO detection, to designing the mitigation strategies. A secondary focus is to develop a system-of-systems architecture to describe the supporting infrastructure for the framework. The framework is also built with the opportunity to leverage future assets from the broader Planetary Defense (PD) community, and identify/speed up relevant PD research and response.i

Near Earth object mitigation studies

Early detection of an object on a collision course with Earth, leading to well-considered and effective measures to mitigate its hazards, is not always possible due to a number of extenuating factors. NASA and the Department of Energy (DOE)s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) have partnered to develop a full systems framework for understanding very short warning time scenarios requiring high-energy impulsive solutions to neutralize Potentially Hazardous Objects (PHOs) found to be on Earth-impacting trajectories. While previous studies have identified and studied certain aspects of the end-to-end impactor mitigation problem in some detail, the preliminary results for year one of a 3-year research investigation we report on herein will discuss the development of an integrated framework extensible to future data and emergent near-Earth object (NEO) mitigation strategies. As we will discuss, recent increases in computational power and algorithm sophistication now allow new calculations of the response of even irregularly shaped/structured NEOs to various proposed mitigation schemes. Representative energy deposition results on the first of 3 Design Reference Asteroids (DRAs), Bennu, will be included, along with mitigation mission designs and plans for subsequent DRAs.