Scenario Development
Over next month, we'll assemble a list of candidate datasets that could
become part of Digital Earth scenarios. The Digital Earth Alpha Version\
has 4 existing scenarios (Museums, Education, Government, and Media): http://www.digitalearth.gov/alpha/alphaVersionDRAFT03.htm
. NASA also has 3 (rivers, hurricanes, and wildfires) that not very
distinct from the Alpha Version list: http://oceanesip.jpl.nasa.gov/acmgis.html
. We also could start our own scenario(s). None of the current
scenarios are research, science or commercial-oriented, leaving a significant
void.
Marguerite said that the National Digital Earth Office is very supportive
of working with the Federation, and encourages us to both create new scenarios
and work within the existing ones. Peter pointed out that it's important
that we identify real problems/needs for the scenarios, as opposed to "solutions
that are looking for a problem".
Working With Other Groups
There are overlaps of the Cluster with at least two Standing Committees.
Howard is coordinating with the Community Engagement Committee to raise
their awareness of Digital Earth. Silvia said that the Interop Committee
will now be exploring ways to showcase data interoperability, including
Digital Earth. Also, Peter pointed out the similarities between this
effort and DODS.
Longer-term Goals
For the January Federation meeting, we hope to offer a tutorial on
making data WMT-compliant. It was agreed that we should try to have
more data WMT-compliant by that time. Rob will begin work on a "Guide
to Making Federation Data WMT-compliant" - a more focused version of the
WMT Specifications document, geared to our needs.
Limitations
The current WMT 1.0 spec is essentially for transferring maps (as opposed
to raw data) across the internet. Formats include GIF, JPEG, TIFF,
and GeoTIFF. The WMT 2.0 spec under development will add HDF-EOS
and raw binary, and should be official next spring. For now, we are
limited to sending images of the data (exceptions: TIFF and GeoTIFF can
handle 32-bit floats and 16-bit integers, but not all TIFF client viewers
support these data types).
Next Month
Next telecon tentatively set for 2nd Monday in Septamber (9/11, 12:00
PDT, 3:00 EDT). There will be a 1-800 number.
The 4th Digital Earth Community Meeting is set for Sept 19 in Wash.
DC.