The Integration of Grid Technology with OGC Web Services (OWS) in NWGISS for NASA EOS Data

Grid technology provides secure, fundamental methods for advanced distributed computing and data sharing over the Internet. The technology has been used in applications in many disciplines. However, applications in the geospatial disciplines are just beginning. This paper describes a project that applies Grid technology to the Earth observation environment through the integration of the Globus Toolkit with the NASA Web GIS Software Suite (NWGISS). As one of the implementations of Open GIS Consortium’s (OGC) Web Services (OWS) technology, NWGISS is a web-based, multiple OGC-standard compliant geospatial data distribution and service system. It provides geospatial data access services to data users for Earth observing data archived in individual data centers (e.g., NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers, DAACs). But it does not provide secure on-demand distributed geospatial data processing and transfer among the data centers. In this project, Grid technology has been used successfully to solve these problems and a prototype Grid-enabled OGC-compliant NWGISS system was produced. This prototype is part of a large Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) testbed for evaluating the usability of Grid technology in the geospatial disciplines, especially in Earth observations and remote sensing.