Flood Monitoring Grid Infrastructure based on SAR and Optical Data

Modern Earth observation tasks require high performance computations and large network data storages. Therefore, nowadays distributed informational infrastructure is very important facility for solving almost all complex applied problems. Ukrainian experts from the Space Research Institute NASU-NSAU actively participate in international activities considering Earth observation domain.
An example of such successful international collaboration in the area of distributed system development is a bilateral Chinese-Ukrainian international project “Wide Area Grid Testbed for Flood Monitoring using Spaceborne SAR and Optical Data” which devoted to support activities within Wide Area Grid (WAG) project that was initiated by the French Space Agency (CNES). This project is also supported within the Working Group on Information Systems and Services (WGISS) of CEOS, and currently implemented by CNES (France), CEODE-CAS (China) and SRI NASU-NSAU (Ukraine). The main objective of the project is the development of “horizontal” infrastructure in order to integrate computational, human, intellectual, and informational resources of space agencies within large distributed system. Implementation of geospatial-related services and Grid-enable EO data archives are among the priority tasks of this project.
Beginning from 2007 up to now SRI NASU-NSAU successfully collaborates with the Center of Earth Observations and Digital Earth of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CEODE-CAS) within WAG Testbed project.. Results achieved so far are as follows:
an unified architecture of a Grid system for satellite data processing was proposed within the CEOS/WGISS activities;
Grid system that integrates high-performance resources of SRI NASU-NSAU and CEODE-CAS was developed;
service-oriented testbed system for flood monitoring using SAR and optical data was developed, and corresponding user interfaces to access the services were developed;
in the beginning of 2010 the developed system was used to deliver geospatial services to monitor the snow cover and assess potential flood risks for the territory of Ukraine.
The system is developing under support of grant of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. During presentation current results of the project will be discussed in more detail.