A Data Library to Archive, Analyze, Visualize and Serve Online Datasets
from Multiple Domains in an Interoperable Framework
Abstract
The PRISM Data Library (DL) is designed to optimize the display,
analysis, and retrieval of multiple domains datasets. Originally created
for climate data, we aggregated data from agriculture and hydrology
domains, as well as non-traditional domains for the DL such as ecology,
finance, power outage and space weather data. These datasets range from
simple geospatial point observations, to spatially gridded data
products, to high-resolution satellite measurements, to GIS
representation of administrative or domain-specific geographic entities.
These datasets are represented in a consistent multi-dimensional (most
often spatial and temporal) framework. As a result, dimension-wise
comparisons are easily enabled through selection or transformation.
Gridded data can be averaged over discrete geometrical entities (e.g.
Counties, Bird Conservation Regions). The DL can be used in a browser,
by connecting to servers at San Diego Supercomputing Center (SDSC) over
the internet. Data selection, processing, and analysis are performed by
the SDSC DL servers, and the resulting images or data files are sent
back to the client’s desktop. This model optimizes the use of internet
bandwidth.