The document summarizes the MeteoSIX project which aims to build a meteorological spatial data infrastructure (SDI) for the Galicia region of Spain. It discusses the context of meteorological data and standards, MeteoGalicia's existing systems, the goals of MeteoSIX including developing OGC services and a geoportal, the technical challenges around data formats and sensor integration, contributions to open source communities, and the planned roadmap for the project.

1. INSPIRE Conference 2011 – Edinburgh, June 30
METEOSIX – BUILDING A METEOROLOGICAL
SDI FOR THE REGION OF GALICIA (SPAIN)*
Xurxo Méndez, Juan Touriño, Jorge Parapar, Marcos Hermida, Vanesa García,
Manuel Antonio Regueiro, José Ramón Viqueira, Francisco Landeira
* Project founded by the Galician Government (code: 09MDS034522PR)
http://meteosix.cesga.es
Computer
Architecture
Systems Group
Laboratory (University of
A Coruña)
MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

2. MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

3. Outline
● Context:
● Meteorological and oceanographic data
● INSPIRE and Spanish transposition
● MeteoGalicia's systems and workflow
● MeteoSIX goals
● MeteoSIX global architecture
● The challenges:
● The data representation matter
● Rapid varying data
● The SOS problem
● MeteoSIX and the community
● Roadmap
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

4. Context
● Great importance of Meteorological information
● Daily management of wind and solar power stations
● Control of pollution emissions
● Agricultural and fishing resources administration
● Personal trip planning
● …
● Increase of the amount of collected and
generated information
● Improvements in the technical means
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

5. Context
● INSPIRE
● Annex III mentions
– ”13. Atmospheric conditions” (measurements, models...)
– ”14. Meteorological geographical features” (temperature,
precipitation, wind speed and direction...)
– ”15. Oceanographic geographical features” (salinity, wave
height...)
● Spanish INSPIRE transposition
● LISIGE (Law 14/2010, July 5th)
– Keeps the same points
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

6. Context
● Works don't start from scratch
● Common Data Model
● NetCDF
● OPeNDAP
● WCS
● SLD
● SWE
● ...
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

7. Context
● Where is Galicia?
Galicia
Santiago de
Compostela
* photo of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela by 'adamrice'
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

8. Context
● MeteoGalicia's systems and workflow
● Organization responsible for obtaining and spreading
meteorological information in Galicia
http://www.meteogalicia.es
● Complex observation system, with networks for
– 100+ weather stations
– Marine data
– Lightning detection
– Radar data
– Satellite data and imagery
– ...
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

9. Context
● MeteoGalicia's systems and workflow
● Several numeric forecasting models
– WRF
– WW3
– SWAN
Finisterrae Supercomputer
– MOHID 2500 64bit CPUs
– … 19K GB RAM
… that run on different grids in
the Finisterrae supercomputer, at
CESGA (Galician Supercomputing
Center)
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

10. MeteoSIX goals
● Create a meteorological & oceanographic SDI in
Galicia
● Structure and spread
➔ Available forecasting geoinformation
➔ Available observation geoinformation
… using
● OGC services:
– WMS, WFS, WCS, SOS
● Non-OGC services:
– NetCDF Subset, OPeNDAP...
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

11. MeteoSIX goals
● Elaborate a GeoPortal that lets
➔ the general public
➔ MeteoGalicia's forecasting staff
… to
➔ discover
➔ query
➔ view
➔ download
… those data
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

12. MeteoSIX global architecture
GeoPortal
GeoPortal
DB
Apache PostgreSQL
Wicket
User
WMS, WCS, SOS, NetCDF Subset Forecast Data
Data Servers
Observations
DB Models' executions results
SQL Server
SOS Server Complementary Forecast in CDM-complaint files
52North- Server Server (NetCDF, Grib, HDF...)
GPRS, ethernet,
ssh, satellite, based GeoServer THREDDS
radiofrequency
Sensors Numerical
Generic DB Finisterrae
{Meteorological PostGIS models input
supercomputer
stations, platform
buoys, coast (CESGA)
buoys, water
stations, Data from GFS,
mareographs, WRF, WW3,
radiosondes...} ESEOAT...
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

13. The challenges
● The data representation matter
● WMS and WFS were not designed to deal with
meteorological data
– Issues when
● managing vertical and temporal
dimensions
● managing styles
● …
Representation of ”wind” variable
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

14. The challenges
● Rapid varying data
● Numerical forecasting models
generate new data twice a day
● Sensors continuously produce
new observations
● User needs the last available
data
➔ Implementation of a polling
system that
• reads and interprets the services Sensors network spread over Galicia
metadata
• updates the references to the last
data in the GeoPortal
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

15. The challenges
● The SOS problem
● Four different types of
sensors
– In-situ
– Remote
– Static
– Mobile
✔ The standard (SOS)
contemplates this
✗ Current available
solutions do not
support all those types
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

16. The challenges
● The SOS problem
● Data integration technologies have to be developed
to provide a uniform SOS data access interface to a
heterogeneous collection of meteorological and
oceanographic legacy data sources
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

17. MeteoSIX and the community
● Some code contributions have already been
made
● In OpenLayers, some patches improving SOS
support
● In ncWMS
– Contributions enabling the server to read and display
data in different projections
– Some synchronization issues fixed
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

18. Roadmap
● Initial version (September 2011)
● Layers overlay
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

19. Roadmap
● Initial version (September 2011)
● Georeferenced queries
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

20. Roadmap
● Initial version (September 2011)
● Favourite locations
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

21. Roadmap
● Initial version (September 2011)
● Different roles
Normal users data view Advanced users data view
Aministrator interface
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

22. Roadmap
● For the final release (December 2012):
● Syndication system (GeoRSS)
– For any location
– For user's favourite locations
● Mobile version of the site
● Statistics
● Vertical cross-sections graphics
● Temporal animations
● History
● ...
● Give feedback to the communities
● Suitability of data formats
● Performance of protocols
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)

23. INSPIRE Conference 2011 – Edinburgh, June 30
Thank you for your attention
http://meteosix.cesga.es
Computer
Architecture
Systems Group
Laboratory (University of
A Coruña)
Xurxo Méndez xmendez@udc.es
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MeteoSIX – Building a Meteorological SDI for the Region of Galicia (Spain)