WPS Compliant Remote Processing

Abstract

Scientists in different research departments of the German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD, German: Deutsches Fernerkungsdatenzentrum) work on complex processes and models in different research fields, such as land surface dynamics, atmosphere, geo-risks and others. At the same time DFD engineers build and operate multi-domain platforms for management and exploitation of Earth Observation (EO) products and datasets. Together they collaborate in an interdisciplinary project named UKIS (German: Umwelt- und Kriseninformationssysteme) [12] that is dedicated to the development of a framework for geospatial web applications. In this context, the paper describes the design and architecture of a distributed processing platform based on Open Source Software (OSS) that allows researchers to plugin in their process back ends with minimal effort to expose their processes and models to users for ad-hoc processing based on individual user input. The researchers retain their accustomed technology stack, while the processing platform handles the user interaction. From a user’s perspective, a front-end guides the user from searching for available processes to entering input parameters and triggering process executions (jobs).