Welcome to the NSF Geosciences

Integrated Earth Information Server

This World Wide Web-based (WWW) Server is under construction and may change drastically from time to time. It contains references to other Unidata-based servers some of which are extremely popular network resources and therefore sometimes overloaded and inaccessible.

IEIS for a Global Vision

This server is a prototype Integrated Earth Information Server (IEIS, as in eyes on the globe). It is built on the infrastructure provided by the nation-wide Unidata Internet Data Distribution (IDD) network, in which participating universities are establishing information servers containing a range of earth-related data.

Perhaps the best recent example of an IEIS product is the "Global Montage" (seen in miniature above) which the SSEC at the University of Wisconsin creates every six hours in graphic form and as an animation of the last week's images (2 MB) .

IEIS make information available in a variety of forms; the list below illustrates some of these:

current electronic weather maps and bulletins;
, oceanographic, seismic, and other environmental information;
, instructional materials to complement the data; and
local and national data in tabular form for use in spreadsheets and other mathematical analysis tools.

The information represented by the icons above is the result of a coordinated national effort among the roughly 125 universities that currently comprise the Unidata community. For more information on the Unidata Program click here.

How the IEIS Work

The information that appears on an IEIS arrives via the experimental nation-wide Unidata Internet Data Distribution (IDD) network, which automatically delivers real-time environmental observations from a variety of observing systems around the globe to servers at Unidata universities. At the heart of each server on each campus (and on this IEIS computer at NSF's Atmospheric Science Division) is a Unidata Local Data Manager (LDM), which captures the data and stores them as each site wishes. Sites may then use Unidata analysis and display programs to transform the data into easy-to-understand, familiar forms and to combine them with environmental data from other sources. As in the examples above, these form can then be made generally available on a university IEIS.

Providing Information As It Happens

Unidata universities are already establishing IEIS around the country to provide up-to-date environmental information. Many of them are in the form of gopher servers. However, an increasing number are WWW servers with hypermedia documents explaining the scientific data. Those leading the way in using a World Wide Web server are:

Educational Infrastructure

As the IEIS prototypes evolve, the environmental information will be augmented with more instructional materials and lesson plans. Our intent is to make the observational data immediately useful in educational programs at all levels. Regional science education coalitions, such as the one in Michigan, are already producing classroom materials for use with the real-time environmental information in earth science and mathematics classes. The University of Illinois has created a set of instructional modules for meteorology.

Distributing Instructional Materials As Well as Data

Unidata's primary motivation in setting up the IDD is to move environmental data from the observing system to the end user in near real time. However, the Unidata community is coming up with other imaginative uses for the sytem even as the prototype is still being tested.

For example, weather information servers at Unidata universities have become so popular that they are overwhelmed with requests for information during significant weather events. Experiments are underway to use the LDM/IDD to create "mirrors" for the IEIS systems themselves, so the processed weather information and accompanying instructional materials are available at more than one site. Specifically, the University of Michigan is creating a particularly useful and elegant set of displays for its Blue Skies extension to the Weather Underground. To ease the burden on the Weather Underground server, we are working with Michigan to copy the Blue Skies files onto the NSF Geosciences Unidata IEIS. When the system is fully functional, both servers will contain the identical information, including associated instructional materials.

Acknowledgements

The Unidata Program Center (UPC), operated by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), is sponsored by the Atmospheric Sciences Division (ATM) of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Click here to learn more about Unidata by visiting the Unidata Program Center World Wide Web server or our gopher server.

The hardware for this IEIS was donated to Unidata by Sun Microsystems to show how Unidata systems can be used for scientific research and education. Please read our acknowledgments document to see how many organizations have contributed to this effort.

NSF Geosciences Web Server Access Statistics

Prepared by Sally Bates , Ben Domenico and Mike Wright

For questions about Unidata, see the Unidata WWW server or contact support@unidata.ucar.edu
Last updated on Thu Jul 7 16:46:44 MDT 1994

ben@unidata.ucar.edu