Free Geography Tools

Click here for parts one and two of this series.

NASA HDF-EOS Web GIS Software Suite (NWGISS)

NASA HDF-EOS Web GIS Software Suite (NWGISS) is a suite of web GIS software that makes HDF-EOS data available to GIS users based on Open GIS Consortium’s (OGC) interoperability protocols. It consists of the following components: a map server (WMS), a coverage server (WCS), a catalog server, a Multi-Protocol Geoinformation Client (MPGC), and a toolbox. Those components can work both independently or collaboratively.

NWGISS can work with all three types of HDF-EOS data, namely swath, grid, and point. Currently, the map server, compliant with OGC web mapping specification 1.0, has been developed and tested. The coverage server, which serves real data to GIS clients, has been developed and tested as a part of OGC WMT II activities. The catalog server provides catalog search capabilities to GIS clients. The state-full catalog server has been implemented and the http-based stateless catalog server is being implemented. The Multi-Protocol Geoinformation Client (MPGC) provides an interoperable way of accessing geospatial data, especially those from remote sensing. It is in conformity with OGC’s web coverage specification ( version 0.5 & 0.7 ), web feature, web map and web registry specification to communicate with a server to request any subsets of a multi-dimensional and multi-temporal geospatial data for a specific geographic region from the server and overlay map image. It also can reformat the returning dataset in user specified data format. And more, it is a robust visualization and analytical tool for geospatial data.

The toolbox consists of two-way translators between HDF-EOS and major GIS formats, as well as the CreateCapabilities tool that automatically creates the XML capabilities descriptions from the metadata in HDF-EOS files. Both tools are available now. NWGISS map and coverage servers have been used by NASA and other space agencies. NWGISS is free to data providers who want to serve HDF-EOS data to GIS clients.

OpenEV

OpenEV is a software library and application for viewing and analysing raster and vector geospatial data.

• Run on popular platforms (Linux, Windows, Solaris, IRIX).
• Handle raster and vector data.
• Support 2D and 3D display.
• Gracefully handle very large (gigabyte) raster datasets.
• Support multi-channel, and complex raster datasets.
• Understand and interpret georeferencing information, and provide on-the-fly reprojection of datasets.
• Provide view manipulation functions (pan, zoom, rotate) at interactive frame rates.
• Provide a powerful image analysis tool.
• Serve as a component in a variety of image analysis applications.

Note: Now part of the FWTools package; doesn’t seem to be under active development anymore. Gary Geller of the TerraLook group writes to say that OpenEV 2.0 is in active development, and should be released late in 2009.

Opticks

General Features:

• Zoom, pan, rotate spatially large datasets.
• Quickly layer GIS features, annotations, results, and other information over your data to provide context.
• Link dataset geographically. Zoom and pan one dataset links to another.
• Product mode and annotations.
• Active annotations, including North Arrow, East Arrow, Scale Bar, and Timestamp
• Many image display controls, such as colormap, histogram, transparency, etc.
• User defined video/image processing “plug-ins”.
• Support for datasets in excess of four gigabytes (64-bit support).
• In memory and on disk processing.
• Analysts can quickly combine steps using graphical wizards.
• Batch processing.
• Online Help
• Native support for many remote sensing file formats: NITF2.0/2.1, ASPAM/PAR, CGM, DTED, ENVI, Generic RAW, ESRI Shapefile, HDF5, AVI, MPEG, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, GeoTIFF.
• Connect to Geodatabases with ESRI ArcSDE integration.
• Support for Microsoft Windows ( 32-bit and 64-bit ) and Solaris SPARC operating systems.

Motion Imagery and Remote Sensing Video Features:

• Pan, zoom, rotate, and geo-referencing spatially large video.
• Playback multiple video datasets synchronized by time.
• Overlay geographics features and have them georeference per frame, moving as you playback.

Multi-Spectral and Hyper-Spectral Features:

• Support for multiple spectral dataset formats including BIP, BSQ, and BIL.
• Support for 1000’s of spectral bands.
• ENVI signature importer.
• Principle Component Analysis.

SAR Features:

• Native support for complex data.
• Display as Phase, Magnitude, In-phase (I), and Quadrature (Q).

OSSIM

OSSIM (Open Source Software Image Map) is a high performance software system for remote sensing, image processing , geographical information systems and photogrammetry.

• Parallel processing capabilities with mpi libraries
• Rigorous sensor modeling
• Universal Sensor Models (RPCs)
• Wide range of Map Projections and Datums supported
• Non-destructive, parameter based image chains
• Native file access
• Precision Terrain correction and orthorectification
• Advanced Mosaicing, compositing, and fusions
• Elevation support
• Vector and shapelib support
• Projection and resolution independent
• Equation editors
• Histogram matching and tonal balancing

REGEEMY

The main goal of this work is to bring developed registration methods into one automatic image registration system and make them work operationally.

The developed registration system is a full-featured application intended for operational use by beginners as well as by advanced users. Registration may be achieved by one simple click or may be controlled by several parameters. The system contains toolboxes that increase the registration strength using user knowledge.

Three different algorithms for control point extraction are implemented in the system and other methods can be easily added. One of the algorithms uses optical flow ideas to extract the features in both images. The second method uses spectral information of the images and their local wavelet transform modulus maxima to extract a set of control points. The last one uses centers of gravity of the closed contours and other strong edges as control points.

Note: Covered in an earlier post.

Remote Sensing Resources – Online Tools

Not applications per se, but a nice set of online applications that demonstrate some of the basic principles of remote sensing.