CERSe - The Component-based Environment for Remote Sensing

Component-based Environment for Remote Sensing

Project

Members

Project Leader, Head Researcher, and Chief Programmer

Advisor
Dr. Walter Ligon
Facilities
Parallel Architecture Research Laboratory - Clemson University
WebWulf
Funding
NASA Earth and Space Science (ESS) program, HPCC, and the Earth Science and Technology Office (ESTO)

CERSe is a project aimed at providing an environment for remote sensing which is easy to use, extensible, and takes advantage of high-performance parallel computer hardware. By ease of use we mean that it provides a component-based environment, design and performance tools, a graphical environment, etc. The power of CERSe comes in a combination of ways. CERSe targets a hardware platform of Beowulf-class supercomputers.

CERSe, the software we use, the parallel programming extensions (MPI-MPICH), the parallel filesystem (PVFS), and all other parts of a Beowulf are all free of cost and open source. CERSe is one of several environments conforming to / developed under CECAAD - the Clemson Environment for Computer Aided Application Design.

Check out WebWulf for a host of images which CERSe has produced.

CERSe has progressed to some form of completion. We demonstrated the project at Supercomputing 2000 in Dallas, Texas and Supercomputing 2001 in Denver, Colorado as part of the NASA booth. NASA has a site which has our posters and some explanation here.

CERSe is now a PSE developed through the use of Coven. Coven provides a framework for PSE development for parallel computers.

Publications

See the PARL Techreports Page for a complete listing.

Screenshots

These are just some of the screenshots from a graphical interface for CERSe.

Related Links

Software

PVFS - The Parallel Virtual File System is a project at the PARL. This project provides a robust filesystem for clusters and is used by CERSe.
CECAAD - The Clemson Environment for Computer-Aided Application Design web site. This project defines how problem solving environments should be built. CERSe is built using many of the concepts from this research.
MPICH - an implementation of the Message Passing Interface for cluster computers. MPICH is the interface of choice for CERSe.
OSSIM - The Open Source Software Image Map project. A project that aims at solving a very similar problem as CERSe but approaches it a little differently.
The AutoClass Project - A Bayesian classifier developed by the Bayes group at NASA Ames Research Center.
TRACEE - A module-based toolkit for algorithm development.

Related Publications

Parallel I/O Bibliography - David Kotz's web-based bibliography of parallel I/O papers. Most have bibtex entries, abstracts, personal comments, and even links to the online paper.
Stochastic Scheduling - A database of stochastic scheduling papers.
Pablo Group Publications - Collection of publications coming from the Pablo group.
Data Survivability Crisis White Paper - A white paper out of NASA explaining very well the data crisis that NASA is facing.

Documentation

World Data Bank II - A (long) listing of latitude / longitude values of important boundaries.
Java Documentation - The official site for Java documentation. This has all the APIs and is amazingly useful.
Sea Surface Temperatures and NOAA - A site which explains the derivation of the SST algorithm using NOAA satellites. Pictures are also included.
NOAA Satellites - A comprehensive site of links to NOAA satellite related pages. There are pics of the satellites themselves, links to algorithms, data providers, calibration data, and more.
SST Primer - A primer on the SST algorithm using NOAA AVHRR satellite data.
NOAA KLM User's Guide - A must have for anyone trying to understand now the NOAA-K and NOAA-M polar orbiter series of satellites work.
NESDIS SST Equations and Temperature Charts - A collection of topics on Sea Surface Temperature equations.
NASA Remote Sensing Tutorial - A nice collection of information for using satellites for computational science.
Remote Sensing Class - Links to tutorials for algorithms like ozone production and depletion, temperature sounding, water vapor sounding, etc.

Graphically Pleasing

WebWulf - A Beowulf cluster in the Parallel Architecture Research Laboratory dedicated to remote-sensing research. Scores of images can be found here made with CERSe and less user-friendly tools which we designed before CERSe.
A Global View From Space - A really cool interactive site from NASA that lets you view a realtime view from space.
CIMSS GOES Gallery - A collection of very cool GOES images that have been singled out for the features that they highlight.
Ocean Remote Sensing Group - A really cool site with many different pictures. They have SST maps for current data and past data. There are trackings and cool pics of hurricanes, snowstorms, fires, etc. There is also an "overview" of each dataset explaining what the dataset itself looked like.

Miscellaneous

NASA's GSFC Supercomputing 2000 Site - CERSe was exhibited at Supercomputing 2000 in Dallas, Texas as part of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center booth. This web site details our posters and provides some explanation.

The Open Source Remote Sensing Effort - Links to a bunch of OSRS projects.

Regional Applications Center (RAC) Program - The NASA RAC program homepage. The program was cancelled so not sure how much longer the site will be up. It has a collection of cool links to software, images, and information.