Meteorology and Oceanography Data Archival Centre (MOSDAC) is a data center of Space Applications Centre (SAC) and has facility for satellite data reception, processing, analysis and dissemination. MOSDAC is involved in web based software design and development for operationally supplying earth observation data from Indian meteorological and oceanography satellites as well as in-situ observation from AWS (Automatic Weather Station) and DWR (Doppler Weather Radar) stations, to cater to national research requirements.
In March 2019, ISRO proposed a TDP (Technology Development Programme) titled “DWR data visualization”. The TDP was approved for the period of 15 months till July 2020. The budget for procuring Workstation with high end Graphics Card was also approved by the committee. Under the TDP, ISRO proposed the following activities:
- 3D visualization of RADAR data : Development of techniques for volume Rendering
- 2D visualization of RADAR data : Integration of RADAR data in THREDDS and its visualization in LIVE
- Visualization of composite images (Satellite + RADAR)
MOSDAC is currently receiving real-time data sets from three ISRO Doppler Weather Radars namely TERLS, CHEERAPUNJI, and SHAR. At MOSDAC following activities are carried out in real-time for the DWR data archival and dissemination:
- Data sets are converted from raw format to netCDF format
- Metadata is generated in the Oracle database ,
- Data is archived along with the preview images
- Data disseminated to the internal as well as external users
- Real - time Data Visualization on Web
In the near future MOSDAC is expected to receive data from 4-5 more ISRO DWRs.
In the proposed research, ISRO plans to provide a real-time 3D volume rendered visualization on Web of these ISRO Radar datasets. Once the technique is developed, they will implement the same for visualization of Temperature and Humidity profiles from INSAT3D Sounder data sets and Megha-Tropiques SAPHIR Humidity profiles data products. To render such data sets in real time there is a requirement of extremely fast processor, large memory and a high end Graphics card.
Source: ISRO
