Analysis Research for Earth Resource Information Systems: Where Do We Stand?

For a decade or more research has been conducted which is intended to lead to the design of operational earth resource information systems. Clearly this research has not yet been completed. It does seem to be far enough along however, that an assessment relevant to future operational activities might well be possible and beneficial. In this paper a model operational system will be discussed not so much as a proposal for an actual system, but merely as a viable objective upon which to focus the re3earch. Possible system configurations and constraints will be noted, and the trend in the cost for data proce33ing will be discussed relative to such a system. INTRODUCTION Before providing this discussion however, it may be helpful to list the major elements of such an information system and to establish certain aspects of the system. I Figure I shows the major elements necessary in an earth observational system. There must be a sensor system viewinG the surface of the earth; there will no doubt be the need for some type of on-board processing of the' data, perhaps including tagging the data at this point with locatioII and c.G.libration information. This is followed by return of the data to the surface of the earth, perhaps througD a telemetry system. Once the data is at a suitable grour:d site prepro-cessing of some type will prove desirable, perhaps including the merging of ancillary data. This will be followed by the application of suitable analysis algorithrr::,; after v.hich the information derived will be utilized by an information consumer_ It should be emphasized at this peir. that this is not intended as a finalized system concept; for e~~mple the blocks in this system are not necessarily eve~ i l l tl.~ correct order. It may be desirable to do preprocessing or analysis operations on board the platform or in other ways to rearrange the steps 2 through which the data passes. This is not important for our present purposes, however. It is only important at this point to recognize that this group of activities will need to be carried out in an operational implementation of such a system. A survey of current remote sensing systems would show that there exists today a duality of system types, in that the present capability to process data springs from two quite different stems of technology. The names given to these two types here are …