Weather Extension for a Commercial Geographic Information System

This SBIR Phase II project will develop a new technology that provides 2D/3D/4D visualization of weather information within a commercial GIS (Geographic Information System) environment. GIS systems provide rich support for mapping, geographic data handling, spatial query, and geographic analysis functionality, but do not include native support for weather. GIS systems typically use static (atemporal) databases for visualization and analysis of geographic data (for example, NIMA CDs). These static databases are typically built by importing existing geographic data (such as road network, urban/rural landuse, etc.). Weather data are temporal/dynamic in nature and are often accessed as large global four-dimensional datasets providing a wide range of weather parameters. So, current applications that use weather information tend to be stove-piped systems with limited capability for integration with other mapping and geographic analysis systems. The proposed research and development would result in a "weather extension" to a commercial GIS architecture, allowing the development of "weather-aware" mapping applications for the US Air Force and DoD. The toolkit extensions would also support incorporation of weather forecasts within future mission applications based on the DoD's Commercial Joint Mapping Tool Kit (C/JMTK) as well as applications based directly on the ArcGIS desktop platform (from ESRIr).