The DEDS: DSTO's Environmental-Data Server for Research Applications

A myriad of requirements exist within DSTO for rapid access to high-quality geospatial and meteorological data; and, with support from the Australian Defence Simulation Office, a software framework has been developed to efficiently and inexpensively serve such data for a variety of end-uses. The framework, implemented in software called the DSTO Environmental-Data Server (DEDS), includes facilities for distributed data warehousing and scheduled retrieval of published source data, as well as post-processing of data for for-mat conversions, production of high-resolution models, and statistical analyses. Via the DEDS web interface or through its application programming interface, users can access: terrain-elevation data; historical regional-scale meteorological modelling; building-geometry data for Australian capital cities; and population-density data for Australia. Each data type is output to the user (or to the user's simulation) in a defined region with post-processing as requested by the user