SOS Application: Timeseries Plots
I've put together a simple timeseries plotter for SOS services using python, matplotlib, and mod_python.
First, some examples:
- A completed form, ready for the user to select one or more stations, then select one or more variables to generate an image.
- A generated plot involving two SATURN stations
- A plot of pressure at a single station
Here's the unpopulated SOS plotting service form.
To use:
Enter one or more getcapabilities urls, then click Submit.
Choose one or more offerings, then click Submit.
Optionally edit the start time and end time (Note that all times are in UTC).
Choose a variable, then click Submit.
This tool is not especially robust yet, so you may run into errors. Also, it's very easy to request a enormous amount of data; there's no throttling or aggregation to limit memory consumption on the server.
Background
On the OOSTethys conference call Friday May 18, I pushed for a "killer app" for SOS to encourage adoption. In a follow-up dicsusssion over email, I suggested phrasing the issue like this:
We want to be able to fill in the blank to this sentence:
"If you serve your data through SOS, you will immediately and automatically be able to XXXX, which is something that would have been very difficult otherwise."
Apps we already have:
"view current observations in an integrated fashion at OpenIOOS.org and OOSTethys.org"
Some candidates that I recommend pursuing:
1) "Satisfy FGDC requirements." Write a tool that automatically generates compliant FGDC records for SOS services and submits them to federal clearinghouses properly.
2) "Archive your data permanently" Gerry mentioned this possibility on the call.
3) "View your data in Google Earth" Let's just generate KML from the SOS service calls.
4) "Visualize timeseries plots alongside other regions" Write an app that plots observations for selectable time periods.
Others?
John Graybeal thought the 1) and 3) were low hanging fruit, but thought that 4) might be a challenge.
