The Geospatial Data Cloud: An Implementation of Applying Cloud Computing in Geosciences

The rapid growth in the volume of remote sensing data and its increasing computational requirements bring huge challenges for researchers as traditional systems cannot adequately satisfy the huge demand for service. Cloud computing has the advantage of high scalability and reliability, which can provide firm technical support. This paper proposes a highly scalable geospatial cloud platform named the Geospatial Data Cloud, which is constructed based on cloud computing. The architecture of the platform is first introduced, and then two subsystems, the cloud-based data management platform and the cloud-based data processing platform, are described. ––– This paper was presented at the First Scientific Data Conference on Scientific Research, Big Data, and Data Science, organized by CODATA-China and held in Beijing on 24-25 February, 2014.