GIS on a Sphere

In the past 20+ years, I’ve seen a lot of really fantastic GIS technology in many parts of the world. However, during my trip to the Denver, Colorado, area last week, I saw something that was truly mesmerizing. My concern is that I won’t be able to adequately describe it for you.

Before the cool stuff, I want to briefly tell you my visit last week of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) in Boulder. SWPC is the world’s leading facility for forecasting and issuing space weather alerts. If you think that your local weather reporter on television has a hard time delivering accuracte forecasts, folks at the SWPC say that forecasting space weather is about 50 years behind the local weatherperson forecasting temperature and preciptation on earth.

Behind the glass window is a room about the size of an average meeting room. Space weather forecasting is on the left. It is staffed during daytime hours and issues a forecast once per day (soon to be increased to three times per day). The right side of the room are the space weather monitoring people. It is staffed all the time (24/7). They are the ones that issue alerts/warnings of sun activity events within minutes of when they occur.

Why is it important to be aware of space weather?

Significant space weather events (solar storms) can have a significant impact on our infrastructure (power, telecommunications, navigation, etc.). In 1989, there was a geomagnetic storm that caused six million people in eastern Canada to lose power for nine hours. The world’s electrical power infrastructure is relatively fragile with respect to solar events. A big question that no one has the answer to is what would happen when an extreme event like the Carrington storm of 1859 occurs again. The Carrington storm was the largest geomagnetic storm in recorded history.

Of course, in 1859 there wasn’t much electonic technology around to be affected outside of telegraph systems, which were disabled in many parts of the world.

Is the Smart Grid smart enough to handle the sun?

With the introduction of the digital electronic age (computers, internet, cell phones, satellites, television, widely available electricity), we rely heavily on technology, which relies completely on electricity. It’s really hard to imagine the potential impact that an event like the 1859 Carrington storm would have in today’s world.

Last week at the Space Weather Workshop in Boulder, Colorado, Jim Caverly from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security suggested that society and public/commercial enterprises are woefully unaware of the impact of a significant geomagnetic event. As a exericse, he suggested (tongue-in-cheek) “what would happen if we turned off GPS for two days?”

GIS on a Sphere

With last week’s attention being focused on space weather, the last thing I expected to experience was the most fascinating GIS visulization tool I’ve seen in recent memory. Part of our the tour of the Space Weather Prediction Center included, to my surprise, including a demonstration of NOAA’s Science on a Sphere, which I’ve promptly renamed GIS on a Sphere.

Science on a Sphere is a 6 foot diameter ball, suspended approximately 7 feet off of the ground, on which color geographic data can be projected from four ceiling-mounted projectors spaced evenly around the “globe”.

The exhibit I saw was very much like the image in the upper right corner of the graphic above. The fantastic part about it is that the operator can display an unlimited number of datasets on the globe. In fact, the globe doesn’t even have to be the Earth. It could be the Earth’s moon, Saturn, Mars or even our Sun.

The operator for our tour, NOAA Meterologist Sara Summers, projected a number of maps on the globe, one being a map showing the tsunami’s, created by the March 11, 2011 earthquake off of the coast of Japan, as they move across the Pacific Ocean and bounce off of other continents. Another fascinating map was one of Facebook users across the globe, with a large blank area exactly the shape of China. One more map dataset illustrated commercial air traffic over the globe showing the tracers of each airliner. The visual presentation is absolutely mesmerizing and miles above any 2D display of geographic data I’ve ever seen.

My attempts to record a video of the Sara’s presentation failed miserably. Fortunately, there are several good videos on Youtube to select from.

The first Youtube video (34 seconds) is a promotional one from the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) which have installed a system. In fact, over 60 of the systems have been installed around the world by NOAA.

The next video is a timelapse video of a Science on a Sphere system being setup at an exhibit for the California Department of Water Resources. I wanted to give you an idea of what the complete system consists of (1m 04s).

For those of you who are interested in the engineering behind the Science on a Sphere, following is an interesting short video (1m 40s) describing the technology.

Lastly, I would be remiss in not including a video of NOAA scientist and Science on a Sphere inventor Dr. Sandy MacDonald. According to Sara, Dr. MacDonald developed Science on a Sphere in his garage in the mid-1990’s. The NOAA website reports that a patent was awarded to NOAA in August 2005, crediting Dr. MacDonald as the inventor. There are over 60 Science on a Sphere systems installed around the world (visit one near you). If you’d like one for yourself, NOAA will provide all the hardware, software, installation, training, support and documentation for around US$150,000 if you’re located within the U.S. and US$200,000 if located outside of the U.S. I commented to Sara that if I happen to win the lottery, I’ll be purchasing one. She responded “me too”.

The following video hosted by Dr. MacDonald is ~14 minutes.

Thanks, and see you next week.

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