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From: "Ramirez, Paul M (398J)" <paul.m.ramirez@jpl.nasa.gov>
To: "general@incubator.apache.org" <general@incubator.apache.org>
Subject: Re: [Proposal] HotdoG for the Apache Incubator
Thread-Topic: [Proposal] HotdoG for the Apache Incubator
Thread-Index: AQHOVkxXiotv42CWYECumppGA9NliJkapSuA
Date: Tue, 28 May 2013 13:40:14 +0000
Message-ID: <CDCA0140.50552%paul.m.ramirez@jpl.nasa.gov>
In-Reply-To: <CDC1030C.4D8FB%paul.m.ramirez@jpl.nasa.gov>
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All,

Bumping for comments since last week was a busy week with voting. I'd like
to call a vote on this proposal in 72 hours, pending no major changes need
to be made.=20

--Paul Ramirez

On 5/21/13 10:55 AM, "Ramirez, Paul M (398J)"
<paul.m.ramirez@jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:

>Dear ASF members,
>
>We would like to propose HotdoG for the incubator. Paul Ramirez (me) will
>be the Champion for this project. The proposal draft is available at:
>
>https://wiki.apache.org/incubator/HotdoGProposal
>
>Looking forward to integration your suggestions and feedback.
>
>
>=3D HotdoG Proposal =3D
>
>=3D=3D Abstract =3D=3D
>
>The HotdoG project is an effort and suite of tools to convert HDF/HDF-EOS
>format into GeoTIFF format. This is the first of a potential series of
>incoming projects originating from The HDF Group -- the non-profit
>organization is interested in evaluating the ASF as a potential home for
>many of its projects. The HDF Group is an independently funded
>organization that started many years ago with major investment from NASA
>as the Hierarchical Data Format (HDF), version 4 and now version 5, is
>the ''de facto'' remote sensing data format for NASA missions, and an
>increasing number of other disciplines including bio medicine, radio
>astronomy, climate science, and other domains.
>
>HDF is both a data and metadata format, as well as a model for
>representing and access information. There are numerous downstream tools
>that can read and write HDF data, including a growing number of
>Geospatial data tools (ESRI-based, and also OpenGeo and other community
>led efforts). In addition, major interoperability efforts are also
>occurring between the remote sensing community and the climate modeling
>community (which has traditionally favored NetCDF as opposed to HDF)
>because of the efforts in HDF5 to leverage a common data format and model.
>
>HotdoG is poised to be a first of its kind in the form of bringing one of
>the major 2 data formats for science to the ASF (the other being the
>NetCDF format).
>
>=3D=3D Proposal =3D=3D
>HotdoG is a software converter that converts Earth Science data in
>HDF/HDF-EOS format into GeoTIFF format. Doing so easily enables users of
>remote sensing data to interoperate with common GIS tools (like WebGIS,
>Web Processing, image analysis, and geo computational tools). We feel
>that the project is an incremental step, and an appropriate focus with
>tangible success possibilities by restraining our focus to HDF/HDF-EOS to
>GeoTIFF conversion.
>
>There are numerous interesting paths that we can take the toolkit in --
>as conversion from remotely sensed data to GeoTIFF involves ensuring that
>the HDF-EOS metadata elements can be appropriately represented using
>GeoTIFF headers, and the associated format. Furthermore, capturing the
>HDF's appropriate geo datum in GeoTIFF will be another important
>challenge.
>
>=3D=3D Background =3D=3D
>
>GeoTIFF is a data and metadata standard for Earth science applications.
>It is based on binary Tagged Image File Format (TIFF).  A GeoTIFF file
>has geographic (or cartographic) data embedded as tags within the TIFF
>file that are used to geo-locate the image. This is required for correct
>integration of the image in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and
>other popular tools like Google Earth Pro.
>
>In the recent years, GeoTIFF has gained popularity as a visualization
>format among NASA HDF Earth science user communities according to the
>NASA data user's survey. However, the conversion from HDF to GeoTIFF is
>not straightforward for end users because NASA HDF data products are
>diverse and organized in many different ways. For example, go to
>http://hdfeos.org/zoo and you'll see many scripting language examples
>because no single script can correctly visualize all NASA HDF data.
>
>=3D=3D Rationale =3D=3D
>
>The HEG tool is limited to some NASA HDF-EOS2 products (no support for
>HDF-EOS5 products) and it is not an open-source tool. The latest GDAL
>(version 1.9.2 and above) is an open-source tool but it cannot handle
>many non-HDF-EOS NASA HDF products such as TRMM (pure HDF4) and Aquarius
>(pure HDF5) correctly and automatically.
>
>=3D=3D Initial Goals =3D=3D
>
>We'll improve GDAL to support NASA HDF products better by handling
>geo-location information and physical meaning of data correctly and
>automatically.
>
>We'll handle NASA products intelligently so novice users don't have to
>supply many options or figure out the details about the data products.
>For advanced users, we'll give a full control of accessing HDF products
>in many different ways so that the converted GeoTIFF file is
>scientifically valid and meaningful.
>
>We aim to provide command line tools first and evolve them into a GUI
>tool.
>
>
>=3D=3D Current Status =3D=3D
>
>We're looking for developers and sponsors.
>
>=3D=3D=3D Meritocracy =3D=3D=3D
>We will discuss the milestone and the future plan in an open forum. We
>plan to encourage an environment that supports a meritocracy. The
>contributors will have different privileges according to their
>contributions.
>
>=3D=3D=3D Community =3D=3D=3D
>
>GIS and Earth Science
>
>=3D=3D=3D Core developers =3D=3D=3D
> * H. Joe Lee <hyoklee AT hdfgroup DOT org>
> * Denis Nadeau <denis DOT nadeau AT gmail DOT com>
> * Pedro Vicente <pvicente AT uci DOt edu>
>
>=3D=3D=3D Alignment =3D=3D=3D
>
>HotdoG employs H4CF Conversion Toolkit for reading data and GDAL for
>writing GeoTIFF. In addition, we plan to integrate HotdoG with other
>products from new missions such as SMAP and IceSAT-2.
>
>If HEG becomes available as open source, HotdoG will employ it as well
>for HDF-EOS2 products.
>
>=3D=3D Known Risks =3D=3D
>
>HDF-EOS2 and HDF-EOS5 libraries are distributed under the
>[[http://opensource.org/licenses/NASA-1.3|NOSA license]] that may not be
>compatible with Apache License. This will be vetted with the Legal
>Affairs Committee and if found incompatible we will find a different way
>to read HDF-EOS products.
>
>HDF is a flexible format which affords for unusual objects such as Point
>& Zonal Averages (HDF-EOS), VData (HDF4), and compound datatype (HDF5)
>that present challenges in mapping to GeoTIFF. To mitigate this challenge
>the initial goals will focus on those objects which are more common place
>and easily map to GeoTIFF.
>
>=3D=3D Documentation =3D=3D
>
>User's guide documentation will be provided via Doxygen. The guide will
>contain specific GeoTIFF conversion examples for each NASA HDF data
>product.
>
>=3D=3D External Dependencies =3D=3D
> * H4CF Conversion Toolkit
> * GDAL
> * HDF-EOS2 / HDF-EOS5
> * HDF4 / HDF5
>
>=3D=3D Required Resources =3D=3D
>=3D=3D=3D Mailing List =3D=3D=3D
> * hotdog-private (with moderated subscription)
> * hotdog-dev
> * hotdog-commits
>
>=3D=3D=3D Issue Tracking =3D=3D=3D
>JIRA HotdoG (HotdoG)
>
>=3D=3D=3D Other Resources =3D=3D=3D
> * Wiki
>  * http://wiki.apache.org/HotdoG
>
>=3D=3D Initial Committers =3D=3D
> * H. Joe Lee (The HDF Group)
> * Paul Ramirez (NASA JPL)
> * Chris Mattmann (NASA JPL)
> * Lewis John McGibbney (Stanford University)
> * Denis Nadeau (NASA NCCS)
> * Pedro Vicente (University of California at Irvine)
> * Babak Behzad (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
>
>=3D=3D Affiliations =3D=3D
> * H. Joe Lee (The HDF Group)
> * Mike Folk  (The HDF Group)
> * Paul Ramirez (NASA JPL)
> * Chris Mattmann (NASA JPL)
> * Lewis John McGibbney (Stanford University)
> * Denis Nadeau (NASA NCCS)
> * Pedro Vicente (University of California at Irvine)
> * Babak Behzad (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
>
>=3D=3D=3D Champion =3D=3D=3D
> * Paul Ramirez <paul DOT m DOT ramirez AT jpl DOT nasa DOT gov>
>
>=3D=3D=3D Nominated Mentors =3D=3D=3D
> * Chris Mattmann
> * Paul Ramirez
>
>=3D=3D=3D Sponsoring Entity =3D=3D=3D
> * Apache Incubator
>
>Sincerely,
>Paul Ramirez
>


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