A Web-Interface for Data Interoperability: the Spectral Library of Mt Etna Volcanic Surfaces

Abstract:

In the frame of the future Italian Space Agency (ASI) Space Mission PRISMA (Precursore IperSpettrale della Missione Applicativa), the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) coordinates the scientific project ASI-AGI (Analisi Sistemi Iperspettrali per le Applicazioni Geofisiche Integrate) aimed to study the hyperspectral volcanic applications and to identify and characterize a vicarious validation and calibration site for hyperspectral space missions. PRISMA is an Earth observation system with innovative electro-optical instrumentation which combines an hyperspectral sensor with a panchromatic medium-resolution camera. These instruments offer the scientific community and users many applications in the field of environmental monitoring, risk management, crop classification, pollution control, and Security.

In this context Mt. Etna (Italy) has been choose as main site for testing the sensor capability to assess volcanic risk. The volcanic calibration and validation activities comprise the managing of a large amount of in situ hyperspectral data collected during the last 10 years. The usability and interoperability of these datasets represents a task of ASI-AGI project. For this purpose a database has been created to collect all the spectral signatures of the measured volcanic surfaces. This process has begun with the creation of the metadata structure compliant with those belonging to some standard spectral libraries such as USGS ones. Each spectral signature is described in a table containing ancillary data such as the location map of where it was collected, description of the target selected, etc. The relational database structure has been developed WOVOdat compliant. Specific tables have been formatted for each type of measurements, instruments and targets in order to query the database through a user-friendly web-interface. The interface has an upload area to populate the database and a visualization tool that allows downloading the ASCII spectral file and also visualizing an interactive graph where the spectral range to plot can be selected by the user.