Collaborating Organisation Overview
The Western Australian Satellite Technology and Applications Consortium (WASTAC) is a consortium whose main objectives are to maintain a reliable, comprehensive and accessible archive of satellite data. WASTAC
members include: The Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology, Landgate, Curtin University of Technology, CSIRO, Murdoch University, Geoscience Australia
Project Overview
WASTAC has managed the reception and archiving of remote sensing data in Western Australia since 1981. This multi-decade snapshot of the state is highly beneficial to research into agriculture, soil moisture, vegetation changes, bushfire management, climate change and ocean temperature. WASTAC required a home for its satellite data that would make the data publicly available via the web.
Project Challenge
Over the decades WASTAC has stored its data on various offline media, which takes considerable time to access. Ideally the data would be in a form researchers could quickly search and download. The raw MODIS archive alone is estimated to be 60 terabytes, and WASTAC did not have the infrastructure to support the online service.
iVEC’s Solution
WASTAC began transferring the satellite archive to iVEC and developed a system to allow users to search the valuable data. The data was downloaded from NASA and is now available online from iVEC.
Scientific Outcome
The MODIS satellite data is now housed at iVEC where it is publicly available online to researchers. There is no internet traffic cost to local researchers for downloading the large data sets.
