Conference Paper

ADAGUC is an open-source geographical information system to visualize NetCDF files via the web. The software consists of a server side C++ application and a client side JavaScript application. The software provides several features to access and visualize data over the web, it uses OGC standards for data dissemination. The spatial data infrastructure is based on OGC compliant web services. These web services include Web Mapping Services (WMS) for online visualization and Web Coverage Services (WCS 1.0) for downloading raster data.
The mapping server is specifically aimed at visualization of meteorological and climatological data. The server can handle raster data like model data and satellite products, swath data from satellites and point observations. It supports multidimensional data from NetCDF 4 and OpenDAP data resources. The mapping server conforms to WMS versions 1.1.1, 1.3.0 and INSPIRE View Service standard. The server supports the recent OGC Best Practice for using Web Map Services (WMS) with Time-Dependent or Elevation-Dependent Data. When the NetCDF data complies to CF Conventions, the metadata describing dimensionality and parameter attributes can be applied to the visualizations.
The client application is a browser application, which can provide a portal to any number of WMS services. It is also possible to use the client application as a component which can be embedded in other web pages.
Several WMS requests have been extended with JSON/JSONP functionality to make the services better suited for browser applications.
ADAGUC server components have been applied in a number of systems for operational use in forecasting and climate research applications.