A distributed multimedia information system designed for the Arno project

The architecture of amultimedia information system, based on the Client-Server paradigm, is described. The system is conceived in order to collect, share and efficiently manage spatial remotely sensed multi-sensor images and ground data, spread over a network. Graphical workstations assure system access through the communication network. Even if this paper refers to a specific application, the system architecture embodies some concepts that are demonstrated to be convenient for the development and integration of information systems in spatial information sciences, as well as for the evolution of photogrammetric and remote sensing applications. Such architecture will be described referring to the implementation of an integrated, hydrogeological and meteorological database, collecting multisensor and multispectral data related to meteorological events. The database installations may be remotely accessed by meteorologists, geologists, hydrologists etc., from a graphical workstation through a specifically designed graphical user interface, in adistributedsystem configuration. The system allows users to query, to see, to understand and to obtain sequences of heterogeneous and multimediadata.