Interoperability Systems for supporting the Italian scientific community working in the Earth Observation from satellite sector

This paper considers interoperability issue among information systems dealing with remotely sensed data. In particular, interoperability among GIS, and imagery databases in distributed environment is tackled. An experimentation of implementing interoperability through data models is presented. This solution has been conceived and developed in a project funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI): the project consider the support from several research units (Universities, CNR Institutes, etc.) which are interested in the following system implementation, and are available to connect to it and share data. These units endorsed the project. The project main objectives are: the implementation and sharing of a common knowledge base and database (data at different processing levels algorithms, software tools, documents, etc.) for the scientific co-operation support and the specifications, implementation and deployment of a distributed information system, accessed and connected through Internet technology. This wok reports the results of the experimentation of a first developed prototype that enables three of the existing local systems to become interoperable and share data at a high level. That is, a distributed system, making interoperable three different autonomous and heterogeneous environmental information systems. This successful test has been particularly meaningful, as the configurations of the three connected systems, cover a huge sector of the systems utilised by the National scientific Community for archiving data.