GLASS, a tool for quality-controlled GNSS Data and Products dissemination

Paul Crocker, professor from University of Beira Interior (UBI) and an EPOS TCS GNSS Data and Products member, presented a poster about GLASS at AGU Fall Meeting. The event, hosted from December 10th to 14th, at Walter E Washington Convention Center, had the poster presentation addressed at Hall A-C (Poster Hall) on Wednesday (December 12th, 2018), from 13:40 to 18:00 (Washington, D.C. time).

According to the abstract submitted, “Europe is covered by various networks of GNSS stations maintained by different agencies with different technical and scientific objectives. The EPOS-IP (European Plate Observing System – Implementation Phase) project aims to harmonize and standardize data collection and processing and to design and establish dedicated products and services that benefit the existence of national and pan-European infra-structures (in particular EUREF), optimized for Solid Earth Research applications”.

Distributed software architecture – Therefore, the idea has been to present the efforts carried out by the members of EPOS TCS GNSS Data and Products to create a distributed software architecture called GLASS, a tool for quality-controlled dissemination within the EPOS. During the operational phase, to start in 2019, this shall provide GNSS data and derived products (coordinates, velocities and strain rates) from thousands of stations in Europe region.

Data flows – “We took the opportunity to describe the data flows from data suppliers and analysis centers to the various EPOS data portals and the integration into the overall EPOS system. In particular we have described the quality control steps that are performed in the GNSS Data and Products, from validating the station log files, obtaining quality metrics of RINEX files and their role in monitoring the overall system strength”, explains Paul Crocker.

Several analysis centers – According to Crocker, was also described how time series and other GNSS products computed at several analysis centers are compared and how the detection of outliers and verification of jumps are dealt with. In terms of Data and Product Dissemination had been detailed the overall software and portal components, the technologies that are used and resulting API’s and their descriptions in formal languages for integration into the central EPOS systems software and existing workflow.

Authors – The authors of this poster, entitled “GLASS, a tool for quality-controlled GNSS Data and Products dissemination”, are: Paul Crocker (UBI), Jan Dousa (Research Institute of Geodesy), Mathilde Vergnolle (CNRS), Carine Bruyninx (Royal Observatory of Belgium), Machiel Simon Bos (UBI), Rui Manuel Silva Fernandes (UBI), Benedikt Ofeigsson (Icelandic Met Office), Petr Bezdeka (Research Institute of Geodesy), Rui Cardoso (UBI), Rafael Couto (UBI), Andras Fabian (Observatoire Royal de Belgique), Juliette Legrand (Royal Observatory of Belgium), Khai-Minh Ngo (Géoazur – Université Nice Sophia Antipolis), Tim Sonnemann (University of Iceland) and Pavel Vaclavovic (GOP/RIGTC).

EPOS-IP is a project funded by the ESFRI European Union.