China Digital Ocean Prototype System

Digital Ocean is a new research domain of Digital Earth. Because of the spatio-temporal, three-dimensional (3D) and intrinsically dynamic nature of ocean data, it is more difficult to make a breakthrough in this domain. The construction of the China Digital Ocean Prototype System (CDOPS) pushes Digital Ocean a step forward from its operation as a mere concept to its achievement as a realistic system. In this paper, the technical framework of the CDOPS is discussed, including its data, function, and application layers. Then, two key technologies are studied in detail that will enable the construction of the 3D ocean environment and the visualization of the ocean model output data. Practical demonstrations show that the CDOPS provides a technical reference for the development of Digital Ocean. This paper is based on an ongoing research project of the development of CDOPS that aims at the facilitation, integration, sharing, accessing, visualization, and use of the ocean data and model computing data from the Digital Earth perspective.