ArcCI: A high-resolution aerial image management and processing platform for sea ice

Abstract

The Arctic sea-ice region has become an increasingly important study area since it is not only a key driver of the Earth’s climate but also a sensitive indicator of climate change. Therefore, it is crucial to extract high-resolution geophysical features of sea ice from remote sensing data to model and validate sea-ice changes. With large volumes of high spatial resolution data and intensive feature extraction, classification, and analysis processes, cloud infrastructure solutions can support Earth science. One example is the Arctic CyberInfrastructure (ArcCI), which was built to address image management and processing for sea-ice studies. The ArcCI system employs an efficient geophysical feature extraction workflow that is based on the object-based image analysis (OBIA) method alongside an on-demand web service for Arctic cyberinfrastructure. By integrating machine learning classification approaches, the on-demand sea-ice high spatial resolution (HSR) imagery management and processing service and framework allows for the efficient and accurate extraction of geophysical features and the spatiotemporal analysis of sea-ice leads.