Service-Oriented Grid Computing for SAFORAH

The SAFORAH project (System of Agents for Forest Observation Research with Advanced Hierarchies) was created to coordinate and streamline the archiving and sharing of large geospatial data sets between various research groups within the Canadian Forest Service, the University of Victoria, and various other academic and government partners. Recently, it has become apparent that the availability of image processing services would improve the utility of the SAFORAH system. We describe a project to integrate SAFORAH with a computational grid using the Globus middleware. We outline a modular design that will allow us to incorporate new components as well as enhance the long-term sustainability of the project. We will describe the status of this project showing how it will add a new capability to the SAFORAH forestry project giving researchers a powerful tool for environmental and forestry research.