Q. What is the most efficient way to browse or view data?
A. If you want to browse the available data select the "list of URLs" radio button as the output type. Instead of retrieving the data for the area and time requested and aggregating it on the web server the browser process goes direct to the data repository and subsamples the data to produce quick look images.
Q. I asked for data for a small area over a two year period and it is taking a long time to retrieve. Why is it slow?
A. Requests for long time series involve the system making a large number of requests to the data repository because often the data is stored in a different file for each date. Some datasets may store data with a range of times in one file. These data will be retrieved much more quickly than retrieving a large date range for a small area.
Q. I am using Firefox and my progress box does not seem to produce view and download buttons as described in the help information. Whats wrong?
A. Some versions of Firefox have issues which affect the performance of the GUI for the AO-DAAC. Try updating to the latest version of Firefox, or use Google Chrome or Internet Explorer.
Q. Can I get a single data point or time series for a single point?
A. Yes, click once where you want a single point of data, and then proceed to set the time range and output type. If you visualise the result you will get a graphical plot of the data for the point where the X axis will be time.
Q. I selected and area and time where there should have been data but only got null values back when I downloaded the result. Why?
A. Sometimes there is not data available for the region or time range you select. It may also be that you zoomed in too much and the bounding area did not contain a value. In this case try selecting a bigger region.
Q. Why do I have to click twice to get my area defined? Why won't click and drag work?
A. The Google Maps interface we are using uses drag to move the map around. The Google Maps programming interface make it difficult to implement click and drag. We are working on this and maybe able to implement a click and drag process in the future.
Q. There are only a few datasets available. Do you plan to add more?
A. We are working to both improve the quality of some of the datasets and add more as quickly as we can. To do this properly we need to add documentation about the dataset, copy the dataset and add extra information to comply with IMOS requirements. It takes time! If there is some particular dataset you are interested in please contact us via the feedback link.
Q. How accurate are the data?
A. Some datasets have products which contain information about accuracy and quality and others do not. We are trying to provided document pages which will provide such information as part of our development process. At present the data is provided “as is” and use at your own risk.
Q. Can I use the data for my business purposes.
A. The datasets are being made available to the Australian research community. Data from this system should not be used for commercial purposes in an ongoing way without contacting us first. Some datasets include specific restrictions and at this stage unless otherwise noted all datasets fall under Creative Commons non commercial copyright protection.
As the system is developed this approach to copyright will be reviewed.
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