An online system of winter wheat drought monitoring based on satellite data: Design concepts and initial testing

In regional scale, satellite data was gained frequency nearly a day or more shorter, and these satellite data had already been wildly used for drought monitoring. Meanwhile, a variety of information systems of drought monitoring based on client/server architecture were developed and employed. However, these systems were too professional for non-professional workers to use. With the development of WebGIS technology, it was possible to realize online drought monitoring based on satellite data. In the northern of China, the main crop was winter wheat. The quality and yield of winter wheat were affected seriously due to drought. In this study, for the purpose of rapid monitoring winter wheat drought, a web system was developed according to the growth characteristics of winter wheat. First, the design concepts, general structure and function modules of drought monitoring system were introduced. In our system, experience model of monitoring drought using satellite data was embedded in online system to analysis the severity of winter wheat drought. Second, key technologies of system were elaborated. System environment under the Myeclipse platform was set up. The language in presentation layer was linked to that in logic layer by using middleware named blazeDS. BlazeDS software realized the interaction between the client and the server. Satellite imageries was processed by calling IDL program. Finally, an initial testing demonstrated our system can be operated in a simpler way to analysis drought information of winter wheat based on satellite data. It can be concluded that this system is widely useful for providing decision-making support information to agricultural departments in a real-time.