RGPSview: a tool for RGPS data visualization

The Radarsat Geophysical Processor System (RGPS) developed at the Jet Propulsion Lab and operated by the Alaska SAR Facility has significantly advanced the analysis of Arctic SAR imagery. The RGPS combines multiple SAR swaths covering the Arctic Ocean to produce time series products specific to a number of sea-ice research interests including ice motion, open water fraction, backscatter histogram and ice deformation. Since the RGPS is a relatively new system, there am few applications which can ingest RGPS products. This paper describes the development of an interactive RGPS visualization application called RGPSview. Designed to aid researchers using POPS products, RGPSview utilizes plugin reader modules to add functionality to the application at run-time and is optimized for viewing large data sets with zooming, panning and saving functions in a geographic reference frame. RGPSview has the ability to display the RGPS image, vector and histogram data types as well as image data in LAS format. The design and use of RGPSview are discussed along with example visualizations of RGPS ice motion datasets.