A distributed web-based metacomputing environment

Remote-sensing data about the Earth's environment is being created and stored at an ever-increasing rate. To disseminate these valuable data, they must be delivered in a usable form to those who can interpret them and to those who would learn to interpret them. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate how remote-sensing data can be delivered using a web-browser as a front end, with distributed high performance computing services and replicated data archives. In particular, we show the implementation of supervised on-the-fly SAR processing: this goal can be achieved by an heterogeneous distributed computing environment in which high performance technologies and web interfaces are effectively utilized to provide animated, supervised, custom processed data. The architecture is designed to support both high and low-speed networking, both supercomputers and workstations, the result supporting both professional and casual users.