Abstract
An early issue in the Australian Wide Scale Wheat Monitoring Project, started in November, 1978, was whether to use area sampling, as in the LACIE, or to be innovative and attempt whole scene processing. The availability of a large computing system and acknowledgment of the trends in price and performance of computers influenced a decision towards whole scene processing.
The computing facilities used in this project are described.
An interactive facility supported by software called ER-MAN II is installed on an IBM 3033 which simultaneously supports several hundred other interactive users. The pros and cons of using such a shared facility for this type of work are explored.
The use of multi-temporal data has been the essence of the approach in this project. Reasons for its use, and its performance implications are discussed from the computing view point.
Results to date indicate that shared use of a large facility is feasible and effective. In addition, some calculations may not be possible on small CPU's.
While the interactive processing of the combination of multi-temporal LANDSAT data and large areas is not common in Australia now, it is probable that its use will increase as the cost of computing equipment decreases.
Date of this Version
1981