The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has granted the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign $11.1M to work on a series of geospatial research projects over the next year. NCSA said Friday that it will help NGA build digital elevation models of the entire Earth using data from its Blue Waters supercomputers as part of the initial EarthDEM project.
The center noted that the University of Minnesota and The Ohio State University will also offer their expertise in programming and data flow domain to produce the elevation models, which is expected to support the assessment and monitoring of various geological activities.
Previously, NCSA used Blue Waters to develop a high-resolution terrain map of Antarctica to help researchers remotely track changes in the continent’s environment.