1. Introduction and goals¶
System purpose¶
A platform for disseminating meteorological and geographic data, built around GeoServer deployed as a cluster on Kubernetes. It exposes OGC services (WMS, WMTS, WFS, WCS, WPS) for three domains — meteorology, aeronautics, hydrology — whose data share three dimensions: time, space and elevation (vertical level). It serves:
- rasters produced by weather models (several dimensions: model run, forecast validity time, vertical level) and by satellite imagery (time series);
- vector data stored in TimescaleDB + PostGIS;
- basemaps (downloaded sources or external services).
Documentation goals¶
- Describe a reproducible architecture: every component is configured through versionable artifacts (image, scripts, manifests), not through manual actions in the UI.
- Describe a GeoServer that is genuinely clustered: variable number of replicas, no fixed IP addresses, shared configuration in the database.
- Provide step-by-step guides validated by prototype for each building block.
Target data inventory (collected 2026-09-02)¶
Expected sources, mostly from the GTS network plus dedicated feeds — the workspace and layer organization (ADR-0002) will be decided against this real inventory, not against any assumption:
| Family | Products | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Surface observations | SYNOP, METAR | point features, observation instant |
| Aeronautical messages | TAF, AIRMET / SIGMET / GAMET | TAF: aerodrome forecasts; the others are area products with a validity period (time intervals, not instants) |
| Imagery | satellite images, radar | radar has a fast refresh cycle |
| Events | lightning | high-volume point events |
| Models | NWP fields | run × validity × level |
| Hydrology | dedicated hydrological layers | to be specified |
Client applications navigating this data must be able to move through time and altitude, and to apply palettes to rasters at request time.
Stakeholders¶
| Role | Expectation |
|---|---|
| Architect | Overall view, decisions and their rationale |
| Ops / platform | Deployment, scalability, monitoring, recovery procedures |
| Developer | Layer publishing, data ingestion, APIs |
| Business user | Stable, high-performance OGC services |