A Landsat Image Databank Using Mass Storage System —'Tsukusys' Image-Bank

The purpose of this paper is to give a comprehensive description of a databank consisting of image data which was extracted from the Landsat multispectral scanning system. The databank, which will be called Tsukusys image-bank, is intended to provide an environmental monitoring and image analysis in Japan. The conventional Landsat image data in the databank are stored in data cartridges on the mass storage system that permit on-line operations. The design consideration of the Tsukusys image-bank includes the following item: types of data structure, hardware resources and data processing for constructing the image-bank. The image-bank is under development as an experimental Landsat image databank at University of Tsukuba. We include in this paper a case study of application of the Tsukusys image-bank.