GeoRef is a Web-based software application designed to increase the efficiency and precision in geo-locating photographs taken by astronauts from the International Space Station. GeoRef provides highly automated processes for: (1) calculating the latitude and longitude coordinates of the center point of the image, and (2) producing geo-referenced map overlays for the image. The georeferenced images produced by GeoRef are designed to support the needs of educational, Earth science, and disaster response users.

Our reference platform for GeoRef is Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS, running Python 2.7.6 and Django 1.9.2. For development we use Django's built-in development web server MySQL database.

We develop using a VagrantBox VM running a Ubuntu Linux inside a Mac OS X host machine. Vagrant VM is strictly optional and only necessary if you are not running directly from a Ubuntu Linux Machine.

Our image view is rendered using the OpenSeadragon open source image viewer. (openseadragon.github.io/)

(Optional) Set up a Vagrant VM ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you are running on a mac, we highly encourage you to use Vagrant to set up a Ubuntu Development Instance. Our set up script works best within the Vagrant environment running on Mac OSX.

Install VirtualBox. We have found that VirtualBox Version 4.3.10 works best with Vagrant. We highly recommend you download VirtualBox 4.3.10. Install the latest version of vagrant: ​http://www.vagrantup.com/downloads

Let's create a directory to hold the whole GeoRef installation and capture the path in an environment variable we can use in the instructions below:

export GEOCAM_DIR=$HOME/projects/geocam # or choose your own
mkdir -p $GEOCAM_DIR

Check out our latest source revision with:

cd $GEOCAM_DIR
git clone https://github.com/nasa/georef_deploy.git

For more information on the Git version control system, visit the Git home page. You can install Git on Ubuntu with:

sudo apt-get install git-all

The "setup_site_vagrant.sh" script initializes the vagrant box and it clones all the submodules that are needed:

# go into the georef_deploy directory
cd georef_deploy

# if you are running inside a Vagrant VM do
setup_site_vagrant.sh

If you are running directly on a Ubuntu Linux Machine, you can skip the above shell script and run the following:: sudo python $GEOCAM_DIR/georef_deploy/setup_site.py

# You need to manually create couple symlinks if not running on vagrant sudo ln -s /home/geocam/georef_deploy georef_deploy sudo ln -s gds/georef/ georef

In the settings.py file, modify the DATABASES field to point to your Django MySQL database:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',
        'NAME': 'georef',
        'USER': 'root',
        'PASSWORD': 'vagrant',
        'HOST': '127.0.0.1',
        'PORT': '3306',
    }
}

You must manually create the data directory and its sub folders. GeoRef will write the image tiles to this directory.

1. Create a data directory

   mkdir $GEOCAM_DIR/georef/data

2. Create the overlays directory

   mkdir -p $GEOCAM_DIR/georef/data/geocamTiePoint/overlay_images

3. Set the permissions

   chmod -R 777 $GEOCAM_DIR/georef/data

If your development environment is set up inside Vagrant, cd into the georef_deploy directory and do:: vagrant ssh And then run the following commands.

You must create the following directory and files:

# If you are not using Vagrant, do
    mkdir -p $GEOCAM_DIR/georef_deploy/georef/data/deepzoom/ & touch $GEOCAM_DIR/georef_deploy/georef/data/deepzoom/deepzoom.exception.log

# If you are using Vagrant, do
    # deepzoom directory needs to be owned by www-data. Put it in /home/vagrant so that it can be owned by www-data (and not by user)
    mkdir -p /home/vagrant/deepzoom 
    # create a symlink to deepzoom in the data dir
    ln -s /home/vagrant/deepzoom /home/vagrant/georef/data/deepzoom

Install Earth Engine by following the instructions below:

https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/python_install_manual

To install Python dependencies, render icons and collect media for the server, run:

cd $GEOCAM_DIR/georef_deploy/georef
./manage.py bootstrap --yes
source $GEOCAM_DIR/georef_deploy/georef/sourceme.sh genSourceme genSettings
./manage.py collectstatic  
./manage.py prep

You'll need to source the sourceme.sh file every time you open a new shell if you want to run GeoCam-related Python scripts such as starting the Django development web server. The sourceme.sh file will also take care of activating your virtualenv environment in new shells (if you were in a virtualenv when you ran setup.py).

To initialize the database

$GEOCAM_DIR/georef/manage.py makemigrations deepzoom

$GEOCAM_DIR/georef/manage.py makemigrations geocamTiePoint

$GEOCAM_DIR/georef/manage.py migrate

Note that the path to manage.py may be different if you are running inside Vagrant.

User name and password are required to use GeoRef. To create one, do:

./manage.py createsuperuser

And follow the prompts.

Now you're ready to try it out!

Restart the Apache server sudo apachectl restart

Point your browser to ​http://10.0.3.18/