A Web-based distributed system for hurricane occurrence projection

As an environmental phenomenon, hurricanes cause significant property damage and loss of life in coastal areas almost every year. Research concerning hurricanes and their aftermath is gaining more and more attention nowadays. This paper presents our work in designing and building a Web-based distributed software system that can be used for the statistical analysis and projection of hurricane occurrences. Firstly, our system is a large-scale system and can handle the huge amount of hurricane data and intensive computations in hurricane data analysis and projection. Secondly, it is a distributed system, which allows multiple users at different locations to access the system simultaneously and to share and exchange the data and data model. Thirdly, our system is a database-centered system where the Oracle database is employed to store and manage the large amount of hurricane data, the hurricane model and the projection results. Finally, a three-tier architecture has been adopted to make our system robust and resistant to the potential change in the lifetime of the system. This paper focuses on the three-tier system architecture, describing the design and implementation of the components at each layer. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.