NDE Big Data Framework

The two main categories of NASA applications are in support of in house R&D, and in the inspection of structures for NASA applications by NASA or its suppliers. Simple file management does not support contextual searching or Big Data tools, and the Databrowse component of the NDEToolbox™ will answer that problem. HDF5 formatting will enable storage of data that outlasts proprietary vendor formats, while supporting advanced tools like Databrowse and optimized routines for reading, writing, and searching in Python, the language of NDEToolbox™. Existing databases or network storage facilities can be accommodated without changes. The implementation of NDEToolbox™ in Python is by definition and by our choice an open source implementation. The plug-in architecture provides a simple path for many customizations. The basic, everyday needs of opening, viewing, processing NDE data will be at hand and will be open for the researcher to understand and extend as needed.

We envision three main categories of users for the NDEToolbox™ outside of NASA. The first category is universities. University laboratories like those at CNDE suffer from the same issues of data management and the need to have access to their data for research purposes. By making NDEToolbox™ open source and easily extended, we hope to gain traction in the university community and to benefit from contributions of additional technology back to the NDEToolbox™. Other commercial laboratories and government R&D laboratories share many of the same needs as NASA and can similarly benefit. Finally, we do see the possibility for commercial implementations of specialized sets of algorithms, such as those being developed by Computational Tools and TRI/Austin for suppliers to the F-35 program. More »