Time Series Generator Installation

Last update: June 18th 2009

General Remarks
The Time Series Generator (TiSeG) processes time series of all suitable gridded MODIS land
products by analyzing the quality assessment science data set (QA-SDS). This product
specific separate layer is distributed with each composite. The decimal digits need to be
converted to binary information and analyzed. Next, the invalid data can be masked or
interpolated. Additionally, an existing time series can be smoothed with harmonic analysis to
reduce temporal noise.

Requirements
Intel CPU, the faster the better, 64 bit technology and multiple CPUs are supported
Sufficient RAM, but RAM more then 2GB will not be supported
Sufficient HDD: the program requires about 3MB, but MODIS data, results in
temporary files will need GBs of space
Windows OS, developed for XP but appears compatible to other versions, e.g. Vista
Color screen with a minimum resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels
Mouse and Keyboard
IDL virtual machine

Installation
TiSeG only works on windows operating systems and has only been tested for Windows XP.
Please create a directory where you want to store TiSeG. Copy the files tiseg.sav and Info.zip
into this directory. Extract the file Info.zip, e.g. with winzip. Make sure that the extracted
folder Info is located in the same directory as tiseg.sav. In the folder Info is a set of csv-
files and a text-file which should be left untouched. Define a Environment variable with name
TiSeG and path to the file tiseg.sav. Install the IDL virtual machine (IDL VM) 6.0 or
higher. This VM is automatically installed with ENVI or IDL development environment.
Otherwise the VM can be downloaded from http://www.ittvis.com for free of charge.

Example
Create directory tiseg at c:\my_tools (the resulting path is c:\my_tools\tiseg\)
Copy the files tiseg.sav and info.zip into this directory
Extract the file info.zip (e.g. with winzip)
Make sure that the cvs-files are located in the folder Info with is in the tiseg
directory (complete path: c:\my_tools\tiseg\Info\
Set the environment variable
o Start System Settings Environmental Variable - New
o Name: Tiseg
o Path: C:\mytools\tiseg
If necessary, install the IDL virtual machine as specified by the provider
Start the IDL virtual machine
Click on the window
Select file tiseg.sav
Run tiseg

TiSeG users guide

We have a draft version of a users guide which we provide with the software. Many thanks to
Christine Sandmeier for writing the guide.

Version
The current version of TiSeG is TiSeG 1.3.24

Literature
Colditz, R.R., Conrad, C., Wehrmann, T., Schmidt, M., Dech, S., 2008, TiSeG A flexible
software tool for time series generation of MODIS data utilizing the quality assessment
science data set. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 46 (10): 3296-3308.

Colditz, R.R., Conrad, C., Wehrmann, T., Schmidt, M., Dech, S., 2008, Analysis of the
quality of collection 4 and 5 vegetation index time series from MODIS. In: Stein, A., Shi, W.,
Bijker, W., Quality aspects in spatial data mining. CRC Press, 161-173. Also published in
ISPRS Spatial Data Quality Symposium, June 13th 15th 2007, Enschede, The Netherlands.

Colditz, R.R., Conrad, C., Wehrmann, T., Schmidt, M., Dech, S., 2006 Generation and
assessment of MODIS time series using quality information. In: IEEE International
Conference on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 2006. IGARSS 2006. July 31st - August 4th
2006, Denver, CO, pp. 779-782.

Conrad, C., Colditz, R.R., Petrocchi, A., Rcker, G.R., Dech, S.W. and Schmidt, M., 2005,
Time Series Generator Ein flexibles Softwaremodul zur Generierung und Bewertung von
Zeitserien aus NASA MODIS Datenprodukten. In: Strobl, J., Blaschke, T., and Griesebner G.,
(Eds), 17. Symposium und Fachmesse fr Angewandte Geoinformatik (AGIT), July 6th - 8th
2005, Salzburg, Austria, pp. 100-105.

Policies
TiSeG is a development of Christopher Conrad (Department of Geography, University of
Wuerzburg, Germany) and Ren R. Colditz (National Commission for the Knowledge and
Use of the Biodiversity (CONABIO, Mexico). The software was developed and implemented
at the German Aerospace Center, German Remote Sensing Data Center and University of
Wuerzburg, Department of Geography. The tool is free of charge and can be fully used. If you
would like to hand it to a third party, please let both of us know. We appreciate the
distribution of the software but we also would like to have an email address of the third party
for possible questions and to keep track of the tools spread. We also appreciate the reporting
of errors, circumstances when the program shows difficulties, or desirable improvements for
future releases. Thanks.