Modern remote sensing technologies for Land Use/Land Cover applications rely on the integration of a big variety of data from both airborne and ground-based instruments. The final product highly depends on the proper and successful exploitation of as much data as possible. This is the reason why a unified data integration and management system should be at the disposal of researchers from different science fields. One possible approach is to develop an information system (IS) based on an open source technology providing an easy data access. Also a standard way of seamless addition of new data should be considered. The approach adopted in this research study is based on a distributed database management system with simple web interface to the data and models. A single cluster contains the following components: a subsystem for data archiving and exchange; a subsystem for specific data preprocessing and calibration; a subsystem for metadata management and integration; a subsystem for the whole catalogue management; a subsystem in support of external users.

The above-described IS was developed in the framework of a joint Russian-Bulgarian project for distributed system infrastructure for aerospace and in-situ data. The system consists of a set of archived data and is supported by hardware/software facilities allowing the exchange of catalogue and ancillary information in an on-line mode. The infrastructure allows to carry out general and detailed data search and to prepare orders for data delivery. The focus at this stage of the work was put on the refinement of the system specification, details of interchange protocols and archive formats, the development of software prototypes ensuring metadata exchange between the system's clusters and access to the information resources of the system. Along with a description of the IS the paper presents a detailed operational scheme of a single standard cluster.