GEOSS Platform data content and use

The GEOSS Platform is a key contribution to the goal of building the Global Earth Observation System of Systems(GEOSS).It enables a harmonized discovery and access of Earth observation data,shared online by heterogeneous organizations worldwide.This work analyzes both what is made available in the GEOSS Platform by the data providers and how users are utilizing it including multiyear trends,updating a previous analysis published in 2017.The present statistics derive from a 2021 EOValue report funded by the European Commission.The offer of GEOSS Platform data has been the object of various analyses,including data provider characterization,data sharing trends,and data characterization(comprising metadata quality analysis,thematic analysis,responsible party identification,spatial–temporal coverage).GEOSS data demand has also been the object of several analyses,including data consumer characterization,utilization trends,and requested data characterization(comprising thematic analysis,spatial–temporal coverage,and popularity).Among thefindings,a large amount of shared data,mostly from satellite sources,emerges with an issue of low metadata quality and related discovery match.Moreover,the trend in usage is decreasing.Therefore,the progressive disconnection of the GEOSS platform from its data Providers and Users and other possible causes are also reported.

Publishing China satellite data on the GEOSS Platform

This paper is the first of a series that describes some of the main dataset resources presently shared through the GEOSS Platform.The GEOSS Platform has been created to provide the technological tool to implement the Global Earth Observation System of Systems(GEOSS);it is a brokering infrastructure that presently brokers more than 190 autonomous data catalogs and information systems.The paper analyses the China Satellite datasets and describes the data publishing process from China GEOSS Data Provider to the GEOSS Platform considering both administrative registration as well as the technical registration.The China Satellite datasets are considered as one of the most important satellite data shared by the GEOSS Platform.The analysis provides some insights as well about GEOSS user searches for China Satellite datasets.

Virtual earth cloud: a multi-cloud framework for enabling geosciences digital ecosystems

Humankind is facing unprecedented global environmental and social challenges in terms of food,water and energy security,resilience to natural hazards,etc.To address these challenges,international organizations have defined a list of policy actions to be achieved in a relatively short and medium-term timespan.The development and use of knowledge platforms is key in helping the decision-making process to take significant decisions(providing the best available knowledge)and avoid potentially negative impacts on society and the environment.Such knowledge platforms must build on the recent and next coming digital technologies that have transformed society–including the science and engineering sectors.Big Earth Data(BED)science aims to provide the methodologies and instruments to generate knowledge from numerous,complex,and diverse data sources.BED science requires the development of Geoscience Digital Ecosystems(GEDs),which bank on the combined use of fundamental technology units(i.e.big data,learning-driven artificial intelligence,and network-based computing platform)to enable the development of more detailed knowledge to observe and test planet Earth as a whole.This manuscript contributes to the BED science research domain,by presenting the Virtual Earth Cloud:a multi-cloud framework to support GDE implementation and generate knowledge on environmental and social sustainability.

Publishing Eurac Research data on the GEOSS Platform

This paper is the third of a series that introduces some of the main dataset resources presently shared through the GEOSS Platform. The GEOSS Platform is a brokering infrastructure that brokers more than 190 autonomous information systems and data catalogs;it was created to provide the technological tool to implement the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). This manuscript focuses on the analysis of Eurac Research datasets and illustrates the data publishing process to enroll the Eurac Research Data Provider to the GEOSS Platform through the administrative and technical registrations. The study provides an analysis of the GEOSS user searches for Eurac Research data in order to understand the main use of datasets of an important Data Provider.

Publishing NextGEOSS data on the GEOSS Platform

This paper is the second of a series that describes some of the main dataset resources presently shared through the GEOSS Platform. The GEOSS Platform was created as the technological tool to implement interoperability among the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS);it is a brokering infrastructure that presently brokers more than 190 autonomous data catalogs and information systems. This paper is focused on the analysis of the NextGEOSS datasets describing the data publishing process from NextGEOSS to the GEOSS platform. In particular, both the administrative registration and the technical registration were taken into consideration. One of the most important data shared by the GEOSS Platform are the NextGEOSS datasets: the present study provides some insights in terms of GEOSS user searches for NextGEOSS data.

Towards a knowledge base to support global change policy goals

In 2015,it was adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to end poverty,protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.The year after,17 Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs)officially came into force.In 2015,GEO(Group on Earth Observation)declared to support the implementation of SDGs.The GEO Global Earth Observation System of Systems(GEOSS)required a change of paradigm,moving from a data-centric approach to a more knowledge-driven one.To this end,the GEO System-of-Systems(SoS)framework may refer to the well-known Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom(DIKW)paradigm.In the context of an Earth Observation(EO)SoS,a set of main elements are recognized as connecting links for generating knowledge from EO and non-EO data–e.g.social and economic datasets.These elements are:Essential Variables(EVs),Indicators and Indexes,Goals and Targets.Their generation and use requires the development of a SoS KB whose management process has evolved the GEOSS Software Ecosystem into a GEOSS Social Ecosystem.This includes:collect,formalize,publish,access,use,and update knowledge.ConnectinGEO project analysed the knowledge necessary to recognize,formalize,access,and use EVs.The analysis recognized GEOSS gaps providing recommendations on supporting global decision-making within and across different domains.

Big Data Analytics for Earth Sciences:the EarthServer approach

Big Data Analytics is an emerging field since massive storage and computing capabilities have been made available by advanced e-infrastructures.Earth and Environmental sciences are likely to benefit from Big Data Analytics techniques supporting the processing of the large number of Earth Observation datasets currently acquired and generated through observations and simulations.However,Earth Science data and applications present specificities in terms of relevance of the geospatial information,wide heterogeneity of data models and formats,and complexity of processing.Therefore,Big Earth Data Analytics requires specifically tailored techniques and tools.The EarthServer Big Earth Data Analytics engine offers a solution for coverage-type datasets,built around a high performance array database technology,and the adoption and enhancement of standards for service interaction(OGC WCS and WCPS).The EarthServer solution,led by the collection of requirements from scientific communities and international initiatives,provides a holistic approach that ranges from query languages and scalability up to mobile access and visualization.The result is demonstrated and validated through the development of lighthouse applications in the Marine,Geology,Atmospheric,Planetary and Cryospheric science domains.

Monitoring land degradation at national level using satellite Earth Observation time-series data to support SDG15-exploring the potential of data cube

Avoiding,reducing,and reversing land degradation and restoring degraded land is an urgent priority to protect the biodiversity and ecosystem services that are vital to life on Earth.To halt and reverse the current trends in land degradation,there is an immediate need to enhance national capacities to undertake quantitative assessments and mapping of their degraded lands,as required by the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs),in particular,the SDG indicator 15.3.1(“proportion of land that is degraded over total land area”).Earth Observations(EO)can play an important role both for generating this indicator as well as complementing or enhancing national official data sources.Implementations like Trends.Earth to monitor land degradation in accordance with the SDG15.3.1 rely on default datasets of coarse spatial resolution provided by MODIS or AVHRR.Consequently,there is a need to develop methodologies to benefit from medium to high-resolution satellite EO data(e.g.Landsat or Sentinels).In response to this issue,this paper presents an initial overview of an innovative approach to monitor land degradation at the national scale in compliance with the SDG15.3.1 indicator using Landsat observations using a data cube but further work is required to improve the calculation of the three sub-indicators.

A view-based model of data-cube to support big earth data systems interoperability

Big Earth Data-Cube infrastructures are becoming more and more popular to provide Analysis Ready Data,especially for managing satellite time series.These infrastructures build on the concept of multidimensional data model(data hypercube)and are complex systems engaging different disciplines and expertise.For this reason,their interoperability capacity has become a challenge in the Global Change and Earth System science domains.To address this challenge,there is a pressing need in the community to reach a widely agreed definition of Data-Cube infrastructures and their key features.In this respect,a discussion has started recently about the definition of the possible facets characterizing a Data-Cube in the Earth Observation domain.This manuscript contributes to such debate by introducing a view-based model of Earth Data-Cube systems to design its infrastructural architecture and content schemas,with the final goal of enabling and facilitating interoperability.It introduces six modeling views,each of them is described according to:its main concerns,principal stakeholders,and possible patterns to be used.The manuscript considers the Business Intelligence experience with Data Warehouse and multidimensional“cubes”along with the more recent and analogous development in the Earth Observation domain,and puts forward a set of interoperability recommendations based on the modeling views.

GEOEssential–mainstreaming workflows from data sources to environment policy indicators with essential variables

When defining indicators on the environment,the use of existing initiatives should be a priority rather than redefining indicators each time.From an Information,Communication and Technology perspective,data interoperability and standardization are critical to improve data access and exchange as promoted by the Group on Earth Observations.GEOEssential is following an end-user driven approach by defining Essential Variables(EVs),as an intermediate value between environmental policy indicators and their appropriate data sources.From international to local scales,environmental policies and indicators are increasingly percolating down from the global to the local agendas.The scientific business processes for the generation of EVs and related indicators can be formalized in workflows specifying the necessary logical steps.To this aim,GEOEssential is developing a Virtual Laboratory the main objective of which is to instantiate conceptual workflows,which are stored in a dedicated knowledge base,generating executable workflows.To interpret and present the relevant outputs/results carried out by the different thematic workflows considered in GEOEssential(i.e.biodiversity,ecosystems,extractives,night light,and food-water-energy nexus),a Dashboard is built as a visual front-end.This is a valuable instrument to track progresses towards environmental policies.

Multi-scale hydrological system-of-systems realized through WHOS:the brokering framework

Global Change challenges are now systematically recognized and tackled in a growingly coordinated manner by intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations.Heterogeneous observing networks provide the founded data sources to assess the Earth environmental status and take sound decisions to achieve a sustainable development.WMO Hydrological Observing System(WHOS)allows to discover and access historical and near real time hydrological observations.WHOS represents the hydrological contribution to the wider WIGOS-WIS system of WMO.It is a digital ecosystems framework contributed by a set of data providers and technical support centers.In this framework,three regional pilots were successfully completed.The WHOS architecture applies the services brokering style,implemented through the Discovery and Access Broker technology.A brokering approach makes a global system of systems possible and sustainable,where the different enterprise systems are enabled to interoperate,despite they implement heterogeneous communication interfaces and data models.In this manuscript,the WHOS brokering solution is detailed by recurring to the definition of a set of transversal viewpoints to describe the important aspects of the complex ecosystem–namely:enterprise,information,computational,engineering,and technological views.Finally,the three regional pilot ecosystems are described as successful cases of WHOS implementation.

Current status and future directions of geoportals

Geoportals are a consolidated web-based solution to provide open spatial data sharing and online geo-information management.Their roles and possible advancements according to the Digital Earth vision and implementation require investigations.This paper presents a review of the literature concerning geoportals and serves the following primary purposes.First,various geoportal approaches for discovering and accessing Earth observation data and geo-information,mainly with scientific purposes,are summarized according to their characteristics and functionalities.Second,current major challenges in geoportals are identified in terms of functionalities,technologies,and especially big data support,from geoportal cases of China.Finally,based on lessons learned from the international and Chinese geoportals,solutions and recommendations for the challenges in geoportals are proposed in terms of their architectures,services,and technologies.The results show that geoportals usually provide access to distributed data systems,offering maps,data discovery,and data downloads.Some of them are also capable of offering online analysis and processing service,enhanced semantic search engines,and dynamic visualization tools.The strength of geoportals could lead to a full-fledged online Digital Earth system that could provide better data sharing and dissemination solutions to the challenges posed by big data.

Developing food,water and energy nexus workflows

There is a growing recognition of the interdependencies among the supply systems that rely upon food,water and energy.Billions of people lack safe and sufficient access to these systems,coupled with a rapidly growing global demand and increasing resource constraints.Modeling frameworks are considered one of the few means available to understand the complex interrelationships among the sectors,however development of nexus related frameworks has been limited.We describe three opensource models well known in their respective domains(i.e.TerrSysMP,WOFOST and SWAT)where components of each if combined could help decision-makers address the nexus issue.We propose as a first step the development of simple workflows utilizing essential variables and addressing components of the above-mentioned models which can act as building-blocks to be used ultimately in a comprehensive nexus model framework.The outputs of the workflows and the model framework are designed to address the SDGs.