Land Monitoring Network Services based on international geospatial standards:SOSI and geoland2/SDI Projects

Spatial Observation Services and Infrastructure is a project to develop and verify innovative infrastructure and services within the context of land monitoring and Earth Observation initiatives at European and Member State(MS)levels.The project’s results contribute to the concept definition of the Shared Environmental Information System(SEIS)emphasising symmetrical online sharing of information as opposed to unidirectional reporting.In a pre-operational set-up,involving the European Environment Agency(EEA),four MS sites and the European Space Agency(ESA),a decentralised information system respecting the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe(INSPIRE)principles is demonstrated integrating distributed data and processing services as well as interactive multi-lingual access.The geoland2 project is carried out in the context of Global Monitoring for the Environment and Security(GMES),a joint initiative of the European Commission and ESA,aiming to build up a European capacity for GMES.The Spatial Data Infrastructure(SDI)task shall set up operational services for the discovery,viewing,access and delivery of all products generated in the geoland2 project.The paper presents the projects along the five International Standards Organisation(ISO)/Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing viewpoints and concludes with the main recommendation that service provisioning can strongly benefit from a(re-)utilisation of the Service Support Environment(SSE)technology provided sustainably by ESA and from the related rich experience.

Insights into CODE-DE–Germany’s Copernicus data and exploitation platform

This article presents and analyses the modular architecture and capabilities of CODE-DE(Copernicus Data and Exploitation Platform–Deutschland,www.code-de.org),the integrated German operational environment for accessing and processing Copernicus data and products,as well as the methodology to establish and operate the system.Since March 2017,CODE-DE has been online with access to Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data,to Sentinel-3 data shortly after this time,and since March 2019 with access to Sentinel-5P data.These products are available and accessed by 1,682 registered users as of March 2019.During this period 654,895 products were downloaded and a global catalogue was continuously updated,featuring a data volume of 814 TByte based on a rolling archive concept supported by a reload mechanism from a long-term archive.Since November 2017,the element for big data processing has been operational,where registered users can process and analyse data themselves specifically assisted by methods for value-added product generation.Utilizing 195,467 core and 696,406 memory hours,982,948 products of different applications were fully automatically generated in the cloud environment and made available as of March 2019.Special features include an improved visualization of available Sentinel-2 products,which are presented within the catalogue client at full 10 m resolution.

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.