EarthConsole® Altimetry Virtual Lab

The EarthConsole^® Altimetry Virtual Lab, funded by ESA, aims at providing a virtual space to:

• Support the Altimetry community in the development & operation of new Earth Observation applications;
• Foster collaboration by leveraging on knowledge-sharing tools.

The Altimetry Virtual Lab has been developed on the new EarthConsole^® platform and hosts the SARvatore (SAR Versatile Altimetric TOolkit for Research & Exploitation) family of processors which was previously available in the ESA Grid Processing On-Demand (G-POD) environment, since 2015. The Altimetry Virtual Lab ensures service continuity following the recent termination of the G-POD environment.

The driving concept is to offer the same processing capabilities formerly available in ESA G-POD while improving the user experience by combining:

• The access to innovative, fully customizable, altimetry data processing services from a single environment at the push of a button;
• The availability of a set of tools to network with colleagues, keep up with the latest news and publications on radar altimetry, and share results to avoid duplication of efforts;
• The flexibility of a virtual space which can be further reshaped following the future emerging needs of the community.

In particular, Altimetry Virtual Lab users can:

1. Request & access, through the G-BOX service, a virtual machine for algorithm development, testing and post-processing analysis. Each virtual machine also includes software for altimetry data analysis & visualization: BRAT, Panoply and Python;
2. Request to access and process data with the following processors which have been integrated and are ready for use:

• • ALES+ SAR Retracker – developed by the Technical University of Munich,
  • FF-SAR (Fully Focused SAR) for CryoSat-2 – developed by Aresys srl,
  • SARINvatore for CS-2, SARvatore for CS-2, SARvatore for S3 – developed by the ESA-ESRIN Altimetry Team
  • TUDaBO SAR-RDSAR – developed by the University of Bonn.
  • Sentinel-6 GPP L1 – isardSAT
  • Fully-Focused SAR for Sentinel-6 and Sentinel-3 – Aresys Srl
  • SMAP for Sentinel-3 – CLS
  • And more are to come, also donated by Users. All processors can be requested for both bulk (P-PRO service) or on-demand (P-PRO ON DEMAND service) processing;

3. Request to integrate, through the I-APP service, additional processors;
4. Access a set of tools to network and share information and results with colleagues: a forum, a datasets repository, and a knowledge-base with relevant altimetry publications and media for consultation;
5. Access already processed datasets by other Users or by ESA for large processing campaigns.

 The Altimetry Virtual Lab intends to lead the way for further virtual labs dedicated to other Earth observation communities and foster interdisciplinarity among them to advance collaboratively in the Earth observation sector.

Access to the Altimetry Virtual Lab web site is free of charge. If you are a former SARvatore G-POD data user or an altimetry data user, please visit this page for detailed instructions to join the EarthConsole® Altimetry Virtual Lab.

All the Altimetry Virtual Lab services are available via the ESA EO Network of Resources initiative. Users with a research, development, pre-commercial, or educational project, may be eligible to apply for an ESA sponsorship and receive a voucher to access these services free of charge or at very competitive prices.

Any request for information related to the Altimetry Virtual Lab should be sent to info@earthconsole.eu with support@earthconsole.eu and altimetry.info@esa.int in cc.

The SARvatore Altimetry Virtual Lab Software User Manual is also available for download.