through platforms and resources networks

 

Exploitation Platforms fully leverage on advances in information technology to allow a step-change in scientific research and value-adding. The community can exploit huge data volumes like the Sentinel missions in a “bring the user to the data” approach, i.e. without needing any infrastructure of their own. The result will be a fully democratized access to downstream benefits, with any stakeholder being able to explore innovative ideas with a fraction of time and investment that would be necessary without a platform-based approach. ESA programmatic activities are implementing 3 mainstream lines:

 

-> network of resources

publishes all available operational resources, for which ESA is sponsoring free at point of use access for science and the “long tail of science” up to pre-commercial demonstration.

Virtual platforms offer also thematically specialised environments (Thematic Exploitation Platforms – TEPs) to specifically support ideas on the following topics: Urban, Polar, Forestry, Hydrology, Geohazard, Coastal and Food Security. TEPs can help you to test your idea out together with the community, support you in the best use of platform and data infrastructure services and pave the way to operationally exploit it.

Resources are harmonised as much as possible for their technical interfaces and administrative process and conditions. Any scientist/value adder can apply for free use via the Open Science for EO opportunity.

 

-> evolving capabilities

allow the community to share data and algorithms on platforms and get support in hosting their algorithms on the clouds. You can find the current public available operational offering on the NoR Discovery Portal.

The following platforms were developed and continue to evolve according to your needs with ESA support:

• openEO Platform: the Federated Open Earth Observation Platform providing you with a cloud-based analytical and processing environment.
• Euro Data Cube: an Earth Observation Information Factory based on latest data cube technology in a working environment to generate value-added information and apps further published on the EDC marketplace.
• Polar TEP: supporting sharing of algorithms and data with a specific focus on the polar community
• Geohazard TEP: a platform specifically supporting hazards like terrain motion and earthquakes, contributing to the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters and supporting EPOS.
• Food Security TEP: platform services supporting the Food Security Community
• Urban TEP: focussing to support Urban applications and exposing an analytics environment for the World Settlement Footprint
• Forestry TEP: platform services for commercial forestry applications
• Coastal TEP: hosting several ready-to-use algorithms and supporting the hosting of your algorithm
• Hydrology TEP: Hydrology services in a cloud‑based collaborative platform
• Store4EO: an eCommerce platform for EO service providers to easily publish and commercialise their apps and services concentrating on their core business, being released from ICT tasks. The platform enables EO service providers to increase their visibility and promote their brand through a dedicated marketplace
• VANTAGE: a new cloud-based platform for analysis and exploitation of video from space. The platform offers a repository of high-definition videos captured from EO satellites and a suite of sophisticated analytical tools, enabling a user to extract value and insight from the videos. It also enables a user to bring their own EO data and user-defined workflows and processing algorithms.

 

-> common architecture 

Via the Common Architecture activities, ESA is funding the definition of an open architecture and related software implementation for a generic exploitation platform that can be used by interested parties to kick-start their activities. The architecture relies on open interfaces based on open standards and reuses as much as possible existing open source components in order to achieve a truly open solution. ESA works within the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and Open Source Community to ensure the availability of all the needed elements.

The evolution of the architecture and its software components will follow an iterative approach based on use cases that are incrementally supported by the architecture.

More information can be found on the Common Architecture section.