European platforms to support the Green Deal
The European Union's Green Deal is a transformative initiative aimed at achieving climate neutrality and sustainable economic growth by 2050. To address the complex challenges posed by climate change and environmental degradation, a robust infrastructure of platform services has emerged to support the Green Deal. At EODC, we implement and develop key components of this infrastructure, including the openEO Platform, ESA GTIF Austria, STAC, Pangeo, and the GREAT project. These services and projects play a pivotal role in gathering, processing, and disseminating critical environmental data and insights that drive policy formulation and sustainable practices.
The openEO Platform serves as a cornerstone for the Green Deal by providing standardized and open interfaces for accessing and processing Earth Observation (EO) data. Leveraging cloud computing and distributed resources, openEO enables researchers, policymakers, and businesses to harness the power of petabytes of environmental data. By fostering collaboration and interoperability, openEO supports the development of innovative applications and services that contribute to the Green Deal's goals, such as carbon monitoring and land-use planning.
The SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) standardises the organisation and discovery of geospatial assets, making it easier to find and use EO data. By embracing STAC, the Green Deal ecosystem and platforms ensure that valuable environmental information, such as satellite imagery and climate models, can be efficiently located and employed in various applications, including environmental monitoring and disaster risk management.
Pangeo, an open-source platform for scalable Earth science, empowers researchers with tools and resources for analysing massive climate and environmental datasets. By offering Jupyter notebooks, cloud computing, and data catalogues, Pangeo facilitates collaborative research and data-driven decision-making. Pangeo's contributions are vital to the scientific underpinnings of the Green Deal, assisting in climate modelling, biodiversity assessment, and ecological forecasting.
ESA's Green Transition Information Factory (GTIF) demonstrates in Austria how to enhance the visibility and access to EO-derived datasets and knowledge for decision-makers, policymakers and citizens. The platform additionally showcases how to efficiently disseminate information for Austria's green transition initiatives allowing users to discover the potentials of transitioning to carbon neutrality by 2050 through EO data and cloud computing.
The GREAT project is focused on building a robust data infrastructure for the Green Deal. It aims to integrate data from various sources, including EO, environmental sensors, and socioeconomic indicators, into a comprehensive data space. This unified data repository enhances data sharing and accessibility, supporting the monitoring, evaluation, and adaptation of Green Deal policies and actions.
In conclusion, these projects form a cohesive and adaptable infrastructure that underpins the Green Deal's ambition to combat climate change and promote sustainability. By providing open and standardized interfaces, advanced geospatial capabilities, efficient data organization, scalable computing, and comprehensive data integration, these platforms facilitate data-driven decision-making, innovation, and drive progress toward the EU's environmental goals. In the face of the global climate crisis, these services are central tools in advancing the Green Deal's mission to build a greener and more sustainable future for all.
