2023-10-04, 16:10–16:30, EURAC Auditorium
The Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem (CDSE) represents a key milestone in access to Copernicus satellite data. First and foremost, the novelty relates to the paradigm shift that all Copernicus data (except for some of the raw data) is immediately available online - global coverage and the entire time range including the archive - at no cost, for any user. The product list includes Copernicus satellite imagery (Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3, Sentinel-5p), Copernicus Services and other satellite data missions (e.g. Landsat, SMOS, Envisat). In the orderable mode, historical Sentinel-1 RAW data and processing of Sentinel 1/2/3 data using official ESA processors is available. So-called Sentinel Engineering Data (mostly Level-0 data) will be available in the rolling 2-week archive. Moreover, CDSE will offer access to commercial satellite data.
The main advantage of immediately available data is that the user does not have to order and wait for the data. Direct access also allows bulk data processing and streaming, e.g. via OGC services (WMS/WFS). In this respect, only online data access provides sufficient capacity to visualise data online. Another advantage of immediately available data is the ability to partially read large data files if they are stored in an optimised chunked format such as Cloud Optimised GeoTIFF (COG) or Zarr for rasters, or GeoParquet for vectors. Partial reading is essential for parallel computing, which allows small chunks of data to be processed in parallel so that there is no need to wait for the data to be fully loaded before processing.
Another novelty of CDSE are the various interfaces where the data are available: from old-fashioned download to various interfaces providing capability to search the catalog connected to the same database to guarantee consistency. First interface is OData - an ESA-adopted standard, which is based on https RESTful Application Programming Interfaces. It enables resources, which are identified by URLs and defined in a data model, to be created and edited using simple HTTP messages. Another interface which is foreseen is the STAC catalogue and API that become a standard in the EO community, also being onboarded to OGC. The CDSE also provides Jupyter Hub - a very suitable tool for prototyping, developing, and testing applications for Earth Observation data processing. This is an open-source, online, interactive web application which gives access to computational environments and resources without burdening the users with installation and maintenance tasks.
The vast majority of the described capabilities are available free-of-charge for the individual's use - personal, research or commercial. For those interested in larger scale processing, there are practically unlimited resources available under commercial terms. The first one of these is CREODIAS, which allows user to access and process the data directly from federated cloud environment, order serverless processing of the EO products and access EO-dedicated services. Yet, additional third-party providers are joining CDSE to offer a variety of additional services (free and commercial) as members of the Data Space.
None of the above
Dr Jędrzej Bojanowski leads the Data Science department at CloudFerro, a company providing cloud computing infrastructures and EO data repositories such as CREODIAS. He specializes in application of satellite data in environmental studies: climatology and monitoring of agriculture. He received a PhD degree in 2014 from the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation of the University of Twente. He gained further experience as an employee of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (Ispra, Italy), a postdoctoral fellow of the Swiss Federal Institute for Meteorology and Climatology (MeteoSwiss) in Zurich and assistant professor and a deputy head of Remote Sensing Centre of the Institute of Geodesy and Cartography in Warsaw, Poland. He carried out ESA- and EUMETSAT-funded projects aiming at generation of ECVs of cloud physical properties from polar-orbiting and geostationary satellites. He was also a principal investigator of ESA projects related to satellite identification and monitoring of agricultural crops for public administration. He received an award of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education for Outstanding Young Scientists.