CDSE and openEM – Collaboration at Scale
In the era of abundant Earth Observation (EO) data, the primary bottlenecks to unlocking its
value no longer lie in data availability or access. With initiatives such as the Copernicus Data
Space Ecosystem (CDSE), Europe provides global access to petabytes of EO data, including
the full Sentinel archive and numerous processing and data analysis. These operational
tools allow users to search, process, and analyse vast amounts of data at scale, within an
integrated and scalable infrastructure.
However, despite this mature infrastructure, EO research still struggles with reusability and
continuity. Many projects focus on narrowly defined timeframes or case studies and rarely
produce reusable outcomes. Scientific workflows are often hard-coded, poorly documented,
or dependent on non-standard configurations, resulting in a proliferation of disconnected
prototypes rather than operational services. This hampers the translation of scientific
insight into applications with long-term monitoring capability - arguably the greatest value
proposition of EO.
