2025-09-17, 10:00–10:30 (UTC), Aula Magna
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.
The Open-Earth-Monitor (openEM) project addresses this gap by generating ready-to-use,
analysis-ready, cloud-optimised data collections and openly sharing them under permissive
licenses, providing a robust foundation for further application development. Furthermore,
contribution to standard interfaces such as openEM strengthen the EO ecosystem by
promoting open standards for data cubes, algorithms, and deployment environments, thus
facilitating portability and reproducibility across infrastructures.
To scale collaboration further, we should do more, for example accompanying each
deliverable in EO research with a fully replicable package - including data, code,
documentation, and processing instructions. This is where CDSE and openEO particularly
shine, supporting infrastructure-agnostic, declarative workflows that are not only reusable
but can also be executed consistently on multiple backend systems - from CDSE to local
clusters. Moving forward, the EO community must shift its focus from producing novel
prototypes to building robust, user-friendly applications that work at continental scale and
beyond. Collaboration at scale - between CDSE, openEM, and the broader EO community - is
essential to achieve systematic, transparent, and ongoing planetary monitoring.