Task Force 7 - Subgroup 5: Earth Observation & Geospatial
One main objective of this Subgroup is to link the Earth Observation community and ICT community, in an effective dialog on tackling the big data from space related issues. The dialog between the key players funding activities on the respective topics (EC – DG GROW, DG CONNECT, DG RESEARCH and European Space Agency) is also important, in order to find complementarities and to avoid duplications.
Finding opportunities to develop projects in partnership with organizations from other domains that could integrate EO data in their products and services is another aim of the SG, as the huge amount of valuable information that is available from EO programmes can be easily integrated with other data in order and to provide added value for all types of users, from policy makers to regular citizens.
The Earth is facing unprecedented climatic, geomorphologic, environmental and anthropogenic changes, which require observation and monitoring at local, regional, continental and global scales, thus resulting in a multitude of new orbital and suborbital Earth Observation (EO) sensors. Therefore, Earth Observation (EO) data volumes are increasing at a rate of several Terabytes a day.
Not only the data volume represents a challenge, but also the varieties of sensors (acquiring the data) and data formats. Also, it is considered that EO data is far from being fully exploited at present. In this context, the more efficient exploration of data and the timely delivery of meaningful extracted information become a major challenge. The result consists in continuous developments in hardware and software, for multi-temporal data analysis, data management and information extraction technologies.
Florin.serban[at]terrasigna.com
- Whitepaper Big Data in Earth Observation (November 2017)
