The Ideal EO Platform: Top Functionalities for EO Data Access and Use
If EO4EU will succeed in its goal of providing easier access to Earth observation (EO) data, it will have to start from the users. That is why a comprehensive survey of potential users was conducted by the project to understand what would be their ideal EO platform.
Below are some of the top functionalities that came out of the requirements gathering activities early in the project.
1. Wide selection of data types and coverages
Survey participants were asked the types of EO datasets that the platform should provide access to, as well as the temporal and spatial coverage of the data. The three most in-demand datasets were Copernicus Sentinel-2 (70%) and Sentinel-1 (63.3%) and the Digital Elevation Model (60%).
All participants indicated demand for dataset coverages for archive data for long time periods to allow the study of long-term changes in Earth’s surface and for various geographical coverage (even up to global for some use cases) to allow users to study a wide range of phenomena, from local to global scales.
2. Access methods, storage, and file types
EO4EU also asked potential users what would be their ideal storage capacity, supported file formats, and methods for user data access.
Users indicated preference for storage capacity of at least 500GB to store the EO datasets for the user use cases (60%). All surveyed also indicated that the ideal platform should support the most popular file formats of geospatial datasets, such as GeoTIFF, NetCDF, shapefiles, CSVs, GeoJSON, etc. Finally, 100% of users also wanted the possibility to have multiple ways of accessing data, such as API, GUI and CLI with a permission control mechanism on the datasets produced by the users to allow sharing them with others.
3. Data search, indexing and catalogs
Users were also asked how they would like to search for and browse data on the platform.
Key search functionalities that came out of the users were the ability to search for data using classic criteria (93.3%) such as time range, sensor, processing level, coverage, and cloud cover, as well as being able to search using natural language or natural expressions (36.7%). Other search functionalities also included being able to search for data using images (30%).
To improve being able to find EO data, users recommended having a two-level metadata system (96.7%) – the first on a collection (dataset) level and the other on a granule (file) level. Useful metadata that came out of the survey were geographical and temporal extents, processing level, keywords, etc.
The users expressed the importance of the metadata associated with the different datasets, which will increase their discoverability and accessibility. Other highlights include the vital role of the interfacing services of the platform, e.g., an API (73.3%), processing algorithms and computing resources.
4. Hardware processing capabilities
Hardware processing capabilities specify the hardware the platform should use to process EO data. The platform supports both CPU supported processing (36.7%), multiprocessing (30%) and GPU processing (20%) and multiprocessing (13.3%). Furthermore, the platform has at least 30-50 GB of memory to process large datasets.
5. Other processing capabilities
The other processing capabilities category includes requirements that the platform should provide. The most important requirements are the ability to perform near-real- time processing data to get results quickly (63.3%); the ability to run part/ all of the processing pipeline on the platform (56.7%) in order to customize the processing to the users’ specific needs and to combine their local processing chains (82.6%) with processing chains running on the platform (70%); the ability to access data using different methods such as API/CLI (30%) and the ability to access intermediate results of the processing (70%), to verify the validity of users’ results and debug any possible problem.
6. Algorithms
Algorithms detail the requirements for processing algorithms and capabilities that users consider useful for extracting added value from EO datasets. Interfacing services define requirements to facilitate platform access and usage.
The key requirements are the data Fusion Algorithms (70%), that integrate data from various sources, such as Sentinel-1 (100%), Sentinel-2 (100%), ERA-5, and MODIS (100%). In addition, the feature Extraction Algorithms that include tools for extracting thematic features, like vegetation indices (e.g., NDVI, NDI) and those derived from Machine Learning (ML) (53.3%).
7. Interfacing services
The interfacing services include requirements to allow users to implement their code and visualise processing results and other datasets. The keys are the code editor, to implement users’ code such as JupyterLab (66.7%) and RStudio (6.70%) and the variety of visualisation interfaces such as WebGIS (56,70%) and XR/VR (3.3%).
8. Authentication and authorization
Finally, authentication and authorisation involves implementing various authentication methods compatible with users' existing platforms and environments. This includes enabling authentication via API access token (46.7%), via HTTPs basic auth (26.7%), based on institutional credentials (13.3%) and enabling OAuth with OpenID (6.7%).
The Process – Requirements Collection and analysis
The EO4EU platform aims to provide centralised access to Earth Observation (EO) data for a wide range of users, including researchers, engineers, students, and policymakers. Early access was granted to participants of an online end-user survey to gather feedback on aspects such as data accessibility and computing requirements. This feedback from 30 participants helped refine the platform and finalise user requirements. Specific requirements for project use cases were collected through surveys and personalised meetings with use case coordinators, ensuring optimal visualisation and interaction with the platform.
In total, 292 specific requirements were gathered, covering the domains of Data, Data Preparation, Data Processing, and Results Presentation.
Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN)
The BPMN helps organisations quickly reach consensus by offering a modelling language that is easily shared and understood by all stakeholders in business processes. This includes technical developers, business analysts, and business users.
In EO4EU, using visual notations, BPMN helped simplify the analysis and improvement of workflows, and it provides training materials for new users by establishing a process flow repository.
Conclusion
The EO4EU platform aims to make Earth Observation (EO) data more accessible, usable, and valuable to a diverse range of users by providing a centralised access and processing point with tailored tools. BPMN offers high-level insights into user-platform interactions, ensuring efficiency, effectiveness, and scalability in the platform's design. Collaborative efforts among partners have enabled a comprehensive understanding of both external and internal user requirements, forming the foundation of the platform's development.
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