Earth Observation Open Science and Innovation

Front matter

ISSI Scientific Report 15

Pierre-Philippe Mathieu Ny Christoph Aubrecht D Editors

Earth Observation Open Science and Innovation

Foreword

The world of Earth Observation (EO) is rapidly changing as a result of exponential advances in sensor and digital technologies. The speed of change has no historical precedent. Recent decades have witnessed extraordinary developments in ICT, including the Internet, cloud computing and storage, which have all led to radically new ways to collect, distribute and analyse data about our planet.

This digital revolution is also accompanied by a sensing revolution that provides an unprecedented amount of data on the state of our planet and its changes.

Europe leads this sensing revolution in space through the Copernicus initiative and the corresponding development of a family of Sentinel missions. This has enabled the global monitoring of our planet across the whole electromagnetic spectrum on an operational and sustained basis.

In addition, a new trend, referred to as “New Space” in the USA or “Space 4.0” in Europe, is now rapidly emerging through the increasing commoditization and commercialization of space. In particular, with the rapidly dropping costs of small sat building, launching and processing, new EO actors including startups and ICT giants are now entering the space business in masses, forming new constellations of standardized small sats that deliver a new class of data on our planet with higher spatial resolution and increased temporal frequency.

These new global data sets from space lead to a far more comprehensive picture of our planet. This picture is now even more refined via data from billions of smart and inter-connected sensors referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT).

Such streams of dynamic data on our planet offer new possibilities for scientists to advance our understanding of how the ocean, atmosphere, land and cryosphere operate and interact as part on an integrated Earth System. It also represents new opportunities for entrepreneurs to turn big data into new types of information services. However, these opportunities come with new challenges for scientists, businesses, data and software providers who must make sense of the vast and diverse amount of data by capitalizing on new technologies such as big data analytics.

vi Foreword

This book invites you to explore various elements of the big data revolution, addressing the development of Space 4.0, the new generation of data-driven research infrastructure (including the emergence of data cubes), new applications integrating IoT and EO, new business models in the emerging geo-sharing economy, new ways to support e-learning and digital education, new application of technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and deep learning, and the increasing role of new actors such as innovative startups, ICT corporates, data scientists and citizen scientists. By doing so, it aims to stimulate new ideas about how to make the most of EO and derived information in a rapidly changing environment.

Wishing you an inspiring journey in the exciting field of EO Open Science and Innovation.

Josef Aschbacher

Director of Earth Observation Programmes European Space Agency (ESA)

Frascati, Italy

Contents

PartI Join the Geo Revolution

Conor O’Sullivan, Nicholas Wise, and Pierre-Philippe Mathieu

Ravi Kapur, Val Byfield, Fabio Del Frate, Mark Higgins, and Sheila Jagannathan

Part II Enabling Data Intensive Science Fostering Cross-Disciplinary Earth Science Through Datacube

Peter Baumann, Angelo Pio Rossi, Brennan Bell, Oliver Clements, Ben Evans, Heike Hoenig, Patrick Hogan, George Kakaletris, Panagiota Koltsida, Simone Mantovani, Ramiro Marco Figuera, Vlad Merticariu, Dimitar Misev, Huu Bang Pham, Stephan Siemen, and Julia Wagemann

Mind the Gap: Big Data vs. Interoperability and Reproducibility

MOD E E I e oe siete E A E outed ANE TE diem ndetncaubanhe den’

Max Craglia and Stefano Nativi

Rajasekar Karthik, Alexandre Sorokine, Dilip R. Patlolla, Cheng Liu, Shweta M. Gupte, and Budhendra L. Bhaduri viii

Geo-Data

Contents

David J. Lary, Gebreab K. Zewdie, Xun Liu, Daji Wu, Estelle Levetin,

Rebecca J.

Mannino, and Dirk Aurin

Allee, Nabin Malakar, Annette Walker, Hamse Mussa, Antonio

New Generation Platforms for Exploration of Crowdsourced

Maria Antonia Brovelli, Marco Minghini, and Giorgio Zamboni

Part III Use Cases Open Science and Innovation Mapping Land Use Dynamics Using the Collective Power

af THE Crowd soroas naen e eaaa REEE EEEE EE Christoph Aubrecht, Joachim Ungar, Dilek Ozceylan Aubrecht,

Sérgio Freire, and Klaus Steinnocher

Ursula Benz and Manfred Krischke

Heike Bach and Wolfram Mauser

Hinnerk Gildhoff

Development of an Earth Observation Cloud Platform in Support

Andreea Bucur, Wolfgang Wagner, Stefano Elefante, Vahid Naeimi,

and Christian Briese

Trevor Monroe, Stephanie Debere, Kwawu Mensa Gaba, David Newhouse, and Talip Killic

Mapping Floods and Assessing Flood Vulnerability for Disaster Decision-Making: A Case Study Remote Sensing Application in Senegal

Bessie Schwarz, Gabriel Pestre, Beth Tellman, Jonathan Sullivan, Catherine Kuhn, Richa Mahtta, Bhartendu Pandey, and Laura Hammett

Earth Observation and Geospatial Implementation: Fueling Sudhir Raj Shrestha, Matthew Tisdale, Steve Kopp, and Brett Rose

Contents ix

Artificial Intelligence and Earth Observation to Explore Water

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Part I Join the Geo Revolution Conor O’Sullivan, Nicholas Wise, and Pierre-Philippe Mathieu

Abstract We live in an increasingly global, connected and digital world. In less than a decade or so, fast developments in digital technologies, such as the Cloud, Internet, wireless network, and most importantly mobile telephony, have dramatically changed the way we work, live and play. Rapid advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) foster a new world of cross-disciplinary data-intensive research characterised by openness, transparency, access to large volume of complex data, availability of community open tools, unprecedented level of computing power, and new collaboration among researchers and new actors such as citizen scientists. Identifying and understanding the key drivers of change in the data economy and EO sector (including technological, human, cultural and legal factors) is essential to providing context on which to build an EO strategy for the twenty-first century. The emergence of cloud computing is already transforming the way we access and exploit data. This has led to a paradigm shift in the way to distribute and process data, and in creating platforms that drive innovation and growth in user applications.

The Earth Observation industry, part of the wider data economy, is experiencing a number of factors that are driving change across the value chain. These include, to name a few, leveraging IT infrastructure such as cloud computing, the rise of platforms and the Internet of Things (IoT), interconnected terrestrial and space-borne systems, diversification of business models and open data policies. Copernicus, the European flagship programme to provide geo-information services to EU policy makers, provides a strong opportunity as market driver for EO-based services. According to a recent survey by the European Association of Remote

C. O’ Sullivan (x) * N. Wise Satellite Applications Catapult, Harwell, UK e-mail: Conor.OSullivan @sa.catapult.org.uk; nicholas.wise @ sa.catapult.org.uk

P.-P. Mathieu ESA/ESRIN, Frascati, Italy e-mail: Pierre.philippe.mathieu @ esa. int

© The Author(s) 2018 3 P.-P. Mathieu, C. Aubrecht (eds.), Earth Observation Open Science and Innovation, ISSI Scientific Report Series 15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-3 19-65633-5_1

Sensing Companies (EARSC), Industry is optimistic about the positive impact the Copernicus programme will have on their business (EARSC 2015).

The European Commission’s Digital Single Market Package is a genuine driver for EU growth and new jobs. It highlights the benefits of a stronger Digital Single Market and its potential for higher growth and new jobs, and increasing global competitiveness:

Full and efficient exploitation of tools and services such as Cloud Computing, Big Data, Automation, Internet of Things and Open Data can drive for better productivity and better services, and therefore should be facilitated, including through market driven solutions, R&D and the promotion of the necessary skills and capacity building, along with further ICT standardisation and interoperability (Council of the European Union 2015)

The volume, variety and velocity of data are increasingly rapidly and “Big Data” acts as the oil in the supply chain for many industries. Within the next few years, ESA spacecraft alone will obtain approximately 25 PB of Earth Observation (EO) data as a result of the Copernicus programme (Di Meglio et al. 2014). In addition, data is generated from a multitude of sources, including small satellite constellations, ground and airborne sensors (e.g. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, UAVs), social media, machine to machine (M2M) communications and crowdsourcing.

The cost-effective to process and store data is falling, making it simpler and more economical to capture larger datasets by leveraging the significant investment made by companies in the cloud computing industry. Increasing value lies in turning this data into knowledge and actionable insights, thereby enabling new applications and services that create value for end users. With views into daily activity being refreshed at a faster rate than ever before, just selling raw pixels is not enough to satisfy end-user demands, those pixels need to be turned into insights. This is evident in the EO sector where ambitious start-ups, such as Planet, are building constellations of small satellites and developing cutting-edge analytics to extract value from the data captured. Many of these start-ups consider themselves as satellite powered data companies. In Planet most recent round of funding the company plans to use the investment to develop its capabilities for processing, interpreting and selling data contained in its images. It was this focus that attracted interest from Data Collective, a venture capital firm, which has backed several big data start-ups (Financial Times 2015).

9 s G $ Shy eneration Transport Knowledge Outputs

Data value chain. Source: Digital Catapult (2014)

More EO missions are being launched than ever before. Reduced launch costs, miniaturisation of technology, improved on-board processing and better reliability are driving increased interest in small satellites by new commercial companies. To unlock the economic potential of data from the increasing number of satellites, public agencies and private companies are creating data products that aim to be responsive to user needs. The satellite data generated from ESA’s Sentinel satellite constellation, for example, will provide actionable insights from the observation of the planet thanks to an array of sensor technologies, including Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Multispectral/Hyperspectral sensors.

EO as a Platform turns raw data into knowledge through processing and analysis, creating value within and across various sectors. EO and remote sensing data has significant potential to help us manage the modern world and our planet’s resources. Applications and services are already emerging for emergency response and environmental monitoring, while emerging markets such as precision agriculture, monitoring of illegal fishing and management of natural resources are rapidly developing. There is increasing value to be created by reaching more customers through the applications of big data. The EO data value chain creates opportunity for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups to engage with the space sector, and generate value from satellite missions by developing applications for citizens, local government and commercial industry.

Public agencies are increasingly interested in how they can interact effectively with companies that have enabled a globally distributed applications ecosystem and are investing extensively in cloud computing infrastructure. Commercial cloud providers, like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, are key enablers of building, deploying and managing scalable applications with the aim of reaching a global audience. Open data policies can enable the private sector to do just that, and reach a wide audience of application developers and end users. According to The Economist, information held by governments in Europe could be used to generate an estimated €140 billion worth of value a year (The Economist 2013). In short, making official data public will spur innovation and create new applications. These benefits need to be balanced against the rights of individuals to have their data protected by government.

Intelligence as as service: increasing value creation

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Summary: value chain, key drivers of change. Source: Satellite Applications Catapult

C. O’Sullivan et al.

The key drivers of change in the data economy impacting the EO market include:

Rise of the platforms: leveraging cloud computing infrastructure to process more and more layers of data, from multiple sources. Simplifying applications development and building an app ecosystem around scalable, on-demand IT infrastructure.

Data as a Service: user manages the application, everything else is delivered as a service. Moving users closer to the data (“data gravity”) via Content Delivery Networks (CDNs).!

Open data policies: demand from users and government policies changing towards improved access to data and tools.

New business models: growing an ecosystem of researchers and developers so that people can easily gain access to and use a multitude of data analysis services quickly, through cloud and high performance computing (HPC) platforms, to add knowledge and open source tools for others’ benefit.

Sensor use growing: Internet of Things and sensors intelligently working at the edge of networks, complementarity of space-borne and terrestrial data. Crowdsourcing: citizen science platforms and their commercial capability. Disruptive innovation: introduces a new value proposition. They either create new markets or reshape existing ones.

Rise of the Platforms

Cloud computing refers to accessing highly scalable computing resources through the Internet, often at lower prices than those required to install on one’s own computer because the resources are shared across many users. Cloud computing has become the next logical evolution in computing—combining the critical elements of each architecture that came before it.

The NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) offers the following definition of cloud computing:

Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.

Cloud computing is about the capability to access any information, at any time, regardless of the resources required and the location of the infrastructure, data,

'CDNs: a content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) is a large distributed system of servers deployed in multiple data centres across the Internet. The goal of a CDN is to serve content to end-users with high availability and high performance. Examples include Microsoft Azure and Amazon CloudFront.

Each new computing cycle typically generates around | 0x the installed base of the previous cycle

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Each new computing cycle typically generates around 10x the installed base of the previous cycle. Source: Kleiner Perkins Caufield Buyers (2014) Internet Trends 2014, see www.kpcb.com/ InternetTrends retrieved on December 5th 2014 application or user. The availability of robust cloud platforms and applications have begun to enable businesses to shift budget spending from capital expense (including dedicated, physical on-site servers) to operating expense (shared hosting by cloud providers) (Woodside Capital Partners 2014).

Cloud computing services are typically segmented into three different areas:

1. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)—third-party provider hosts virtualised computing resources over the Internet, through which customers can host and develop services and applications.

2. Platform as a Service (PaaS)—used by developers to build applications for web and mobile using tools provided by the PaaS provider—these range from programming languages to databases.

3. Software as a Service (SaaS)—software is hosted in the cloud, but appears on devices with full functionality.

Access to the Cloud and platforms are required to capitalise on the data and tools being created to make it easier and faster to discover, process and action on EO datasets. The cloud provides scalability and flexibility in a cost-efficient manner. There should be a combination of ESA and cloud providers supporting the communities within the EO ecosystem to develop tools and ensure data access.

Commercial cloud, capitalising on co-location of computing resources and data storage, is now becoming widely adopted as it offers several advantages enabling users to (1) perform data-intensive science, (2) ensure traceability of workflows,

Infrastructure as a Service Platform as a Service

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Cloud delivery options. Source: Woodside Capital Partners (2014) OpenStack: Is this the Future of Cloud Computing? see www.woodsidecap.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/WCP-OpenStack- Report_FINALa.pdf. Retrieved on 21st November 2014.

input data sets and therefore enabling to reproduce results, (3) facilitate integration with other non-EO data through standard web services (e.g. open data and IoT for smart cities) and (4) open new business models, whereby commercial data, proprietary software, apps and computing resources can now be rented on-demand (as opposed to purchased) to generate Information as a Service. Given the number of EO platforms that are being developed and coming on-line, the challenge revolves around the technical and economic aspects of interoperability, such as:

e A common EO data pool from all EO missions in Europe;

e A processing capability management (sharing of resources and cloud services for processing);

e Sustainability through fair and democratic access to all resources (data, intellectual properties, enabling technologies/computing) by means of underlying implementation principles based on brokerage within an open environment;

e Federated user interfaces subsystems (e.g. interlinked EO data catalogues), interface and standards definition and agreement;

¢ Development of common value-creation techniques (research in data analytics and information retrieval, information visualization, data mining, fusion of in situ data with geo-information, etc.);

e Definition and application of commonly agreed data management principles to ensure data discoverability, accessibility, usability, preservation and curation.

e With the emergence of cloud-based storage and computing, users are now able to easily and cheaply process data on demand. This leads to a paradigm shift whereby data providers are now moving the computations—and therefore the users—to the data, rather than the data to the users. In this context, ESA is developing a series of EO Thematic application platforms or Virtual Research Environments (e.g. Geohazard SuperSites) to exploit the data for different applications and communities.

e Increasing data access and data liquidity, through interaction with the wider data economy and embracing ICT trends (Cloud, open software, APIs), will support new products with market opportunity. This will pave the way for new and existing organisations that have valuable skills or market knowledge, to enter the EO community by making it easier to discover, access and process EO datasets. Both the “democratisation” of GIS skills and making EO tools and interfaces more user friendly are crucial to enabling a much wider range of users.

Core to the data access agenda is cloud computing, which allows users to use on-demand computing resources co-located with data staged for analysis in the cloud. Commercial cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, offer various tools and techniques to enable the build, deployment and management of scalable applications, with the aim of reaching a global audience. Through these platforms, underlying computer and storage resources scale automatically to match application demand. When data is made publicly available via a commercial cloud provider, users can access and analyse the data extremely rapidly and at very large scale.

Core also to increasing data access and liquidity are powerful functional interfaces (APIs) that allow discovery and retrieval of EO data and products, thereby delivering analysis ready data. The cloud based API Economy is key to accelerating value, improving performance, and extending products and services to the widest possible audience. User friendly API’s are essential—they must be flexible enabling enhanced features so entrepreneurs and developers can use combinations of data for specific themes. A well-established way to simplify access to services and data is to implement an API since this enables a developer to exploit their specialist knowledge to create higher level products and services without having to invest a large amount of time and effort to access the relevant data and create, and then verify, basic services. Companies like Planet Spire are following this approach by developing APIs and allowing “plug-and-play” access to them. The biggest player in the satellite data industry, DigitalGlobe has recently announced the launch of Maps API to allow software developers to embed satellite images, maps and other geospatial content into their mobile and web applications.

10 C. O’ Sullivan et al.

Data as a Service

More recently, the concept of data as a service (DaaS) has developed. It represents the enablement of regular, non-expert users to effectively take control of often highly complex and traditionally inaccessible IT tools. DaaS can be defined as the sourcing, management, and provision of data delivered in an immediately consumable format to users.” Like all members of the “as a Service” family, DaaS is based on the concept that the product, data in this case, can be provided on demand to the user regardless of geographic or organisational separation of provider and consumer. Data quality can happen in a centralised place, cleansing and enriching data and offering it to different systems, applications or users, irrespective of where they were in the organization or on the network.

An increasing number of Internet network owners have built their own content delivery networks (CDNs) to improve on-net content delivery and to generate revenues from content customers. For example Microsoft builds its own CDN in tandem with its own products through its Azure CDN. CDNs, like Azure and Amazon’s CloudFront, are key enablers of building, deploying and managing scalable applications with the goal of reaching a global end user audience. Through these platforms, underlying computer and storage resources scale automatically to match application demand.

According to some reports, 300,000 APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are projected to be registered by 2020.° APIs are the fastest growing, businessinfluencing technology in the IT industry today. With an API, developers can exploit functions of existing computer programmes in other applications. Companies are exposing APIs to allow others to consume their business functions, for a profit. Where Windows and Linux have been traditional development platforms of the past, Google, Facebook, Twitter and other companies are becoming the development platforms of the future. All of these companies built a functional platform of business capabilities and extended their business models by exposing APIs so that developers can exploit their functionality. Google Maps is a key example. Many developers write mash-ups (using content for an application from more than one source) on top of Google Maps for various reasons, for example retail store locators, traffic reports, road conditions and so on.

APIs are now coming of age with the advent of cloud computing, where the ability to host external APIs has matured to a point where cloud service providers have scalable capacity to handle transaction loads and spikes in traffic. Mobile platforms now put application reach on millions of devices, all having access to back-end APIs across the Internet. Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace (Amazon’s API marketplace) attracts not only developers and partners looking

Oracle (2014) Data-as-a-service: the Next Step in the As-a-service Journey, see www.oracle.com/ us/solutions/cloud/analyst-report-ovum-daas-2245256.pdf retrieved on 2nd March 2015.

3IBM (2013) Global Technology Outlook.

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APIs are enabling more and more devices to connect. Source: IBM (2014) Exposing and Managing Enterprise Services with IBM API Management.

to exploit Amazon’s APIs, but other vendors also, such as SAP and Oracle (that provide their own APIs on AWS, to offer analytics for additional value).

Open Data Policies

Data has been referred to as the new raw material of the twenty-first century. Like many other raw materials, it needs investment to locate, extract and refine it before it yields value. Open data, employed in combination with open platforms, such as APIs, expands the network of minds and unlocks the data’s latent potential. As a result of increased demand for access to free data, governments and agencies are doing more to open up large amounts of public sector information to the public. ESA, for example, is implementing a free, full and open data policy through the Copernicus programme of Sentinel satellites.

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan made America’s military satellite-navigation system, GPS, available to the world; entrepreneurs pounced on this opportunity. Car navigation, precision farming and three million American jobs now depend on GPS.* Official weather data are also public and avidly used by everyone from insurers to ice-cream sellers. All data created or collected by America’s federal government must now be made available free to the public, unless this would violate privacy, confidentiality or security.

Open and machine-readable is the new default for government information. (US President, Barack Obama (2013))°

Many countries have moved in the same direction. In Europe, the information held by governments could be used to generate an estimated €140 billion a year. McKinsey estimates the potential annual value to Europe’s public sector administration at €250 billion.’

The emerging open data ‘marketplace’

The emerging open data ‘Marketplace’. Source: Deloitte (2012) Open growth: Stimulating demand for open data in the UK, see www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/deloitte-analytics/articles/ stimulating-demand-for-open-data-in-the-uk.html retrieved on 8th February 2015.

There are lots of companies, charities and individuals who would benefit if all the data the public sector holds was shared with them, particularly if it was shared only with them. However, those benefits have to be balanced against the rights of individuals to have their data protected by government, and the risks to individuals and to society of too much data being available (for example, through making fraud easier).

4The Economist (2013) A new goldmine; Open data, see www.economist.com/news/business/ 21578084-making-official-data-public-could-spur-lots-innovation-new-goldmine retrieved on 8th February 2015.

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*Thid.

7™McKinsey Global Institute (2011) Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity.

In The Cathedral & the Bazaar, a book by Eric on software engineering methods, the image of a bazaar is used to contrast the collaborative development model of open source software with traditional software development. In the traditional software development “vending machine model’, the full menu of available services is determined beforehand. A small number of vendors have the ability to get their products into the machine, and as a result, the choices are limited, and the prices are high. A bazaar, by contrast, is a place where the community itself exchanges goods and services.®

In the technology world, the equivalent of a thriving bazaar is a successful platform. In the computer industry, the innovations that define each era are frameworks that enabled a whole ecosystem of participation from companies large and small. The personal computer was such a platform and so was the World Wide Web. This same platform dynamic is playing out now in the recent success of the Apple iPhone. Where other phones have had a limited menu of applications developed by the phone vendor and a few carefully chosen partners, Apple built a framework that allowed virtually anyone to build applications for the phone, leading to an explosion of creativity, with more than 100,000 applications appearing in little more than 18 months, and more than 3000 new ones now appearing every week.’ Android, with a global smartphone operating system market share of around 80%,!” is Open-source software for a wide range of mobile devices and a corresponding open-source project led by Google. These successes are due to the openness around frameworks.

As applications move closer to the mass of data, for example by building an applications ecosystem around free and public data sets, more data is created. This concept of ‘data gravity’ is about reducing the cycle time/feedback loop between information and the data presented. This is achieved through lower latency and increased. There is an accelerative effect as applications move closer to data.!!

Smartphones and tablets, collectively “mobile devices”, are the fastest adopted technology in history. They have been adopted faster than cell phones, personal computers (PCs), televisions, even the Internet and electricity. The reason why the likes of Apple (GOS) and Google (Android) lead the way in mobile applications is because they combine a large pool of talented mobile developers with a robust development infrastructure. Apple ignited the app revolution with the launch of the App Store in 2008, and since then, an entire industry has been built around app design and development. According to recent announcements from Apple, apps on iOS generated over €8 billion in revenue for developers in 2014 and to date, App

8 athrup, D. and Ruma, L. (2010) Open Government: Collaboration, Transparency, and Participation in Practice, O’ Reilly Media.

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‘OBusiness Insider website, see www.businessinsider.com/iphone-v-android-market-share-2014- 5?IR=T retrieved on 3rd March 2015.

"Dave McCrory (2011), Gathering Moss, Data Gravity, and Context, see www.datagravity.org retrieved on 17th March 2015.

Store developers have earned a cumulative €20 billion from the sale of apps and games.'* According to Flurry Analytics, a mobile analytics firm, in 2014 overall app usage grew by 76%.

New Business Models

New entrants to the EO sector, including Planet and Spire, are opening their data to developers and end-users through APIs. APIs can make it easier to access EO data and to extract the embedded value. Planet has announced that it will release a developer API this year.'*

Business models are also emerging to develop a more integrated network of stakeholders. CloudEO, a German company that supplies EO data on a pay-per-use or subscription basis,'* aims to bring together imagery providers, analytics companies and customers through one platform. In order to attract and expand the user community beyond the boundaries of EO, the development of semantic search structures can play a pivotal role in reaching new users. The GEOinformation for Sustainable Development Spatial Data Infrastructure (GEOSUD SDI) is one example of this.!°

Among the new products and services that are being developed, EO video data products are worth highlighting. Enabled by more frequent revisit times of EO satellite constellations, these products have the potential to improve the value proposition of a satellite data provider in applications such as disaster relief, surveillance and other applications that could benefit from real-time monitoring.!° Canadian company, UrtheCast, has been granted the exclusive right to operate two cameras on the Russian module of the International Space Station (ISS). As the ISS passes over the Earth, UrtheCast’s twin cameras capture and download large amounts of HD (5 m resolution) video and photos. This data is then stored