New Copernicus Data Access Service to Support the Ecosystem for Earth Observation
A new service to better exploit the EU’s Copernicus satellites data
Copernicus is the Earth Observation component of the European Union Space Programme, co-funded with the European Space Agency (ESA). ESA, to whom the Copernicus Data Access initiative has been delegated by the European Commission, has selected an industrial team lead by T-Systems, including CloudFerro, Sinergise, VITO, DLR, ACRI-ST and RHEA as partners, for its implementation and operations. Click on their names to check their messages as well.
On Friday, 16th of December 2022, the new Copernicus Data Access Service kicked-off, taking the European Union Copernicus program to the next level and ensuring the data to make the greatest possible impact to institutional users, the research community, the commercial sector as well as to every citizen of our planet. The new Copernicus Data Access Service builds on existing distribution services and DIAS-es, ensuring their continuity, but it is also much more — it is bringing significant improvements. Read on to find out what is waiting for you.
Evolution of Copernicus data access
The European Union Copernicus program is the biggest provider of Earth Observation data in the world and its launch was almost certainly one of the most important events in the remote sensing community over the past decade. With systematic monitoring over large areas, good quality of data, resolution fitting its objectives, ensured longevity of the program and, most importantly, clear and simple open data policy it took the world by a storm. This, however, is not something to be taken for granted. When Copernicus started, remote sensing was a niche field occupying mostly researchers and the intelligence community. There was no specific reason to expect that it will be any different with Sentinel data. But it happened. The data was picked by enthusiasts, then by companies and institutions. Fast forward a couple of years and suddenly there are hundreds of applications helping farmers to better manage their fields, financial markets forecast prices of corn, journalists regularly use it to observe or validate news, the European Common Agriculture Policy relies on its data to monitor practically all agriculture fields for sustainable agriculture practices, researchers are building digital twins of the environment, security organizations predict migration patterns… There are many more examples. Nobody expected Copernicus data to start such a revolution in this field. It was (and still is) a tremendous validation of ESA’s operational capacity, but at the same time also significant pressure on the data distribution systems as they were not expecting such uptake. Still, the Copernicus Data Hubs have already distributed an order of magnitude more data than are published. With user uptake growing further, as well as recognized importance of Earth Observation data for the monitoring of the climate changes, the EU decided to invest in the next level of user data processing and distribution infrastructure. The new Copernicus Data Access Service initiative was born.
The future of European user data processing and distribution will be powered by experienced players — T-Systems and CloudFerro with their well-used cloud infrastructure, Sinergise and VITO with Sentinel Hub and openEO data discovery and processing tools, and DLR, ACRI-ST and RHEA taking care of on-demand processing and Copernicus Contributing Missions. All of them are well versed in ESA-lead projects. Furthermore, the majority of the technology, which the service will be built upon, has been developed and validated within past ESA and Copernicus activities. The partners will work under close guidance of ESA in order to address objectives set by the European Commission.
So, what it is all about?
First and foremost, it’s about data, or rather, data availability. Instant data availability. Just about all the data ever acquired by Sentinel satellites, with minor exceptions, will be available on-line, instantaneously including e.g. Sentinel-1 SLC and GRD and L2 OCN, Sentinel-2 L1C and L2A (reprocessed to Collection 1, as reprocessed data becomes gradually available), Sentinel-3 and Sentinel-5P L1 and L2 data as well as Copernicus Contributing Missions data. Full archive, and always up-to-date.
There is currently no infrastructure where all of this would be available at one place. The new Copernicus Data Access will be it. Data will be available through various interfaces — from old-fashioned download, direct S3 access with STAC items and cloud-optimized formats to streamlined access APIs, which are able not just to fetch the data but also process it. There will be a web-based application built on top of a very popular EO Browser technology, as well as a JupyterLab. And several on-demand processors capable of building non-default formats and derived products such as Sentinel-1 coherence and CARD4L products, MAJA-powered atmospheric processing and similar. For those interested in processing, there will be scalable cloud resources available, optimized for EO tasks. Last but not least, there will be a special focus put on traceability. With the nowadays advances in machine learning-powered image manipulation this is especially important. For all data managed within the Copernicus Data Access, it will be possible to trace where it came from and what operations were performed to it.
Important for many of you — the vast majority of these capabilities will be available free for use, funded by the European Union. The quotas designated for users should more than suffice for the individual’s use — personal, research or commercial. For those interested in larger scale operation, there will be practically unlimited resources available under commercial terms, powered by the industrial team partners and accessing the identical full set of data collections as well as additional open and commercial ones, allowing to build applications on world scale. Furthermore, there will be significant credits made available, in the form of extra free resources, to be used for research and pre-commercial exploitation opportunities.
What is it in for Sentinel Hub users?
A ton. With Sentinel Hub playing a core role in the largest EO data distribution system in the world for at least the next six years it is gaining on importance and longevity. There are many software architects building EO application at the moment, asking a question what services to rely upon to ensure long-term sustainability. The answer is suddenly much clearer. The scale of the system will allow us to put even more focus and resources into reliability and performance. We will also, together with VITO, double down on openEO interface. And add new data collections. Last, but not least, Sentinel Hub will be the service, which will have data available in the fastest and most up-to-date manner!
It is all about timing, responsibilities and commitments
The initiative has quite an intense phase-in plan, in order to allow hundreds of thousands of existing users of the Copernicus Data Hubs to migrate their workflows to the new service. First, limited but stable, roll-out is planned for the end of January 2023 with continuous upgrades over the upcoming months until full service will be made available by the end of June 2023.
This is a very challenging yet super exciting opportunity for everyone in the remote sensing community — from beginners to experts, from researchers, companies and institutions, as well as individuals. Just about anyone can benefit from being aware of what is happening with our planet. And we should all take interest in it, and act. For the consortium partners, however, this is especially important — we were given an opportunity to build a new ecosystem for everyone to use. An ecosystem that strives to provide a significant upgrade over existing tools and services. This comes with huge responsibility towards everyone — not just to the ESA and European Commission, but for the world-wide EO community.
We are confident we can execute it, so stay tuned for further information. More details coming soon.
