Cloud-based EO platforms have transformed the way researchers and scientists analyze and utilize EO data. These platforms often follow a three-layered design (often named “tiers”) comprising infrastructure, services, and exploitation interfaces. An example architecture based on this approach is the “Earth Observation Exploitation Platform Common Architecture” (EOEPCA) of ESA (https://eoepca.org). Leveraging the power of cloud computing, EO platforms provide a comprehensive ecosystem that seamlessly integrates storage, processing, analysis tools, collaboration, visualization, and data exploitation capabilities.
The following overview will explore each layer of the three-layered design and provide examples to illustrate the functionalities and benefits of cloud-based EO platforms in real-world applications. They showcase the diverse range of tools, services, and interfaces (also named “building blocks”) available to store, process, analyze, collaborate, visualize, and exploit EO data effectively within the cloud environment.
Infrastructure & Resource Tier
“The Resource Tier represents the hosting infrastructure and provides the EO data, storage and compute upon which the exploitation platform is deployed.”
(Source: EOEPCA Master System Design)
- Data Storage: The data storage component may include distributed file systems like distributed parallel file systems (e.g., GPFS, Hadoop) or object storage services (e.g., Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage) to securely store and manage EO datasets.
- Computing Resources: The computing component can provide virtual machines (e.g., Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, OpenStack), container environments (e.g., Docker-Engine, Kubernetes) or batch-computing systems (e.g., High Performance Computing) for executing data processing and analysis tasks on EO datasets.
Platform Tier
“The Platform Tier represents the Exploitation Platform and the services it offers to end-users.”
(Source: EOEPCA Master System Design)
The services of the platform tier can be grouped into data-related and processing-related services. The processing tools and services often rely on the data services to get discover and get access to data available on the platform.
- Data Services
- Data Catalog: Data available on the platform needs to be described with metadata to be findable by users. Often processing and analysis services, such as Open Data Cube or OpenEO, make use of the data catalog to ease the use of EO data. These services enable users to annotate, search, and discover EO datasets based on various metadata parameters.
- Data Access Service: This enables users to retrieve and access EO datasets. This may involve APIs, protocols, or data transfer mechanisms like Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Services or HTTP services for efficient and secure data access.
- Data Visualization Service: The visualization component provides standardized web services for the visualization of raster and vector data available on the platform. User interfaces like QGIS or web mapping tools can be used together with those services.
- Data Processing and Analysis Tools: This service component may include widely used processing tools like GDAL (Geospatial Data Abstraction Library), remote sensing software like SNAP (Sentinel Application Platform), data cube related tools (e.g., xarray & Dask) and APIs (e.g., OpenEO API) for performing advanced analysis on EO data.
Exploitation Tier
“The Exploitation Tier represents the end-users who exploit the services of the platform to perform analysis, or using high-level applications built-in on top of the platform’s services.”
(Source: EOEPCA Master System Design)
- User Interfaces: The exploitation interface component may include web-based interfaces like web portals (e.g., EO Browser from Sinergise), dashboards (e.g., Earth Observation Dashboard from NASA, ESA, JAXA or web development environments (e.g., JupyterLab). All of them provide interactive interfaces for users to explore and analyze EO data through a user-friendly interface.
Exercise: Build a platform
Now it is time for you: Please Drag and drop the building blocks of a platform into a correct diagram.