Copernicus is the European Union's Earth Observation (EO) programme managed by the European Commission. The main goal of the programme is to observe our planet and its environment to benefit all European citizens. The programme has revolutionized the European space industry by making access to sattelite data is easier than never before. The enormous amount of EO data available as a public good for anyone at no cost.Huge amount of archival data and the continuous growth of large EO data sets made it necessary not only to create a cloud environment, but also to develop the usability and exploit the potential of EO data - the DIAS platforms (Data and Information Access Services). For this reason, EO platforms were launched, thanks to which we have gained a powerful tool for EO data access and scalable processing.
EO platforms are an essential element to enhance the EO data usability, making it possible to change data into information. The platforms provide users with a computing power that enables fast and efficient processing and allow users to access, process and analyse Copernicus products in the cloud directly connected to an EO archive. The availability of data, storage, and processing in a single place makes it easier to develop and distribute scalable digital services based on the EO data. Below you can see consumption model for DIAS and EO platforms.
We have built and now operate several EO platforms based on a hybrid cloud in an Infrastructure-as-a-service model. Our services consist of open-source components, such as Open-Stack for cloud orchestration, Ceph for storage management, Prometheus and Graphana for monitoring, K8s for processing, and others.
Taking as an example CREODIAS, WEkEO, CODE-DE and other platforms built and operated by CloudFerro, we have created the main building blocks and architecture of entirely European cloud platforms based on open-source software.
We have managed to create a new service - an EO platform as a service.
Federation and a multi-platform approach allows users and operators to gain benefits from the synergy between different platforms, such as a shared multi PB data repository available from various platforms and elasticity cloud components for additional processing needs. At the same time, it generates a technical challenge that we need to address. We have met challenges focusing on three main topics:
Using the EO Platform is connected with numerous benefits. The most significant are:
