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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EDGE (European Direction in GEOSS Common Infrastructure Enhancements)

Teaser

Summary

The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) is a social and software ecosystem sharing independent and open Earth observation information and processing services implemented by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) with the objective to improve the availability, access and use of Earth observations for a sustainable planet.
The GEOSS Platform, until 2017 called the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI), is the cornerstone around which the GEOSS software ecosystem is implemented. Enabling the connection and coordination of many autonomous and multi-organizational systems and services contributing to GEOSS, it is the technological tool implementing GEOSS.
The Horizon 2020 co-funded, ESA coordinated project EDGE is a European contribution to GEOSS, evolving two of the GEOSS Platform components, i.e. the GEOSS Portal and the GEO Discovery and Access Broker (GEO DAB) with the aim to further enhance the Platform for it to better respond to the user needs.
At the end of the first 10-year period of GEO, in 2015, key successes and shortcomings were assessed and reported. Despite the recognised great advancement in terms of data interoperability, the GCI in general still suffered from a â€œdata-centricâ€ nature, which sometimes alienated the users. .
EDGE recognised this, and adopted a user-centric (or co-design) approach in line with the GEO strategy for the period 2016-2025, which can be summarized in the following activities: engaging all user communities to better understand their needs, delivering solutions (in terms of EO data, information, tools and services) in response to them, and advocating the benefits of using GEOSS.
The main objectives of EDGE are to:
â€¢ OBJ. 1: Better Respond to the User Needs: In favour of a more user-centric approach, an Agile development methodology is used that, on an iterative basis, involves users in capturing and clarifying the required functionalities and in evaluating developed enhancements.
â€¢ OBJ. 2: Improve the User Experience: The enhanced Platform pursues intuitiveness and easiness of use, along with a desirable look & feel.
â€¢ OBJ. 3: Serve a Comprehensive Community of Users: a modular architecture, with re-usable components, allows easy adaptation to heterogeneous communities, specific needs, different contexts and devices.
â€¢ OBJ. 4: Raise Interest in and Awareness of GEOSS: this is pursued through dissemination and exploitation activities and enhancements that are enabling social interconnectivity, transforming the Platform into a social network, and offering well-known user feedback mechanisms.

Work performed

During the first year, EDGE carried out activities in several directions. 19 use cases from 8 different thematic areas have been analysed, of which 16 have been implemented (e.g. ECOPotential, SWOS, ENERGIC-OD and AtlantOS). GEO Flagships, Initiatives and Community activities as well as Copernicus Services and ESA Exploitation Platforms have been considered as requirements source and for validation of the solutions. EDGE as well experimented different innovative functionalities that were demonstrated e.g. during the GEO Week 2017 in Washington, the 3rd GEOSS Data Providers Workshop in Italy and the GEO Week 2018 in Kyoto.
EDGE activities were organized and prioritized in synergy with the GCI Operations Foundational Task with the GEOSS Evolve initiative, the GEO Secretariat and other stakeholders. EDGE provided the brokering of 20 new data sources, and updated the service for 10 data sources more and advanced on the GEOSS Platform reusable components (APIs, Widgets, Mirrors, Views). EDGE contributed to the formalisation of the GEOSS Resource Providers registration process and integrated the Yellow Pages tool developed by the University of Geneva and the Status Checker component developed by USGS.
Innovative functionalities being experimented regard in particular:
â€¢ Knowledge generation and sharing in coordination with the H2020 ECOPotential and ERA-PLANET/GEOEssential integrating the Virtual Laboratory (VLAB) with the GEO DAB and building a dedicated Community Portal.
â€¢ Use of cloud infrastructures in the context of the VLAB prototype, experimenting the use of containerization technologies for the harmonization of programming environments for scientific models.
â€¢ Data cubes, e.g. via a study identifying ways in which they can be utilized in the framework of GEOSS.

Final results

The high number of initiatives that adopted or are exploiting the solutions offered by the GEOSS Platform is an indication that there is a need and increased awareness of the GEOSS Platform and its capabilities. It also confirms that the modular architecture of the GEOSS Platform, relying on reusable components, is easily adaptable.
The GEOSS Platform has helped GEOSS open up to a wider spectrum of data providers and users, ranging from specialists and researchers to non-scientists, decision makers from the public and the private sector. There exists an increased interest from citizens, as well.
The close relationship with the users has facilitated the identification of topics on which EDGE needs to focus during the next year of the project.
The transition from a Common Infrastructure to a modern Web-based Platform has opened the contribution to a wider range of technology and knowledge providers in GEOSS â€“ e.g. IT experts, mobile apps developers, AI specialists. The importance of knowledge generation, management, and sharing for evidence-based science and policy-making is becoming more evident. The prototypes for knowledge access and sharing, demonstrate the feasibility of a clear advancement beyond the state-of-the-art. There is a recognized need to reduce time spent by users on data preparation, so to better focus on the study subject itself. Data Cubes and Analysis Ready Data facilitate addressing this need. In response to these requirements, the Platform is already evolving towards a Knowledge-based Platform.
In addition, the different conceptions and scopes characterizing the Regional Hubs (AmeriGEOSS, AOGEOSS, AfriGEOSS, EuroGEOSS, the Chinese DBAR (Digital Belt and Road) and China GEOSS) bring significant opportunities and challenges as regards their possible integration and interaction with the GEOSS Platform. In this context, there is an expressed need to avoid replication of efforts and to implement a uniformity of GEOSS users experience with the different Hubs.
By enabling the creation of services in support of science/policy interface for informed and evidence based decision-making, the GEOSS Platform is expected to have a strong societal impact. In particular, the GEOSS Platform is called to make a difference as regards the three, so-called, GEOSS Priorities: the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. EDGE considers them as drivers of the specification and prioritization of the Platform evolutions, which are carried out in coordination with GEO.
In particular, EDGE is developing discovery and access capabilities of SDG indicators and of climate-related data. Moreover, the project supports disaster resilience with specific functionalities (has already developed features for disaster assessment and has connected to the Copernicus Emergency Management Service).