Earth Observation Ground Segment Approach and Vision

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Earth Observation Ground SegmentApproach and
Vision

• Gunther Kohlhammer
• Head of Earth Observation Ground Segment
  Department
• Earth Observation Programmes Directorate

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ESRIN the ESA Space Centre in Italy
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The ESRIN Establishment

• Founded in 1966
• 21.000sqm (constructed area)
• Personnel on site 600 average

• Visitors per year over 30.000
• international conferences ca. 10.000
• Meetings per year 2.700
• Budget in 2004 ca 200 Meuros

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ESRIN Staff and Contractors

• ESRIN hosts today 151 permanent staff
• 71 in the Earth Observation field
• 10 in the Vega Department
• 35 in Informatics
• 5 in Finance
• Additional staff is working in the supporting
  services Telecommunications, Contracts, Site,
  Personnel and Communication
• 426 Contractors from the European industry are
  working for ESRIN onsite as well as offsite
• Furthermore, ESRIN employs a number of Young
  Graduate Trainees and visiting scientists

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Earth Observation Satellites

• ESRIN manages the exploitation phase for all ESA
  and 3rd Party Missions
• Today ERS-2 and Envisat are operational

• New ESA missions will include
• Cryosat prediction of thinning arctic ice due to
  global warming
• GOCE measure high-accuracy gravity gradients and
  provide global models of the Earth's gravity
  field and of the geoid
• ADM-Aeolus The Earth Explorer Atmospheric
  Dynamics Mission will provide improved analyses
  of the global wind field in three-dimensionals.

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Oxygen Objective Relevant/Translated for IIM

• Increase Use of EO imaging sensors
• For archived and new data
• Also from / in synergy with non-EO domains (e.g.
  GIS)
• Coping with the increasing EO data amounts
  (petabytes)and complexity (different sensor
  types)
• Exploiting complementarity (data fusion across
  sensors)
• Preparing for systematic detection of relevant
  phenomena (otherwise some might remain undetected)

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Increase Use Challenges

• Evolving user requirements
• More and more need for information (instead of
  data)
• Access to large data sets and processing power
• Data fusion (with other EO sensors or from non-EO
  domains)
• Distributed, component based programming
  environment
• Increasing
• Number of missions
• Sensor variety / resolution
• Acquired / archived data size

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Increase Use Opportunities

• Technology evolution
• Cost reduction
• Processing power
• Storage
• Telecommunications
• Computing methods (neural networks, fuzzy logic,
  genetic algorithms, )
• Automation
• Research results
• New models
• New feature identification methods / algorithms
• Standards

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Increase Use Possible approaches

• Pre-requisites
• Systematically generate and load on-line level
  1/2 products
• Make available large processing power close to
  data
• Make possible
• Image selection also by information content
• Information discovery in large image archives
• Generation of level 3/4, using ESA or user
  algorithms
• Explore
• Extraction of GIS compatible features from images
  
• Simplified access to information via semantic
  terms
• Fusion with ground sensors data

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• ESA - EUSC Cooperation

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ESA EUSC Relations

• ESA and EUSC have long standing relations
• Meeting at least twice per year
• First official coordination meeting on January
  21, 2002
• IIM Coordination Group from May 26, 2003
• GS harmonisation (Heterogeneous Mission
  Accessibility)
• Addressed areas
• Requirements
• Technology
• Data access systems
• EO data

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ESA EUSC Formal Agreement

• Under finalisation(on the basis of the similar
  agreement in place with EC-JRC)
• Concerns three Activity Domains
• Access to and provision of EO data
• Security requirements (GS infrastructure, data,
  services, )
• GS infrastructure and technology (data service
  access)

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GS infrastructure and technology (draft)

• Establish cooperation projects on EO GS
  Technology
• Easier access to catalogues and data
• Tasking
• Fast data distribution in Europe and worldwide
• Information mining feature extraction
• Distributed interoperable service environments
• Technology evolutions
• Promote common actions (e.g. Conferences,
  Workshops, etc.) in order to foster and extend
  cooperation ? This
  Conference is one example