Yaniss Guigoz

Bringing GEOSS Services into Practice: A Capacity Building Resource on Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI)

Data discoverability, accessibility, and integration are frequent barriers for scientists and a major obstacle for favorable results on environmental research. To tackle this issue, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) is leading the development of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), a voluntary effort that connects Earth Observation resources world-wide, acting as a gateway between producers and users of environmental data. GEO recognizes the importance of capacity building and education to reach large adoption, acceptance and commitment on data sharing principles to increase the capacity to access and use Earth Observations data. This article presents “Bringing GEOSS services into practice” (BGSIP), an integrated set of teaching material and software to facilitate the publication and use of environmental data through standardized discovery, view, download, and processing services, further facilitating the registration of data into GEOSS. So far, 520 participants in 10 countries have been trained using this material, leading to numerous Spatial Data Infrastructure implementations and 1,000 tutorial downloads. This workshop lowers the entry barriers for both data providers and users, facilitates the development of technical skills, and empowers people.

Facilitating the production of ISO-compliant metadata of geospatial datasets

Abstract Metadata are recognized as an essential element to enable efficient and effective discovery of geospatial data published in spatial data infrastructures (SDI). However, metadata production is still perceived as a complex, tedious and time-consuming task. This typically results in little metadata production and can seriously hinder the objective of facilitating data discovery. In response to this issue, this paper presents a proof of concept based on an interoperable workflow between a data publication server and a metadata catalog to automatically generate ISO-compliant metadata. The proposed approach facilitates metadata creation by embedding this task in daily data management workflows; ensures that data and metadata are permanently up-to-date; significantly reduces the obstacles of metadata production; and potentially facilitates contributions to initiatives like the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) by making geospatial resources discoverable.

An interoperable cloud-based scientific GATEWAY for NDVI time series analysis

Processing of high-resolution time series satellite images typically requires a large amount of computational resources and time. We introduce here a scientific gateway for computing the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) time series data. Based on a distributed workflow using the Web Processing Service (WPS) standard, the gateway aims to be completely interoperable with other standardized tools. The availability of this gateway may help researchers to acquire knowledge of land cover changes more efficiently over very large spatial and temporal extents, which is especially important in the context of Armenia for which timely decision-making is needed. A scientific gateway for computing the NDVI time series data based on a distributed workflow using the WPS standard.An optimal NDVI times series geoprocessing services based on cloud infrastructures.Experimental results in the study area that include some part of the territory of Armenia.

GEOCAB portal : a gateway for discovering and accessing capacity building resources in earth observation

The discovery of and access to capacity building resources are often essential to conduct environmental projects based on Earth Observation (EO) resources, whether they are Earth Observation products, methodological tools, techniques, organizations that impart training in these techniques or even projects that have shown practical achievements. Recognizing this opportunity and need, the European Commission through two FP7 projects jointly with the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) teamed up with the Committee on Earth observation Satellites (CEOS). The Global Earth Observation CApacity Building (GEOCAB) portal aims at compiling all current capacity building efforts on the use of EO data for societal benefits into an easily updateable and user-friendly portal. GEOCAB offers a faceted search to improve user discovery experience with a fully interactive world map with all inventoried projects and activities. This paper focuses on the conceptual framework used to implement the underlying platform. An ISO19115 metadata model associated with a terminological repository are the core elements that provide a semantic search application and an interoperable discovery service. The organization and the contribution of different user communities to ensure the management and the update of the content of GEOCAB are addressed.

An interoperable web portal for parallel geoprocessing of satellite image vegetation indices

The main objective of this paper is to introduce a portal of geoprocessing services that can be used to compute either a single vegetation index or a combination of vegetation indices, as a workflow. High Performance Computing (HPC) resources are used for the calculations, and the Web Processing Service (WPS) standard is used to handle the requests from and the responses to the portal. In case of a workflow, a single node of the cluster is dedicated to each index, and the number of used cores depends on the complexity of the task. In addition, based on a series of experiments made to accelerate remote sensing image processing, a parallelization method within the computational node is automatically chosen depending on the complexity of the operations and the amount of data. The suggested algorithm optimizes the processing by selecting the best methodology (serial or parallel) and the number of cores to efficiently manipulate and distribute the data. The interoperable web portal, Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) and the heterogeneous resources of HPC cluster are located in the same local area network, and the cluster nodes have access to the data via network file system sharing. The use of standardized web services makes it possible to use remote data as inputs.

Integration of data and computing infrastructures for Earth Science: an image mosaicking use-case

This paper addresses the emerging issue of integrating data sharing and computing e-infrastructures for multidisciplinary applications. In the recent years several solutions have been proposed to implement digital infrastructures for sharing and processing scientific data and observations. Spatial data infrastructures currently enable effective and efficient geo-information data sharing in many disciplinary communities, and innovative solutions are under development to support new open data and linked data paradigms. In parallel, High Performance Computing systems, computing grids and more recently cloud services, enable fast processing of big data. However, the integration of data and computing e-infrastructures is a raising issue in multidisciplinary research. In the context of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) initiative, an innovative approach has been proposed. Taking into account that the heterogeneity of data and computing e-infrastructures and related technologies cannot be reduced beyond a certain extent, since it is due to the need of supporting use cases and scenarios from different scientific communities, a brokering solution has been designed and developed. A Business Process Broker (BPB) is a component which takes a formal description of a scientific business process, and translates it in an executable process which can be run on multiple and remote processing and workflow services. In doing this it solves all the interoperability issues in a (semi-)automated way. It allows lowering the entry barrier for both computing service providers and users, decoupling the specification of the scientific process from the underlying enabling infrastructures. The paper presents and discusses a BPB use-case from the European project IASON, implementing an Earth Observation application involving satellite image mosaicking, HPC computing services and spatial data e-infrastructures.

SCOPED-W: SCalable Online Platform for extracting Environmental Data and Water-related model outputs

This article presents SCOPED, an innovative approach for extracting environmental data using OGC services. In the field of water resource management, SCOPED-W (‘W’ for ‘Water’) is a method that was developed in the framework of EU/FP7 IASON and EOPOWER projects. This platform supports the collection of data required to build a Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model and the uptake, spatialization and dissemination of raw data generated from the outputs of different SWAT models for the Black Sea region. Scientists are documenting the data served by the platform in ISO standardized metadata to support informed use. SCOPED-W primarily targets the community of SWAT users in the Black Sea region but it can easily be replicated in other geographical areas. Additionally, the SCOPED approach is based on data interoperability that makes it fully compatible with other domains of application as demonstrated here with three original use cases. The article also highlights the benefits of the approach for the GEO community and discusses future improvements for supporting integration with other platforms such as UNEP Live.

A web platform for landuse, climate, demography, hydrology and beach erosion in the Black Sea catchment

The Black Sea catchment (BSC) is facing important demographic, climatic and landuse changes that may increase pollution, vulnerability and scarcity of water resources, as well as beach erosion through sea level rise. Limited access to reliable time-series monitoring data from environmental, statistical, and socio-economical sources is a major barrier to policy development and decision-making. To address these issues, a web-based platform was developed to enable discovery and access to key environmental information for the region. This platform covers: landuse, climate, and demographic scenarios; hydrology and related water vulnerability and scarcity; as well as beach erosion. Each data set has been obtained with state-of-the-art modelling tools from available monitoring data using appropriate validation methods. These analyses were conducted using global and regional data sets. The data sets are intended for national to regional assessments, for instance for prioritizing environmental protection projects and investments. Together they form a unique set of information, which lay out future plausible change scenarios for the BSC, both for scientific and policy purposes.