Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 20
European Space Agency Testbed
Background
ESA-ESRIN, the European Space Agency establishment in Frascati (Italy), is
the largest European EO data provider and operates as the reference European
centre for EO payload data exploitation.
EO data provide global coverage of the Earth across both a continuum of
timescales (from historical measurement to real time assessment to short and
long term predictions) and a variety of geographical scales (from global scale
to very small scale). In more detail, EO data are generated by many different
instruments (passive multi-spectral radiometers working in the visible, infrared,
thermal and microwave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum or active instru-
ments in the microwave field) generating multi-sensor data in long time series
(time-span from a few years to decades) with a variable geographical coverage
(local, regional, global), variable geometrical resolution (from few meters to sev-
eral hundreds of meters) and variable temporal resolution (from few days up to
several months).
EO data acquired from space constitute therefore a powerful scientific tool to
enable better understanding and management of the Earth and its resources.
More specifically, large international initiatives such as ESA-EU GMES (Global
Monitoring for Environment and Security) and the intergovernmental GEO
(Group on Earth Observations) focus on coordinating international efforts to
environmental monitoring, i.e. to provide political and technical solutions to
global issues, such as climate change, global environment monitoring, manage-
ment of natural resources and humanitarian response.
At present several thousand ESA users worldwide (Earth scientists, researchers,
environmentalists, climatologists, etc.) have online access to EO missions'
“metadata” (millions of references), data (in the range of 3-5 PB) and derived
information for the long term science and the long term environmental moni-
toring; moreover the requirements for accessing historical archives have been
