EO Data Hub

Earth observation data can provide a wealth of information by virtue of its comprehensive geo-temporal coverage, the range of instruments and sensing platforms and the sophistication with which measurements can be derived from the Earth system. These can be applied to obtain insights into the interaction between human activity and the Earth system.

Particularly important factors in recent times have been the recognition of the value of both public service (state-funded through space agencies) and commercial constellations, good access to key data sets from trusted sources and the desire to combine data sets for high level product or information services relevant to environmental sciences. Hitherto, the UK strategy has been to invest in data centres, hubs and platforms via Europe and both science assets such as the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) and UK software and data platform companies have been successful in obtaining funding in a European context. This project is a very important first step driven by the UK's new National Space Strategy (NSS) which identifies the opportunity of market growth in EO, the need for world-leading science and technology e.g., the fight against climate change, and the value of international partnerships.

The sheer scale of EO datasets can presents barriers to its effective exploitation due to a significant growth in types of sensors, in data volumes, and in data products which are essential outputs from satellites for science to services. Furthermore, practitioners often wish to combine EO with sensor networks, model data and, in a new challenge, digital twins of the Earth.

The EO DataHub seeks to meet these challenges, capitalise on UK strengths and take the opportunity to create a first UK infrastructure capable of serving public and commercial EO data, alongside other data sources, to a wide range of users from science to industry to government. The key attributes of this pre-operational service, which is intended to be free in this phase to UK users at the point of use, are the following:
- A federated approach using UK-specific software infrastructure which is state-of-the-art, and demonstrably keeps the UK at the forefront of digital EO technologies, reducing data downloads and data volumes for storage
- Platforms for specific sectors which are judged to enable the most benefit in this phase of the project; one will be climate.
- Pilot projects and champion users which will support progression of the concept, specifications, evaluation and demonstration.
Software wrappers to allow algorithms to run at data sources (selected sources)
- Access to scientific, public and commercial data sets; the last by procurement and negotiation.
- A central place for NERC community EO data sets, alongside its Environmental Data Service, specifically serving the outputs of the UKEO Climate Information Service (UKEO CIS) and model data from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, CMIP6.

Through the provision of a shared software infrastructure and user services, the data hub will seek to address the issues around fragmentation of data access and services experienced by the user community. Data streams from the academic and commercial sectors will build on and provide continuity from previous UK investments, including high quality, Essential Climate Variable UK-produced datasets and UK-specific datasets; high-profile climate model simulations - CMIP and CORDEX; access to operational data streams and commercial data streams. By providing an innovation laboratory, the EO Data Hub expects to support academic, industry and government users leading to 1000+ users; five large-scale, impactful activities with business or national stakeholders; support to at least 10 SMEs per year and 10 government users.