Land Monitoring Network Services based on international geospatial standards: SOSI and geoland2/SDI Projects

Abstract

Spatial Observation Services and Infrastructure is a project to develop and verify innovative infrastructure and services within the context of land monitoring and Earth Observation initiatives at European and Member State (MS) levels. The project's results contribute to the concept definition of the Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS) emphasising symmetrical online sharing of information as opposed to unidirectional reporting. In a pre-operational set-up, involving the European Environment Agency (EEA), four MS sites and the European Space Agency (ESA), a decentralised information system respecting the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) principles is demonstrated integrating distributed data and processing services as well as interactive multi-lingual access. The geoland2 project is carried out in the context of Global Monitoring for the Environment and Security (GMES), a joint initiative of the European Commission and ESA, aiming to build up a European capacity for GMES. The Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) task shall set up operational services for the discovery, viewing, access and delivery of all products generated in the geoland2 project. The paper presents the projects along the five International Standards Organisation (ISO)/Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing viewpoints and concludes with the main recommendation that service provisioning can strongly benefit from a (re-) utilisation of the Service Support Environment (SSE) technology provided sustainably by ESA and from the related rich experience.