Open Data Cube (ODC) in Taiwan: The Initiative and Protocol Development

Abstract

The growing Earth Observation (EO) satellite data requires an open and freely accessible exploitation tool to facilitate the development and sustainability of applications on land use and land cover change, water resources, forest monitoring, and etc. Open Data Cube (ODC) was initiated by the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) to provide a solution with new computing technologies. ODC can promote free and open EO satellite data and application algorithms, and lower the technical barriers for users on exploiting the data. This project aims to develop the ODC protocol in Taiwan and apply it on a case study – forest monitoring after the attack of typhoon Morako in Taimali river basin, the eastern of Taiwan. Firstly, the strategic implementation, the platform, and the infrastructure of Taiwan Data Cube (TWDC) are initiated. And, the TWDC is applied on forest monitoring between 2000 and 2016 using Landsat-7 images. Finally, the improvement and perspective of TWDC protocol are discussed. In the future, (1) the Formosat series images will be prepared as Analysis Ready Data (ARD), (2) the software environment will be improved on data management and user interactive interface, and (3) the protocol of TWDC will be duplicated to developing countries on international cooperation projects under the collaboration with CEOS and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).