Quality control in Earth observation
The GEOSS common infrastructure provides a GEO portal and search engines. Users now have a single Internet access point to data, imagery and analysis of information from all parts of the globe. Network interoperability is ensured by a common set of data standards. With EU funding of the project 'Quality aware visualisation for the global Earth observation system of systems' (GEOVIQUA) , scientists expanded the GEOSS to include rigorous data quality indicators integrated with quality-enabled search and visualisation tools. Searches can be filtered based on quality criteria. Quality information is displayed together with data in a format compatible with existing GEO portal standards and mass-market mapping tools such as Google Earth. A user feedback system is implemented to capitalise on the wealth of knowledge and experience of individual users. Their sheer numbers should ensure quality is maintained and potential issues are highlighted. Researchers successfully extracted quality indicators from the main EO metadata formats and converted them into useful layers for compatibility with developed graphical representation tools. In addition, the team developed models of quality-enhanced producer metadata exploiting International Standards Organisation standards. The models enable encoding of reference data, citations, and issues discovered in metadata documents. Tools provide formal uncertainty estimates. GEOVIQUA has actively contributed to an enhanced GEO label with increased user trustworthiness. From their desks, users will have access to the same phenomenally huge EO data sets and tools, now enhanced with the trustworthiness required for sustainability.
Keywords
Earth Observation, GEOSS, portal, search engines, data, imagery, analysis, standards, quality, tools, metadata, models
