Data network management and support services for the Centre for Earth Observation

The Centre for Earth Observation (CEO) project of the European Commission aims at enhancing the European-wide communication and exchange of information and data between Earth Observation data and service providers and users. The CEO project is currently in its pathfinder phas...

The Centre for Earth Observation (CEO) project of the European Commission aims at enhancing the European-wide communication and exchange of information and data between Earth Observation data and service providers and users.

The CEO project is currently in its pathfinder phase and plans to conduct a series of "proof-of-concept" activities in the domain of communications technology in order to support the CEO pathfinder requirements and design process.

This second announcement for communications technology "proof-of-concept" activities covers the second call and covers three specific areas:

- European Earth Observation catalogue interoperability. The proposed work will result in a European Earth Observation data catalogue being interoperable to other European and global catalogues within the framework of the ongoing CEOS Catalogue Interoperability Experiment (CINTEX);

- Catalogue interoperability gateway to the World Wide Web. The current protocols used for Earth Observation catalogue interoperability are based on priority protocols, such as those used in the CEOS CINTEX experiment (IMS and UIT). Other protocols, such as http, might not fulfil all requirements but are better known to the user community. The purpose of this study is to establish a multi-purpose gateway for WWW clients to talk to these protocols, specifically IMS.

- Enhanced user help and navigation tools for Earth Observation data catalogues. Based on existing technological approaches, a demonstrator will be generated and used with existing catalogue systems, which eases the access to, and understanding of, Earth Observation catalogues for non-experts in Earth Observation terminology. The generated prototypical software shall be portable to other systems.

Tender documents can be requested from:

European Commission
Joint Research Centre
Mr. P. Churchill
TP 441
I-21020 Ispra
Tel. [phone]; Fax [phone]
E-mail: [e-mail]