INFEO due to go live in autumn 1999
INFEO (information on earth observation) is scheduled to replace the European Commission's Earth Observation Centre's (CEO) current earth observation information system EWSE (European Wide service exchange), this autumn. INFEO will offer all the functions of EWSE and also allow on-line searching of major data collections for the first time. The following activities are now underway to prepare INFEO for release: - Gateways, to talk to data catalogues, are being installed around Europe and elsewhere in the world so that all Earth observation data of possible interest is available; - An advertisement and announcement server similar to that of EWSE is being built; - Work is also continuing on the user interface to make INFEO as simple as possible to use. Catalogues from the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) and other European research centres are already connected and are being tested, and new gateways to connect to SpotImage, Eurimage and the European Space Agency (ESA) will be installed over the course of the summer. In addition, non-space catalogues from, for example, the Institute for Terrestrial Ecology and the Swedish Environmental Data Centre will be added in the coming months.