Periodic Reporting for period 1 - OEMC (Open-Earth-Monitor Cyberinfrastructure)
Reporting period: 2022-06-01 to 2023-11-30
The Open-Earth-Monitor Cyberinfrastructure will increase European capability to generate timely, accurate, disaggregated, people-centred, accessible (GSM-compatible) and user-friendly environmental information based on Earth Observation data. We will achieve this by building a cyberinfrastructure anchored in FAIR data principles, leveraging and improving our existing platforms OpenEO.org Geopedia.world GlobalEarthMonitor.eu EarthSystemDataLab.net OpenLandMap.org OpenDataScience.eu LifeWatch.eu XCUBE and EuroDataCube.com.
We do this in 3 phases:
a) implementation of the computing engine and in-situ O&M data services;
b) direct application of the Open-Earth-Monitor to support EU Green Deal and other strategic actions;
c) dissemination and engagement of stakeholders & target users through series of open workshops, then revise the tools and adjust them to better fit their objectives and limitations.
We specifically target contributing to:
operational planning for planting 3 billion trees over the EU by 2030;
achieving climate-neutrality by 2035 in the land sector;
building back a net-zero GHG emission economy by 2050;
achieving UN’s SDGs’; monitoring essential biodiversity indicators;
compiling natural capital accounts for private / public sectors;
enabling businesses to leverage competitive advantage through the EU Green Deal;
increasing the quality of life for European Citizens.
We do this in 3 phases:
a) implementation of the computing engine and in-situ O&M data services;
b) direct application of the Open-Earth-Monitor to support EU Green Deal and other strategic actions;
c) dissemination and engagement of stakeholders & target users through series of open workshops, then revise the tools and adjust them to better fit their objectives and limitations.
We specifically target contributing to:
operational planning for planting 3 billion trees over the EU by 2030;
achieving climate-neutrality by 2035 in the land sector;
building back a net-zero GHG emission economy by 2050;
achieving UN’s SDGs’; monitoring essential biodiversity indicators;
compiling natural capital accounts for private / public sectors;
enabling businesses to leverage competitive advantage through the EU Green Deal;
increasing the quality of life for European Citizens.
We will innovate:
1) implementation of original cloud-based solutions to seamlessly integrate in-situ (point, site) & EO data so that we
can produce environmental information at analysis- and decision-ready levels;
2) implementation of fully-scalable Automated Mapping / AutoML frameworks;
3) user-experience-designed data provision and Apps possibly reaching millions of users across EU and globally;
4) financial assessment tools allowing users to directly quantify ecosystem services (SEEA methodology), to identify
optimal environmental and climate solutions, & to build business solutions.
Reporting Period one:
The first twelve months of the OEMC focused on project design, and user- and operational- requirements, with deliverables heavily skewed toward Work Packages 1, 2, and 8. Crucially, the project identified partner institutions to help co-develop a total of 32 use-cases, which includes at least one use-case for each monitoring tool to be developed under Work Packages 5 and 6. OEMC members interviewed use-case partners and determined the feasibility and expected impact of each use-case. Additionally, standards and operational guidelines were set to ensure interoperability and FAIR compliant processes for technological development.
In the final 6 months of the first reporting period, nearly all tasks from all Work Packages opened, and development on the computing engine, data harmonization tools, and environmental monitoring tools came underway. A prototype for the Tier 1 solution has been released at https://App.EarthMonitor.org — this is now the central place (Tier 1) where all monitors will be published by April 2024 (version 1). For external users it should be the landing page to explore project outputs as here all publications, data sets, geo-stories will be cross-linked.
The computing engine (back-end) has been set up by OpenGeoHub where all Tier 1 in-situ datasets will be integrated with EO data through a cloud-based solution (COGs, Geoparquet, Flatgeobuf etc). The Open-Earth-Monitor computing engine will serve all monitors, use-cases and building blocks generated from the project. Currently we have also incorporated a complete copy of the Landsat ARD V2 (1.4PB) and have produced a number of analysis-ready biophysical indices for the world that we will hopefully host and make publicly available also via the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem.
The OEMC hosted 3 events during the first reporting period, including two public events: the Project Launch in July 2022 and the annual Global Workshop in October 2023. The third event was a technical summit for Work Packages 3-6 in Muenster in May 2023, at which critical technical decisions have been made concerning the design of the OEMC App, choice of software for catalogs, data visualization and federated computing.
The main project achievements for the first 18 months thus include:
1. Over 30 peer-reviewed publications (submitted / published) and listed at: https://earthmonitor.org/scientific-publications/
2. Over 4TB of FAIR data published on https://zenodo.org/communities/oemc-project & https://app.earthmonitor.org;
3. One OEMC global workshops with oral talks and training sessions + science webinars video-recorded in HD https://earthmonitor.org/knowledge-hub/
4. The OEMC App has been launched in December 2023 (video available) and is operational from https://App.EarthMonitor.org.
1) implementation of original cloud-based solutions to seamlessly integrate in-situ (point, site) & EO data so that we
can produce environmental information at analysis- and decision-ready levels;
2) implementation of fully-scalable Automated Mapping / AutoML frameworks;
3) user-experience-designed data provision and Apps possibly reaching millions of users across EU and globally;
4) financial assessment tools allowing users to directly quantify ecosystem services (SEEA methodology), to identify
optimal environmental and climate solutions, & to build business solutions.
Reporting Period one:
The first twelve months of the OEMC focused on project design, and user- and operational- requirements, with deliverables heavily skewed toward Work Packages 1, 2, and 8. Crucially, the project identified partner institutions to help co-develop a total of 32 use-cases, which includes at least one use-case for each monitoring tool to be developed under Work Packages 5 and 6. OEMC members interviewed use-case partners and determined the feasibility and expected impact of each use-case. Additionally, standards and operational guidelines were set to ensure interoperability and FAIR compliant processes for technological development.
In the final 6 months of the first reporting period, nearly all tasks from all Work Packages opened, and development on the computing engine, data harmonization tools, and environmental monitoring tools came underway. A prototype for the Tier 1 solution has been released at https://App.EarthMonitor.org — this is now the central place (Tier 1) where all monitors will be published by April 2024 (version 1). For external users it should be the landing page to explore project outputs as here all publications, data sets, geo-stories will be cross-linked.
The computing engine (back-end) has been set up by OpenGeoHub where all Tier 1 in-situ datasets will be integrated with EO data through a cloud-based solution (COGs, Geoparquet, Flatgeobuf etc). The Open-Earth-Monitor computing engine will serve all monitors, use-cases and building blocks generated from the project. Currently we have also incorporated a complete copy of the Landsat ARD V2 (1.4PB) and have produced a number of analysis-ready biophysical indices for the world that we will hopefully host and make publicly available also via the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem.
The OEMC hosted 3 events during the first reporting period, including two public events: the Project Launch in July 2022 and the annual Global Workshop in October 2023. The third event was a technical summit for Work Packages 3-6 in Muenster in May 2023, at which critical technical decisions have been made concerning the design of the OEMC App, choice of software for catalogs, data visualization and federated computing.
The main project achievements for the first 18 months thus include:
1. Over 30 peer-reviewed publications (submitted / published) and listed at: https://earthmonitor.org/scientific-publications/
2. Over 4TB of FAIR data published on https://zenodo.org/communities/oemc-project & https://app.earthmonitor.org;
3. One OEMC global workshops with oral talks and training sessions + science webinars video-recorded in HD https://earthmonitor.org/knowledge-hub/
4. The OEMC App has been launched in December 2023 (video available) and is operational from https://App.EarthMonitor.org.
In addition to the outputs from the Grant Agreement, the project has also produced a number of significant data sets and tools. This includes the global monthly water vapor data set (https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.8193738) and the Zen package (https://github.com/Open-Earth-Monitor/zen) that allows for the easy upload and updating of data on zenodo.
We have also assisted the EuroGEO in organization of the event at EURAC and processing of video recordings of all talks. To enable easy access to all such materials we have set up a https://earthmonitor.org/knowledge-hub/ URL where one can list and browse all such multimedia materials.
We have also assisted the EuroGEO in organization of the event at EURAC and processing of video recordings of all talks. To enable easy access to all such materials we have set up a https://earthmonitor.org/knowledge-hub/ URL where one can list and browse all such multimedia materials.