NextGEOSS has evolved throughout six gradually incremental releases:
1) The Alpha Release (June 2017) with deployment of the catalogue, the beginning of the activities of pilots. The catalogue was deployed including the harvest extension that allowed to add new harvesters. Special attention was given to improve the cataloguing datasets and enriching the respective metadata. OpenSearch was improved to allow a wider range of possible queries.
The following was also accomplished:
- Deployment of NextGEOSS' services in cloud infrastructure;
- User support via on-boarding service, including training sessions;
- Initial setup of the Analytics Engine;
- Implementation of User Management (UM) service.
2) The Beta Release (April 2018) included the full integration of the Crop Monitoring supporting Food Security pilot; three new pilots integrated and discovering data through OpenSearch interface; one additional external pilot integrated; further Integration of components.
3) Version 1.0 (January 2019) included:
- Improved UI for Data Hub, allowing users to mimic the 2-step search, with Data Providers, Data Collections and Service Catalogue pages;
- Cataloguing one European project data;
- Integration of 3 internal and 1 external pilots in production;
- Release of the OpenSearch API;
- Refurbished NextGEOSS portal with consolidated service pages and engagement offerings, and new design.
4) Version 1.1 (June 2019), including:
- Integration of all but one the internal pilots into sandbox;
- Integration of 6 internal pilots into production;
- Integration of 2 new external pilots into sandbox;
- Release of 5 community portals;
- Integration of 3 pilots with UM, cataloguing output data; cataloguing external projects.
5) Version 2.0 (November 2019), including:
- All internal pilots except one in production;
- Integration of external pilots and examples of Cloud Bursting in DIAS;
- UM integration for 3 pilots;
- Analytics for 3 more pilots and extended the dashboards;
- Several new harvesters running continuously;
- Implementation of QoS;
- Improved OpenSearch compliance;
- Harvesting of 2 new data sources.
6) Version 3.0 (September 2020), included:
- Refactored backend to sort out performance issue;
- Cataloguing additional data;
- Integration of all remaining pilots.
NextGEOSS has engaged not only the GEO community, but also involving other sectors not traditionally present in EO. Several commercial stakeholders have also been involved and consulted. This involvement has enabled the identification and exploitation of relevant gaps and opportunities for exploring and expanding NextGEOSS services, and developing innovative services.
The NextGEOSS' User Experience also enables the tailoring of the offer to the new stakeholders. For this, NextGEOSS enables new applications to find and retrieve new data, supporting research institutes, universities, and commercial companies to enter the market with new product ideas and services.
The project held one summit per year and participated in the EuroGEOSS Workshops. There were continuous communication and dissemination activities, including the webpages, social media, communications in international events, online workshops, hackathons, webinars and publications, with 90+ videos available. A strong emphasis was given on open data and standards, connecting with regional GEOs.
