Remote sensing data management

Space Systems

Space data access & Applications

The SPACEBEL Remote Sensing Data Management Business Unit specializes in the development and operation of data and information acquisition, integrity, archiving, discovery, processing, retrieval, visualization, dissemination and quality control. It also encompasses the exploitation of federated and collaborative payload data ground segment services and data dissemination and all aspects related to subsystems for accessing data and information and user interface tools and methods.

Our core expertise includes Web-based Spatial Data Infrastructures and Service provisioning infrastructures facilitating interoperable discovery and access to Earth Observation data and application services consuming these data. We design, develop and maintain Web-based operational software systems, part of the ESA Payload Data Ground Segment, the Space Component Data Access of Copernicus and the Space Weather Data Center incl. the ESA/SWE Portal within the Space Situational Awareness. We also developed the EORegions! underlying exploitation-platform software which we offer to customers as a scalable cloud-based, service provisioning platform consistent with the ESA and Open Geospatial Consortium exploitation platform architecture guidelines.

More specifically, our realisations employ service-oriented or RESTful design patterns, are based on state-of-the-art interoperability standards from standardisation bodies such as W3C, OASIS, ISO, OGC and rely on cloud-native (Kubernetes, Docker), Java and Web-based technology. For current implementations and activities including the ESA EO-CAT, and EO-GeoJSON standardisation, we also exploit knowledge-representation, Semantic Web, Linked Data and Jupyter technology.

In addition, we provide our expertise in EO standards to standardisation bodies and standardisation projects initiated by the European Space Agency at a global scale in the contexts of OGC and CEOS.

Reference Projects

Copernicus Space Component

SPACEBEL is responsible for the Interoperability Layer implementation and its maintenance. This component allows for discovery, feasibility analysis, ordering of Earth Observation products from Copernicus Contributing Missions through a single endpoint, based on orchestration and Web services technology. All interfaces implement the corresponding Open Geospatial Consortium standards. End customer: ESA

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ESA Earth Observation Catalogue

EO-CAT is the Next Generation Earth Observation system designed to manage end-user Earth Observation services. SPACEBEL designed and developed the Kubernetes-based collection and product metadata catalogue and the supporting EO SKOS Thesauri. The catalogue provides access to Earth Observation products and standards-based external interfaces based on OGC EO OpenSearch and EO O&M and EO GeoJSON metadata specifications

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ESA Federated Earth Observation and CEOS

ESA Federated Earth Observation missions access provides a unique entry point to a growing number of scientific catalogues and services for Earth Observation missions. It facilitates access to European missions data in the international context of the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites. SPACEBEL designed and developed the FedEO system. In addition, SPACEBEL supports ESA at the CEOS Working Group on Information Systems and Services) within the Discovery & Access Interest Group (DAIG). The FedEO Gateway software is also used by the German Space Agency DLR as part of their CODE-DE environment.

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ESA Space Situational Awareness

SPACEBEL designed and developed the Space Weather services portal as Prime contractor for ESA. It is deployed at the SWE Data Centre in Belgium. The Portal relies on an underlying Service-Oriented Architecture and service orchestration workflows technology. An interactive Web user interface enable to retrieve data from the Space Weather Metadata Repository and access to Space Weather applications in the Data Centre

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Copernicus Global Land

As part of a service contract for the EU Joint Research Centre, SPACEBEL implemented an Earth Observation Datacube, i.e. a standards-based Pixel-based access for selected Copernicus Global Land datasets. A dedicated Web client relies on an OGC Web Coverage Service interface and facilitates visual evaluation of the spatial and temporal quality of the COPERNICUS Global Land products. The DataCube allows reviewers to assess the product quality and browse the data according to its space and time axes.

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