EO4SEE Logo

EO4SEE stands for Earth Observation for South East Europe and it represents a pathfinder assessment for regional high volume data access, process and information service delivery platform within the region.

The pathfinder expresses the concept envisioned by ESA of a Regional Exploitation Platform for Earth observation data. For more than 20 years the satellites developed or operated by ESA have provided a wealth of data. While the availability of the growing volume of environmental data from space represents a unique opportunity for science and applications, it also poses a major challenge to achieve its full potential in terms of data exploitation. EO4SEE will facilitate the creation of a platform working environment providing the data, tools, and required resources, as opposed to downloading, replicating, and exploiting data ‘at home’.

About EO4SEE

The need for more advanced data visualization and analytics capabilities increases with the introduction of the Sentinels missions (big) data. These missions, along with the Copernicus Contributing Missions as well as Earth Explorers and Third Party missions will provide routine monitoring of our environment at the global scale, thereby delivering an unprecedented amount of data. The current and future datasets are often too large for researchers or data analysts to view and analyze with traditional processing tools. In this context, ESA has started in 2014 the EO Exploitation Platforms (EPs) initiative, a set of R&D activities that in the first phase (up to 2017) aims to create an ecosystem of interconnected Thematic Exploitation Platforms (TEPs) on European footing, addressing: coastal, forestry, hydrology, geohazards, polar, urban themes and food security. However this approach does not necessarily cover all of the use cases for EO data access and processing capabilities. In particular, the requirements of stakeholders from particular geographic regions requiring information services over several thematic domains may diverge significantly from those working in specific thematic domains. Furthermore, by considering a regional based approach for accessing data and associated processing resources, this may better match EO capabilities to coordinated regional initiatives to develop new business and expand local economies. EO4SEE project, financed by ESA, will provide a pathfinder assessment for regional high volume data access, process and information service delivery platform within the South East Europe region. The platform has the aim to offer advanced multi-temporal statistical analysis functions and visualization capabilities in a virtual environment, for a well defined geographic scope: the South-East Europe (targeted geographical features: Danube Basin, Carpathian Mountains, Black Sea). EO3SEE platform architecture is developed following the model proposed by ESA in the Exploitation Platform Open Architecture” specification document. The base infrastructure for the platform is provided by Earth Observation Innovative Platform Testbed Poland (EO IPT).

EO4SEE geographical scope

EO4SEE topics:

  • Integrated water management and flood risk prevention;
  • Environmental risks prevention;
  • Management of natural assets and protected areas;
  • Natural resources management;
  • Integrated coastal zone management; • Archaeology and cultural heritage.

Consortium

  • TERRASIGNA (prime contractor) is a Romanian leading provider of customized Geo-Information services with a wide pool of public and private national, European and North American clients.
  • West University of Timisoara (partner)
  • CleverMaps (partner) is a Czech company focused on providing geospatial intelligence services in several fields - agriculture, forestry, environment, transportation and regional development.
  • GISAT (partner) is an SME sized company founded in 1990 as first privately run remote sensing and geoinformation service company in the Czech Republic. The mission of the company is to provide its clients with complete portfolio of value added, high quality and state-of-the-art geoinformation services based on the Earth Observation technology.
  • Creotech Instruments (partner) Leader of Polish space sector, participates in a number of projects conducted by the European Space Agency. Creotech manufactures and supplies precise measuring instruments to research institutes around the world and carries out projects related to the study and exploration of outer space.
  • Wasat (partner) Wasat is the Polish space and geoinformation SME that develops and provides services based on Earth Observation, GIS and mobile technology.
  • SIGMA GAMES (partner) is a company focused on the simulations, 3D and VR/AR games and visualizations.

Other

Project website: http://pathfinder.terrasigna.com/

Companies