19.02.2018
Copernicus and the free & open source software community
The Copernicus Programme, with over 12 TB of Earth Observation (EO) data generated daily, is the third largest data provider globally. Our full, free and open data policy allows anyone anywhere in the world to access and use the data and information. But that is not the full picture. There is another community that often provides an important link to these vast amounts of data and the end user by providing tools, plug-ins and libraries to handle the data and make it easier for the end users to use it – this community is organised under the umbrella of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). This article is dedicated to all members of this community, the geospatial specialists, developers and enthusiasts, who help us unleash the full power of Copernicus, and shows the interaction between open data and Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).
Quelle: Copernicus
The Open Data Institute defines good open data as follows:
- It can be linked to for easy sharing
- It is available in a standard, structured format
- It has guaranteed availability and consistency over time
- It is traceable to its sources
These are the guidelines that we follow for Copernicus data and information. We are constantly striving to make the data easier to access, simpler to share, and more relevant to support your research or solve your business problem with EO. The upcoming Copernicus Data and Information Access Services (to be operational in mid-2018) will represent a considerable leap forward in this mission.
In the latest Copernicus Observer, we shall showcase some examples of tools linked to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) initiatives. We will show how these tools make access, processing and visualisation of Copernicus data and information more approachable and open, and how community resources invested into FOSS are boosting the growth of the Copernicus ecosystem.
The examples include:
- Accessing Copernicus Sentinel Data for GIS software to create WMS instances
- Creating maps and directly processing data
- Processing Sentinel images with the SNAP Toolbox
- Videos that show how to read and visualize data in NetCDF, HDF and GRIB formats
- Excellent web maps that visualize the damage extent resultung from forest fires in Sicily
Read this and more at the Copernicus Observer