Evolution of Earth Observation Online Data Access

With the Heterogeneous Missions Accessibility (HMA) initiative, the OGC standard “Web Coverage Service (WCS) Earth Observation Application Profile” has been developed to harmonize online access to very large primary Earth Observation data holdings. Although its use in web mapping servers has proven valuable capabilities, this standard is not yet widely adopted. Its acceptance for data download by end users is hampered by the lack of interpretation guidelines and its complexity requiring considerable server and client implementation efforts. In this context, the project “Evolution of EO Online Data Access Services” funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) and presented in this paper analyses relevant scenarios and technologies for data publication and access, identifies potential for improvements of standards and their implementations, prototypes and evaluates selected improvements and proposes standard extensions for future releases. We hope hereby to considerably improve the acceptance of online EO data access services and standards and to promote their evolution and diffusion.