Geophysical parameters retrieval from sentinel-1 SAR data: a case study for high performance computing at EODC

In this paper, we show first experimental results of big data processing for geophysical parameters retrieval from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data, carried out at the Earth Observation Data Center (EODC) for Water Resources Monitoring. The EODC is utilizing the high-performance computing platform provided by the third generation of the Vienna Scientific Cluster (VSC-3). Different Level-1 SAR datasets including data acquisitions from Sentinel-1 in four case studies were processed at the VSC-3 using the new SAR Geophysical Retrieval Toolbox (SGRT) developed at the Vienna University of Technology. SGRT produces a series of different geophysical parameters through time series analysis of satellite SAR data. This study presents the recent improvements and new features of the SGRT together with the findings obtained from the case studies performed at the EODC high-performance data processing environment.