→ SENTINELS COLLABORATIVE GROUND SEGMENT WORKSHOP #12

8 June 2016 – Executive Summary

BACKGROUND

The Sentinel family of satellites is being developed to meet the operational needs of Europe’s environment monitoring programme, Copernicus. The firsts in the fleet, Sentinel-1A, Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-3A were launched in April 2014, June 2015 and February 2016 respectively. Sentinel-1A is already accompanied by its’ sister satellite Sentinel-1B, launched in April 2016. Sentinel-5P will be launched later in 2016. The B-units of Sentinel-2 and -3 are foreseen for launch in 2017.

Copernicus is the European Union’s Earth Observation and Monitoring Programme, headed by the Commission (COM). ESA coordinates the delivery of data from upwards of 45 satellites, comprising the Copernicus dedicated missions (Sentinels) and the Copernicus Contributing Missions. The Commission is responsible for the overall initiative, setting requirements and managing the Copernicus services.

The Copernicus Space Component (CSC) – coordinated by ESA – includes the development and operations of the Sentinel satellites, as well as the distribution of the acquired Earth observation data. All Sentinel products are currently freely accessible online for the worldwide user community at www.copernicus.eu and sentinels.copernicus.eu

In addition to that, and in close coordination with the Commission, ESA facilitates cooperation activities with Participating States to the Copernicus and the GMES Space Component Programmes (including Canada) for direct and efficient access to Sentinel data. In the framework of the Sentinels Collaborative Ground Segment, potential activities of those countries are the set-up of a national mirror site, employment of own local passive receiving stations, development of innovative data processing tools and applications and complementary calibration/validation activities. In any Participating State, various initiatives and entities can be involved in the cooperation. Therefore a National Point of Contact bundles the flow of information between the national entities and ESA.

Under the lead of the Commission, ESA implements a similar cooperation scheme also with international partners.

WORKSHOP CONTEXT

The Sentinels Collaborative Ground Segment (CollGS) workshops provide a platform for information and discussion between ESA, the National Points of Contact, national entities involved in the cooperation and the Commission. The workshop succeeds the yearly meetings of the “GMES Operations Consultation Group”, which started in 2010. In order to foster coordination among the CollGS initiatives, workshops are organised by ESA twice a year.

The workshop #12 objectives were to:

Summarise the activities of the Copernicus Integrated Ground Segment Task Force lead by the Commission

Report on the latest Copernicus Space Component (CSC) developments: programmatic and technical

Update on the latest status of the various Collaborative initiatives established by GMES Space Component (GSC) and Copernicus Participating States

Promote the coherence between the CSC Ground Segment and Participating States collaborative initiatives

Provide a forum for participants to harmonise their plans

Address specific issues in the fields of:

Status of national mirror sites

Collaborative products (e.g. Level-2, Level-3, Analysis Ready Data)

On-going and planned projects and operational services at national and regional level

The workshop took place on the 8th June 2016 at the ESA ESRIN premises in Frascati, Italy. 40 external participants attended the workshop, representing 20 countries. The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) were also represented as per previous GOCG meetings.

During the first part of the meeting, ESA introduced the workshop objectives and reported on the status of implementation of the recommendations from the CollGS workshop#11. The Commission presented the overall programmatic status of the Copernicus programme, including in particular a summary of the activities conducted in the frame of the Integrated Ground Segment Task Force. ESA provided an overview of the latest status and prospect of the Copernicus Space Component, including the current programmatic set-up, the overall technical implementation status and the status of the Sentinels missions. The status of the Sentinel data access and upcoming dissemination enhancements was also provided.

The second part of the workshop was dedicated to presentations by the participants addressing the progress of own CollGS initiatives. EMSA presented the CleanSeaNet service based on Sentinel-1 observations. 11 presentations from Member States and Copernicus Participating countries demonstrated the maturity reached by the on-going and planned CollGS initiatives.

The final round table and wrap-up focused on the status and evolution of Sentinel data access.

WORKSHOP HIGHLIGHTS

Participants emphasized the usefulness of the workshop, as the technical forum to coordinate the various CollGS initiatives. Future workshops should also include participation by international partners once every two years. Participants suggested having a closer coordination between the CollGS workshops and the Copernicus Integrated Ground Segment Task Force meetings in order to maximise synergies. The main highlights of the workshop are summarized below.

The status of the recommendations from CollGS workshop #10 and 11 was reviewed. Most actions have been implemented; four recommendations remain to be completed by end 2016.

Both the Copernicus Space Component ground segment and the national Sentinel CollGS initiatives have undergone further major developments over the last months.

The CSC ground segment operates nominally and serves the different user typologies through dedicated data access hubs. The hubs are since May 2016 connected via a dedicated 10Gbps line to the GEANT academic network. The refurbishment of the Collaborative data hub was also completed in spring 2016. Further data dissemination enhancements are planned to be introduced in the coming months, including e.g. publishing of Sentinel-2 products in TILE and RGB format, hub back-end scalability, deployment of additional core node(s).

CollGS agreements between ESA and eleven Participating States have been signed to date. Further signatures are planned during the coming months. With European countries not participating to the ESA GSC programme, a cooperation scheme similar to CollGS is being implemented based on Technical Collaborative Agreement documents, currently being tailored with Estonia, Hungary and Slovenia With international partners, ESA is implementing the cooperation based on Technical Arrangements; four of them have been signed to date (i.e. NASA, NOAA, USGS and Geoscience Australia).

Concerning the Copernicus Services, a presentation was given by EMSA on their activities, including also CleanSeaNet. Their services are now relying progressively more on Sentinel-1 data.

Hence the cost for acquiring SAR commercial data (Radarsat and TerraSAR-X) is being significantly reduced. As a consequence wider service can be offered to EMSA’s stakeholders (e.g. European countries plus some partnering countries).

Many national activities, in particular Sentinel data mirror sites, and generation of high-level products and services are operational. Many mirror sites in place are now also adding hosted processing to their services. Furthermore, some of the national initiatives compromise now specific support actions to promote Sentinel data uptake by the commercial sector, e.g. SMEs, in the field of EO value adding. Sentinel-1 and -2 core products are being used operationally by services from many different application fields. In particular, the following highlights were presented:

Austria CollGS: two collaborative initiatives are being implemented addressing institutional and commercial areas. The national data mirror (access portal and rolling archive) operated by ZAMG opened recently and sees a high user demand during the first days. Hosted processing and archiving capacities for Sentinel data are offered by EODC in collocation with further EO data for the generation of additional products and services by institutional and commercial users.

Canada CollGS: the national mirror site was opened in November 2015. Currently the “National Earth Observation Data Framework (NEODF)” to be replaced in near future with the “Earth Observation Data Management System (EODMS) serves mainly governmental users. Several operational services based among others on Sentinel data are supported (e.g. sea and river ice service, fire monitoring).

Finland CollGS: The national mirror FINHUB is operational since May 2016, including hosted processing and higher products generation e.g. for water quality and snow cover. Local passive X-band station is operating. Several operational applications are already supported, e.g. baltic

sea ice monitoring service, flood detection.

France CollGS: PEPS mirror site platform was opened in September 2015 with approx. 700 registered users in March 2016. Hosted processing is available as in-kind contribution to support e.g. national business promotion initiatives.

German CollGS: Sentinel data mirror at CODE-DE will provide online data archive, hosted processing and additional products. CODE-DE will be open later this year. Sentinel-1 X-band acquisition at the passive X-band station in Neustrelitz is operational. EDRS reception is in preparation, based on successful Alphasat demonstrations and a new Ka-Band antenna in Neustrelitz

Greece CollGS: The Hellenic Sentinel data mirror is included in the BEYOND concept for access to various EO data and is operational. Several applications are supported e.g. the monitoring of floods, smoke dispersion and fires. Federated single sign on as well as hosted processing are additional functions of the portal. A specific service based on Persistent Scatterers determined from Sentinel-1 data, is being pursued

Italy CollGS: The procurement of the national mirror site is on-going. An intermediate small scale solution is in place since May 2016 and provides Sentinel data access.

Norway CollGS: Sentinel data is distributed via national mirror site. Main users are national institutions. As those institutions process Sentinel data in their infrastructure together with other EO data, a focus is on reducing data volumes for data distribution (bands extraction etc). A specific service based on Persistent Scatterers determined from Sentinel-1 data, is being pursued.

Slovenia CollGS: EO platform focusing on Slovenian coverage for various applications combines Sentinel-1 and-2 data with further data sources (Landsat). Data is currently extracted from SciHub and stored in an ICT infrastructure provided by Amazon WS.

Sweden CollGS: National Sentinel data mirror site (SWEA) is being procured for an initial period of 12 months with option for 3 further years, It is target to open in Q3 2017. The coverage focuses on Swedish territories and the Baltic sea.

Poland CollGS: A national Sentinel data mirror is intended to be set-up by end 2016 under the auspices of the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management in Cracow, already managing meteorological and EO data from various sources.

In summary, collaborative GS initiatives has made major progress since the last CollGS workshop as indicated by:

The significant increase of users registered in CollGS national portals

The number of new national services/applications deployed in the last 6 months

The implementation in several CollGS of hosted processing capabilities, some based on private/public ICT

The introduction of specific measures to support data uptake by SMEs and start-up

Several national initiatives are also addressing regional/national applications based on Permanent Scatterers generated using Sentinel-1 data.

Beyond the presentations, it was noted that several plans for new CollGS by various Participating States are being refined.

Regarding Sentinel data access, the paradigm of “bringing the user to the data” or “bringing the data to the user” was discussed. Participants highlighted, that both approaches are needed: moving Sentinel data to those users with other relevant data archives in their own infrastructure on the one hand and on the other hand providing Sentinel data exploitation within hosted processing environments to those user not having sufficient processing capabilities “at home”. This is in line with the latest roadmap defined in the frame of the Copernicus Integrated Ground Segment Task Force, as well as ESA EO ground segment evolution strategy.

WORKSHOP RECOMMENDATIONS

It was noted that implementation of four recommendations from the workshop #10 and #11 are in-progress, and should thus be further tracked, namely:

It should be possible to access Sentinel-3 Marine L2 products from the Collaborative data hub

The management of configuration control and versioning of core and collaborative products should be consolidated and standardized

It is recommended to assess the use in Sentinel-2 of specific DEM addressing national needs. Furthermore it is recommended to assess the release of Level-1B core products in order to respond to the needs expressed by relevant Participating States

It is recommended to prepare a dedicated presentation to the Copernicus User Forum on the opportunities in terms of value-added products/applications that the Sentinel-1 PS Journal could support.

The following new recommendations were identified:

1. It is recommended that the IGS roadmap and Annexes (once finalised) are distributed to the GOCG participants for information

2. It is recommended to assess the possibility to collect data dissemination statistics also from third parties re-distributing Sentinels core products and/or considering other means to report on the use of Sentinel data following data distribution/ exploitation of scale by third parties

3. It is recommended to distribute Sentinel data access statistics arranged per Participating State, e.g. number of users per PS, number of products accessed, etc.

4. It is recommended to map and promote online the services offered by national mirror sites (e.g. Sentinel data availability, user access conditions, hosted processing services, additional products development)

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5. It is recommended to test federated user management (Single Sign On) in the context of core/collaborative GS integrated GS

6. It is recommended to extend the attendance to GOCG workshops to International partners (once every 2 years suggested)

7. It is recommended to assess the potential coordination/combination of meetings between CollGS workshops and the Copernicus Integrated Ground Segment Task Force in order to maximize synergies and promote efficiencies.

ESA, in close coordination with the Commission, will follow up these recommendations and report on the status of their implementation at the next Sentinel CollGS workshop, GOCG #13, foreseen to take place in December 2016, hosted by DLR in Oberpfaffenhofen (Munich).