The term Data Cube as it relates to Big Earth Data has recently gained a lot of attention. The Data Cube concept promises to tackle some of the challenges associated with serving and consuming large volumes of environmental data. Data Cubes offer a more on-demand and analysis-ready access to n-dimensional data, that can be accessed along any dimension (space, time, spectrum), allowing for efficient trim or slice operations. The Data Cube concept makes large volumes of environmental and geospatial data more manageable and thus, increases the general uptake of Big Earth Data.

Even though the Data Cube concept is not new, the application to Big Earth Data entails quite a few challenges: interoperability between different data providers, combining data from different domains with domain-specific formats, different spatial and temporal resolutions and different coordinate systems. The success of Data Cubes for Big Earth Data relies on the cooperation of Data Cube technology providers, data users and large data organisations in the future. A better understanding of the challenges large data organisations face and the needs data users have is helpful for the adoption of existing technologies as well as for future development of Data Cube technologies.

This session aims to establish a dialogue between Data Cube technology providers, data users and large data organisations. A particular focus will be set on technical Data Cube solutions from current initiatives, on challenges large data organisations face and the requirements data users need in order to benefit most from Data Cube services.