Cloud-based Research Data Infrastructures Integrating In-Situ and Remote Sensing Data

For many scientific domains such as hydrology, ocean sciences, geophysics and social sciences, geospatial observations are an important source of information. Scientists conduct extensive measurement campaigns or operate comprehensive monitoring networks to collect data that helps to understand and to model current and past states of complex environment. The variety of data underpinning research stretches from in-situ observations to remote sensing data (e.g., from the European Copernicus programme) and contributes to rapidly increasing large volumes of geospatial data.

However, with the growing amount of available data, new challenges arise. Within our contribution, we will focus on two specific aspects: On the one hand, we will discuss the specific challenges which result from the large volumes of remote sensing data that have become available for answering scientific questions. For this purpose, we will share practical experiences with the use of cloud infrastructures such as the German platform CODE-DE and will discuss concepts that enable data processing close to the data stores. On the other hand, we will look into the question of interoperability in order to facilitate the integration and collaborative use of data from different sources. For this aspect, we will give special consideration to the currently emerging new generation of standards of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and will discuss how specifications such as the OGC API for Processes can help to provide flexible processing capabilities directly within Cloud-based research data infrastructures.