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Project title

Earth Observation Data Cube For Ireland

Primary Funding Agency

Environmental Protection Agency

Co-Funding Organisation(s)

n/a

Lead Organisation

National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG)

Lead Applicant

Alastair McKinstry

Project Abstract

The aim of this proposal is to build a national geospatial data infrastructure for environmental researchers which will lower barriers to access Earth Observation and climate data, thereby lowering the cost of using the data in research applications and facilitating innovation around the data. Analysis ready data (ARD) is key to these aims, providing a satellite data product which is pre-processed and ready to use. ARD from Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and high resolution multispectral sensors will be provided over the Irish Exclusive Economic Zone for the lifetime of the Copernicus programme (2015-present). The Landsat mission will provide multispectral satellite data from 1984 to present, and a harmonised Sentinel-2 Landsat-8 product will be included. Two sets of model data will be included: the Met Éireann Re-Analysis provides 2.5km resolution data from 1981-2019; and the HiRes Climate Model provides 4km data from 1981 to 2100. Supporting datasets such as the Copernicus Digital Elevation model and the imminent Irish Land Use dataset will also be included. The Earth Observation DataCube for Ireland (EODC4I) will be built using state of the art technologies for cloud native geospatial systems. It will be offer platform-as-a-service features, with access to the data provided at multiple levels. Users will be able to browse the datacube through the web portal, access and analyse data through APIs or desktop Geographical Information Systems software, build and apply analysis and processing code with Jupyter notebooks or run analysis code directly from github repositories directly on the datacube holdings. Co-design and collaboration with environmental researchers from academia and the public sector will ensure that the datacube is designed to maximise the utility of the data holding, ensure that access and analysis features are appropriate and comprehensive and that the aim to create a useful and used piece of data infrastructure is achieved. Demonstration workshops will be carried out to promote and facilitate use of the system. Finally, two use cases will be built on the datacube, providing end-to-end testing of the system and the tools and showcasing the potential for national scale satellite and climate data analysis. One will focus on national scale statistics of land use land use change (LULUC) from 1990 to present using multispectral data. The second will generate national scale statistics of flood occurrences from SAR data.

Grant Approved

�342,482.97

Research Hub

Natural Environment

Research Theme

n/a

Start Date

01/03/2023

Initial Projected Completion Date

28/02/2026