Big Earth Data - the Documentary

Big Earth Data - the digitized planet is a 53min TV documentary illustrating the challenges and opportunities of Big Data in the Earth sciences; watch the full feature in English, German (not online available), and in French language in full HD quality, plus extra bonus material (with permission by ZDF and Gruppe5).

Over 1.5 years we have initiated and scientifically advised production of the TV documentary "Big Earth Data" with Gruppe 5 and supported by think-dialog, financed jointly by German TV stations ZDF and ARTE as well as the European Commission as part of the EarthServer project. The resulting 1h feature has been broadcast by ARTE on 2015-Feb-06 at 21:45 and 2015-Feb-20 at 09:00 CET in Germany and France, and by ZDF on 2015-Nov-23 in Germany.

The documentary has been critically acclaimed also by experts in the field:

• 2nd prize at the International Science Film Festival 2015 in Hungary for the Big Earth Data contribution.
• "gestern Abend habe ich auf ARTE eine sehr gute Dokumentation zum Thema Big Data gesehen: Ich war echt begeistert..." [Forum "Datenbanken Verstehen"]
• "Ich selbst bin Geograph und finde die Dokumentation sehr gut. Danke arte!" [arte comments]
• ranked "Top Doku" on dokumonster.de.

Spin-off Effects

Making this feature has spawned a series of spin-off features, including:

• A 5min feature on the EarthServer technology (i.e., rasdaman);
• A 5min feature on oil spill monitoring about the European Maritime Surveillance Agency (EMSA);
• A 4-part Web series on Big Data by ARTE in German and French language.
• a 30min feature on Big Earth Data in the ZDF series Leschs Kosmos (in German), largely based on our ARTE footage.
• a feature by Heike Hoenig in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine one week before initial ARTE broadcast, introducing the topic and advertising the TV documentary. Likewise, the topic was taken up by Bremen local newspaper Weserkurier.
• A feature series Big Data – Die Überwachung der Erde, broadcast August 31, 2017.

Some "Making of" Pictures All images copyright Heike Hoenig.