HMA-FO:
Heterogeneous Mission Access - Follow-On

With the drastic increase of computer power and network accessibility the analysis of multi-layer datasets and large scale processes have moved to the fingertips of users. Europe's electronic infrastructure backbones are now maturing and reaching a level of capability to deliver the high-volume geospatial data required for environmental information.

With OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS), users do not any more need to bother about data piecemeal clipped into single file containers. WCS delivers user selected contiguous geographical or temporal coverage of geophysical phenomena. An Application Profile for Earth Observation Sensors (EO-WCS) profile shall particularly cater for the requirements identified as Use Cases in EO scenarios and shall provide a specification to WCS implementers for building WCS with exactly identical functional behaviour when dealing with EO data.

In accordance with ESA intentions and requirements the project focuses on establishing a new open and international standard for online distribution of EO products. This has been accomplished by:

• Review of existing standards for EO product distribution;
• Identification of ESA's Use Cases and requirements for Online Data Access (ODA) to EO products, considering especially the requirements of GMES Data Access (GSC-DA) based on HMA norms;
• Identification of possible applications of and extensions to the OGC WCS and WCS-T specifications for EO Product handling;
• Elaboration of a proposal for changes to OGC WCS specifications, and the development of an EO-WCS Application Profile for feedback into the OGC consensus process;
• Implementation and/or extension of Open Source Software (OSS) supporting and complying to the aforementioned applications and extensions;
• Installing, running, and testing that OSS on a number of demonstration servers, including ECSS acceptance testing and conformance testing according to OGC rules;
• Extension of the SSE WebMapViewer as a graphical user interface for demonstrating and testing of servers implementing EO-WCS;
• Studying advanced OGC Web Services (OWS) concepts, such as WCPS, and evaluation of modern internet based data distribution concepts for online data dissemination benchmarking with evolving EO needs to identify perspectives of possible future EO-WCS evolution.

See the ESA HMA-FO Task 3 project site for further details.

Sponsor: European Space Agency

Partners:

• EOX IT Services GmbH, Austria (lead)
• G.I.M. Geographic Information Management nv/sa, Belgium
• Jacobs University, Germany
• Spot Image SA, France