- Earth observation data from ESA satellites in the Open Telekom Cloud
- Copernicus Data and Information Access Service (DIAS) available in the first quarter of 2018
- Processing directly in the cloud – no download needed
The European Space Agency (ESA) has commissioned T-Systems to develop a cloud platform for accessing satellite data. With the Copernicus Data and Information Access Service, or Copernicus DIAS for short, T-Systems will make mass data from the European Observation Program available from the Open Telekom Cloud. Companies will then be able to access the data free of charge and use them directly in the cloud for commercial purposes. The high-resolution images and radar images of the earth provide important environmental parameters for agriculture and forestry, for instance, for monitoring the climate data of cities and oceans or managing air quality. Copernicus DIAS from the Open Telekom Cloud will be available before the end of the first quarter of 2018.
Until now, it has required a huge amount of time and resources to download, store and process this constant stream of data. “Only companies commanding commensurate means have been able to do so. Copernicus DIAS from the Open Telekom Cloud now democratizes this European satellite data,” said Jurry de la Mar, ESA Account Director at T-Systems. “This will give rise to entirely new use cases and potential for new digital services. For example, companies now have the opportunity to analyze changes to infrastructure or environments worldwide on a fully automated basis, as already done successfully by oil companies, for example.”
Less data traffic in the network
Furthermore, the fact that the satellite data are processed directly in the Open Telekom Cloud relieves pressure in the networks. At the moment, more than 100,000 users download earth observation data every day. “We expect this network load to fall thanks to Copernicus DIAS,” said de la Mar.
T-Systems will not only provide current earth observation data in the Open Telekom Cloud, but will also maintain an archive. In the long term, this will create a database with a volume of more than forty petabytes. To put this in context, this corresponds to more than eight billion high resolution smartphone photos in JPEG format at five megabytes each.
Copernicus DIAS is funded by the EU.
