The ESA-FAO GEOportal – Operational Gateway to GEOSS
Written by Mirko Albani, Hermann Ludwig Moeller and Jolyon Martin
Monday, 31 March 2008
The
ESA-FAO GEOportal is a gateway to Global Earth Observation data,
information and services developed by the European Space Agency (ESA)
in collaboration with The Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations (FAO) as contribution to GEOSS.
As
part of the Initial Operational Capability of GEOSS, the GEOportal
constitutes a main access point to worldwide information on Earth
Observation capabilities and services including the ones proposed and
implemented in the framework of GEO activities.
The
GEOportal includes a number of common functions and solutions to
search and discover services and provides news and other relevant
information to the GEOSS user community.
The
Community concept is extended to a global community and across all
GEOSS users providing an entry point to the resources no matter where
the user is located and no matter the nature of usage within the
GEOSS areas of application. The portal achieves this goal based on
two key characteristics:
A
high-level structure of the information according to the nine GEO
Societal Benefit Areas (SBAs).
A
global coverage, linking all resources contributed by the GEO members
and participating organizations.
It
complements the already existing Community Portals and other Portals
operated by GEO Members and Participating Organizations and as such,
unlike most other GEOSS components, it does not belong to any single
member or organization.
Fig. 1 - Illustrates the GEOportal as part of the GEOSS architecture
with its interfaces towards the different resources of the GEOSS.
Based
on the GEO recommended standards and following the Geospatial Portal
Reference Architecture of the OGC the GEOportal provides a variety of
services:
Geospatial Portal Service providing the user interfaces for viewing,
discovering data, information and services available in GEOSS.
Portrayal Viewer Service allowing the display and handling of maps
and context information from various sources, e.g. from different GEO
Societal Benefit Areas through WMS services.
Interfaces to Catalogue Services of the GEOSS Clearinghouse, allowing
distributed catalogue search in an interoperable manner.
Browse through a comprehensive directory of service providers e.g.
related to GEO Members and Participating Organizations.
Retrieval of Earth observation education, training and capacity
building resources.
Through
a user friendly interface the homepage allows quick access to a
variety of information resources.
While
a relevant event happens somewhere in the world, an SBA alert appears
on the globe, localized over the region related to the event. For
example real time alerts and activations of the International
Charter “Space and Major Disasters” are already appearing on the
rotating globe on the GEOportal homepage.
While
a relevant event happens somewhere in the world, an SBA alert appears
on the globe, localized over the region related to the event. For
example real time alerts and activations of the International
Charter “Space and Major Disasters” are already appearing on the
rotating globe on the GEOportal homepage.
From
the homepage, to access to different types of information, the
GEOportal allows navigation and access primary via Societal Benefit
Area selection and Geographical selection.
The
SBA selection leads the user to a main SBA page providing relevant
information on the services available within that SBA, the service
providers, the international initiatives in place, as well as
showcases of data sets.
From
there, the user can have access to specific service pages, providing,
among other, a user friendly description of the services, a point of
contact and a direct link to the services. A system of related resources builds a knowledge system able to provide
the user with a wider variety of information on services and
organizations operating in its area of interest. The
user can also refine his search by SBA subcategory and/or
geographical area, in order to retrieve services more appropriate to
satisfy his informational needs.
Fig. 2 - GEOportal homepage (www.geoportal.org).
The
geographical selection allows the user, selecting regions and
countries from the rotating globe, to access a variety of data,
information resources and services available for that specific
geographical area. The search can be refined as well by the SBA of
interest.
At
the time of writing, several GEO Member States and Participating
Organizations have established implementation pilots and made
available Community Portals accessible from the GEOportal. These
community portals are serving particular regions and/or are specific
to a Societal Benefit Area of GEOSS and related user scenarios.
In
perspective, the GEOportal may also be used for creating Community
Portals or individual portals if required by a GEO member or
participating organization. The GEOportal software is based on a
number of Open Source modules which could be made available and
configured to create for example a Portal for a specific SBA. The
GEOportal open source software may be taken up by GEOSS communities
to create their own portals, lowering the entry barrier, in
particular for developing countries, to become part of the GEOSS and
contributing to the establishment of an interoperable GEOSS.
With
the number of components of GEOSS growing, it is fundamental to
ensure that any resource newly available to GEOSS can be discovered
through the GEOportal coupled to the GEOSS Clearinghouse and GEOSS
Registries.
ESA
has secured the operations of the portal until the end of 2009 as a
minimum and accordingly to ESA standard service levels. The
GEOportal
The
geographical selection allows the user, selecting regions and
countries from the rotating globe, to access a variety of data,
information resources and services available for that specific
geographical area. The search can be refined as well by the SBA of
interest.
operations are not actually limited to the operations of
the technical infrastructure of the underlying GEOportal system, but
include the maintenance of the information contained locally within
the GEOportal and ensure the consistency of the links and interfaces
to GEOSS. Local information may include up to date sample data sets
representative of the different SBAs and the GEOportal provides also
value-adding in that its operators proactively identify and highlight
specific data and information.
The
need for additional features/evolutions will be assessed during the
Initial Operational Capability of GEOSS taking into account the
operational experience of the GEOportal and users’ feedback and the
GEOportal is now open to serve GEOSS and to further evolve taking
into account the requirements of its users and of the GEO
Secretariat.
The
ESA-FAO GEOportal is a gateway to Global Earth Observation data,
information and services developed by the European Space Agency (ESA)
in collaboration with The Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations (FAO) as contribution to GEOSS.
