Peter A. Strobl is a Senior Scientist at European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy. In this presentation, he gave an overview of the development of CEOS-ARD, its current status, and provided an outlook on the next steps in CEOS-ARD and the OGC SWG. The concept of “Analysis Ready Data” (ARD) was initially developed within the Committee on Earth Observation Satellite (CEOS). CEOS defines ARD as “satellite data that have been processed to a minimum set of requirements and organized into a form that allows immediate analysis with a minimum of additional user effort and interoperability both through time and with other datasets”. Over the course of the past few years CEOS has developed a number of so-called ‘Product Family Specifications’ (PFS) which cover a variety of different sensing methods and observed parameters. Institutional and commercial satellite data providers have accepted these specifications and by now a broad variety of satellite image products are available as “CEOS-ARD certified”. The growing popularity and demand of ARD by the user communities have led to calls for a more formal endorsement of respective standards. Over the past six months, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has therefore formed a Standards Working Group (SWG) which will pursue this task. |