The main objective of LEO is to go beyond TELEIOS by designing and implementing software supporting the whole life cycle of linked open EO data and its combination with linked geospatial data, and by developing a precision farming application that heavily utilizes such data.
A lot of remotely sensed data coming from satellites has become available at no charge in Europe and the US recently, and there is a strong push for more open Earth Observation data. Open Earth Observation data that are currently made available by space agencies (e.g., ESA and NASA) are not following the linked data paradigm. ICT STREP project TELEIOS recently introduced the linked data paradigm to the Earth Observation domain and developed prototype applications (wildfire monitoring and burnt scar mapping, semantic catalogues and rapid mapping) that are based on transforming Earth Observation products into RDF, and combining them with open, linked geospatial data. However, TELEIOS did not consider the whole life cycle of linked open Earth Observation data, and concentrated mainly on developing scalable storage and query processing techniques for such data.
In LEO, the core academic partners of TELEIOS (UoA and CWI) join forces with 2 SMEs and one industrial partner with relevant experience (SA, VISTA and PCA) to develop software tools that support the whole life cycle of reuse of linked open EO data and related linked geospatial data.
Project results:
LEO Project Software: http://www.linkedeodata.eu/Software-and-data
Finally, to demonstrate the benefits of linked open EO data and its combination with linked geospatial to the European economy, a precision farming application is developed that is heavily based on such data.
Expected final results
The expected scientific and technological results of LEO are the following:
1. A detailed specification of the linked EO data life cycle
2. Publication of various EO and geospatial data as linked data (e.g., OpenStreetMap data and Natura 2000 of Bavaria-Germany available in http://datahub.io/organization/leo, etc.)
3. The publishing tool GeoTriples that takes as input vector or raster EO data and geospatial data available in some well-known formats and transform it into RDF
4. An extension of the tool Silk for interlinking open EO data and geospatial data
5. The tools LEO Data Search Engine and LEODroid for searching and browsing linked EO data and geospatial data
6. The tool Sextant for browsing and visualization of linked EO data and geospatial data
7. The LEO software stack integrating the above tools and others produced by the partners in earlier projects (e.g., TELEIOS)
8. The precision farming application LEOpatra
Impact of results
Finally, LEO has developed the mobile precision farming application LEOpatra which concentrates on fertilization and makes use of satellite images and linked open geospatial data. E-agriculture and especially the use of remote sensing, GPS, geospatial and mobile technologies in agriculture, is an important area of research and development internationally and has been supported actively by ESA, Copernicus, FAO and other relevant agencies. In Europe, the current reform proposals for the Common Agricultural Policy towards 2020 have set specific objectives such as viable food production, sustainable management of natural resources and climate action, and balanced territorial development.
Project partners:
NATIONAL AND KAPODISTRIAN UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS
SPACE APPLICATIONS SERVICES NV Belgium
PC-AGRAR INFORMATIONS- UND BERATUNGSDIENST GMBH Germany
VISTA Geowissenschaftliche Fernerkundung GmbH Germany
STICHTING CENTRUM VOOR WISKUNDE EN INFORMATICA Netherlands
