EO-Crowd – Publication and Crowdsourcing Analysis of Phenomena of Interest in EO Products
This Action aims at supporting innovation in businesses and start-ups by providing a platform with co-operative crowdsourcing capabilities for disseminating information on phenomena detected from EO data, derived particularly using Copernicus data and services. As platform, the already available citizen observation platform CitobDB, which was developed in SYKE for gathering and managing volunteer crowdsourced observations of the environment, will be used and extended for the required tasks. After the FPCUP EO-Crowd, there will be new technical and practical possibilities for companies and start-ups and their services: To integrate notifications of phenomena of interest from Copernicus EO data, provided by satellite data processing experts and to integrate crowdsourcing to their own services.
The objective of the service is to support innovation in businesses and start-ups by providing a platform with co-operative crowdsourcing capabilities for disseminating information on phenomena detected from EO data. Additionally, the businesses and start-ups can use the information made available on the SYKE TARKKA service for viewing the satellite EO data products from Copernicus data on pre-selected sites and satellite products at highlighted acquisition times when there are phenomena of interest: Provided event data in CitobsDB will point to scenes and crowdsourcing information worth looking at.
The service is utilized in two main modes of operation:
- The Highlighting Service for Phenomena (HiSP) allows pre-selection of information of interest in the EO data, filtering out cloudy scenes and allowing the business service to focus on useful information in for example environmental permit monitoring tasks. This essentially means that there is a source of pre-selected information on a specific topic and geographic area of EO data worth looking at, not wasting company time and resources on cloudy images and the expert task of selecting the useful EO scenes of optical satellite data.
- The Crowdsourcing Service for screening the Phenomena of Interest (CSePIn) allows the publication of the identified phenomena by the company itself in the HiSP service, without intervention by the HiSP operator. This essentially means that the company can crowdsource internally or externally the selection of the scenes which can be marked as “phenomena of interest” for the specified topic. In-situ citizen observations associated with the EO data can be a part of this published piece of open data. Users of HiSP service will be able to access these pieces of information.
Outputs and Results
- Implementation and demonstration of a highlighting service for phenomena (HiSP) and of a crowdsourcing service for screening the phenomena of interest (CSePIn)
- Demonstration of the potential of these services in a Finnish pilot use case concerning cryosphere, hydrology and water quality
- Stakeholder workshops, consisting of an “on location” workshop in Finland, an “online” demonstration session for international organizations and companies and a final workshop
- Survey of user needs on HiSP and CSePIn to be included in future planning of the services
- Implementation of an Estonian pilot use case on the Baltic Sea and lake water quality, in association with the Finnish tests in the commonly adjacent Gulf of Finland area
- Interaction with Estonian stakeholders and summary of the findings in project workshop