EOMOUNT - A satellite data based near-realtime observing system at local/regional scale

Abstract

This paper presents the satellite based monitoring facility at the European Academy of Bolzano (EURAC). This applied research environment usues its own satellite receiving system whose data are input for different applications, developed based on the demand of different users such us the Civil Protection of Bolzano, the meteorological office of the province and also the European Commission’s JRC (Joint Research Center). User driven applications like snow cover monitoring in near-real time, a daily Particulate Matter (PM) map or a cloud product based on MODIS satellite images directly received will presented. They are based on an integration of satellite and in-situ data. The data are processed at EURAC’s processing & archiving facility and elaborated with auxiliary data to develop near-real time products and composite products. The processing chain is based on a generic processor scheme that handles the different processing tasks, including pre-processing such as remapping. It can easily be adapted to retrieve additional physical parameters such as e.g. vegetation and land cover. Actually the data received is obtained from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) from NASA’s satellites AQUA and TERRA at 250m, 500m and 1km resolution. The receiving facility is designed to receive already identified and future satellite missions. The paper will discuss different challenges in processing data from heterogeneous data sources in an operational way and give an outlook on potential future applications. On EURAC’s Webportal http://eomount.eurac.edu is planned to provide the obtained information with standardized OGC-Webmapping and Web-Coverage Services, which advantages will be discussed. The system is embedded in an SDI (Spatial Data Infrastructure) Environment that provides also a catalogue service to manage spatially referenced resources, based on on the principles of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and International and Open Standards. HMA (Heterogeneous Missions Accessibility) is implemented to establish harmonised access to heterogeneous Earth Observation (EO) missions and applied also on the product generation processes dealing with no EO-data. Finally, the paper describe the access policy to the applications that partly is “free and open” and partly is restricted to certain users. Keywords: near-real time, processing chain, SDI.