International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol XXXV, Part B4. Istanbul 2004
2. GEOLAND
GEOLAND is a GMES project of the 6" Framework Program
covering the above priorities. It started in January 2004 for a 3-
year duration. The goal of GEOLAND is to provide spatialized
indicators and products in support of the implementation of
European directives, and also of European policies and
international conventions. Examples of directives include the
Habitats, Natura 2000, Wetland, and Water Framework
directives. Examples of international policies and conventions
are UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change), UNFF (United Nations Forum for Forests), or
the European Council regulation on Food Aid Policy, as well as
the Kyoto Protocole.
Operational Scenario
/ Regional Monitoring : Global Monitoring N
Core seus. mei Land Cover :
Nature
Protection
Blo-physical
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Land
gu \sCover Bu
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Observatories
Policy Support
Figure 1. GEOLAND structure
Directives Implementation |
GEOLAND has the ambition to provide a comprehensive
coverage of land cover and vegetation GMES related issues. It
has the goal to integrate existing heritage and link to other
related GMES activities, develop and demonstrate pre-
operational services for monitoring European as well as larger
international areas, and develop a vision for an operational
service infrastructure,
GEOLAND is structured to address regional monitoring in
Europe as well as global monitoring (Figure 1). The activity is
structured in two layers, a layer of so-called Observatories,
which are the precursors of future GMES services, and a layer
of Core Services, which provide in a mutualized way the
Observatories with the value-added remote sensing products
that they need.
| Data | | ^ Added |
| Reduction | EO data Value |
: other data À ;
= TBytes ;
Ten ve
Core Services
= GBytes E
I Jl I i.
Observatories z]
tu Li
End Users |
Figure 2. Information chain
With this structuration there are 8 sub-projects with 2 Core
Services (Generic Land Cover, Biogeophysical Parameter), 3
784
regional Observatories (Nature Protection, Spatial Planning,
Water and Soil) and 3 global Observatories (Natural Carbon
Fluxes, Food Security and Crop Monitoring, Land Cover and
Forest Change).
The information chain is shown in Figure 2. The "level 1" space
data provided by the space agencies (that is, calibrated,
geocoded, top of atmosphere radiances) are first processed in
the Core Services, with a proper exploitation of synergies, and
then processed in the Observatories with a late customization
philosophy. Along the information chain the product value
increases together with a significant decrease in data volume.
The envisaged products are quite numerous : 45 intermediate
land cover and biogeophysical products from Cores Services
have been identified, and 28 final products, which span
different integration levels from simple parameters to complex
environmental assessments (Figure 3).
Observatory état EE
Spatial Indicators
8| General land cover and specialised land
cover (agriculture, forest, urban infrastruc.
duct:
on, spatial fire pattern
S, € q vegetation growth
Water shortage risk map
Water pollution
Figure 3. GEOLAND product overview
An operational scenario activity has also been set up with the
objective to develop a vision for the future GMES
infrastructure, including a space segment, with the key
objective to lead to a sustainable availability of standard sensor
series, a ground segment, and the implementation of GMES
Services.
Many different user organisations, at regional, national,
continental and international levels are associated to
GEOLAND, being either part of the consortium or having
shown interest in the project through letters of intent. The
GEOLAND approach is definitely user-driven.
Altogether the GEOLAND consortium, led by Infoterra GmbH
(Germany) and co-led by MEDIAS-France, gathers 56
European partners, and mixes three categories of organisations,
users, service providers and researchers.
detail the
The rest of the paper describes in more
Biogeophysical Parameter Core Service.
3. THE BIOGEOPHYSICAL PARAMETER CORE
SERVICE (CSP)
3.1 Introduction
The Biogeophysical Parameter Core Service, named in short
CSP, is a joint venture of 10 partners, MEDIAS-France, Météo-
France and NOVELTIS (France), VITO (Belgium), Institute of
Intern
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