Date: 30 November 2023
Telespazio UK, a subsidiary of Telespazio (a joint venture between Leonardo, 67%, and Thales, 33%), has been awarded a contract by the European Space Agency (ESA) to deliver its Platform Interoperability Building Block Evolution programme as a next phase of the previous Earth Observation Exploitation Platform Common Architecture (EOEPCA) contract. The project, entitled EOEPCA+, will provide a reference architecture that can combine Earth Observation (EO) cloud and platform capability through the evolution and development of a complementary set of innovative building blocks.
Project partner, Novaspace (a merger between SpaceTec Partners and Euroconsult), is providing a professional approach to community management and outreach to ensure that the software developed meets user needs, creates real impact and draws on the benefits of different national and inter-government initiatives to utilise budgets more effectively in ESA member states and beyond.
ESA’s EOEPCA+ initiative continues the previous focus of EOEPCA in harnessing the paradigm shift from “bringing the data to the user” (i.e. user downloads data locally) to “bringing the user to the data” (i.e., move user exploitation to hosted environments with co-located computing and storage).
This paradigm shift is leveraging the availability of free and open data together with that of affordable and powerful cloud computing resources to create an opportunity for the wide adoption and use of EO data across many areas of society.
Telespazio UK (and partners to be on-boarded) will design and develop a complementary set of innovative Building Blocks, utilising existing best of breed open-source technologies from initiatives such as OpenEO, EOEPCA and Pangeo to harness interoperability through standardised geospatial interfaces.
Dr Geoff Busswell, Telespazio UK’s Head of Marketing and Sales, said: “We have seen a huge growth in the number of Earth Observation big data platforms across Europe in the last few years. ESA’s initiative through EOEPCA, and now EOEPCA+, will make a big impact in standardising the use of key software building blocks. This will make creating or evolving big data platforms more efficient and ensure there is a greater level of interoperability between big data platforms. We look forward to working with new partners and end users on this exciting journey.”
