The vast increase of available Earth Observation data, not the least from the Copernicus Sentinel satellites, but also from commercial providers, has provoked major challenges in providing storage, access, and processing solutions which will only exacerbate with new missions in the foreseeable future. Meanwhile the paradigm is shifting away from scenes and images to extended coverages, datacubes and digital twins. Already today, truly global datasets such as the Copernicus DEM require seamless, high resolution, global grids which push traditional storage and processing concepts to their limits and beyond.
These challenges affect not only data providers but equally need to be coped with by the rapidly expanding sector of Earth Observation Exploitation Platforms and not the least by the users themselves. These actors see themselves confronted with the task to ingest and fuse data of various types, levels, formats, and origins best summarised as “Big Earth Data”.
A prerequisite to cope with these “Big Earth Data” coming from Earth Observation (EO) and other sources will be the integration of existing and future data infrastructures, a task that puts a strong focus on coordination, harmonisation and interoperability of data and services. A multitude of respective standardisation initiatives are underway by various stakeholders such as INSPIRE, OGC, ISO, CEOS, and GEO. Georeferenced grids are a central concern in many of them and the various approaches entail a coordination task of its own.
The intention of this Agora is to gather geospatial data providers and users as well as standardisation experts from different backgrounds, inform each other about specific requirements and current developments by e.g. discussing established grid-based approaches such as WGS84 LatLon, UTM, WMTS and EQUI7 as well as novel concepts such as Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS), and to promote a network for coordination and awareness raising for related existing and planned standards.

speakers:
• • Gino Caspari, GeoInsight (Ruhr University Bochum)
• Michael Jendryke, GeoInsight (Ruhr University Bochum)
• Peter Strobl, Senior Scientific Officer, JRC
• Enrico Cadau, Sentinel-2 Mission Management, ESA
• Henning Schrader – Head of Mapping & DEM Development, Airbus Defence and Space