ESA – Earth Observation for Sustainable Development (EO4SD)
- Client
- ESA – European Space Agency
- Year
- 2016-2019
- Partners
- Eleaf, Satelligence, ITC, DHI-Gras, GeoVille, Space-Tec
- Location
- North Africa (Morocco), Africa (the Great Green Wall Initiative region, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, and Uganda), Latin America (Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay), Asia (Cambodia) and Middle East (Syria)
The Earth Observation for Sustainable Development (EO4SD), launced by ESA, is an initiative to foster the use of satellite-based environmental information in projects, programmes and activities of the Multilateral Development Banks and their client states. It concentrates on nine thematic areas: agriculture and rural development, water resources management, urban development, climate resilience, disaster risk reduction, marine resources, fragility, conflict and security and Eastern European region. In this project Nelen & Schuurmans task has been to integrate data and make it easily available for all stakeholders.
The challenge
For Nelen & Schuurmans the task of Data Integrator presented a challenge considering the amount and variety of information, as well as the diverse audience with whom it was to be shared. This included maps, output from models and their respective analyses regarding deforestation, water productivity, habitat quality and more. The different spatial resolutions also varied widely between regions which included the Sahara belt and specific countries, such as Cambodia.
For every demonstration the information has to presented, distributed and accessed by various users. The Lizard platform was deployed to host the richness of the information and thanks to its powerful connection via API, the accessibility is simplified.
Our solution
During the entire project all of the information and datasets were made accessible using the Lizard platform. We created a dedicated portal: eo4sd.lizard.net. For every one of the 15 demonstrations a sub portal was arranged. To provide an overview of the information we developed a catalogue. The catalogue makes it easy to view various sets of information and the necessary metadata for further update. It facilitates the search for specific countries, regions, data producer and product specifics. Furthermore, the needed metadata information is also available for every data sets in the catalogue.
The outcome
During these three years Lizard had more than 1000 visitors from different countries and regions. There were 200 personal accounts created and dedicated user manuals for every demonstration and used during the capacity building events. During every event, the stakeholders were guided to browse to the available data not only for their region but also for the others. Besides browsing through the data, the analytics of the platform was used in a way that the user could answer questions regarding to the presented results. Questions like: Is the biomass increased or decreased in my project area during the last years? Or, what is the influence of extreme weather on this trend in water productivity?
The datasets cover around 240 GB of information for the countries and regions at different spatial resolutions. To ensure the data remains available after the demonstrations, the datasets produced under EO4SD were shared with the following partners by using our API :
- World Bank: inclusion of 15 datasets including time series information in their data catalogue
- Conservation International: hosting of 55 datasets on the Resilience Atlas
- ICRAF: storing of 10 datasets including time series on the Landscape Portal
Go to the final report and video
All cases