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Since the opening of Earth Observation (EO) archives (USGS/NASA Landsat and EC/ESA Sentinels), large collections of EO data are freely available, offering scientists new possibilities to better understand and quantify environmental changes. Fully exploiting these satellite EO data will require new approaches for their acquisition, management, distribution, and analysis. Given rapid environmental changes and the emergence of big data, innovative solutions are needed to support policy frameworks and related actions toward sustainable development. Here we present the Swiss Data Cube (SDC), unleashing the information power of Big Earth Data for monitoring the environment, providing Analysis Ready Data over the geographic extent of Switzerland since 1984, which is updated on a daily basis. Based on a cloud-computing platform allowing to access, visualize and analyse optical (Sentinel-2; Landsat 5, 7, 8) and radar (Sentinel-1) imagery, the SDC minimizes the time and knowledge required for environmental analyses, by offering consistent calibrated and spatially co-registered satellite observations. SDC derived analysis ready data supports generation of environmental information, allowing to inform a variety of environmental policies with unprecedented timeliness and quality., Measurement(s)surface reflectance • backscatterTechnology Type(s)satellite imagingSample Characteristic - LocationSwitzerland Machine-accessible metadata file describing the reported data: 10.6084/m9.figshare.14635485

Global environmental changes are mostly induced by human activities (e.g., food and energy production, urbanization, mining activities). To assess and understand these changes that are occurring all around the planet, regular and continuous monitoring is an essential condition. However, due to the potentially large area spread over numerous locations that need to be followed, this usually leads to a low frequency of monitoring of environmental changes of only a few selected sites at best. With the increasing number of freely and openly accessible big remotely-sensed Earth Observations (EO) Data repositories and the increasing capabilities of open and interoperable software solutions it is now possible to automate various EO data processing tasks to monitor environmental changes at large scale. This paper presents the Live Monitoring of Earth Surface (LiMES) framework that helps to automate image processing tasks in transforming raw data into information and knowledge through workflows using interoperable processing service chains for monitoring environmental changes. Both benefits and limitations are demonstrated and discussed through the implementation of a prototype to facilitate the update on the status of some of the 278 UNEP Environmental Hotspots. We believe that such a framework can help to reduce the gap between massive volumes of EO data and the users such as International Organizations (IO) in order to help them better fulfil their environmental monitoring mandates by bringing raw data to a level which can be used by non-remote sensing experts for basic impacts assessments.

Pressures on natural resources are increasing and a number of challenges need to be overcome to meet the needs of a growing population in a period of environmental variability. Some of these environmental issues can be monitored using remotely sensed Earth Observations (EO) data that are increasingly available from a number of freely and openly accessible repositories. However, the full information potential of EO data has not been yet realized. They remain still underutilized mainly because of their complexity, increasing volume, and the lack of e cient processing capabilities. EO Data Cubes (DC) are a new paradigm aiming to realize the full potential of EO data by lowering the barriers caused by these Big data challenges and providing access to large spatio-temporal data in an analysis ready form. Systematic and regular provision of Analysis Ready Data (ARD) will signi cantly reduce the burden on EO data users. Nevertheless, ARD are not commonly produced by data providers and therefore getting uniform and consistent ARD remains a challenging task. This paper presents an approach to enable rapid data access and pre-processing to generate ARD using interoperable services chains. The approach has been tested and validated generating Landsat ARD while building the Swiss Data Cube.

Earth Observations Data Cubes (EODC) are a new paradigm revolutionizing the way users can interact with Earth Observations (EO) data. They can provide access to large spatio-temporal data in analysis ready format. Systematic and regular provision of Analysis Ready Data (ARD) can significantly reduce the burden on EO data users by minimizing the time and scientific knowledge required to access and prepare remotely-sensed data having consistent and spatially aligned calibrated surface reflectance observations. Currently, Sentinel-2 ARD are not commonly generated by the Copernicus program and consequently getting uniform and consistent Sentinel-2 ARD remains a challenging task. This paper presents an approach to generate Sentinel-2 ARD using an automated processing services chain. The approach has been tested and validated to complete the Swiss Data Cube with Sentinel-2 data.

Forests represent important habitats for species and provide multiple ecosystem services for human well-being. Preserving forests and other terrestrial ecosystems has become crucial to halt desertification, land degradation, and biodiversity loss worldwide, and is also one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. Remote sensing could greatly contribute to measuring progress toward SDGs by providing consistent and repetitive coverage of large areas, as well as information in various wavelengths, which facilitates the monitoring of environmental trends at various scales. This paper focuses on SDG indicator 15.1.1&mdash, &ldquo, Forest area as a percentage of total land area&rdquo, to demonstrate the potential of Earth Observation Data Cubes for SDGs. The approach presented here uses Landsat Analysis Ready Data (ARD) stored in the Swiss Data Cube, and offers a complementary method to ground-based approaches to monitor Switzerland&rsquo, s forest extent based on the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). The proposed method performs time-series analyses to extract a forest/non-forest map and a graph representing the trend of SDG 15.1.1 indicator over time. Preliminary results suggest that this approach can identify similar forest extent and growth patterns to observed trends, and can therefore help monitor progress toward the selected SDG indicator more effectively.

Environmental sustainability is nowadays a major global issue that requires efficient and effective responses from governments. Essential variables (EV) have emerged in different scientific communities as a means to characterize and follow environmental changes through a set of measurements required to support policy evidence. To help track these changes, our planet has been under continuous observation from satellites since 1972. Currently, petabytes of satellite Earth observation (EO) data are freely available. However, the full information potential of EO data has not been yet realized because many big data challenges and complexity barriers hinder their effective use. Consequently, facilitating the production of EVs using the wealth of satellite EO data can be beneficial for environmental monitoring systems. In response to this issue, a comprehensive list of EVs that can take advantage of consistent time-series satellite data has been derived. In addition, a set of use-cases, using an Earth Observation Data Cube (EODC) to process large volumes of satellite data, have been implemented to demonstrate the practical applicability of EODC to produce EVs. The proposed approach has been successfully tested showing that EODC can facilitate the production of EVs at different scales and benefiting from the spatial and temporal dimension of satellite EO data for enhanced environmental monitoring.