GEOSS Information System Community

In the past 10 years, a GEOSS community emerged including four main stakeholders, following a supplier-consumer pattern: (1) information and processing resource providers, (2) GCI component providers, (3) EO application developers, and (4) GEOSS end users (Figure 14.2). The GEOSS information supply system is comprised of the GEOSS resource providers and the GCI providers (i.e., ESA, USGS, CNR, IEEE), while the GEOSS consumers are the GEOSS application developers (e.g., downstream services SMEs) and the GEOSS end users (e.g., data scientists, global changes researchers, teachers, practitioners, decision makers, and citizens).

GEO has devoted considerable efforts to building the GEOSS information system that has made EOs discoverable and in part accessible (see the next

FIGURE 14.2

The GEOSS community.

section on GCI). This information system comprises a large set of resources providers:

Observation (data) systems: These include ground-, air-, water-, and space-based sensors, field surveys, and citizen observatories. GEO works to coordinate the planning, sustainability, and operation of these systems, aiming to maximize their added-value and use.

Information and processing systems: These include hardware and software tools needed for handling, processing, and delivering data from the observation systems to provide information, knowledge, services and products.

To continue leveraging these successes through 2025 and increase EO accessibility and (re)use, GEO will evolve GEOSS and the GCI to meet current and emerging needs by

Extending the user audience to decision makers and the general public

Placing additional focus on the accessibility and usability of EO resources to improve our scientific understanding of the Earth processes and enhance our predictive capabilities that underpin sound decision-making

Providing a service framework to engage partners and user communities in evolving the current infrastructure to enable collaborative tools for cocreation of products and services suitable for effective exploitation by user communities

Evolving the current SoS component-based architecture with an open- systems platform that is flexible, sustainable, and reliable for data access, integration and use, and the delivery of knowledge-based products and services