Data Cubes for Easier Access to Earth Observation Data

Data cubes are three- or more dimensional data structures that allow rapid and direct analysis of large amounts of data. One application area is earth observation data. The growing number of remote sensing satellites, such as the ESA Sentinel missions, increases the amount of available data by many terabytes every day. For many analyses, however, only a limited region may be needed, or only scenes collected under particular recording conditions. Instead of downloading and completely analysing many large-scale images in order to obtain that selection, various filters are specified in a procedure similar to a database query and the results are made available to the user in the form of a data cube. In this way analyses and calculations can be made only for the required time period, region and parameters.

As part of the project, DLR’s Maritime Safety and Security Lab in Bremen will adapt for use in data cubes its existing automated processors for extracting wind and wave information from SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) images. This makes it possible to easily tap available earth observation data to answer questions like “What was the peak wave height on the German North Sea coast in 2017?” or “What is the average wind velocity at the planned location for an offshore wind park?”