Union Satellite Centre (SatCen). It was held at the ESA Centre for Earth Observation (ESRIN), Frascati, 12th–14th November 2014. The conference brought together researchers, engineers, developers, users in the area of Big Data in the space sector. The focus is on the whole data life cycle, ranging from data acquisition by space borne and ground-based sensors to data management, analysis and exploitation in the domains of Earth Observation, Space Science, Space Engineering, Space Weather, etc. Special emphasis is put on highlighting synergies and cross-fertilisation opportunities.

OBJECTIVES

The main objectives of BiDS’14 are:

• Contribute towards the identification of the priorities for a ’Big Data from Space’ research, technology development and innovation agenda;

• Widen competences and expertise of universities, research institutes, labs, SMEs, and industrial actors;

• Foster networking of experts and users towards better access and sharing of data, tools, and resources;

• Leverage innovation, spin in/off of technologies, and business development arising from research and industry progress.

To this aim, contributions addressing the Big Data issues (data volume, velocity, variety and veracity) in the relevant research areas and themes have been elicited.

THE CONFERENCE

A total of 132 papers were submitted for presentation at the conference. Following the peer-review process by members of the Conference Programme Committee, 79 papers were selected for oral and 41 for poster presentations. Among the 79 papers selected for oral presentation, 30 originate from Invited Sessions devoted to a series of horizontal themes as well as applications in astronomy, climate science, and geospatial information. Given the high number of excellent submissions, besides 3 plenary sessions, the Conference Final Program was structured around parallel pairs of Invited and Regular sessions, complemented by a poster, a demo and an industry session, where a very high level of interaction has been experienced. In addition to this, the first day a plenary session has been reserved to an “Authorities

INTRODUCTION

Big Data from Space refers to Earth and space observation data collected by space-borne and ground-based sensors. Whether for Earth or space observation, they qualify being called ’big data’ given the sheer volume of sensed data (archived data reaching the Exabyte scale), their high velocity (new data is acquired almost on a continuous basis and with an increasing rate), their variety (data is delivered by sensors acting over various frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum in passive and active modes), as well as their veracity (sensed data is associated with qualified uncertainty and accuracy measurements). Last but not least, the value of big data from space depends on our capacity to extract information and meaning from them.

Big Data from Space is an emerging domain given the recent sharp increase in all three main dimensions of big data: volume, velocity, and variety. Fortunately, this increase is paralleled by tremendous amount of new developments related to big data in other fields and enabled by technological breakthroughs and new challenges in hardware and software developments, multi-temporal data analysis, data management and information extraction technologies. In addition, the recent multiplication of open access initiatives to big data from space is giving momentum to the field by widening substantially the spectrum of users as well as awareness among the public while offering new opportunities for scientists and value-added companies.

This is especially true for Space Science with the processing and data volume challenges given by the Gaia mission which aims to build a catalogue of approximately 1 billion astronomical stars, and for Earth Observation (EO) data with the public release of the complete archive of Landsat data by the United States Geological Survey (USGS). At an even larger scale, the ambitious and unique European Union Copernicus programme1 whose Sentinel missions operated by the European Space Agency will deliver free and open access to global data in the microwave and optical/infrared ranges. The first one, Sentinel-1A, has been launched on the 3rd of April 2014 and is already delivering high resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) global data every 12 days at a daily rate of 2.5 TB.

Following the advent of the big data from space era confirmed by the success of the Big Data from Space event organised by the European Space Agency (ESA) in June 2013, this 2014 conference on Big Data from Space (BiDS’14) was co-organised by ESA, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, and the European

CONCLUSIONS

The Conference has permitted to highlight new and emerging areas, as well as areas requiring special attention such as collaborative environments, the federation of processing capabilities, harmonisation and standardisation of access, and processing mechanisms allowing for the seamless deployment of approaches exploiting the full spectrum of Big Data from Space, so as to foster the generation of new and reliable meaningful information.

Concerning future opportunities for business development, some key-issues have been identified, namely: quality of data (data veracity) leading to quality information for end-users; the future of space open data (data value); the identification of value chain segments; the “commoditisation” of Big Data infrastructures; legislation frameworks (interoperability, data protection, IPR); Big Data Public Private Partnership (cPPP) between EC and Big Data Value Association. Priorities for Research and Technology Development have been also derived, aligning with EU’s views on a data-driven economy:

• Availability of interoperable datasets and enabling infrastructures (volume, variety & velocity);

• Availability of good quality and reliable data (veracity);

• Usability of the data for decision-making processes;

• Improved framework conditions that facilitate value generation from datasets, cooperation among “players” and sharing of solutions (value);

• Existing (Earth Observation, Space Science, Space Security Awareness, Space Engineering) and future applications where improved Big Data handling can make the difference.

Round Table”, where senior representatives from the European Space Agency, SatCen, JRC, EC Copernicus and EC DG Connect have been involved. During the round table, questions addressing the importance of Big Data and future directions in particular for what concerns research, technology and innovation have been discussed and analysed.

Finally, during the Conference a Call for Papers has been announced, for a publication in the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine (GRSM) Special issue on “Big Data from Space”.

The presentations – together with discussions and contacts established during the conference – and the papers published in the Conference Proceedings (http://congrexprojects.com/2014-events/BigDatafromSpace/proceedings), have greatly contributed to achieve Conference objectives and represent a valuable snapshot of the current status of research activities, developments, and initiatives in Big Data from Space. The Conference hosted more than 440 participants, from 28 different countries and belonging to various international and national organizations (ESA, JRC, EU SatCen, CNES, DLR, ASI, NASA, NOAA, etc.), research institutes and universities, industries and SMEs, active in various domains (e.g. Earth Observation, Earth Science, Climate Science, Astronomy, etc.).

Numerous contributions (with 3 dedicated sessions) address the volume dimension of big data from space, with emphasis on architectures and platforms as well mainstream technology and hardware developments including graphic processing units. The velocity dimension is driving substantial research and developments for the analysis of time series, as revealed by another 3 dedicated sessions. The variety dimension transpires across most contributions, where the data coming from different sensors or even non-sensor data are integrated and exploited. Numerous application domains are represented with emphasis on geospatial information extraction, climate science, and astronomy presented during the respective 3 plenary sessions. In addition, the need to scale-up SAR data access, research and service support, and processing for the Sentinel-1 satellites is recognised by a session on SAR processing. All generic key aspects of big data are mirrored by respective sessions on architectures and platforms, data storage management, harmonisation and standards, open and linked data, data assimilation, data visualisation, data processing, data mining and content based image retrieval, multi-temporal analysis, and citizen cyber-science. All Conference material, including the electronic version of presentations, is available on the Conference web site http://congrexprojects.com/2014-events/BigDatafromSpace.

RECOMMENDATIONS

A preliminary list of recommendation for ESA to drive future activities in the field has been finally drawn, and is summarized below:

1 Establish a Research, Technology Development and Innovation agenda for Big Data from Space, with several well-coordinated (and unified) concepts and activity streams, in close and permanent dialogue with key industry and SMEs actors;

2 Foster research activities and innovative solutions in the “Data Science” domain, in view of future downstream services;

3 Coordinate the European efforts (either programmatic or technical) for developing and promoting new models and platforms for Big Data from Space exploitation (from data-to-users to users-to-data);

4 Contribute to the exploration and implementation of new “partnership models” for the actual exploitation of future Big Data flows;

5 Include in technology programmes activities supporting the development in cross-sectorial Big Data fields

Following the excellent feedback received, ESA, JRC and SatCen confirmed their availability to organise the next Big Data from Space Conference in Spring 2016, in order to proceed along the trail blazed in this event.