Stefan Jensen
Head of SEIS and SDI Group
European Environment Agency
Denmark

Abstract
EEA experiences and propositions as a solution provider for Earth Observation data

The European Environment Agency (EEA) hosts the initial operational services of the Copernicus land component. This includes the production of pan-European long-term time series like Corine Land Cover (CLC) complemented by high-resolution layers on land cover characteristics and data on hot spots (currently riparian zones and the co-produced urban atlas). Production is organised depending on the products either through the work of national institutions or through industry services or a combination of both. Data and web-services are highly demand and provided like all EEA products without access constraints and free of charge as also required by the Copernicus data and information policy. The land.copernicus.eu portal serves as single access point for all of the Copernicus land products and will in the near future establish the necessary links with the GEOSS platform. We regard our contribution of EO data and other high-quality European reference data as Europes contribution in support of the data needs for global environmental challenges. For a value-added usage of EO data, the linkage with (in-situ) reference data has to be enhanced. Here, as a future challenge, further interoperability can be achieved through connecting these data to the ones supplied by other providers to the GEOSS platform. We consider further standardisation and a broader adoption of open data principles by data and service providers as needed to support this interoperability. In Europe, this is step-wise supported by the INSPIRE implementation and the PSI directive but has to be complemented by interoperability activities globally. The work of GEOSS should contribute to the latter.