Over the past year, the GDA Analytics and Processing Platform (APP) has made significant strides in leveraging Earth Observation (EO) technologies to support the mission of ESA’s GDA programme, which is mainstreaming these innovations into international development operations.
As a cornerstone of GDA’s cross-cutting activities, the APP will equip International Financial Institutions (IFIs), the programme’s core partners, and the wider GDA community including EO industry and developing country stakeholders with an initial set of ten EO capabilities to turn satellite data into actionable insights:
- AI Super Resolution enhances resolution of Sentinel-2 imagery up to 3 metres.
- AI Road Extraction extracts road networks from very high resolution basemaps or Sentinel-2 satellite imagery, supporting applications like urban planning or infrastructure monitoring.
- Built-Up Areas Delineation identifies urban areas in densely or sparsely populated regions.
- Built-up Areas Change Detection identifies changes in built-up areas between two Sentinel-2 images.
- Climate Indicators Processor calculates climate variables, indices, and anomalies.
- EO Time-lapse Generator creates visual time series animations to quickly assess any environmental changes.
- Ground Motion Monitoring helps to monitor and analyse ground deformation
- Surface Water Dynamics provides insights to monitor variations of surface water extent.
- Vegetation Trends analyses long-term vegetation dynamics
- Vessel Detection System helps monitor and analyse vessel movements.
The capabilities are scalable and reusable, meaning that they can accommodate increasing data volumes and be combined into new, diverse and potentially more complex analysis workflows.
One of the APP’s standout features is its adaptability to users of varying technical expertise.
1. For non-technical users, the platform offers pre-designed EO capability widgets that simplify the interaction with complex datasets and analytical workflows.
2. The APP’s Explorer enables advanced users to explore the generated results together with a variety of EO and other geospatial datasets.
3. Advanced technical users, on the other hand, can leverage powerful tools like JupyterLab, Docker image and job monitoring tools.
Moreover, the platform will support seamless integration with users’ in-house systems, empowering them to merge their internal workflows with the EO capabilities available through the GDA APP. This versatility ensures that the APP can serve a broad spectrum of users, from newcomers to EO data to seasoned experts seeking programming functionality.
On 23-24 October, the first release of the APP was presented to GDA programme team members during a review meeting at ESA-ESRIN. The release garnered constructive feedback, reinforcing the commitment of the consortium partners – MEEO, GeoVille, EarthPulse, and GMV – as they continue to work towards the official launch of the GDA APP, scheduled for February 2025.
“The Analytics and Processing Platform (APP) represents a key horizontal element for the GDA programme. A key ambition is to support users with different levels of technical expertise. Moreover, it is important that GDA APP adheres to current interoperability best-practices, so that it does not exist in isolation, but rather interfaces with existing capabilities in the IFI and development assistance context and allows exposing analytic functionality coming from other initiatives in ESA’s EO Directorate and the EO community at large.”
ESA’s technical officer Patrick Griffiths
Starting in January, the GDA APP team will present the platform to IFI partners and GDA stakeholder communities, offering hands-on demonstrations and opportunities for users to provide valuable feedback. By engaging with the APP and its capabilities early on, users will gain a clear understanding of its strengths and limitations, fostering collaboration and meaningful input throughout its development. A further key milestone will be a dedicated user consultation event to be held during 2025 ESA Living Planet Symposium, taking place in Vienna in June.
Looking ahead, the APP aims to empower experts to integrate their own EO capabilities into the platform, broadening its reach and impact across a growing audience. GDA APP will be openly accessible and most of its functionality will be available free of charge, yet for limited temporal/spatial contexts. A dedicated premium tier offering, with enhanced scalability and computational power, will be available for more advanced usages and commercial users.
If you are interested in the APP’s EO capabilities and would like to experience them first-hand, reach out to us.
