Long-Term Data Preservation: Objectives of the Workshop

The large amount of new Earth Observation missions coming in the next years and the increased demands from the user community, bring a challenge for Earth Observation satellite operators, Space Agencies and EO data providers to manage the data and to offer the access to the different products as coherently and easily as possible. With the increasing interest on global change monitoring, the use and exploitation of Earth Observation data has been increasing systematically and many users request time-series of data spanning 20 years and more calling for a need to preserve the EO data without time constrains and keep them accessible. On the other hand:

• Current EO data preservation approaches are still mostly limited to the satellite lifetime and few years after.
• More and more EO missions data can be called ‘historic’ and more and more operators are faced with the decision if and how to preserve these data.
• The data volumes are increasing dramatically.
• EO data preservation policies, if existing at all, are different for each EO mission, each operator or Agency.

Both technically and economically, long term data preservation (LTDP) is a subject that calls for harmonisation, cooperation and sharing among all the data owners for the benefit of the user community. Even if the issue has been addressed in many different ways and by many different groups, the preservation and easy access of the whole European EO space data cannot be guaranteed.

To respond to the urgent need for a coordinated and coherent approach for the long term preservation of the existing European EO space data, ESA is proposing, in collaboration with the Ground Segment Coordination Body members through a dedicated LTDP working group formed in January 2008, a European common Long Term Data Preservation policy and a cooperation scheme for the implementation of an European LTDP System with the aim to guarantee the complete European EO space data set preservation.

The aim of the workshop organized at ESA/ESRIN in Frascati (Italy) is to present the status of the activities of the GSCB Long Term Data Preservation Working Group and to involve additional EO data owners/providers (private/public) and archive owners in the process of definition of the European common LTDP policy and cooperation scheme. The workshop will provide an overview of the proposed European common LTDP policy & cooperation scheme and will allow the collection of comments and feedbacks from participants. It will give room for the data owners/providers to present their plans and achievements with regard to long term data preservation, to present the implication analyses for their missions deriving from an European common LTDP policy and to describe their understanding and interest for an European LTDP System.