Mattia Santoro

Italian National Research Council | CNR · Institute for Atmospheric Pollution IIA

This paper is the first of a series that describes some of the main dataset resources presently shared through the GEOSS Platform. The GEOSS Platform has been created to provide the technological tool to implement the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS); it is a brokering infrastructure that presently brokers more than 190 autonomous...

Integrative and Comprehensive Understanding on Polar Environments (iCUPE) project developed 24 novel datasets utilizing in-situ observational capacities within the Arctic or remote sensing observations from ground or from space. The datasets covered atmospheric, cryospheric, marine, and terrestrial domains. This paper connects the iCUPE datasets to...

During the past two centuries, the world has undergone deep societal, political, and economical changes that heavily affected human life. The above changes contributed to an increased awareness about the deep impact that policy decisions have at the local and the global level. Therefore, there is a strong need that policy-making and decision-making...

Several holistic approaches are based on the description of socio-ecological systems to address the sustainability challenge. Essential Variables (EVs) have the potential to support these approaches by describing the status of the Earth system through monitoring and modeling. The different classes of EVs can be organized along the environmental pol...

Cloud computing facilities can provide crucial computing support for processing the time series of satellite data and exploiting their spatio-temporal information content. However, dedicated efforts are still required to develop workflows, executable on cloud-based platforms, for ingesting the satellite data, performing the targeted processes, and...

Technical Report FG-AI4EE D.WG3-05 provides a list of best practices for environmental efficiency in artificial intelligence and blockchain applications. First, the report provides an introduction to highlight the added value of the combined use of AI and blockchain technologies. In fact, these technologies offer different, complementary features,...

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) could greatly facilitate the exchange of data and functionalities between software applications in a flexible, controlled and secure way, especially on the web. Private companies, from startups to enterprises, have been using APIs for several years now, but it is only recently that APIs have seen increased...

Snow cover plays an important role in biotic and abiotic environmental processes, as well as human activities, on both regional and global scales. Due to the difficulty of in situ data collection in vast and inaccessible areas, the use of optical satellite imagery represents a useful support for snow cover mapping. At present, several operational s...

Avoiding, reducing and reversing land degradation and restoring degraded land is an urgent priority to protect the biodiversity and ecosystem services that are vital to life on Earth. The latest Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Landmark Assessment Report highlighted that land degradation throu...

Over the last decades, to better proceed towards global and local policy goals, there was an increasing demand for the scientific community to support decision-makers with the best available knowledge. Scientific modeling is key to enable the transition from data to knowledge, often requiring to process big datasets through complex physical or empi...

Land degradation is a critical issue globally requiring immediate actions for protecting biodiversity and associated services provided by ecosystems that are supporting human quality of life. The latest Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Landmark Assessment Report highlighted that human activities are c...

Avoiding, reducing, and reversing land degradation and restoring degraded land is an urgent priority to protect the biodiversity and ecosystem services that are vital to life on Earth. To halt and reverse the current trends in land degradation, there is an immediate need to enhance national capacities to undertake quantitative assessments and mappi...

From their inception, digital technologies have had a huge impact on our society. In both the private and the public sectors, they have contributed to, or at times driven, change in organisational structures, ways of working, and how products and services are shaped and shared. Governments and public administration units, driven by the digital evol...

There is a growing recognition of the interdependencies among the supply systems that rely upon food, water and energy. Billions of people lack safe and sufficient access to these systems, coupled with a rapidly growing global demand and increasing resource constraints. Modeling frameworks are considered one of the few means available to understand...

This poster presents ongoing research activities related to Land Degradation monitoring and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG15.3.1 indicator)

In 2015, it was adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity. The year after, 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) officially came into force. In 2015, GEO (Group on Earth Observation) declared to support the implementation of SDGs. The GEO Global Ear...

The 3rd GEO Data Providers Workshop was held at the ESRIN, the establishment of the European Space Agency (ESA) in Frascati (Italy) from the 2nd to the 4th of May 2018. The event was co-organized by the GEO Secretariat, ESA, CNR-IIA (Italy), United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the University of Geneva (Switzerland). The Joint Research Centre...

River discharge is a critical water cycle variable, as it integrates all the processes (e.g. runoff and evapotranspiration) occurring within a river basin and provides a hydrological output variable that can be readily measured. Its prediction is of invaluable help for many water-related tasks including water resources assessment and management, fl...

Presentation of the H2020 ECOPOTENTIAL project Virtual Laboratory Platform

This paper explores for the first time the contents, structure and relationships across institutions and disciplines of a global Big Earth Data cyber-infrastructure: the Global Earth Observation System of System (GEOSS). The analysis builds on 1.8 million metadata records harvested in GEOSS. Because this set includes almost all the major large data...

Moving from data to information and knowledge in the GEOSS framework and more generally for the EO and Geospatial Information domains

Presentation of GEOSS and in particular of the GEOSS Common Infrastructure

Starting from a set of User needs dealing with a set of significant Essential Variables, possible Earth Observation gaps are recognized by analyzing the current GEOSS metadata content. Gaps are categorized and possible actions (relying of the GEO DAB) to address those gasps are presented.

In the Earth system science domain, most current digital infrastructures are able to support data access rather than provide answers to complex questions e noticeably, supporting the ability to address the what-if questions posed by users. To this purpose, integrated modeling is an indispensable element. This work follows a recognizable gap charact...

The ECOPOTENTIAL project aims to build a unified framework for ecosystem studies and management of protected areas. To achieve such objective, the open and interoperable access to data and knowledge is assured by a GEO Ecosystem Virtual Laboratory Platform, fully integrated in GEOSS. The concept of GEO Ecosystem Virtual Laboratory stems from the ne...

Data discoverability, accessibility, and integration are frequent barriers for scientists and a major obstacle for favorable results on environmental research. To tackle this issue, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) is leading the development of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), a voluntary effort that connects Earth Obser...

The ConnectinGEO Observation Inventory (OI) is created and populated using the current information in the metadata concentrated in the GEO Discovery and Access Broker (DAB) of the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI) to analyse the observations and measurements currently available in it. WP4 defined a high-level process for the population of the Obser...

@ServiceURL: http://salina.ba.issia.cnr.it/cgi-bin/pywps?Service=WPS&Version=1.0.0&Request=DescribeProcess&Identifier=lc2h @Storyline: Land cover to habitat translation @Abstract: The LC/LU to habitat mapping is carried out based on the decision rules of Table 1. Within each patch of the input LC/LU map, the labels of all GIS layers are combined. T...

@ServiceURL: http://salina.ba.issia.cnr.it/cgi-bin/pywps?Service=WPS&Version=1.0.0&Request=DescribeProcess&Identifier=phyloH_Obs @Abstract: The script estimate the phylogenetic entropy and the phylogenetic mutual information across sample given a reference tree and a table of observations The script user the API https://github.com/albertyw/itol-api...

@ServiceURL: http://salina.ba.issia.cnr.it/cgi-bin/pywps?Service=WPS&Version=1.0.0&Request=DescribeProcess&Identifier=cca_cd @Storyline: Change detection from Copernicus strata @Abstract: Change detection from Natural Grasslands to Other in "Murgia Alta" using The Copernicus Natural Grassland cover layer at 20 meters spatial resolution as time T1 d...

There are many expectations and concerns about Big Data in the sector of Earth Observation. It is necessary to understand whether Big Data is a radical shift or an incremental change for the existing digital infrastructures. This manuscript explores the impact of Big Data dimensionalities (commonly known as ‘V’ axes: volume, variety, velocity, vera...

The identification of appropriate mechanisms for process sharing and reuse by means of composition is considered a key enabler for the effective uptake of a global Earth Observation infrastructure, currently pursued by the international geospatial research community. Modelers in need of running complex workflows may benefit from outsourcing process...

Access to Earth Observation products remains difficult for end users in most domains. Although various search engines have been developed, they neither satisfy the needs of scientific communities for advanced search of EO products, nor do they use standardized vocabularies reusable from other organizations. To address this, we present the Prod-Tree...

Access to Earth Observation products remains difficult for end users in most domains. Although various search engines have been developed, they neither satisfy the needs of scientific communities for advanced search of EO products, nor they use standardized vocabularies reusable from other organizations. To address this, we present the Prod-Trees p...

River discharge is a critical water cycle variable, as it integrates all the processes (e.g. runoff and evapotranspira-tion) occurring within a river basin and provides a hydrological output variable that can be readily measured. Its prediction is of invaluable help for many water-related areas such as water resources assessment and management, as...

Seagrass meadows (marine angiosperm plants) occupy less than 0.2% of the global ocean surface, annually store about 10-18% of the so-called "Blue Carbon", i.e. the Carbon stored in coastal vegetated areas. Recent literature estimates that the flux to the long-term carbon sink in seagrasses represents 10-20% of seagrasses global average production....

Terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs) have become integral tools for extrapolating local observations and process-level understanding of land-atmosphere carbon exchange to larger regions. Model-model and model-observation intercomparisons are critical to understand the uncertainties within model outputs, to improve model skill, and to improve our und...

The vision of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) is the achievement of societal benefits through voluntary contribution and sharing of resources to better understand the relationships between the society and the environment where we live. To address complex issues in the field of geosciences a combined effort from many disciplin...

Recent enhancements of the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI; http://www.earthobservations.org/gci_gci.shtml), and in particular the introduction of a middleware in the GCI that brokers across heterogeneous information systems, have increased significantly the number of information resources discoverable worldwide. Now the challenge moves to the nex...

Advancing our knowledge of environmental phenomena and their interconnections requires an intensive use of environmental models. Due to the complexity of Earth system, the representation of complex environmental processes often requires the use of more than one model (often from different disciplines). The Group on Earth Observation (GEO) launched...

Even with the use of common data models standards to publish and share geospatial data, users may still face semantic inconsistencies when they use Spatial Data Infrastructures - especially in multidisciplinary contexts. Several semantic mediation solutions exist to address this issue; they span from simple XSLT documents to transform from one data...

Many software tools are in use in the different Geosciences domains to the aim of publishing, accessing, evaluating and using available datasets in a service based environment. These tools/services are often domain-specific and usually support a small and disciplinary set of protocols and data models. On the other hand, multidisciplinary applicatio...

This presentation demonstrates the use of the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI) brokering components to provide harmonized access and potential discovery to the set of model outputs and observation-based benchmark data into evaluation, visualization, and analysis scientific workflows in a transparent way to facilitate carbon cycle model benchmarkin...

The UncertWeb framework is a distributed, Web-based Information and Communication Technology (ICT) system to support scientific data modeling in presence of uncertainty. We designed and prototyped a core component of the UncertWeb framework: the Business Process Broker. The BP-Broker implements several functionalities, such as: discovery of availab...

Presently, solutions for geo-information sharing are mainly based on Web technologies, implementing service-oriented frameworks, and applying open (international or community) standards and interoperability arrangements. Such frameworks take the name of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs). The recent evolution of the World Wide Web (WWW), with the...

The identification of appropriate mechanisms for process reuse, chaining and composition is considered a key enabler for the effective uptake of a global Earth Observation infrastructure, currently pursued by the international geospatial research community. In the Earth and Space Sciences, such a facility could primarily enable integrated and inter...

The concept of multidisciplinary interoperability for managing societal issues is a major challenge presently faced by the Earth and Space Science Informatics community. With this in mind, EuroGEOSS project was launched on May 1st 2009 for a three year period aiming to demonstrate the added value to the scientific community and society of providing...

Data interoperability in the study of Earth sciences is essential to performing interdisciplinary multi-scale multi-dimensional analyses (e.g. hydrologic impacts of global warming, regional urbanization, global population growth etc.). This research aims to bridge the existing gap between hydrologic and atmospheric communities both at semantic and...

The number of interoperable research infrastructures has increased significantly with the growing awareness of the efforts made by the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). One of the Social Benefit Areas (SBA) that is benefiting most from GEOSS is biodiversity, given the costs of monitoring the environment and managing complex inform...

EuroGEOSS is a research project supporting the development of the GEOSS Common Infrastructure and the multi-disciplinary research efforts needed to address global sustainability research. The framework it has developed to integrate data, services, and models from different disciplines is based on a brokering approach that advances the traditional S...

Presently, solutions for geo-information sharing are mainly based on Web technologies, implementing service-oriented frameworks, and applying open (international or community) standards and interoperability arrangements. Such frameworks take the name of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs). The recent evolution of the World Wide Web (WWW), with the...

The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), envisioned by the group of eight most industrialized countries (G-8) in 2003, provides the indispensable framework to integrate the Earth observation efforts at a global level. The European Commission also contributes to the implementation of the GEOSS through research projects funded from its...

The implementation of the INSPIRE Directive in Europe and similar efforts around the globe to develop spatial data infrastructures and global systems of systems have been focusing largely on the adoption of agreed technologies, standards, and specifications to meet the (systems) interoperability challenge. Addressing the key scientific challenges o...

In striving to improve the predictive capabilities of ecological forecasting we face three basic choices: develop new models, improve existing ones or increase the connectivity of models so they can work together. The latter approach of chaining different interoperable models is of particular interest, as technical developments have made it increas...

Natural ecosystems are in rapid decline. Major habitats are disappearing at a speed never observed before. The current rate of species extinction is several orders of magnitude higher than the background rate from the fossil record. Protected Areas (PAs) and Protected Area Systems are designed to conserve natural and cultural resources, to maintain...

One of the main challenges in Earth Science Informatics is to build interoperability frameworks which allow users to discover, evaluate, and use information from different scientific domains. This needs to address multidisciplinary interoperability challenges concerning both technological and scientific aspects. From the technological point of view...

The Common Data Index (CDI) is the middleware service adopted by SeaDataNet for discovery and query. The primary goal of the EU funded project SeaDataNet is to develop a system which provides transparent access to marine data sets and data products from 36 countries in and around Europe. The European context of SeaDataNet requires that the develope...

The GIIDA (Gestione Integrata e Interoperativa dei Dati Ambientali) project is an initiative of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) launched in 2008 as an inter-departmental project, aiming to design and develop a multidisciplinary e-infrastructure (cyber-infrastructure) for the management, processing, and evaluation of Earth and Environmen...

SeaDataNet objective is to construct a standardized system for managing the large and diverse data sets collected by the oceanographic fleets and the new automatic observation systems. The aim is to network and enhance the currently existing infrastructures, which are the national oceanographic data centres and satellite data centres of 36 countrie...

To the aim of setting up a Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) the creation of a system for the metadata management and discovery plays a fundamental role. An effective solution is the use of a geoportal (e.g. FAO/ESA geoportal), that has the important benefit of being accessible from a web browser. With this work we present a solution based integra...

In the last years, scientific community is producing great efforts in order to study the effects of climate change on life on Earth. In this general framework, a key role is played by the impact of climate change on biodiversity. To assess this, several use scenarios require the modeling of climatological change impact on the regional distribution...

SeaDataNet is an EU funded project aiming to create and operate a pan-European, marine data infrastructure for managing the large and diverse datasets (i.e. temperature, salinity current, sea level, chemical, physical and biological properties) collected by the oceanographic fleets and the new automatic observation systems. In order to make the Sea...

Several biodiversity application scenarios require modeling the impact of climate change on species distribution. For this purpose, heterogeneous data resources and modeling services are required to interoperate. An information technology and service framework to study the Climate Change impact on biodiversity species distribution is presented. Thi...

The implementation of the INSPIRE Directive in Europe and similar efforts around the globe to develop spatial data infrastructures and global systems of systems have been focusing largely on the adoption of agreed technologies, standards, and specifications to meet the (systems) interoperability challenge. Addressing the key scientific challenges o...