Paolo Mazzetti

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

The integration and harmonization of marine data from diverse sources are vital for advancing global oceanographic research and ensuring seamless discovery and access of critical datasets. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the metadata harmonization efforts within the Blue-cloud 2026 project, which brokers data from numerous Blue Data...

This paper is the third of a series that introduces some of the main dataset resources presently shared through the GEOSS Platform. The GEOSS Platform is a brokering infrastructure that brokers more than 190 autonomous information systems and data catalogs; it was created to provide the technological tool to implement the Global Earth Observation S...

The GEOSS Platform is a key contribution to the goal of building the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). It enables a harmonized discovery and access of Earth observation data, shared online by heterogeneous organizations worldwide. This work analyzes both what is made available in the GEOSS Platform by the data providers and how us...

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

This paper reports on major outcomes of the ERA-PLANET (The European network for observing our changing planet) project, which was funded under Horizon 2020 ERA-net co-funding scheme. ERA-PLANET strengthened the European Research Area in the domain of Earth Observation (EO) in coherence with the European participation to Group on Earth Observation...

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...

Global Change challenges are now systematically recognized and tackled in a growingly coordinated manner by intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations. Heterogeneous observing networks provide the founded data sources to assess the Earth environmental status and take sound decisions to achieve a sustainable development. WMO Hydrolog...

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...

As part of the Encyclopedia of Mathematical Geosciences, this chapter deals with the "Geosciences Digital Ecosystems" topic.

This manuscript discusses the key characteristics of the Digital Ecosystems (DEs) model, which, we argue, is particularly appropriate for connecting and orchestrating the many heterogeneous and autonomous online systems, infrastructures, and platforms that constitute the bedrock of a digitally transformed society. Big Data and AI systems have enabl...

The International Symposium of Digital Earth is a biennial event of the International Society for Digital Earth, a not-for-profit organization promoting the Digital Earth vision and implementation. The 11th International Symposium on Digital Earth (ISDE11) was held on 24-27 September 2019 in Florence, Italy, and it was dedicated to the topic "Digit...

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...

Earth observations data cubes (EODCs) are a paradigm transforming the way users interact with large spatio-temporal Earth observation (EO) data. It enhances connections between data, applications and users facilitating management, access and use of analysis ready data (ARD). The ambition is allowing users to harness big EO data at a minimum cost an...

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...

When defining indicators on the environment, the use of existing initiatives should be a priority rather than redefining indicators each time. From an Information, Communication and Technology perspective, data interoperability and standardization are critical to improve data access and exchange as promoted by the Group on Earth Observations. GEOEs...

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...

Presentation of the H2020 ECOPOTENTIAL project Virtual Laboratory Platform

The pan-European Virtual Hub (pEVH), developed as part of the ENERGIC-OD European project, facilitates the usage of geospatial information open data to all users, and SMEs in particular. It is a single point of access to a wide range of datasets. It brokers major open data platforms, and provides added-value services including semantic discovery fo...

The presentation deals with the interoperability challenges for Big Earth Data: an invited presentation at the ”High-level Workshop on Big Earth Data” held in Sanya (China) from the 11th of Dec to the 14th of Dec 2017.

Big Earth Data-Cube infrastructures are becoming more and more popular to provide Analysis Ready Data, especially for managing satellite time series. These infrastructures build on the concept of multidimensional data model (data hypercube) and are complex systems engaging different disciplines and expertise. For this reason, their interoperability...

This paper presents the Virtual Research Environment (VRE) enabling two European GEO Geohazard Supersites in Italy. According to GEO (Group on Earth Observation) vision, Geohazard Supersites provide access to spaceborne and in-situ geophysical data and models for selected sites prone to natural hazards –noticeably, earthquakes and volcano eruptions...

Two successful GEO Data Provider Workshops (St. Petersburg, November 2016 and Florence, April 2017) highlight the depth and breadth of the GEOSS ecosystem and how it is continuously developing and improving. In particular, the 2nd Data Providers Workshop, focused on and discussed both the Technology Ecosystem, built around the GCI, and the Communit...

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

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...

This paper addresses the emerging issue of integrating data sharing and computing e-infrastructures for multidisciplinary applications. In the recent years several solutions have been proposed to implement digital infrastructures for sharing and processing scientific data and observations. Spatial data infrastructures currently enable effective and...

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...

In accordance with the international Supersite initiative concept, the MED-SUV (MEDiterranean SUpersite Volcanoes) European project (http://med-suv.eu/) aims to enable long-term monitoring experiment in two relevant geologically active regions of Europe prone to natural hazards: Mt. Vesuvio/Campi Flegrei and Mt. Etna. This objective requires the in...

This paper investigates the usability of Future Internet technologies (aka "Generic Enablers of the Future Internet") in the context of environmental applications. The paper incorporates the best aspects of the state-of-the-art in environmental informatics with geospatial solutions and scalable processing capabilities of Internet-based tools. It sp...

Open Data promise to create new market opportunities and social value. In particular, geospatial data have a potentially huge inner value. But to unleash their potential, data need to be not only open but also effectively usable. The present paper describes the concept and implementation of the Virtual Hubs developed in the ENERGIC-OD European proj...

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...

Big Data Analytics is an emerging field since massive storage and computing capabilities have been made available by advanced e-infrastructures. Earth and Environmental sciences are likely to benefit from Big Data Analytics techniques supporting the processing of the large number of Earth Observation datasets currently acquired and generated throug...

The knowledge about existing networking and research initiatives in the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions is fundamental for achieving the main goal of fostering sustainability and uptake of research results through networking activities. The European project IASON addresses those needs implementing an operational instrument enabling collection a...

The knowledge about existing networking and research initiatives in the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions is fundamental for achieving the main goal of fostering sustainability and uptake of research results through networking activities. The European project IASON addresses those needs implementing an operational instrument enabling collection a...

This paper explores key issues in the development of open access to research data. The use of digital means for developing, storing and manipulating data is creating a focus on ‘data-driven science’. One aspect of this focus is the development of ‘open access’ to research data. Open access to research data refers to the way in which various types o...

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...

Once the most industrialized republic of the Soviet Union, Armenia inherited a dramatic ecological situation from the Soviet era. As the key national environmental academic entity, the Center for Ecological‐Noosphere Studies (CENS) of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia has a strong national role in delivering authoritative...

Armenia is a small country geographically located in the South Caucasus region. Once the most industrialized republic of the Soviet Union, the country inherited a dramatic ecological situation from the Soviet era. After the mid‐1990s, the economic policy of Armenia shifted towards a strong support for industrial development greatly ignoring ecologi...

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...

Collaborative research poses important challenges and opportunities to scientific communities, such as the realization of effective interactions between different groups and organizations. Data sharing is growing increasingly important, as repositories are growing in size, number, and variety in the different domains. The underlying challenge is in...

The Group on Earth Observation (GEO) has the mandate to implement the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS ). GEOSS is intended to serve users in nine Societal Benefit Areas (SBA s) of Earth Observation, particularly in support of decision and policy making. The success of GEO depends strongly on the contributions and support from a wi...

Global sustainability research requires an integrative research effort underpinned by digital infrastructures (systems) able to harness data and heterogeneous information across disciplines. Digital data and information sharing across systems and applications is achieved by implementing interoperability: a property of a product or system to work wi...

Access to Earth Observation products remains not at all straightforward for end users in most domains. Semantically-enabled search engines, generally accessible through Web portals, have been developed. They allow searching for products by selecting application-specific terms and specifying basic geographical and temporal filtering criteria. Althou...

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...

The Global Mercury Observation System (GMOS) Project includes a specific Work Package aimed at developing tools (i.e. databases, catalogs, services) to collect GMOS datasets, harvest mercury databases, and offer services like search, view, and download spatial datasets from the GMOS portal (www.gmos.eu). The system will be developed under the frame...

Web-based distributed modelling architectures are gaining increasing recognition as potentially useful tools to build holistic environmental models, combining individual components in complex workflows. However, existing web-based modelling frameworks currently offer no support for managing uncertainty. On the other hand, the rich array of modellin...

The Group on Earth Observation (GEO) Model Web initiative utilizes a Model as a Service approach to increase model access and sharing. It relies on gradual, organic growth leading towards dynamic webs of interacting models, analogous to the World Wide Web. The long term vision is for a consultative infrastructure that can help address “what if” and...

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...

This document outlines the ENVIROFI data and meta-information specifications. The approach we have adopted is to first analyse the domain specific data models, vocabularies, ontologies and metadata found in the ENVIROFI pilots. This analysis is supported in the appendix with examples of the data sources described. We then review the available metad...

The scope and complexity of Earth Observation investigations require advanced digital infrastructures supporting multidisciplinary information sharing and interoperability. The existing cyber(e)-infrastructures are often designed either for disciplinary applications, or for addressing specific challenges (e.g. high performance computing). However,...

The European Project EGIDA (Coordinating Earth and Environmental cross-disciplinary projects to promote GEOSS) co-funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework programme, has started in September 2010. It aims to prepare a sustainable process of contribution to GEO/GEOSS promoting coordination of activities carried out by: the GEO S...

To better exploit any environmental dataset it is necessary to provide detailed information (metadata) capable to furnish the best data description. Operating environmental data and information networking requires the long-term investment of financial and human resources. As these resources are scarce, ensuring sustainability can be a struggle. 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...

GeoViQua (QUAlity aware VIsualization for the Global Earth Observation System of Systems) is a recently started FP7 project aiming at complementing the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) with rigorous data quality specifications and quality-aware capabilities, in order to improve reliability in scientific studies and policy decision...

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...

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 partnership between ISPRA - SINAnet (National Environmental Information System Network) and CNR - GIIDA (Gestione Integrata ed Interoperativa dei Dati Ambientali) builds upon the results of a re-engineering process applied to existing Italian national and local infrastructures in order to contribute to the realization of a National System of Sy...

In the framework of the EGIDA Project (European Commission FP7), that aims to support the implementation of the GEOSS Science and Technology roadmap, a workshop was held for the identification and analysis of European National contributions across a wide range of GEOSS SBAs (Social Benefit Areas), characterised through a bottom-up approach to GEOSS...

Environmental and geographical data describing atmospheric or terrestrial phenomena are collected in digital form since three decades. Geomatics, that is automatic management and

The scope and complexity of Earth Observation investigations require advanced digital infrastructures supporting multi-disciplinary information sharing and interoperability. The existing e-infrastructures are often designed either for disciplinary applications, or for addressing specific objectives (e.g. high performance computing). However moving...

The cost effective delivery of scientific and policy requirements is a key driver for the realization of global sustainability research, integrated assessment and supporting innovative systems. The next generation of geospatial information infrastructures is proposed as a possible solution. Still, questions such as ‘what does all this mean to envir...

4) Austrian Institute of Technology, SIM, Vienna, Austria (denis.havlik@ait.ac.at), (5) Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation, Karlsruhe, Germany (thomas.uslaender@iosb.fraunhofer.de), (6) SINTEF -Foundation for Scientific and Industrial Research, Norwegian Institute of Technology, Oslo, Norway (Arne.J.Berre@...

This paper outlines the grand challenges in global sustainability research and the objectives of the FP7 Future Internet PPP program within the Digital Agenda for Europe. Large user communities are generating significant amounts of valuable environmental observations at local and regional scales using the devices and services of the Future Internet...

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...