The European Strategy for Data aims at creating a single market for data sharing and exchange to increase the European Union’s (EU) global competitiveness and data sovereignty. Additionally, emphasis is put on the need to prioritize people's needs in technology development and to promote EU values and rights.
The EU has largely invested in making data accessible. Examples of this are the Copernicus Programme, the Group on Earth Observation (GEO) intergovernmental partnership, and the Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe funding programmes. In the scope of such programmes, several Earth Observation (EO) cloud platforms have been developed, providing access to data, tools and services for a wide range of users, including support to policymakers in developing evidence-based and data-driven policies.
Typically, these platforms are an expression of very specific research communities with different sizes and scope, even niche in some cases, with various and -often under-represented- user needs, as opposed to more mainstream platforms with a wider user uptake.
As a consequence, the current landscape of EO cloud platforms and infrastructures in the EU is rather fragmented, thus their potential is only partially exploited by users. We started our research by classifying existing infrastructures, identifying available good practices and highlighting the technological enablers, in order to point out and leverage the building blocks needed to improve the usability of such platforms (Di Leo et al., 2023).
In this follow-up study, we seek to provide a user-centric perspective, aiming at identifying limitations in the current offer of EO cloud platforms by conducting a research study on user experience. We aim to propose good practices to improve both the platform design and functionalities by taking into account the user viewpoint. Our research questions are:
• Does the current offer cover the entire development lifecycle?
• What are the pain points / bottlenecks to address on the current platforms from a user’s viewpoint?
To create a meaningful sample of EO cloud platforms, we have surveyed use cases from EU flagship initiatives like e-shape, OpenEarthMonitor and GEOSS Platform Plus, to understand more on their use of the platforms. In addition, we have developed an additional use case so to gain hands-on experience on cloud platforms.
Responders to the survey were developers of different use cases in a wide range of sectors, including agriculture, energy, health, ecosystem, disaster management, water, climate and climate change, forestry and oceans. Intended end user categories ranged from business owners to analysts, developers, data scientists and policy makers, as well as citizens. A common need emerging from the exercise is the possibility to integrate datasets of different nature and from different sources: EO, in situ, Internet of Things (IoT) data, etc. Final products of the considered use cases ranged from static maps to streams of data and web apps. In the development lifecycle, techniques such as machine learning, deep learning, parallel computing, virtualization / containerization and data cubes, are of common use among developers.
The main concerns on EO cloud platforms that emerge from the survey were:
(1) The difficulty to discover the services offered / the lack of services to browse the available services;
(2) The reduced accessibility to data and services, as well as the timeliness and coverage of data provision and quality;
(3) The poor transparency of the price;
(4) The limited possibility to integrate heterogeneous datasets and tools from different providers;
(5) The limited quality of learning material and documentation, as well as the frequency of their updates;
(6) The lack of effectiveness of support services such as helpdesks and forums;
(7) The limited possibility of exchanging code, good practices, and support with other users, and the liveness of the communities around the platforms;
(8) The lack of possibility to customize tools and services;
(9) The lack of strategies for the sustainability of platforms after the funding period;
(10) The lack of effective facilities for storage and for advanced functionalities such as machine learning, deep learning, parallel computing, etc.
Based on these responses, we identified a set of dimensions of high relevance for users, which are meant for a self-evaluation by platforms so to improve their offer. Such dimensions can be summarized as 1) discoverability, 2) accessibility, 3) price transparency, 4) interoperability, 5) documentation, 6) customer care, 7) community building (data, models and knowledge sharing), 8) customization, 9) sustainability of business plan and 10) characteristics and performance of the platform.
Among others, the adherence to the FAIR principles (Wilkinson et al, 2016) and to the TRUST principles (Lin et al., 2020), the use of open source components and the compliance to open standards (e.g. from the Open Geospatial Consortium – OGC), all represent essential dimensions to enhance both the platforms’ usability and the user’s satisfaction.
Finally, we discuss the emerging trend of creating federations among platforms. Federations can be of different types such as: federation of identity (e.g. single sign-on); federation of trust; federation of resources (e.g. storage and computational facilities) etc. Federations may overcome many of the problems that we identified, such as i.e. interoperability, discoverability, accessibility, etc. They provide a set of services available from one single place. This trend is expected to grow progressively, especially towards the concept of data spaces, in which the EU is largely investing.
To conclude, the study outlines the need to address challenges and limitations to improve both the usability and user satisfaction when using available EO cloud platforms. The identification of user needs and concerns, along with the emphasis on principles such as FAIR and TRUST, open source components and OGC standards, will be crucial in shaping the future of data platforms and infrastructures in the EU and beyond. Furthermore, the potential of federations among platforms presents an immediate opportunity to move towards the vision of data spaces that the EU is putting forward, thus enhancing both collaboration and data sharing, ultimately contributing to the development of a more cohesive and effective data market in Europe.