Rationale

EARSC’s extensive engagement with Earth observation user communities has highlighted the need for a common language to help service providers and users arrive at a mutual understanding of the types of services that can be offered and the benefits that can be delivered. We have developed an Earth observation taxonomy that is not only a process of naming and classifying the EO services but additionally a tool to improve the understanding between these communities.

Under this context, this document presents a reduced version of the Del 4.3. from the CopHub.AC H2020 project, which outlines the third update of the EARSC taxonomy. The EARSC taxonomy has been carefully reviewed and includes for the first time a generic definition of available products and how those form the basis for the delivery of the EO services (the combination of e.g. EO products, in-situ data, modelling etc. to deliver contextualized knowledge to a service user). This taxonomy update, from both the market and thematic perspectives, has been conducted in close collaboration with the research community through the CopHub.Ac project. 

Inside this taxonomy, each catalogue of services contains specific services offered to citizens, business, government and other organisations. The taxonomy should be continuously updated to ensure its continued relevance in a fast-changing sector. We have made every effort to ensure that the structure is sufficiently robust to accommodate future market segments and thematic topics; as the market changes and grows, these changes will need to be incorporated in future taxonomy updates.

We look forward to receiving stakeholders’ feedback and working with stakeholders in continuing this exciting evolution of the description and structuring of EO services.

Market View

This page provides the top level structure for the breakdown (taxonomy) of the EO Services markets. There are 22 market sectors identified grouped into 6 categories (titles on the tabs) organised according to the EARSC Taxonomy. The information is organised:

• Market Sector: this defines the area of market for which EO services apply.
• Composition: gives examples of the types of organisation that make up the market sector. It helps define the sector.
• EO Services: Each EO Service is unique within the Thematic services taxonomy but may apply in several different market segments. For each EO service there may be many specific products which are being offered and which are described in a section on the application service page.

Thematic View

This page shows the taxonomy structure of the EO services organised thematically. There are 6 classes of service as shown on the tabs. Each class contains a number of thematic sectors into which the EO services are grouped.

• Thematic Sector: this is the classification of the grouped EO services.
• Client view: These are each EO service described as a client may wish.
• Key-words: these define the products which can make up an EO service.