Semantic Earth Observation Data Cubes

摘要

There is an increasing amount of free and open Earth observation (EO) data, yet moreinformation is not necessarily being generated from them at the same rate despite high informationpotential. The main challenge in the big EO analysis domain is producing information from EOdata, because numerical, sensory data have no semantic meaning; they lack semantics. We areintroducing the concept of a semantic EO data cube as an advancement of state-of-the-art EO datacubes. We define a semantic EO data cube as a spatio-temporal data cube containing EO data,where for each observation at least one nominal (i.e., categorical) interpretation is available and canbe queried in the same instance. Here we clarify and share our definition of semantic EO data cubes,demonstrating how they enable different possibilities for data retrieval, semantic queries based onEO data content and semantically enabled analysis. Semantic EO data cubes are the foundation forEO data expert systems, where new information can be inferred automatically in a machine-basedway using semantic queries that humans understand. We argue that semantic EO data cubes arebetter positioned to handle current and upcoming big EO data challenges than non-semantic EO datacubes, while facilitating an ever-diversifying user-base to produce their own information and harnessthe immense potential of big EO data.