C-SCALE will demonstrate that a shared, open, general purpose Copernicus access platform is feasible by combining/federating the best-of-breed tools, competences and services from DIAS, the national Collaborative Ground Segments and EOSC. By collaboratively building on the competences of pan-European e-Infrastructures and existing project initiatives, C-SCALE will federate European digital capabilities and lay the foundation for a European open source Big (Copernicus) Data Analytics platform. The approach is similar to Google Earth Engine, near compute data access is achieved through sophisticated indexing and caching solutions including an advanced application programming interface (API) using data-aware placement of services/application leveraging the computing centre closest to the data. However, unlike Google Earth Engine, C-SCALE will present a model for transparent sustainability and governance aimed at supporting European academic, public sector and commercial activities on an equal basis and will integrate other European activities from EC (DIAS), ESA (e.g. NoR, Open Earth Engine, EuroDataCube, etc.) and national offerings. By making the resultant (Copernicus) Data Analytics platform for scientists available through EOSC Portal, Copernicus end-users will benefit from EOSC generic services, facilitating cross-disciplinary pollination of technologies and collaboration opportunities with other big data science domains that offer their services on EOSC, such as high energy physics, astrophysics and bioinformatics. Furthermore, by abstracting the setup of computing and storage resources away from the user, C-SCALE will allow end-users to focus on deploying custom workflows to quickly and easily generate meaningful results. Finally, interoperability between commercial (e.g. DIAS) and public (EOSC) cloud infrastructures will facilitate fluid technology transfer allowing for an enhanced research to operational transition of applications.
