Copernicus - the European earth observation (EO) program - started in 2014 when Sentinel-1a, the first from a series of exceptional satellites, was launched. With an 11 billion Euros budget, it is one of the biggest exploration programmes of mankind ever, providing data for environmental protection, urban planning, agriculture, forestry and water economy, and civil protection. With Copernicus Europe will take the worldwide lead in EO. According to the European Commission it will create 40.000 jobs in Europe. Citing PricewaterhouseCoopers, ´Each Euro invested in Copernicus brings 10 Euro added value´.

Due to the advanced sensing concepts and outstanding spatio-temporal sampling characteristics, the Sentinels will collect more and better data than ever before. They will make an important contribution to environmental and socio-economic sciences. Exploiting their data is challenging due to (1) storing, transferring and processing such Big Data, and (2) the lack of adequate processing algorithms, optimised and exploited jointly by different disciplines.

EODC was founded as private-public partnership to tackle these challenges. However, its current storing and processing capacity is yet insufficient. A Shared Research Facility (SRF) on top of the existing EODC infrastructure could address these limitations. With a 50% funding of the Vienna Business Agency for the proposed 2.1M€, a unique Big Data processing facility can be built in Vienna, accessible for industry, science, education and start-ups. Funding of an SRF that supports high-level research in the field of managing our environment, understanding the effects of climate change, and ensuring civil and food security promotes a cutting-edge image of Vienna on to the global stage.