Demonstrating Interoperable Data Analyses using the Open Data Cube, Google Cloud and Google Earth Engine Satellite Datasets

The Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), Analytical Mechanics and Associates (AMA), and the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD) collaborated with Google to demonstrate the use of the open source Open Data Cube (ODC) technology on the Google Cloud for connecting to Google Earth Engine satellite datasets. The analysis-ready Earth Engine global datasets are connected to ODC Jupyter notebook algorithms using an Application Programming Interface (API). Multiple interoperable datasets, such as Landsat, Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2, have been used to detect dense time series of water extent and find unique double and triple observation coincidences for validation testing. This demonstration provides an alternative to the common Google Earth Engine user interface and also an alternative to other cloud computing options with fewer satellite data choices. Such examples could be critical for future monitoring of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and national development agendas and could provide a tool for skills training and capacity building in support of decision making in developing countries. In addition, the growing community of ODC users can now take advantage of the many Earth Engine datasets, including non-satellite data and citizen generated data. Further, this tool will promote innovations via community hackathons to exploit such data to address various issues related to agriculture and food security, water extent and quality, urbanization, illegal mining, deforestation and land degradation.