Polar Thematic Exploitation Platform

A Polar Thematic Exploitation Platform (Polar TEP) is being developed for the European Space Agency (ESA). Polar TEP will provide polar researchers with access to computing resources, earth observation (EO) and other data, and software tools in the cloud. This new approach will remove the need to transfer large EO data sets around the world, while increasing the analytical power available to researchers and operational service providers.

In the traditional workflow for the analysis of earth observation (EO) data, users download the data to their local site and then process it using their available software and computing resources. With the increasing volume of data available from missions such as Sentinel, and the resulting need for powerful computing resources for processing, the existing methods of working are inefficient and restrict the use of EO data.

ESA’s Thematic Exploitation Platform (TEP) concept aims to provide a working environment where users can access algorithms and data remotely, providing them with computing resources and tools that they might not otherwise have, and avoiding the need to download and store large volumes of data. This new way of working will encourage wider exploitation of EO data.