Using ECMWF's Forecasts (UEF2019)

ECMWF operates two Copernicus services, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) and due to Copernicus’ open data policy, many datasets on climate, air quality, fire, or floods are available free of charge.

However, data accessibility is still one of the biggest obstacles for users of these data. Users face difficulties in downloading and processing these growing data volumes. On data services / providers side, many attempts are undertaken to make open environmental data better accessible for users, e.g. data cube technologies, standardised web services or data portals, such as the Copernicus Climate Data Store.

Future data services will probably be based on cloud services, but there are many open questions on how a reliable and scalable data service based on cloud services could be established. How much processing capacity would users need, is the geographic location of the cloud servers important for users and do users care whether the cloud is publicly-funded or the services are offered by a commercial provider?

A user requirements survey on Big Earth Data put users into the spotlight between November 2018 and January 2019. We were interested how users of large volumes of environmental data interact with the data and what challenges they currently face. One part aimed at finding out how users would like to work with future data services and what aspects of cloud services, e.g. geographic location or publicly-funded cloud vs. commercial cloud provider, play an important role for users. The presentation will provide a perspective on how users of open environmental data currently work with the data and what challenges they face. A specific focus will be put on user’s expectations of future data and cloud services.