CONCEPT NOTE

EO FOR DEVELOPMENT TRAINING


Title

Training on Cloud Computing for EO

Duration

5 training days

Target audience

African space agencies and institutions, EO service development community, Navigation and Positioning


 

Rationale

As Africa continues to gain traction in space domains, one of the remarkable progresses is the urge for the continent to affirm her fair share in the digital earth, which necessitates adoption of enabling novel technologies. In this era, it has been gradually observed that there is a trend for convergence of technologies. Even though the African Space Strategy focuses on four service domains: (1) Earth Observation, (2) Satellite Communication, (3) Navigation and Positioning, (4) Space Science and Astronomy; their technologies have become so much interconnected that it is no longer easy to treat each domain in isolation. Combination of infrastructure and derived services from these domains produce integrated services of higher utility and value.

 For instance, in disaster management, EO is deployed to map hazards and disaster in all phases and to give the respondents a clear picture of the situation. Satellite communication takes over to augment all communication in major-disaster-stricken areas where terrestrial networks have been damaged. Navigation and positioning provides location-based service data (search ad rescue) for the entire cycle, and further applied to continually update respondents on accurate localised weather conditions. Many of the services are mobilized through the international community, and combination of these interventions brings out a powerful service that saves lives and resources. Many other sectors such as agriculture, transport, marine economy, management of resources, etc. are adopting the integrated technology approach for efficiency of service.

 Meanwhile, as more and more satellites are being deployed, so does the volume of available data. This massive data demands for wider bandwidth and more local storage. But many African countries experience intermittent connectivities, and personal computers do not have the required capacities commensurate to the data demands. Hence, for the operators, the concern is now, access, storage and processing. By design, cloud computing and cloud storage offer solution to these challenges, and the big question is on how prepared are African institutions and how are they positioned to utilize cloud computing services?

The AU Agenda 2063 prioritizes skills revolution, with emphasis on soft skills for targeted knowledge-based economies in Africa. The African Space Strategy further calls for reinforcement of capacities to raise a critical mass of scientists in hardware, software and services. Some of the regional groupings of the continent have demonstrated appetite for this approach, and the training strategy for GMES & Africa further identified the need to invigorate research clouds at the regional level.

Given this background, it has therefore become necessary to equip African institutions on integration of emerging technologies to produce end-user-oriented services that are accurate and useful. A thorough training is therefore proposed.

Objectives of the Training

The emphasis is laid on EO and how other contributing technologies can be plugged in to produce value-added solutions. The major objectives of the training is:

  1. To harness data accessibility by navigating different repositories to obtain desired datasets;
  2. Understanding and demonstrating cloud solutions for data mining and processing.

Target audience

This course is targeted for African institutions that provide space services for communities, with bias on Earth Observation.

Course details

The emphasis in this first course is to demonstrate isolation or mining of datasets from big data and how other technologies such as cloud computing can enrich EO service. This implies the application of cloud solutions for selection, computation and processing of big data, linking with Google Earth Engine and other platforms for further processing and analysis. Given these factors, the course programme is proposed as below:

Expected results

The training is expected to impact tangible knowledge and skills in the entire cycle of data ecosystem starting from data identification to data utilization. By the end of the training, participants should be more equipped and capable of obtaining datasets and processing them in the cloud. The training should inspire different institutions to apply mechanisms for deploying continuous services that answer the needs of users.