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“eCollaboration” can be defined as any activity performed by means of/supported by electronic tools or infrastructure, aimed at reaching a goal/meta-goal and possibly involving human interaction.

 

The user services developed for ESA Earth Observation (EO) missions are mainly limited to provide information on and access to standard data products. At present, ESA’s EO ground segment infrastructure does not consider the preparation of a user infrastructure (i.e. a user segment to complement the space and ground segment) that allows for interaction and collaboration among users, e.g., in the execution of research or generation of science and/or commercial (value added) products. Moreover, the possibility to integrate EO derived products with products from other sources would offer collaborative services to an even larger end-users community (providers included); collaborative services that would deliver combined and integrated products.

To look into this exciting possibility ESA started in March 2004 to work on its “THEmatic Vertical Organisations and Implementation of Collaborative Environments”, that is, THE VOICE study financed by the Agency's General Study Programme.

This study is run by an international consortium of industries led by DATAMAT S.p.A. (Italy). Other members include Dutch Space B.V. (The Netherlands), SciSys Ltd (UK) and S.E.S.A. S.p.A. (Italy), supported by VEGA Technologies SAS (France).

The study aims to investigate the understanding of requirements in selected science and application communities and the demonstration and validation of innovative networked collaborative working modes. The overall study objectives are:

  1. The identification of the common and generic technology elements essential for the establishment of a collaborative environment that supports web-based domain-specific vertical organisations;
  2. Identification of common interface mechanisms for data, applications and serviceestablishment, including “exchange languages” for the interaction and exploitation of available resources (publication, subscription, discovery, accounting, billing…);
  3. Implementation of prototypes, i.e. the implementation of collaborative environments with representative applications and services for domain-specific vertical organisations involving the Earth science domain.

During the execution of the study, ESA will be kept informed of the progress being made.

 

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Last modified: 25 May 2006