This course is about the advances in Earth Observation (EO) over the last few years. The objective of this course is to explore the major trends in the collection, storage, distribution and analysis of remote sensing data. The data sources introduced in the course include satellites, ground sensors, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The European Copernicus Programme is the world’s largest free and open monitoring system for environmental and security purposes. It is cited throughout the course as an example of the technological frontier, presented together with a commercial case study. Cloud-based access, archiving and processing technologies are introduced and discussed and basic terminology like DaaS, SaaS and PaaS is explained in the specific context of EO. The advent of AI represents the dawn of a new era in data analysis. AI for EO provides additional analysis tools beyond physical algorithms. AI makes it possible to work on extremely big data volumes and combine very different data types such as images and social media data.
