01 - VEDA: Empowering Open Science for Earth Observation Data (Invited)#
Presented by: Slesa Adhikari
Abstract#
Open science has emerged as a transformative approach to scientific research, fostering inclusivity, accessibility, and reproducibility. Developed by NASA, Visualization, Exploration and Data Analysis (VEDA) stands as a powerful open science platform, aiming to facilitate discovery, interactive visualization, and Earth observation data analysis.
VEDA’s foundation lies in its commitment to openness and inclusivity. By intelligently integrating community-standard open-source software and interfaces, VEDA offers an open Earth data science environment. Notable components include the Spatio-Temporal Asset Catalog (STAC) storage and APIs, OGC-standard dynamic tiling for raster and vector data, and the community-friendly JupyterLab interface. Additionally, VEDA presents a novel, lightweight, and customizable website (dashboard), enhancing data discovery, light analytics, and storytelling capabilities.
VEDA’s forward-thinking approach embraces cloud-native technology, harnessing the power of analysis-ready, cloud-optimized (ARCO) data in cloud-optimized GeoTIFFs (COGs) and Zarr formats. This approach transcends traditional data compatibility barriers, ensuring efficient data access and exploration.
Accessibility and reproducibility are key to open science. VEDA makes data, visualization, and analysis accessible to the global scientific community via the dashboard and APIs. Further, science insights published on the dashboard are reproducible through VEDA’s JupyterHub.
In this workshop session, we intend to showcase the seamless transition from the VEDA dashboard to the JupyterHub environment, demonstrating how researchers can “jump into” open science. Our exploration will encompass the discovery, visualization, and analysis of VEDA datasets through the accessible VEDA APIs. Notably, this knowledge can be seamlessly extended to embrace a wider array of community tools, emphasizing the versatility and applicability of VEDA beyond its core platform.