Training Resource Description
The Copernicus programme from the EU and ESA, along with other disruptive innovations in satellite technology, has opened up vast quantities of free and open data to support new applications. To help navigate and make sense of this data, a range of portals, tools and platforms are emerging to match relevant data to development use cases.
The Climate Change Knowledge Portal from the World Bank, provides global data on historical and future climate, vulnerabilities, and impacts.
Portals from ESA include the ESA CCI Open Data Portal which hosts a suite of Essential Climate Variable datasets produced under the Climate Change Initiative (CCI) programme as a single point of access. And the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem which provides complete, free and open access to Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3 and Sentinel-5P user products.
While open data is the first option, there are other options as well, particularly in the development community, where resources on the ground with clients are often limited. So, not every problem can be solved with open data. As a result, commercial data may have to be used to create solutions that are fit for purpose.