New Paradigms Offering New Earth Observation Opportunities

Today, we are faced with a number of demanding scientific and technical challenges that - if resolved successfully - will lead to advanced and highly demanded applications of Earth observation data. The given challenges arose in many fields of remote sensing and data interpretation and have to be tackled by advanced methods and paradigms. Prominent examples range from new satellite sensor concepts and computational sensing via efficient distributed data processing on ground up to automated data interpretation and knowledge extraction for individual end users. We will give a survey of innovative sensor concepts, new approaches of how to combine remote sensing data with geomatics, future prospects for cloud-based data handling and services, and data interpretation by (deep) learning and interactive visualization. These approaches will be complemented by assessments of typical new user-oriented applications that are expected to result from each new paradigm. In particular, we will address the prospects of computational imaging, the advantages offered by exploiting compressed data or of compact descriptors based on selected metadata, the potential of extracting high-level semantic information by combining sensor data with already existing knowledge contained in publicly accessible databases, and data trend investigations based on cloud-computing concepts together with advanced algorithms for the analysis of image time series. Finally, these approaches will be compared with totally new ideas resulting from the introduction and application of quantum computing. In order to assess the feasibility and the application potential of each proposed new approach, we will provide typical application scenarios based on the parameters of the current series of European Sentinel satellites and its stakeholder community. This does not only include the description of algorithms but will also consider the design of user interfaces and analysis tools such as the provision of standardized data analysis platforms. This results in a global scenario of future activities for the remote sensing community at large.