A data cube is a multidimensional data infrastructure used to store data. It represents the data in terms of dimensions and measures: each dimension corresponds to an attribute or a set of attributes, and each cell stores the value of some aggregate measure such as count or sum (Han et al., 2012). Earth Observation Data Cubes stand out for storing and transferring large quantities of Earth observation imagery, facilitating data organization and management, and allowing pre-processing and fast access to summarized data (Kopp et al., 2019), (Copernicus, 2021). The world’s first EO data cube, The Australian Geoscience Data Cube (AGDC), was developed in 1979 in the context of the countries’ first participation in the Landsat program (Lewis et al, 2017). Several other initiatives and projects have been deployed since then to support national and regional policies in decision-making (e.g.: Swiss Data Cube, DE Africa) and to foster the use and impact of satellite data (e.g.: Open Data Cube).
Copernicus. (2021, October 14). Observer: Data cubes: Enabling and facilitating earth observation applications | copernicus. Copernicus - Europe’s Eyes on Earth; European Union. https://www.copernicus.eu/en/news/news/observer-data-cubes-enabling-and….
Han, J., Kamber, M., & Pei, J. (2012). Introduction. In Data Mining (pp. 1–38). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-381479-1.00001-0.
Lewis, A., Oliver, S., Lymburner, L., Evans, B., Wyborn, L, et al. (2017). ‘The Australian Geoscience Data Cube-Foundations and lessons learned’. Remote Sensing of Environment, 2020, 276-292, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2017.03.015.
Senior Lecturer & Head of Unit at the University of Geneva and Head of the Digital Earth Unit United Nations Environment Grid Geneva
Gregory Giuliani is the Head of the Digital Earth Unit and Swiss Data Cube Project Leader at GRID-Geneva of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Geneva’s Institute for Environmental Sciences.
