Downstream Service/Application Development for National Statistics and Reporting

This action aims to develop and test a downstream application/service to support national statistics and reporting on land cover with a particular focus on ecosystem accounting. The application/service shall support public agencies to produce annual updates of selected dynamic ecosystem/land cover classes based on EO data in a more automated manner. Focus is on improving the generation and selection of training/calibration data by exploiting Copernicus Sentinel data, in combination with existing geospatial information. Building on an active user dialogue, the application is developed according to user requirements. In a first step, the action is oriented towards developing an application/service for a German public agency (Federal Agency of Cartography and Geodesy). However, this action is not necessarily restricted to only German authorities but user requirement and uptake actions will aim at involving stakeholders with similar needs from other EU countries and countries bordering the EU in order to stimulate international adoption and cross border cooperation.

In March 2021, a user requirement workshop took place between project staff of the German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the German Federal Agency of Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) in order to define data specific user requirements. Furthermore, a user survey was developed and conducted in 2021 to investigate the extent to which remote sensing data is already being used by authorities and to evaluate the requirements for satellite-based products for land cover in general and ecosystem mapping in specific. The survey also helped, at an early stage, to identify interested users to be included in the broader user uptake workshop planned towards the end of this action. Another focus was on the development of the application concept and methodological-technical concept. With the application concept for the automated generation of land cover information this action focuses on classes that contribute to national ecosystem accounting but is open to other classification schemes as well. Relevant geodata and class schemes were investigated to be integrated for training and calibration of the national mapping test case (coarse ecosystem classes) for Germany. The training area selection tool was developed that allows to integrate existing geodata and automatically sample training areas. It is flexibly applicable to various classification schemes but was specifically tested for the German ecosystem classification legend developed by the German Federal Statistical office. The training area selection tool is written in Python and usable in form of Jupyter Notebooks which allows users to adapt the selection process according to their needs. The tool was officially presented and distributed in a user uptake workshop in November 2022, as well as to further potential users in individual meetings.