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Coordinated by  
Framework Partnership Agreement on Copernicus User Uptake (FPCUP)Framework Partnership Agreement on Copernicus User Uptake (FPCUP)

Sentinel Mosaics in Finland in National Reference Grid

Point of contact
Markus Törmä
Finnish Environment Institute - SYKE
Latokartanonkaari 11
00790 Helsinki
Phone: +358-29-295251713
URL: www.syke.fi

Implementing Partner: FMI, Syke
Implementing Country: Finland Primary Topic: Copernicus User Needs, Land Primary Target Users: Public Sector Primary Target Region: Europe Europe: Finland Type of Action: Building an active user dialogue
Action No.: 2018-1-82
Duration: Last Update:



As part of Finnish government’s initiative “Digitalisation of Public Services”, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry was leading the project involving other ministries and public institutions to build a common Finnish Geospatial Platform during (2017-2019) for the public administration, private industry, and the general public. This platform was to provide common specifications and services for geospatial data providers in public administration and industry, harmonized and common datasets for all data users and shared user services. Its purpose was to harmonize and improve e-services in public administration, improve and enhance the transparency of data-based decision-making, create cost savings in public administration and make the core spatial datasets available on a platform, which the private sector can use as a basis for constructing its own service ecosystem.

The Geospatial Platform project consisted of eight sub-programmes for which the National Land Survey was the responsible body. One of these sub-programmes, “Distribution and Processing of Satellite Imagery”, had the objective to build processes to produce routinely satellite images mosaics in national map projection based on Sentinel-1/2 images which are distributed via web maps and download services, for public and private entities.

The FPCUP Action 2018-1-82 extended the sub-programme “Distribution and Processing of Satellite Imagery” and concentrated on raising awareness and helping the end-users in using Sentinel imagery and these mosaics in particularly. This was achieved by:

  • end-user engagement with the survey of the usefulness of produced Sentinel image mosaics,
  • a workshop for presenting survey results, end-user demo cases and discuss the end-user requirements and next development steps, and
  • creating a helpdesk to help end-users and aid to solve their problems related to Sentinel-images and produced mosaics.

FMI role was primarily related to surveying for end-user needs and analysing the survey results. For certain requirements, these were also reacted on in the service dissemination systems. The role of SYKE was taking care of helpdesk (i.e. answering question about Sentinel data and its use), making demos with end-users and making presentations about Sentinel data and its use in end-user demos.

User survey & workshop

The use of Sentinel data in Finland was surveyed by FMI initially 2017, and later autumn 2019 including session at Finnish Satellite Workshop in January 2020. About 50 answer were achieved, and according to them the general knowledge about Sentinel data was quite good, but its access was difficult and the knowledge about Finnish Sentinel mosaics was limited. The wishes for easy and flexible access with standard tools were answered on the one hand with WMS/WCS OGC services for viewing, on the other hand with free cloud-optimized GeoTiff data from the STAC catalogs.

 

Outputs and Results

  • User engagement in survey on mosaics and Copernicus service usefulness
  • Workshop for deeper dialogue presenting survey results and discussing the next development steps for mosaics and Copernicus services in general
  • Demo cases
    • Ruokavirasto (Finnish Food Authority): Examples of how to utilize Sentinel-1/2 data for agricultural subsidy monitoring, and monitoring of fires at agricultural fields.
    • LUKE (Natural Resources Institute Finland): Production of Sentinel-2 NDVI-mosaics according to their specification for testing agricultural yield forecasting.
    • Metsähallitus: Mosaics are used for biotope mapping of Upper Lapland in order to monitor and plan the use of areas under control Metsähallitus. For this purpose, the gap-filling of time-series and phenological feature production was done for years 2019 and 2020 for the monthly NDVI mosaics.
    • Other demo cases have been for different groups at SYKE:
      • Baltic sea reed classification: Testing the feasibility of sea reed classification using Sentinel-2 imagery.
      • Soil moisture: Literature study and some example images using Sentinel-2.
      • Soil organic carbon: Literature study about the possibilities to use Sentinel-2.
  • Helpdesk for mosaic service: eohelp.pta@ymparisto.fi
  • Mosaics