Open Data and Earth Observations The Case of Opening Up Access to and Use of Earth Observation Data Through the Global Earth Observation System of Systems

Earth observations (EO) represent a growing and valuable resource for many scientific, research and practical applications carried out by users around the world. Access to EO data for some applications or activities, like climate change research or emergency response activities, becomes indispensable for their success. However, often EO data or products made of them are (or are claimed to be) subject to intellectual property law protection and are licensed under specific conditions regarding access and use. Restrictive conditions on data use can be prohibitive for further work with the data. Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) is an initiative led by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) with the aim to provide coordinated, comprehensive, and sustained EO and information for making informed decisions in various areas beneficial to societies, their functioning and development. It seeks to share data with users world-wide with the fewest possible restrictions on their use by implementing GEOSS Data Sharing Principles adopted by GEO. The Principles proclaim full and open exchange of data shared within GEOSS, while recognising relevant international instruments and national policies and legislation through which restrictions on the use of data may be imposed.The paper focuses on the issue of the legal interoperability of data that are shared with varying restrictions on use with the aim to explore the options of making data interoperable. The main question it addresses is whether the public domain or its equivalents represent the best mechanism to ensure legal interoperability of data. To this end, the paper analyses legal protection regimes and their norms applicable to EO data. Based on the findings, it highlights the existing public law statutory, regulatory, and policy approaches, as well as private law instruments, such as waivers, licenses and contracts, that may be used to place the datasets in the public domain, or otherwise make them publicly available for use and re-use without restrictions. It uses GEOSS and the particular characteristics of it as a system to identify the ways to reconcile the vast possibilities it provides through sharing of data from various sources and jurisdictions on the one hand, and the restrictions on the use of the shared resources on the other. On a more general level the paper seeks to draw attention to the obstacles and potential regulatory solutions for sharing factual or research data for the purposes that go beyond research and education.

Virtual Cilicia Project. How to use Google Earth as a visualization environment in an archaeological context

Over the past few years, archaeology has experienced a rapid development in geophysical prospection and remote sensing techniques. At the same time, the focus of archaeological research has shifted to landscape evelopment and human interaction. To impart the results, new methods and techniques are necessary. Virtual globes such as Google Earth offer fascinating methods of giving interested amateurs the possibility to interactively explore ancient cities and landscapes. Thanks to the increasing usage of GIS in cultural heritage, the implementation of interactive three dimensional learning opportunities becomes less and less tedious, but the non-linear narrative story telling medium demands for a special adaption of the content. This paper summarizes the experience gained during the realization of the “Virtual Cilicia Project” and outlines the future potential of virtual globes in the field of cultural heritage.

The free escape continuum of diffuse ions upstream of the Earth's quasi-parallel bow shock

The Earth's bow shock is very efficient in accelerating ions out of the incident solar wind distribution to high energies (≈ 200 keV/e). Fluxes of energetic ions accelerated at the quasi-parallel bow shock, also known as diffuse ions, are best represented by exponential spectra in energy/charge, which require additional assumptions to be incorporated into these model spectra. One of these assumptions is a so-called "free escape boundary" along the interplanetary magnetic field into the upstream direction. Locations along the IBEX orbit are ideally suited for in situ measurements to investigate the existence of an upstream free escape boundary for bow shock accelerated ions. In this study we use 2 years of ion measurements from the background monitor on the IBEX spacecraft, supported by ACE solar wind observations. The IBEX Background Monitor is sensitive to protons > 14 keV, which includes the energy of the maximum flux for diffuse ions. With increasing distance from the bow shock along the interplanetary magnetic field, the count rates for diffuse ions stay constant for ions streaming away from the bow shock, while count rates for diffuse ions streaming toward the shock gradually decrease from a maximum value to ~1/e at distances of about 10 RE to 14 RE. These observations of a gradual decrease support the transition to a free escape continuum for ions of energy >14 keV at distances from 10 RE to 14 RE from the bow shock.