Announcement of Opportunity: Earth Observation Cloud Services

News / 24 September 2019

The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) invites proposals from companies that provide cloud-based geospatial processing platforms for development of applications using Earth observations. GEO encourages commercial cloud services providers to offer data access and processing credits to the GEO community.

GEO’s mission is to enable the use of Earth observations to support sustainable development policies that are grounded on objective data and methods. On support of its mission, GEO is promoting the use of cloud services as the primary method for effectively mining information from satellite imagery big data. Cloud services allow users to focus on the production of information and analysis, rather than be distracted with the data management overhead, since cloud services minimise the efforts required to download, store, and manage large datasets.

All offers of cloud services credits from commercial providers will be openly shared with the GEO community by the GEO Secretariat. Access to server licenses and/or cloud services credits will be allocated to select project proposals based on merit as determined by a review board in response to competitive calls.

Offers from commercial providers must abide by Rules of Engagement with the Commercial Sector contained in Annex C of the GEO Rules of Procedure, in particular articles 2.6 and 2.7:

1. “Relations between GEO and commercial sector organizations must be impartial and provide equal access to all commercial sector organizations. GEO engagement with the commercial sector should not provide, nor imply, exclusivity or endorsement or preference to a particular commercial sector organization, product or service;
2. Services developed by commercial sector organizations as a contribution to the GEO Work Programme should be made freely available, on a best-efforts basis, to GEO Members;”

Any commercial sector cloud services provider may respond to this engagement opportunity. There will be no competitive selection of commercial providers. In principle, all offers are welcome and will be considered on their individual merits.

This is an ongoing effort by the GEO. Commercial sector cloud services providers are welcome to make proposals to the GEO Secretariat with respect to grants and/or credits for use of their services at any time.

Download the  Commercial Sector Engagement Opportunity here.