China announces open sharing of Gaofen data

News / 8 November 2019

At the opening of the GEO Week 2019 Plenary, China as the GEO 2020 Lead Co-Chair made an announcement on open sharing of Gaofen data to more than 1500 registered delegates and via livestream to a global audience.

“For the first time, China will share global data with 16-meter resolution from Gaofen-1 and Gaofen-6 satellites. We will share three types of such data with coverage outside China: historical records, daily updated Wide-Field-of-View (WFV) images and global coverage data,” explained Ms Wenbo Zhao, Deputy Director of Earth Observation System and Data Centre, China National Space Administration (CNSA).

Referring to the GEO Data Sharing Principles, Ms Zhao declared that China has developed an open data policy for Gaofen satellites which allows free and open data access by the global community. Registered users around the world, without restrictions as long as they cite the source of the data, can freely discover and download the WFV data from the data platform CNSA-GEO, hosted by Huawei Cloud.

She added, “As a contribution from China, we just started the journey of open data. We really appreciate your feedback to help us improve this platform constantly.”

This announcement aims to meet the urgent needs timely for global sustainable development, disaster prevention and mitigation, and climate resilience.

“This has been an expectation of the global community. Now it comes true as a direct result of Dr. Gilberto Camara, [the GEO Secretariat Director’s] visit to CNSA in April this year,” she said.

Watch the full statement from the Opening of GEO Week Plenary here.

Watch a video highlighting this announcement here.

Access Gaofen data from here.