The PARSEC Accelerator

PARSEC is a business accelerator supporting the creation of new Earth Observation (EO) based products and services. The accelerator targets SMEs, start-ups, entrepreneurs and researchers who want to have an impact on the emerging Food, Energy and Environment sectors. With the support ofPARSEC, their ideas will be developed into solutions fueled by the benefits of EO.

The PARSEC In situ Data Hub

The PARSEC In situ Data Hub one of the three PARSEC Business Catalysts acts as an active, multi-source repository with automated discovery, retrieval, harmonisation and transformation services.

The hub communicates with other systems and provides access to geo-referenced field observationscoming from the following innovative and often low-cost open-source terrestrial sources:

  • sensor networks,
  • independent IoT devices,
  • citizen observatories,
  • crowdsourcing,
  • unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV),
  • other online structured (e.g. XML or JSON services, databases, csv or excel files) and unstructured (sensor measurements in web page tables) data sources available.

The PARSEC In situ Data Hub provides access to real and past-time data in a structured way (for machine-machine communication) and an interface that offers users the ability to visualise the spatial information with charts, tables or maps. Data will be exportable from the user interface to excel, csv, html, json, and other formats.

The datasets of the In situ Data Hub are made available publicly for anyone interested to access or download for free and can be used for various purposes, including:

  • the production of value-added products, particularly in combination with satellite data via the Big Data Toolbox;
  • validation of parameters extracted with EO techniques and algorithms;
  • training neural networks;
  • calibration or visualisation purposes;
  • discovering insights based on big data analysis that can combine observations, time and geolocation, etc.;
  • services of operational monitoring, warning and reporting to public institutions or businesses.