UKRI-3142 EO DataHub Platform Software Development and Operations

Tender description

The EO DataHub (EODH) programme has been instigated to address challenges around effective exploitation of Earth Observation Data. It represents a first phase of a national asset, supported by the government and specified with the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) alongside NERC. The programme is a pathfinder project led by the National Centre for Earth Observation and a partnership of public sector bodies. Its role is to: a) serve the UK national interest; b) offer all UK users a step-change in data access and quality from commercial to government actionees to researchers and students; c) mitigate and transition the Copernicus-related data activities to a UK-orientated model; d) provide a delivery approach which enables a much more rigorous, evidence-led legacy beyond the project - articulating UK capability, showcasing UK datasets, evidenced costs and user-specified sustainability needs. Lot 1: The overall objective is to develop and operate the cloud-based Hub Platform of the EODH, a software system to provide a common and consistent access layer to a range of EO data sources, and services to discover, manipulate and cache data products. The Hub Platform facilitates the development of applications which utilise EO data to produce value-added products, gain insights and support decision-making for given application scenarios. The Hub Platform is targeted at application developers and EO expert users to support them with services and data access to meet their needs. The successful tenderer will need to develop an overall system architecture including interfaces and a data model. This must use appropriate standards and best practices. It should apply experience from examples of the successful implementation and operation of federated and cloud-based infrastructures for the EO community. The architecture should reference and consider examples of infrastructures, standards and specifications in the EO sector such as the ESA Earth Observation Exploitation Platform Common Architecture, OpenEO, the EuroDataCube, ESA Thematic Exploitation Platforms programme, the Copernicus CDS, European Weather Cloud and European Open Science Cloud. Examples of standards and other literature include but should not be limited to the OGC family of specifications, reports from their interoperability experiments and testbeds, CF-netCDF, OpenID Connect, OAuth 2.0, STAC, and CEOS OpenSearch Best Practice. Parts of the required functionality may be delivered through existing off-the-shelf solutions and services from public cloud providers. The Tenderer is encouraged to reuse existing production-ready solutions wherever possible. The Tenderer will implement services and interfaces as outlined in the system architecture on a public cloud provider. The Tenderer will need to work closely with the other funded work streams in the EO DataHub programme. This is critical to its overall success. The work streams are: 1) The DataHub Platform – the subject of this requisition specification. 2) Data streams – the integration of different sources of data into the Hub Platform. 3) Applications – the development of 3 software applications which exploit the functionality provided by the Hub Platform. Note that the Data Streams and Applications work streams will be funded through separate ITTs which will be issued separately in the coming months. Proposals are invited from individual organisations who would act as the prime contractor. We expect proposals to gather an expert team that is likely to include multiple organisations acting as sub-contractors to the prime. The lead for the Hub Platform will become a part of the partnership and management of the EODH Programme. If you are interested in this requirement, please email Jacob.Morris@ukri.org, referencing UKRI-3142 EO DataHub Software Infrastructure.