Earth Observation (EO) data plays a crucial role in environmental monitoring, supporting scientific research, and enabling informed decision-making. However, accessing and processing large amount of datasets can be quite challenging. Users often need to navigate to multiple sources, download large files, and adopt various processing methods. These steps are barriers that limit the full potential of EO data.
To address these challenges, the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem (CDSE) was introduced as a centralised hub that provides free, harmonised access to a wide range of EO products. These include Sentinel satellite data, Digital Elevation Models (DEMs), mosaics, value-added services such as biophysical parameters like FAPAR (Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation) and many other products. Beyond data access, CDSE also offers multiple cloud-native tools and APIs to simplify the EO workflows. One of the key services within this ecosystem is the openEO API, which provides a unified interface for everything from data discovery and preprocessing to large-scale analysis and deep learning.
openEO is an open-source API that provides standardised access to EO data and simplifies the deployment of processing workflows as scalable, cost-efficient services. By eliminating infrastructure-related complexities, it empowers researchers, developers, and organisations to focus on deriving meaningful insights. It bridges the gap between users and cloud-based infrastructure, enabling developers, researchers, and data scientists to tackle complex geospatial challenges through a unified interface and distributed computing environments.
As an ever-evolving open-source tool, openEO continuously expands its capabilities to improve accessibility, interoperability, and scalability of EO workflows. Recent developments in openEO provide powerful and flexible solutions for managing and scaling complex EO processing tasks such as:
These openEO capabilities are already validated in several large-scale operational projects such as ESA WorldCereal , Copernicus Global Land Cover, Tropical Forestry Mapping and Monitoring Service (LCFM), World Ecosystem Extent Dynamics (WEED), GrasslandWatch and many more. These initiatives leverage openEO’s robust, scalable, and interoperable framework to deliver high-impact Earth observation services.
At ESA Living Planet Symposium 2025 (LPS25), users are invited to explore how openEO enables operational geospatial solutions across diverse EO pipelines. Several of these projects will be featured during the symposium, offering deeper insights into their implementation using openEO: ESA WorldCereal in F.02.07, LCFM in D.02.03, WEED in F.04.08, and GrasslandWatch during A.02.07). Let me give you two specific use cases that showcase openEO’s flexibility.
Launched in 2020, ESA WorldCereal has built the first open-access system capable of delivering global-scale agricultural insights at an unprecedented 10-meter resolution. This initiative empowers researchers, policymakers, and farmers to monitor crop production, assess food security risks, and support sustainable agriculture.
Within CDSE, openEO enhances WorldCereal's implementation by providing direct access to multiple data sources and fostering interoperability across EO datasets, tools, and cloud services. Its flexibility enables users to work seamlessly with optical, SAR, and meteorological data, facilitating data assimilation and multi-observation. Furthermore, the system's generic design extends beyond agriculture, making it potentially applicable to other applications requiring pixel level classification based on EO time series.
WorldCereal 2021 temporary crop extent map, resampled to ~0.004 ° resolution. Each pixel contains a number between 0 and 100, indicating the fractional cover of temporary crops within that pixel.
Read more about WorldCereal and how openEO streamlines and scales WorldCereal’s agricultural monitoring workflows through cloud-based processing and seamless EO service integration in this CDSE use case ‘Using openEO to streamline global crop mapping’.
The HRL Cropland product offers a comprehensive view of agricultural land use across Europe. It consists of several status layers that provide information not only on what is grown, but also how and when it is cultivated. Together, these layers help track farming practices, support policy implementation, and improve our understanding of cropland dynamics over time.
The HRL crop type product is generated through an advanced, scalable workflow designed to deliver detailed and reliable agricultural crop type information across Europe. At its core is a state-of-the-art, transformer-based machine learning model capable of generalizing across diverse landscapes and multiple years. Integrated into the openEO framework, it ensures scalability and broad accessibility. Kasper Bonte explains more about the full suite of HRL cropland products in the blog post ‘New Copernicus High-Resolution Layer on Croplands Launched for Europe’.
Zoom into crop type product for a region in France for period 2017-2021
Are you wondering how to manage large volumes of datasets from different sources? Do you want to make your workflow scalable? Or are you looking to join a truly FAIR and open ecosystem, free from commercial conflicts of interest?
Contact us to see how openEO can support you in developing scalable and flexible EO workflows or join us at the ESA Living Planet Symposium 2025. You can meet the openEO team throughout the entire conference during different hands-on sessions, presentations, demonstrations, tutorials and at the exhibition on the CDSE, ESA (EOF), Open Science in Making session and VITO Remote Sensing booths. Our openEO experts will be available for direct interaction, on-request demos and open to discussion for possible collaboration.
Here's an overview of a few sessions in which you can discover more about openEO’s capabilities.
openEO aims to support FAIR principles and open-science community. These principles are seamlessly integrated into the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem (CDSE), making it intuitive to adhere to them. Feel free to join Victor Verhaert during the D.02.26 session to discover more about "A.I. in F.A.I.R.".
Discover more openEO-related contributions that will be given during ESA LPS25 at https://dataspace.copernicus.eu/events/esa-living-planet-symposium-2025 or https://remotesensing.vito.be/news/meet-us-esa-living-planet-symposium-2025.
In addition to the presentations given by the openEO team, there are of course several other presentations from users and projects that will showcase how openEO is integrated into their workflows. Looking forward to showing you the wide variety of capabilities during one of the world’s premier events on Earth observation.