ABSTRACT
The ESA Science and Application Department of Earth Observation Programmes Directorate at ESRIN has focused on the development of a dedicated Earth Science grid infrastructure, under the name Earth Observation Grid Processing On-Demand (G-POD). This environment provides an example of transparent, fast, and easy access to data and computing resources. Using a dedicated Web interface, each application has access to the ESA operational catalogue via the ESA Multi-Mission User Interface System (MUIS) and to storage elements. It furthermore communicates with the underlying grid middleware, which coordinates all the necessary steps to retrieve, process, and display the requested products selected from the large database of ESA and third-party missions. This makes G-POD ideal for processing large amounts of data, developing services that require fast production and delivery of results, comparing scientist approaches to data processing, and permitting easy algorithm validation.
