The free and open source WEkEO Jupyter Catalogue is only one click away
WEkEO DIAS, the Copernicus data access platform is committed to granting its users the best experience in accessing environmental data from the Copernicus Sentinel satellites and services. In addition to providing harmonised access to the original data sources, WEkEO features a Jupyter Catalogue, a gallery with freely accessible and user-friendly training materials – Jupyter Notebooks. The catalogue is regularly updated, and future Notebooks will guide users through new data and share more examples of different applications.
But what is a Jupyter Notebook? And what does the Catalogue offer?
A Jupyter Notebook is a web-based interactive computing environment allowing programming in different languages and the use of code, equations, figures and text in one single document. It is a good way to document your computing steps and to easily share it with others. WEkEO and its partner organisations have been developing Python based Jupyter Notebooks.
To support users in their journey towards facilitated data processing and visualisation, WEkEO has created a Notebook catalogue on six themes: Atmosphere, Climate, Land, Machine Learning, Marine, and Tools. The notebooks provide information on data access and product characteristics (such as coverage and formats), and feature step-by-step guides on how to load, browse and visualise the data. Other notebooks share examples of how data can be applied to understand environmental phenomena or address environmental challenges we face today. On top of this, the well-documented examples offer the possibility to reuse the code, under open licences.
Another WEkEO tool with access to the Jupyter Catalogue is the WEkEO Jupyter Hub, a virtual platform where users can run these notebooks and process data themselves. Python is the main programming language used in Jupyter environments and it is essential to be able to master such platforms, as it provides users a building block to develop new applications.
Illustrating a use case
There is no more effective way to highlight the potential of the Jupyter Notebooks Catalogue than by exploring one of the many Notebooks available.
“Portrait of a lake’s death” was developed in the context of a Jupyter Notebook Competition and was added to the catalogue as a free-access use-case for WEkEO users; the project leveraged the Copernicus Sentinel-2 Mission data to assess the state of the Acuelo Lagoon in Chile, which dried up in 2018. In the researchers’ own words, satellite imagery “can be used to predict critical situations that require urgent action by society”.
The first section of the Notebook provides a contextualisation of the study by illustrating different elements, from the geography and morphology of the lake area to the water supply. In the second segment, the Notebook dives deep into the analysis of the Sentinel-2 products and their processing.
What’s next?
As anticipated by Hayley Evers King, Marine Applications expert at EUMETSAT and Jupyter notebook developer, “we are preparing more and more notebooks that turn a web story into a more interactive experience, where users can recreate analysis and figures for themselves; these notebooks are connected to international environmental challenges and policies and particular topics of interest in the news.”
• Learn more about the WEkEO Jupyter Hub in this article
• Read this article for a step-by-step guide to access the Jupyter Notebooks Catalogue