Remote Sensing Image Ground Segment Interoperability: PLEIADES-HR Case Study

Pleiades-HR is a high-resolution optical Earth observation system developed by CNES, for civilian and military users. The launch of the first Pleiades satellite is scheduled in 2008, the second, 18 months later. The Pleiades-HR program is the French part of the French-Italian ORFEO program which also comprises COSMO-SkyMed, an Italian high-resolution radar system. The Pleiades-HR products will be distributed by Spotlmage and will complete the existing SPOT product line. In such a multi-sensors and multi-users context, CNES has decided to design the new Pleiades-HR ground segment pointing the stress on systems interoperability in order to ease the data access from the end user point of view. After a synthetic presentation of the Pleiades HR ground segment and image products, this paper focuses on PLEIADES HR image product definition and cataloguing services, two major points for the image ground segment interoperability. Among all possible solutions, the image product and catalog services have been defined taking into account the PLEIADES-HR system characteristics, its performance requirements and the international standards (ISO-TC211, OGC, image standards, JPEG2000 ...) use and evolution capabilities. The results presented in the paper are also part of a European initiative of ground segment harmonisation studied in the frame of the HMA project with other European Space Agencies.