EO Browser Updates — Summer 2022
Petabytes of New Data, Planet PlanetScope Subscription, Multi-Language Support, Timelapse and 3D Improvements, Paste Geometry Support, Advanced Sentinel-1 Options, Enhanced Evalscript Editor and more
Authors: Monja Šebela, Dino Horvat, Sabina Dolenc
Following our traditional summer blog posts on EO Browser updates, this summer we again present everything you need to know about the latest features and changes.
1. Multi-Language Support
To bring Earth Observation data closer to more people, especially the younger population, we continue to implement different languages. As EO Browser is more and more recognised as a great tool for teaching, exploring and learning about our planet through EO data, we are also getting help with translations from geography teachers, professors and remote sensing experts. In the last year, we’ve doubled the number of languages in which you can search the available satellite data. In the last year the main functionalities of the EO Browser have been translated into Swedish, Finnish, French, Latvian, Estonian and Danish.
If you are missing your native language and you would like to contribute, follow this link to learn more about how you can get involved.
2. Petabytes of New Data
The amount of available data is growing rapidly. We have added several new collections that you can explore seamlessly in the EO Browser.
CNES Land Cover Map
A collection covering metropolitan France with a 10 meter spatial and annual temporal resolution.
Global Human Settlement
Explore the world’s population distribution and density at 10 meter resolution in the GHS collection.
The Global Human Settlement Layer GHS-BUILT-S2 is a global map of built-up areas (expressed as probabilities from 0 to 100 %) with a spatial resolution of 10 meters. It was derived from a global Sentinel-2 image composite for the reference year 2018 using Convolutional Neural Networks.
Planet-NICFI
Norway’s International Climate & Forests Initiative (NICFI) gives everyone access to Planet’s high-resolution, analysis-ready mosaics of the world’s tropics in order to help reduce and reverse tropical forest loss, combat climate change, conserve biodiversity and enable sustainable development. This outstanding collection has a spatial resolution of less than 5 meters and you can find the data bi-annually from September 2015 to August 2020 and monthly from September 2020 onwards.
Four new high resolution vegetation phenology and productivity collections
🔹 Seasonal Trajectories — This annually updated collection (2021 isn’t yet available) provides the Plant Phenology Index (PPI) on a 10-day basis from 2017 on. The spatial coverage is the EEA39 region.
🔹 Vegetation Indices — The collection is available daily and provides four different vegetation indices (NDVI, LAI, FAPAR, PPI) with a 10 meter resolution. The temporal availability ranges from October 2016 to February 2021.
🔹 Vegetation Phenology and Productivity Parameters — VPP contains 13 parameters describing specific stages in the vegetation growth cycle. A second collection for a second season in a year is available. Temporal availability: January 2017 — January 2020.
🔹 CORINE Land Cover Accounting Layers — This collection shows the CLC status layers. Four account layers are available, starting in 2000 with an updated version every six years. The spatial resolution is 100 meters and the coverage is the EEA39 region.
ESA WorldCover map
The European Space Agency (ESA) WorldCover map is a global land cover map with 11 different land cover classes, produced at 10 meter resolution based on a combination of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data. The WorldCover map was created for the year 2020 (1 January to 31 December) with global coverage. It provides valuable information for applications such as biodiversity, food security, carbon assessment and climate modelling. Read more!
Landsat 9
The Landsat collections (landsat-ot-l1 and landsat-ot-l2) with Landsat 8 data have been expanded with Landsat 9 data. You can read more about this in our forum post.
Discover and share all the collections available through Sentinel Hub in our public collections registry.
3. Third Party Data Import and PlanetScope Subscription
As you may already know, you can search, order and visualise commercial high-resolution data directly in the EO Browser. You can choose between Planet PlanetScope (in 3 meters spatial resolution), Airbus Pleiades (0.5 meters) and SPOT (1.5 meters), as well as Maxar WorldView data (0.5 meters).
A few months ago, the Sentinel Hub APIs got richer for the PlanetScope Subscription API — a great tool in combination with the PlanetScope’s Hectare under management model. And it was only a matter of time that we integrated it into the EO Browser as well. Basically, with a single request to register your area of interest, we provide both, archive data and ensure that new observations are instantly available and added to your collection.
To get started, watch our demonstration video to learn how easy it is to order all the commercial data in our offer (see below), or read our step-by-step PDF guide.
In the case of the PlanetScope subscription, you need to select the relevant data collection (1), choose your area of interest (2), specify the desired search criteria and confirm them by clicking on the “Search” button (3).
Then choose a product from the products displayed and confirm your choice by clicking on the “Prepare order” button (4). Select “Subscription” (5), set the criteria, enter your Planet API key and create the subscription (6).
*Please note that commercial data search is only available to Sentinel Hub users with an active subscription. To activate the Planet PlanetScope subscription model, you must also purchase a corresponding commercial data package. For more information on commercial data, click here.
4. Timelapse Improvements
The Timelapse update in winter brought many new features and optimisations for the EO Browser. You can now add multiple visualisation layers to a single animation. The control over AOI and image filtering is much finer. You can also enjoy higher output resolutions and enhance the results with a fade effect between images. All these new features are explained in more detail in this blog post.
5. Sentinel-1 Corrections
Some of the most commonly used Sentinel-1 corrections can now be activated in EO Browser! In the effects, you can enable orthorectification with your favourite digital elevation model, add a lee speckle filtering to smooth out radar noise, and also select the backscattering coefficient.
Sentinel-1 GRD data as provided by ESA isn’t geometrically corrected for target elevation, and hilly areas can appear slanted or misplaced. To correct for this using SH, simply enable orthorectification. This adjusts the pixel positions to be in line with the terrain. Below you can see an example of a mountain ridge without corrections (left) and with orthorectification applied (Copernicus 10/30 DEM was used).
To reduce speckle noise, activate one of the three lee speckle filtering options in the effects. For filtering to work, you will need to be at least at zoom level 12. Note that although the image looks smoother, some information is lost from the image when you filter it. Below is an example of noise reduction with a 7x7 speckle filter (image on the right) over Mayang Imphal, India.
You can also choose between BETA0, GAMMA0_ELLIPSOID (default), GAMMA0_TERRAIN and SIGMA0_ELLIPSOID backscatter coefficients. If you select the GAMMA0_TERRAIN option, the radiometric terrain correction (RTC) is activated. RTC includes orthorectification, while also correcting the radiometry (pixel values) to account for the effects of the underlying terrain. Below you can compare the image with orthorectification (default GAMMA0_ELLIPSOID coefficient is used) on the left and radiometric terrain correction on the right.
Note that all these corrections can also be set for each layer in your Configuration utility. If this is the case, just leave these options as layer default.
6. 3D Improvements
Our 3D got some amazing new features too. To start, 3D is now fully embedded in the 2D interface! This means you can seamlessly switch between the two without a restrictive window popping up. You can now work with 3D just as easily as you are used to from 2D imagery.
If you have a pair of red-cyan 3D glasses at hand, you can experience the 3D with the new stereoscopic view! Once activated, you’ll see two stereoscopic parameters to tweak: Depth contrast (Eye gap [m]) and Depth offset (Eye angle [°]).
Depth contrast determines how far apart the objects seem from one another. Imagine we have two hills, one of which is closer to the viewer than the other. If you set the depth contrast to 0, it looks like both hills are the same distance away from the viewer. If you increase it, the distance between them increases. Think of it as having a box in your computer — the higher the depth contrast, the longer the box.
The second option, depth offset, determines the “closeness” of the objects in relation to the computer screen. If you set it to 0, it looks like the furthest point of the scene (the horizon) is as far away as the computer screen, while all the objects appear to be closer than the computer screen. It’s like they pop out of the screen! If you increase the value, “the box” is pushed deeper into the screen, as if it were moving away from the viewer, which increases our depth perception.
The sun time you set in your scenes is now preserved when you share your 3D scenes with others, and you can also enable/disable the lens flare effect, which is visible when the camera is looking at the sun. You can read more about the other 3D features in detail in our blog post Terrain Viewer in EO Browser: A Play of Light and Shadow. There’s so much you can do with this tool, try it out!
7. Paste Geometry Support
Until now, you could only define the Area of Interest (AOI) by manually clicking on the map or by uploading the file in KML/KMZ, GPX or GEOJSON/JSON format. Now it’s possible to define the AOI by inserting the geometry directly into the EO Browser in all existing file formats.
To make the processing of spatial data in EO Browser even easier for you, we’ve introduced the new WKT file format in addition to the existing formats and you are able to directly insert your own bounding box coordinates as used by the Process API.
8. Other Improvements
Basic Image Download for Compare Mode
Basic image download now also works for compare mode! This opens up some cool possibilities. In the image below, we used the opacity slider of the compare mode to overlay the Sentinel-2 true color image with a semi-transparent ASTER-GDEM visualization. The result is a Sentinel-2 image of a glacier, mixed with detailed terrain information. You can overlay several images this way, and also export images created with a split slider.
Improved Evalscript Editor
The custom script editor got an update as well. The scripting window can now be set to full screen or resized manually. You can also choose between a light and a dark mode for the editor, as well as enjoy nice Javascript coloring, code suggestions and linting (automated help in finding style or coding errors).
Sorting of Pins
Working with pins has never been easier! After the previous updates on the pins, we have now developed this feature even further. Since managing a large number of pins can be confusing, we have tried to make it easier for you. Therefore, we have now introduced sorting of pins by date, location (closest to your current position), collection (Datasetld) and by title.
Special effects badge
Another improvement is that it’s now always clear whether a layer uses special effects or not. This is indicated by a white circle badge next to the effects option.
Zoom to location
In addition, the location search now automatically zooms in on the location, making navigation even easier.
Rectangular selection tool
An extremely useful feature for those used to downloading satellite images from EO Browser is the rectangular selection tool. Instead of drawing a polygon with n-points, you can now simply drag on the screen and draw a rectangle.
More options for data fusion scripts
Finally, you can now specify the DEM instance when using DEM in your data fusion scripts, as well as include Landsat MSS and ETM+, or your own BYOC collections. We can’t wait to see your amazing scripts in our Custom script repository!
9. Behind the Scenes Work
If we have done our job properly, you as a user should not have noticed anything. However, we have made some changes behind the scenes that have a positive effect for both you and us.
Processing satellite data is now even easier, as we have completely replaced the FIS service with the more powerful Statistical API. From now on, you do not have to create multiple layers in the Sentinel Hub Dashboard to see statistics in EO Browser. Instead, you can use a single evalscript as shown in the example below.
See this FAQ to learn how the script works and how to set up your own layers for statistical information. To familiarize yourself with statistical API and its additional functions and features, we recommend you check our API Reference, and our Statistical API Webinar. You can also find some examples of its amazing features here.
Next to that we moved the pins to a new EO Browser specific database to improve the storage of data on our site.
If you are an expert in the field of remote sensing or even teach it, you should not miss our initiative to create a “Remote Sensing 101” textbook. We are looking for experts who are willing to help us create a free eBook for introductory courses in remote sensing at university level. If you think you can contribute in any way (by writing about a topic, providing lecture notes, or anything else), please contact us (if you haven’t already). Email us at info@sentinel-hub.com. A chapter in this eBook will also be dedicated to the EO Browser. Read more about our initiative.
If you want to learn more about Sentinel Hub, make sure to listen the MapScaping Podcast:
