The IRIDE initiative, financed by the Italian PNRR and developed by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) with support from ESA, aims to deploy a comprehensive constellation of satellites – including SAR, optical, panchromatic, hyperspectral, and infrared sensors – to provide Earth Observation data and services at national and European level. Within this context, the IRIDE Marketplace and its Data Lake form the backbone for managing and sharing EO products across stakeholders.
Terradue is responsible for the design and implementation of the IRIDE Marketplace Data Lake, under contract with Serco Italia. Our work builds on our long-standing experience developing cloud-native geospatial platforms and aligns with the goal of ensuring streamlined data access for users ranging from public authorities to downstream service developers.
A Comprehensive Data Infrastructure
The IRIDE Data Lake is designed as a modular and scalable system for managing EO data from the constellation and other sources. Its core components include:
- Data Ingestion and Transformation: Incoming data are automatically validated, structured, and indexed using STAC (SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog) metadata standards. Predefined pipelines transform raw products into Analysis Ready Data formats such as Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs (COGs).
- Data Catalog and Discovery: A central STAC-compliant catalogue allows users to search across collections using spatial, temporal, and other metadata filters. The catalogue supports CQL queries and is designed to integrate easily with third-party systems.
- Data Visualisation: Using Titiler and Web Map Tile Service (WMTS) interfaces, the Data Lake offers seamless interactive map-based previews. This enables users to explore the spatial context of datasets directly within graphical applications.
- Secure Data Access: The system supports signed URL authentication for secure and temporary access to assets stored in S3-compatible object storage. Users can retrieve either full products or specific data segments using range requests for performance optimisation.
Enabling the IRIDE Marketplace
The IRIDE Marketplace brings together EO data, services, and applications in a unified cloud-native platform. In this ecosystem, the Data Lake serves as the entry point for:
- Discovery and access to datasets across the IRIDE missions.
- Support for downstream services that rely on fast access to large EO archives.
- Integration with tools for algorithm development, AI model training, and real-time analytics.
This architecture supports both operational services and innovation-driven activities, fostering the development of value-added EO services in Italy and beyond.
Designed for Performance and Interoperability
The IRIDE Data Lake leverages best practices in cloud architecture for deployment and it employs open standards like STAC, COG, and RESTful APIs to ensure interoperability and maintainability.
By focusing on cloud-optimised storage and services, the system ensures that EO data are available on demand, with high performance for both human users and automated services.
Looking Ahead
With the Data Lake currently in active development, Terradue continues to refine the ingestion, discovery, and access interfaces to support the evolving requirements of the IRIDE constellation. Our goal is to deliver a robust and extensible data infrastructure that can adapt to future mission expansions and new use cases.
The IRIDE programme reflects the broader shift toward federated and user-driven EO ecosystems in Europe. Through the Marketplace and Data Lake, Terradue contributes a critical piece of this infrastructure, enabling scalable and secure access to EO data for the benefit of public authorities, businesses, and researchers.