C-SCALE has developed an easier mechanism in just one-step, to discover relevant scientific data in satellite data archives across Europe and across the C-SCALE Data Federation. This service will support scientists, researchers and any other user communities, to quickly find the data they were looking for in the huge offer of Copernicus Data.
The Metadata Query Service (MQS) implements a STAC API to accept and answer STAC-compliant queries for products available across the C-SCALE Data Federation. It is aware of individual sources of data in the federation, and can forward incoming queries to those sources (sites), receive their responses and combine them into a compound response, which is then returned to the user, indicating the availability of products matching their query across the federation.
The MQS can also be made aware of different sites’ focus in terms of geographical area, acquiring and retention policy, product type selection and similar factors, so that incoming queries do not need to be redistributed to all sites but rather only to those who are likely to possess matching products.