The Open Data Cube (ODC) is an open source solution for accessing, managing, and analyzing large quantities of Geographic Information System (GIS) data - namely Earth observation (EO) data. It presents a common analytical framework composed of a series of data structures and tools which facilitate the organization and analysis of large gridded data collections.

The Open Data Cube was developed for the analysis of temporally-rich earth observation data, however the flexibility of the platform also allows other gridded data collections to be included and analyzed. Such data may include elevation models, geophysical grids, interpolated surfaces and model outputs.

A key characteristic of the Open Data Cube is that every unique observation is kept, which contrasts with many other methods used to handle large gridded data collections. Some of the major advantages of ODC are the following:

• Flexible framework

• User maintains control and ownership over their data

• Paradigm shift from scene-based analysis to pixel based

• Lower barrier to entry for remote sensing data analysis.

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In our technical overview document, we briefly describe and illustrate the high-level architecture and ecosystem of the ODC framework in order to provide a better understanding to those who are new to ODC. This document only covers major components of the ODC and the relationships between them. Find it here>>

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What can it do?
Project Open Data Cube (ODC) is an open source project born out of the need to better manage Satellite Data. It provides the foundation of several international, regional to national scale data architecture solutions, such as Digital Earth Australia, Africa Regional Data Cube, and others. The Data Cube works well with Analysis Ready Data (ARD), pre-processed, ready to use data made available by data providers. While providers work on making global ARD products available on the cloud, the Data Cube typically uses the USGS collection 1 Landsat 8 PDS for demonstrations. These data are not ARD and should not be used for scientific analysis. In 2019, it is expected ARD data will become easily available on the Cloud, and until then a user can simply add and index their own processed data. Any data available to you can be installed to your cube, including commercial, in situ, or derived products.

The Open Data Cube system is designed to:
-    Catalogue large amounts of Earth Observation data
-    Provide a Python based API for high performance querying and data access
-    Give scientists and other users easy ability to perform Exploratory Data Analysis
-    Allow scalable continent scale processing of the stored data
-    Track the provenance of all the contained data to allow for quality control and updates

It has evolved to support interactive data science and scientific computing. ODC will always be 100% open source software, free for all to use and released under the liberal terms of the Apache 2.0 license.

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