Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
This section of the User Manual lists the Frequent Asked Questions (FAQ) for the Charter Mapper implemented by ESA.
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What is the ESA Charter Mapper?
It is a Processing Environment built and integrated in COS-2, implemented by ESA, to support operations with on-line services to access and visualize EO data products. User Manual introduction page can be found at https://docs.disasterscharter.org and the Quick Guide of the ESA Charter Mapper can be downloaded by clicking here.
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Who can use it?
Charter Project Managers (PMs) and Value Adding (VA) providers can use the ESA Charter Mapper during activations. The Charter members may use it for monitoring operations and for promotion and training purposes.
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Can Authorized Users (AUs) and End-Users (EUs) access the ESA Charter Mapper?
AUs and EUs cannot access the ESA Charter Mapper since it is specifically dedicated to operations to support activations. Upon specific requests, the possibility to access it for training purposes can be considered.
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Is it necessary to use the ESA Charter Mapper in a Charter activation?
PMs, VA providers, Executive Secretariat (ES) members are free to use or not the ESA Charter Mapper.
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Is the ESA Charter Mapper able to process EO data? Is it able to extract geo-information from data?
The ESA Charter Mapper enables the visualization of EO data as well as a set of processing services, basic and advanced, for Optical and SAR data; basic services include the multitemporal composite service able to combine images from different sensors over time; advanced services will be released gradually.
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Who built the ESA Charter Mapper?
The Charter Mapper is an ESA initiative implemented with an industrial team composed of EVERSIS (Poland) and Terradue (Italy).
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What is the point of contact concerning User Support?
If experiencing issues in the usage of the Charter Mapper implemented by ESA or would like to report a problem, please send an e-mail to helpdesk@disasterscharter.org from 08:00 to 16:00 UTC (or 07:00 to 15:00 UTC end March - end October, daylight saving time period) and outside above hours and days also to cos_support@disasterscharter.org.
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How can I access the ESA Charter Mapper?
The landing page address is: https://cpe.disasterscharter.org. General or activation workspaces are accessible after the login.
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Are all the EO missions of the Charter constellation supported?
The ESA Charter Mapper supports a broad range of EO missions and will gradually support the totality of the EO missions provided by Charter members.
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Is the ESA Charter Mapper able to generate Value Added Products (VAP)?
The generation of VA products is beyond the ESA Charter Mapper mandate. A user can upload VA products and visualize the VAPs automatically ingested from COS-2. The ESA Charter Mapper is made available to the PM and VA provider without imposing it as a unique tool for VA processing. The PM and VA providers generally have their own Value Adding chains to generate VA products. However, EO data can be processed using the ESA Charter Mapper and it can be used for the generation of a VAP.
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Can the user download EO data from the ESA Charter Mapper?
A user can retrieve the Browse image (GeoTIFF) of the EO data product, but not the original EO data product. In addition, any derived or VA product generated on the ESA Charter Mapper can be downloaded. The PM and VA provider can download data if they have signed the license and Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) associated to the concerned EO data.
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What do I find once connected?
When a charter is activated for a disaster, the ESA Charter Mapper creates a specific workspace dedicated to the activation for the different users to search, view and process activation-related data such as EO Data acquisitions and Value-added Products. The General workspace is primarily meant for Executive Secretariat members, while workspace dedicated to activations are meant for Charter Project Managers and Value Adding providers.
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What functions and services are available?
The user can explore EO data and Value-Added products, search for specific EO data and visualize imagery, visualize single or combined image bands (so called assets) following data calibration, upload external data, access EO processing services and execute processing on-demand, access GIS functions via QGIS, etc.
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Does the ESA Charter Mapper handle specific EO data formats?
The ESA Charter Mapper provides access to EO data coming from several missions and sensors and provided using different data formats and metadata. To reduce EO data heterogeneity, the ESA Charter Mapper seeks to pre-process the acquisitions into a common format which, on the one hand, provides a ready-to-inspect and comparable dataset and, on the other, to have downstream processing services that support multi-sensor and multi-mission acquisitions.
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How can the user retrieve the EO data products?
The user can gather all the available EO data of a selected Charter activation; he/she can use multiple filters to retrieve the desired data from the EO data collection of the activation.
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Will the user access the original products or only the overview/footprint of the EO product?
The PM/VA provider can visualize the full resolution EO data products generated automatically in the ESA Charter Mapper as well as the original EO data and process them on-demand to generate a set of EO products according to his/her need. The ESA Charter Mapper provides the user with directly usable geospatial information with basic services to support image.
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Is the ESA Charter Mapper able to calibrate EO data products?
The ESA Charter Mapper can systematically calibrate Optical and SAR EO data. Radiometric calibration workflow employed for multiple optical missions and SAR missions are available at the following links: https://docs.disasterscharter.org/concepts/opt-calibrated-data/, and https://docs.disasterscharter.org/concepts/sar-calibrated-data/.
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Where does users access the results of the processing services they executed?
The user can access the products generated by the processing services in a dedicated and personal section called My Results in the top right of the user workspace.
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How can I train myself with the platform before or after a real activation?
PMs, VA members are invited to access and use the training instance of the ESA Charter Mapper to familiarize with the system and to be better prepared when using the ESA Charter Mapper in operations during a real activation. The training instance offers the same user experience to the operational one. It includes a selection of relevant EO data acquired over recent activations. PM/VAs can access the training platform anytime.
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Is it possible to integrate a new EO data service?
The integration of a new EO Service in the ESA Charter Mapper is possible; it is managed by the Executive Secretariat of the International Charter Space and Major Disasters ExecutiveSecretariat@disasterscharter.org