Copernicus Australasia Regional Data Hub

Presented by: Alla Metlenko - 23rd September 2020

The Copernicus Australasia Regional Data Hub (the Hub) is Australasia’s gateway to Sentinel satellite data from Europe’s Copernicus Programme in our region, covering a third of the Earth’s surface. A free, open and trusted service that has shared over 10 Petabytes (PB) of Sentinel data, to a monthly average of 700 users from 40 different countries, since going fully operational in April 2018!

The Copernicus Programme is a € 6.7 billion and 20+ year programme, financed and managed by the European Commission (EC). The Sentinel satellites that collect this data are built and operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT).

A cooperation arrangement between the EC and the Commonwealth (represented by Geoscience Australia) to access and use Sentinel data for the delivery of innovative products and services for societal benefit created the opportunity for the Hub, which is enabled by technical agreements with ESA and EUMETSAT. A consortium of five government agency Partners fund the Hub.

So what’s Geoscience Australia’s (GA) role in all this and why is the Hub important? Furthermore, what does Eurovision have to do with it? Come join me to find out.

Alla Metlenko leads the operations of the Copernicus Australasia Regional Data Hub. This includes managing the relationships that underpin this multi-faceted partnership of consortium partners, suppliers and supporters, who all work together to enable access and delivery of Sentinel imagery to our region.

Alla joined the public service as a remote sensing analyst in 1998 then moved quickly to manage stakeholder relations as Secretariat to the Interdepartmental Committee on Law of the Sea; Account Manager for Australian Centre for Remote Sensing (ACRES) government clients; Executive Officer of the Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (ICSM). She then led many and varied sections within GA namely ACRES operations, spatial decision support systems and business intelligence, in-between having children.

Alla studied at RMIT University, where she acquired a bachelor’s degree in Land Information with first class honours followed by a Master of Applied Science by research in remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Her master’s research used remote sensing coupled with spatial and statistical modelling to develop a hierarchical classification system to map the habitat of one of Australia’s threatened bird species: the Plains-wanderer in the Northern Plains of Victoria.