The eStation is an earth observation processing system that has been developed by the JRC since 2009. It is designed to automatically deal with the acquisition, processing, visualisation and analysis of key environmental parameters derived from remotely sensed data, re-analysis, seasonal forecast, climate projections and in-situ data. The portfolio of the eStation includes products from the main Copernicus services, including land monitoring, marine, emergency management and atmosphere.
In addition to the processing services, the eStation offers a highly-customised web client, made available to different end-users for computing ad-hoc thematic products and environmental indicators. All processing steps are easily configurable allowing the user to modify the generated environmental indicators and to implement new ones.
The eStation has been distributed to the regional and national centres in all sub-Saharan African countries involved in the MESA project (Monitoring of Environment and Security in Africa), and is being further developed and customised for the beneficiaries of the GMES & Africa support programme.
Since 2019, JRC has developed a climate-oriented version of the eStation, called Climate Station, for the intra-ACP Climate Services and Related Application Program (ClimSA). It also includes forecast and projection products, local station data and additional features like the Jupyter Notebooks. The eStation and Climate Station have the same functionalities, and differ only in the customisations made for the beneficiary communities in terms of portfolio and ancillary layers (administrative boundaries, among others).
Join and use the online eStation
The eStation online is a version of the eStation for Climate and Environment, giving access to visualisation and analysis components.
Languages: Available in English and French.
Restrictions: The eStation online cannot be used for commercial purposes.
The installation of the eStation for Climate and Environment consists of the following steps:
- Find a suitable computer/server as host machine.
- Identify or create a user with administrative rights on the computer.
- Install Docker and Git on the host machine.
- Clone the Git repository containing the installation script.
- Execute the installation script to pull Docker images, and customize settings.
- Perform post installation checks, and control the application.
Latest news
Carolina Arias Muñoz (JRC D.6) participated in the 16th EUMETSAT User Forum in Africa, which took place in Cotonou, Benin, from 16-20 September, 2024. This was the continuation of the technical session held online in June. Over 150 participants from 46 African countries and various international organizations attended the event, which focused on enhancing the use of satellite data for climate monitoring and decision-making.
The first batch of ClimSA stations was installed in Nairobi, Kenya, on the second week of August, at the Kenyan Meteorological Department (KMD), ICPAC and the Regional Training Center (IMRT). The deployment will be concluded in 2025, and involve all African countries.
Related JRC software
The IMPACT Toolbox is integrated within the eStation for Climate and Environment, but not available on the eStation online. It offers a combination of remote sensing, photo interpretation and processing technologies in a portable and stand-alone GIS environment, allowing non specialist users to easily accomplish all necessary pre-processing steps while giving a fast and user-friendly environment for visual editing and map validation. No installation or virtual machines are required.
