New concepts for earth observation data catalogues

Conventional satellite data ground segments comprise sensor mode planning, data acquisition systems, data ingestion interfaces, processing capabilities, the catalogue of available data, a data archive, and interfaces for queries and data dissemination. In the present architecture of the systems to access satellite image archives, from the perspective of the information access, the catalogue plays the central role. The catalogue stores the meta information necessary to specify a query. The result of a query is given as a list of images and as quick looks. It is the user who has to browse visually over the quick looks to restrict the result of the query according to his interest. In order to have the possibility to query such catalogues by using the image content, we present a new concept based on an interactive learning of the image semantics, as given by the user.