Visualising Earth observation data

A good practice guide on visualising Earth observation data is now available

This summer, EUMETSAT organised a series of webinars focusing on data visualisation and story-telling with Earth observation data.

Last Updated

28 November 2023

Published on

22 November 2023

The aim was to encourage more people to access and work with Copernicus and EUMETSAT Earth observation data and services.

The webinars involved data journalists from many news outlets (BBC, Der Spiegel, Washington Post, AFP, Le Monde and others) and leading scientists who came together to discuss how they visualise data to support communication about environmental topics and the climate crisis.

As well as learning about how journalists and scientists are using Earth observation data to support storytelling, the webinars also included introductory sessions to different types of data and visualisation resources, such as EUMETSAT's EUMETview and the Copernicus WEkEO online platforms.

In total, the webinars attracted over 9000 registrations from around the globe and this translated into more than 3000 attendees over the six webinars, indicating a growing interest in working with Earth observation data for storytelling.

The recordings from each webinar are available below:

Good practice guide

After the webinar series finished, the key outcomes were compiled into a short good practice guide on data visualisation with Earth observation data.

The good practice guide is an open document in read-the-docs format on GitHub and all suggestions for edits and additional comments are welcome. It is hoped that the guide will continue to develop as a community-driven resource for data visualisation.

As well as links to all the individual presentations, the guide offers representative examples of data visualisations and provides links to data access platforms and tutorials to help people easily access Earth observation data.

Data visualisation checklist

Some of the key points that came up in the webinars have also been summarised into a handy 10-point checklist of simple things to consider when storytelling with Earth observation data:

Have you made sure that your image/animation is clear and easy to understand. If you can, test it with others before releasing it.
Does your image have a simple key, scale bar, and where relevant a background map, so that people understand the context and everything is clear in the image or animation?
Try to use a colour scheme that is clear and appropriate for the data shown.
Have you annotated the main features that you want to show e.g., wildfires? Don’t assume that it will be obvious to everyone.
If you have labels on your image, try to keep text to a minimum and avoid jargon or specialised technical terms.
Can you include additional supporting information, where possible, to back up your image/animation?
If possible can you provide links, for instance, links to scenes in online Earth observation data viewers, so that others can recreate your image?
Have you made sure that your image/animation will work with all mobile formats for social media channels?
If it is a single image, would it be better to animate a series of images to make the focus more easy to see and understand?
Where possible, try to blend different types of Earth observation data, e.g., infrared or SAR data, as well as true colour imagery if it will help to highlight the focus of your image or animation.

Online Earth observation data viewers such as WEkEO (left) and EUMETview (right) were highlighted during the workshop series.

Funding and partners

The webinars were funded by the EU’s Copernicus Programme and involved many partner organisations including Mercator Ocean International, ECMWF, EEA, ESA, JRC, WMO, Météo-France, FMI, CNRS and many more.