Introduction

The FORCE integration on CDSE makes it possible to use selected functionality of the FORCE processing engine on the CDSE infrastructure through the openEO API.

Instead of installing FORCE locally, manually downloading data and annotating your results with metadata, the FORCE integration runs on cloud hardware, takes care of the input data staging and automatically generates a STAC catalog and item from the resulting FORCE data cube.

Prerequisites

This guide assumes basic familiarity with the FORCE processing engine and Python. You do not need to be an expert FORCE user to make use of the CDSE deployment.

All examples use the openEO Python client. Due to openEO’s language-agnostic architecture, you should be able to replicate all behavior with other client libraries as well (e.g., R, Javascript), although this has not been tested.

TipWhat to read if you are unfamiliar with FORCE

If you are an openEO user who wants to get familiar with FORCE, we recommend to first have a look at the FORCE documentation pages for:

• The data cube concept and organization: This is the file structure you will receive when running FORCE processing modules
• The level 2 processing system: the basic FORCE module to generate Analysis Ready Data Cubes from raw Satellite input products
• (Optional) The Time Series Analysis (TSA) module: This is the higher level processing module made available through openEO

TipWhat to read if you are unfamiliar with openEO

If you are a FORCE user curious how to process in the cloud and the openEO interface, it will be helpful to be familiar with:

• The openEO vocabulary
• The openEO Python client: The main interface used to interact with the openEO backend. You may want to use the R client or Javascript client instead, if you prefer. However, in this guide, examples will be given exclusively with the Python client.

ImportantData cube representation

Please note that the FORCE integration does not make use of openEO’s data cube concept, processing is done on FORCE’s native data cubes. Therefore, other openEO processes cannot be applied to FORCE data cubes.

Scope

In this guide, you will learn how to create a full processing pipeline using FORCE and openEO:

1. Discover inputs: Query a STAC catalog to determine input products
2. Generate an Analysis Ready data cube with the FORCE level 2 processing system
3. Analyze time series with FORCE’s higher level processing system

On the way, we will cover how to:

• Download data cubes for local processing / visualization / permanent storage
• Apply higher level processing without having to download intermediate results