Assessing the Added Value of Onboard Earth Observation Processing with the IRIDE HEO Service Segment

TL;DR

This paper evaluates how onboard Earth observation data processing enhances operational services by enabling earlier, more detailed, and responsive information extraction, exemplified through the IRIDE programme's burnt-area mapping case study.

Contribution

It demonstrates the operational benefits of onboard processing in EO services, showing improvements in detail, responsiveness, and event detection over ground-only architectures.

Findings

Onboard processing enables higher spatial detail in EO data.

It allows detection of smaller, more precise events.

Onboard intelligence improves system responsiveness and timeliness.

Abstract

Current operational Earth Observation (EO) services, including the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS), the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), and the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS), rely primarily on ground-based processing pipelines. While these systems provide mature large-scale information products, they remain constrained by downlink latency, bandwidth limitations, and limited capability for autonomous observation prioritisation. The International Report for an Innovative Defence of Earth (IRIDE) programme is a national Earth observation initiative led by the Italian government to support public authorities through timely, objective information derived from spaceborne data. Rather than a single constellation, IRIDE is designed as a constellation of constellations, integrating heterogeneous sensing technologies within a unified service-oriented architecture. Within this framework, Hawk for Earth Observation (HEO) enables onboard generation of data products, allowing information extraction earlier in the processing chain. This paper examines the limitations of ground-only architectures and evaluates the added value of onboard processing at the operational service level. The IRIDE burnt-area mapping service is used as a representative case study to demonstrate how onboard intelligence can support higher spatial detail (sub-three-metre ground sampling distance), smaller detectable events (minimum mapping unit of three hectares), and improved system responsiveness. Rather than replacing existing Copernicus services, the IRIDE HEO capability is positioned as a complementary layer providing image-driven pre-classification to support downstream emergency and land-management workflows. This work highlights the operational value of onboard intelligence for emerging low-latency EO service architectures.