## Introduction

The OGC openEO Community Standard defines a set of well-defined processes in support of interoperable cloud-based processing of large Earth observation datasets.

We recommend reading the glossary before diving into this specification. The glossary explains the most important terms used in this specification.

The OGC openEO Community Standard consists of two parts:

- OGC openEO API Community Standard, the accompanying API specification that enables discovery, chaining and execution of the processes defined in this sepcification
- OGC openEO Processes Community Standard, this specification

### Abstract

openEO specifies an open application programming interface (API) for connecting applications and other client software to big Earth observation cloud back-ends in a simple and unified way.

The openEO specification aims at increasing the interoperability of big EO data processing of satellite imagery in the cloud. Implementations of openEO can be used to add an interoperability layer on top of existing services. Its development has been driven by the need to overcome the challenges associated with different tools, APIs, and data formats in geospatial technology. openEO has been developed from the bottom up, with each version of the specification supported by implementations.

The primary use case for specifying openEO was to simplify and unify the data processing using a common API and a specification for a set of pre-defined processes. As such, users can still work in their favored programming language without worrying about data organization and pre-processing. Users can avoid vendor lock-in as the generated process descriptions can be executed at multiple provider endpoints, making it easier to compare and reproduce processing results between different providers.

### Source of this Document

The majority of the content in this OGC document is a direct copy of the content contained at https://github.com/Open-EO/openeo-processes. No normative changes have been made to the content. This OGC document does contain content not in source openEO Processes GitHub repository. Specifically, while derived from content on the openEO Processes repository, the chapters "Abstract", "Source of this Document", "Submitting Organizations", and "Supporting Organizations" in this document are not found on the openEO Processes repository.

### Submitting Organizations

The following organizations submitted this Document to the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC):

- openEO Project Steering Committee

The organizations listed above have granted the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) a nonexclusive, royalty-free, paid up, worldwide license to copy and distribute this document and to modify this document and distribute copies of the modified version under a Apache License, Version 2.0 (see below).

### Supporting Organizations

The following organization (in alphabetical order) support the submission of the openEO Community Standard to the OGC:

- EOX IT Services GmbH
- EUMETSAT
- Eurac Research
- European Space Agency (ESA)
- GeoConnections - Natural Resources Canada
- German Aerospace Center - DLR
- Matthias Mohr - Softwareentwicklung
- Planet Labs PBC
- Telespazio VEGA UK Ltd
- University of Münster - Institute for Geoinformatics
- VITO (Flemish Institute for Technological Research)

### License Agreement

The standard is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. You can implement this standard in services, clients or processing tools without restrictions.