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<p>In recent years, the increasing range of applications of Earth Observation data products and availability of low-cost satellites has resulted in an increasing number of commercial satellite systems. These services may provide complementary capabilities to those of Space Agencies.  Adoption of these data products for many applications requires that they meet an assured level of quality that is fit for the given purpose.  For the most efficient exploitation of EO data,  therefore,  assessment of data quality, calibration and validation are indispensable tasks,  forming  the basis for reliable scientific conclusions.  </p><p> </p><p>In this context, the European Space  Agency has established the Earthnet  Data Assessment Pilot  (EDAP) project, which aims to enable maximum exploitation of growing data availability by performing early data assessment for various missions that fall into one of the following instrument domains number of  missions, in the Optical, SAR and atmospheric  domains. These assessments are intended to evaluate and report the quality of a satellite mission with respect to what is “fit for purpose” within the context of the its stated performance and application. This activity compliments similar activities from other international partners, including NASA. </p><p> </p><p>Such quality information is often  communicated to users  in an ill-defined or incomplete manner.  We show the development of a generic satellite mission quality assessment framework, developed within EDAP, which is designed  provide a  thorough  review  of  all important  aspects of  mission quality. The assessment results are  conveye d ata top  level  to the user  as a quality assessment matrix diagram. The framework  itself  is based on  the principles of CEOS QA4EO (Quality Assurance for Earth Observation)  and  builds  on the experience  of  several  European projects that worked towards  practically  implementing them. </p><p> </p><p>In a wider context,  such a  framework has  potential for  more general use  in both institutional and commercial Earth Observation  –  helping  mission providers  to understand  the  information their  users  need and  empowering  users  to make informed decisions about which data is fit for their purpose.  As such, there is potential for international collaboration, between space agencies, to synergise quality assessment approaches and to work towards the development of a common standard.</p>

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We introduce the rationale for, and architecture of, the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative (CCI) Open Data Portal (http://cci.esa.int/data/). The Open Data Portal hosts a set of richly diverse datasets -13 "Essential Climate Variables" -from the CCI programme in a consistent and harmonised form and to provides a single point of access for the (>100 TB) data for broad dissemination to an international user community. These data have been produced by a range of different institutions and vary across both scientific and spatio-temporal characteristics. This heterogeneity of the data together with the range of services to be supported presented significant technical challenges.An iterative development methodology was key to tackling these challenges: the system developed exploits a workflow which takes data that conforms to the CCI data specification, ingests it into a managed archive and uses both manual and automatically generated metadata to support data discovery, browse, and delivery services. It utilises both Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) data nodes and the Open Geospatial Consortium Catalogue Service for the Web (OGC-CSW) interface, serving data into both the ESGF and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). A key part of the system is a new vocabulary server, populated with CCI specific terms and relationships which integrates OGC-CSW and ESGF search services together, developed as part of a dialogue between domain scientists and linked data specialists. These services have enabled the development of a unified user interface for graphical search and visualisation -the CCI Open Data Portal Web Presence.