The analysis of user requirments
The meeting with the potential users of the soil moisture products was held on May 29, 2014, at the central building of the National Meteorological Administration. This meeting was attended by representatives of the following institutions: The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, The National Research and Development Institute for Soil Science, The Agrochemistry and Environment Protection, The Faculty of Geography - University of Bucharest, The Institute of Geography; The National Institute of Hydrology and Water Management Research Center Groundwater Engineering - Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest, The Romanian Space Agency and The National Meteorological Administration.
After the meeting, 10 questionnaires were completed users. The analysis of the completed questionnaires led to the following conclusions:
- All users surveyed have used products derived from satellite data;
- 3 track users not previously received satellite products generated by Copernicus services; 2 users are aware of these services;
- 6 users currently use data on soil moisture, the source data is in-situ measurements;
- Response time required for the products to find the optimal use in organizations is less than 24 hours for 2 users, between 1-7 days for 7 users and more than 7 days for a single user;
- 8 users are willing to contribute data to improve product quality ASSIMO;
- 8 users surveyed believe that the organization they belong will allocate financial resources to access products derived from satellite data;
- All users surveyed want to be part as an end user for ASSIMO and they want to be informed on the future development of the service.
The main objective of this work is the synthesis of user requirements for ASSIMO regarding product validated satellite soil moisture. After completing the ASSIMO questionnaire there were identified key user requirements:
- The optimal spatial resolution: very high (2.5 - 10 m) (6 users), high (10-30 meters) (2 users) Medium (30-250 meters) (3 users) and low (> 250 m) (1 user );
- The preferred method of receiving products: digital maps delivered via FTP / HTTP (8 users) and web services (WMS / WFS / KML) (5 users);
- The use of GIS Software: ESRI ArcGIS (8 users), MapInfo (1 user), Open Source (4 users) and R (1 user).