Planet Earth is increasingly in danger due to the strong presence and impact of the human life. In response to this, the United Nations has supported environmental conventions attempt to define internationally agreed protocols (e.g., Kyoto, Biodiversity and Montreal) to limit and monitor status of our global environment.

The World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg 2002 (WSSD), highlighted the urgent need for coordinated observations relating to the state of the Earth. It established the ad hoc intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO), co-chaired by the European Commission, Japan, South Africa, and the United States, and tasked it with the development of an initial ten year Implementation Plan by February 2005.

The GEOSS ten year Implementation Plan establishes the intent, operating principles, and institutional frame, which was the base at the third Earth Observation Summit, in Brussels, for the establishment of the intergovernmental GEO. The role of the European Earth Science community in the development and implementation of this global infrastructure is of paramount importance.

Preceding the WSSD-2002, the European Commission (EC) and the European Space Agency (ESA) initiated, jointly supported by all ESA and EU member countries, a parallel international initiative called Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES), which is now considered to be the European contribution to GEOSS.

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The implementation and the systematic monitoring of international Environmental conventions need data, tools and world-wide infrastructures to gather and share the data.

A common dedicated infrastructure will permit the Earth Science communities to derive objective information and to share knowledge in all environmental sensitive domains over a continuum of time (from historical measurement to real time assessment to short and long term predictions) and a variety of geographical scales (from global scale to very local facts).

Furthermore, each specific Earth Science domains community has existing methods, approaches and working practices for gathering, storing and exchanging data and information. These are likely to impose a considerable constraint on the impact and increased effectiveness generated by a shared e-Infrastructure approach.

The challenge in front of us today, is to offer a framework that allows scientists from different Earth Science disciplines to have access, to combine and to integrate all historical and present Earth-related data from space, airborne and in situ sensors available from all digital repositories dispersed all over Europe together.

GENESI-DR, short for Ground European Network for Earth Science Interoperations - Digital Repositories, wants to tackle this challenge.

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The good news is that existing European (and as well world-wide) EO dedicated network of operational facilities for acquisition, processing, archiving and dissemination is indeed an excellent starting point, with historical remarkable cooperation experience, towards a global Earth Science interoperable infrastructure to move forward towards an open data and knowledge infrastructure to be used not just by deep experts.

To improve this situation, since a couple of years, ESA coordinates the Ground Segment Coordination Body (GSCB), a strategic European wide initiative that works towards a harmonised and coherent infrastructure evolution across existing ESA and National Earth Observation mission ground segments. The GSCB has the responsibility to coordinate the definition and implementation of specific technical elements of the respective EO facilities.

GENESI-DR establishes open Earth Science Digital Repository access that will be the basis for Science users to seamlessly access and share all data, information, products and knowledge available from participating key centres.

This builds upon the existing, operational and focused Earth Observation (EO) European infrastructure to demonstrate and validate how Europe can best respond to the emerging global needs relating to the state of the Earth.

GENESI-DR involves key Earth Science centres responsible for operational data acquisition, processing, archiving and distribution and additional data holding facilities, and aims to operate, validate and optimise the integrated access and use of available digital repositories for Earth scientists.