Pangeo: Openness for Sovereignty, Innovation, and Sustainable Communities

Slides of the keynote given at the OpenEarthMonitor final event, CREAF, Barcelona, 7 October 2026 (19 slides, including thank-you and references). Earth observation is generating data at unprecedented scales, but what we can do with it depends on what lies behind: how data are stored, accessed and processed, and who builds and maintains that infrastructure once projects end. The talk argues that openness is a practical strategy, on three fronts, and adds a fourth on AI. Sovereignty: Pangeo is sovereign by design, fully open so it runs wherever you choose, with Pangeo@EOSC as a reference deployment for Europe and a diverse community of builders across Europe. Innovation: tools start from a scientific need (VirtualiZarr, UXarray, xdggs, JupyterGIS); global grids as an old need at a new scale (GRID4EARTH: HEALPix on WGS84 in Zarr); biodiversity needs to bridge scales, from GBIF records on the ground to Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3, each record on the HEALPix cell that matches its uncertainty; and standards are agreed, not generated. AI-ready, responsibly: agents follow what we agreed, declared as FAIR Digital Objects; people review and sign the code and the science as nanopublications; use the best AI today, keep the freedom to switch, and fill the gap with open models run in Europe. Communities: meetings, the Environmental Data Science Book, training (including training AI agents with MCP servers and skills), and where funding makes the difference, from long-term research software engineer positions to shared tools to work together. The Earth-observation figures (Copernicus Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 from ESA's EOPF Zarr, GBIF records on WGS84 HEALPix) are reproducible from the code in github.com/annefou/pangeo-keynote-figures.