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The first known use of the term “Geographic Information System” can be traced back to Dr. Roger Tomlinson’s research paper “A Geographic Information System for Regional Planning” in 1968. Since then GIS has evolved from being a niche scientific tool to a mass-market technology. T

Today, GIS is being used in different industries and applications. Regardless whether the famous quote “80% of all data in the world has a spatial relation” is accurate or not; it is true that there are more than 770 million smartphones (as of 2013) with GPS capabilities and the number of smartphones with GPS/GNSS sensors have being growing each year.

The large scale use of GPS/GNSS has been one of the biggest driving factors for the growth of new applications and analysis that utilise location data. Location data is slowly transforming the mobile industry and the fact remains that most of the apps we use today, require location access.

Perhaps, it’s not difficult to see why the US Department of Labor identified Geospatial technology (besides nanotechnology and biotechnology), as one of the three most important high-growth industries of the 21st century in one of its reports.

But then again, what exactly does the Geospatial industry encompass?*

Definitions can be a tricky thing; sometimes it’s rather difficult to restrict a term to its original and historic definition. If one were to define Geospatial technology as “any technology that enables the creation, management, analysis and visualisation of Geospatial data”, then would it be correct to identify that any field/domain that uses spatial information and maps, as part of the Geospatial industry? And as a natural extension, would it be accurate to identify anyone who works with spatial data as a Geospatial professional?

When you think about it, most applications and technologies utilise location data for some purpose or the other. Self-driving cars, UAVs, Wearables, Augmented Reality, Internet of Things, Connected bikes and other technologies use spatial data and maps for a wide variety of purposes and applications.

Wearable Tech & Internet of Things*

Google Maps democratised GIS technology and Wearable tech could do the same for some of the more niche GIS applications like Geomedicine. Wearable technologies like Fitness bands, Smartwatches, etc., might still remain a niche device but they have quite a few sensors built into them – GPS, accelerometer, heart-rate sensor, etc. These sensors together with the APIs like Apple’s Health Kit and Google Fit are going to be very helpful in bringing Geomedicine applications all the more closer to being a reality and a widely-used tool.

Data from wearable tech are already forming the base layer for some really cool and insightful visualisations like the RunKeeper map by Mapbox that visualizes the routes that people use for fitness activities in different cities across the globe. Visualizations like this can be helpful for the city planners to understand leisure activities in urban areas.

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The European Commission will invest almost €16 billion in research and innovation in the next two years under Horizon 2020, the EU’s research and innovation funding scheme, following a new work programme for 2016-17 adopted on 13 October. The work programme is now available on the participant portal.

The new funding opportunities offered by the Work Programme are directly aligned with the policy priorities of the Commission of President Jean-Claude Juncker and will substantially contribute to the Jobs, Growth and Investment Package, the Digital Single Market, Energy Union and Climate change policy, Internal Market with stronger industry and making Europe a stronger global actor.

In line with Commissioner Moedas’ strategic priorities, Horizon 2020 will be open to innovation, open to science, and open to the world. The new Work Programme 2016-17 offers funding opportunities through a range of calls for proposals, public procurements and other actions like the Horizon Prizes, together covering nearly 600 topics. The programme’s structure is a reflection of the overall flexibility of Horizon 2020 which focuses on the EU’s long-term priorities and the most pressing societal challenges while allowing it to swiftly address emerging problems such as outbreaks of diseases.

The programme will support a range of cross-cutting initiatives: the modernisation of Europe’s manufacturing industry (€1 billion); technologies and standards for automatic driving (over €100 million); the Internet of Things (€139 million) to address digitalisation of EU industries; Industry 2020 in the Circular Economy (€670 million) to develop strong and sustainable economies; and Smart and Sustainable Cities (€232 million) to better integrate environmental, transport, energy and digital networks in EU’s urban environments.

(More information in the full press release and associated fact sheet)
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Research and innovation are the engines of Europe’s progress and vital to addressing today’s new pressing challenges like immigration, climate change, clean energy and healthy societies.
Carlos Moedas, Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation

Japan International Cooperation Agency (J ICA) will provide $3 million to realize a pilot project as part of the creation of the national infrastructure for geospatial data in Ukraine, Deputy Head of Diplomatic Mission and Advisor to Embassy of Japan to Ukraine Hiromi Nakano has said.

“This is a grant, we do not demand the return of it,” she said at the joint seminar of JICA and the State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre in Kyiv on Friday.

Nakano said that the pilot project which was launched by JICA in September 2015 will be finished in August 2017.

Head of the State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre Maksym Martyniuk said that the pilot project today is considered as a preparatory stage to create the database for processing geospatial information in Ukraine.

The project will cover geospatial data of territories of around 900 square meters.

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Japan International Cooperation Agency is giving $3 million to help Ukraine create a national infrastructure for geospatial data. The agency and the State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre held a joint seminar last week to make this announcement. The project, which was launched in September 2015 is scheduled to be finished in August 2017. It will cover geospatial data of territories of around 900 square meters. ©Source

Luciad software introduces stunning 3-D visualization to the web, allowing everyone to interact with today’s increasingly massive data sets.

LEUVEN – Luciad software introduces stunning 3-D visualization to the web, allowing everyone to interact with today’s increasingly massive data sets.

To demonstrate Luciad’s new capabilities, the company created an application that interactively visualizes 70,000 flights across the globe during a period of 24 hours.

The free app gives users a new perspective on air traffic data provided by FlightRadar24. Fortune Magazine and Gizmodo have recognized the app as “pretty staggering” and “bewilderingly addictive.”

Users can move around the globe, select and zoom in on airports or airlines of their choice, allowing them to understand the complexity, and beauty, of air traffic.

“Luciad is specialized in solving complex situations that require real-time situational awareness,” said Luciad CEO Marc Melviez.

“Traditionally, such applications were only available to users in demanding industries such as aviation and defense and needed to run on powerful desktop computers. Now we have a solution that runs efficiently on any device and allows users to view their data in a beautiful and instinctive way.”

Luciad’s web solution extends beyond flights, explained Melviez, and can be applied to any moving things such as vehicles, pallets, packages and mobile phones.

“The technology and its ability to show extremely large amounts of moving things will drive innovation and generate countless new business opportunities in the months and years to come,” Melviez said.

The free web app is available online at 3d.luciad.com.

About Luciad

Luciad’s software components are designed for the creation of situational awareness applications. By connecting directly to data sources, Luciad’s software not only analyzes and visualizes what is happening now, but also helps predict what will happen next – allowing users to act quickly and safely. “Connect, visualize, analyze, act” is both our method and our motto. www.luciad.com

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China launched four satellites to provide photographs to commercial clients while helping with harvest assessment, geological disaster prevention and resource surveys. The launch of the Jilin-1 mission took place at 04:13 UTC on Wednesday, using a Long March-2D launch vehicle from the 603 Launch Pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center’s LC43.

Chinese Launch

The Jilin-1 mission was developed on the China’s Jilin Province and is the country’s first self-developed remote sensing satellite for commercial use.

Jilin-1 consists of four satellites, one for high-definition images, one for testing new space technology and another two for video.

Data will be provided to commercial clients to help them forecast and mitigate geological disasters, as well as shorten the time scale for the exploration of natural resources.

2015-10-06-235504The satellites were developed by the Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co., Ltd under the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Jilin, one of the country’s oldest industrial bases, is developing its satellite industry as a new economic drive. The province plans to launch 60 satellites by 2020 and 138 by 2030.

The first phase will see the launch of the first four Jilin-1 satellites. Between 2016 and 2019 there are plans to have 16 satellites in orbit, completing a remote sensing network that will cover the entire globe and will be capable of a three to four hours update in the data provided.

From 2020, the plans point to a 60 satellite orbital constellation capable of a 30 minutes update in the data provided.
See Also

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From 2030 the Jilin constellation will have 138 satellites in orbit, forming a all-day, all-weather, full spectrum acquisition segment data and a capability of observing any global arbitrary point with a 10 minutes revisit capability, providing the world’s highest spatial resolution and time resolution space information products.

The four satellites are Jilin-1, Lingqiao-A, Lingqiao-B and LQSat.

Jilin 1 is a 420 kg high-definition optical satellite with a 0.72 m resolution pan-chromatic camera and 4 m resolution multi-spectral camera.

It is equipped with three deployable solar panels for power generation that will be stored in internal batteries. The satellite will operate on a 656 km sun synchronous orbit.

2015-10-07-054204The Lingqiao-A and Lingqiao-B satellites are designed to capture videos with a 4K ultra-clear video resolution of 1.13 meters m on 4.3 × 2.4 km swaths. Weighing 95 kg each, its dimensions are 1.1 meter diameter and 1.2 length.

The satellites are equipped with body mounted solar panels. The satellites will operate on a 656 km sun synchronous orbit.

LQSat is a micro-satellite for technology demonstration designed by CIOMP. Its main payload is a camera with 2 m resolution.

LQSat is equipped with a fixed solar array for power generation. Satellite dimensions are 0.40 × 0.40 × 0.60 m and a mass of about 54 kg. The lifetime of LQSat is about 1 year. UHF downlink with 25 wpm CW and 4k8 CSP packet data using MSK at 27dBm, and also a 2.4GHz downlink at 30dBm using 1Mbps QPSK.

“More info“http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/10/china-launches-jilin-1-mission-long-march-2d/

Since the launch of the Earth Resources Technology Satellite in 1972 (later renamed Landsat), which ushered in the modern era of global land observations and monitoring, remote sensing has been an integral part of agriculture and food security programs of governments and agencies around the world. Since then there has been a fast progress in application of remotely sensed data to the mapping and measurement of the Earth’s characteristics. The last 35 years have seen amazing improvements in sensor technologies, incredible advances in computing, and impressive innovations in analytical procedures.

Rapid technological advancements in earth observation capabilities, coupled with advances in IT, cloud computing, GNSS, mobile technologies and the smartphone revolution have created a unique opportunity for implementing smarter solutions for the agriculture sector globally.

Of late multilateral agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB) have taken up a more focussed approach towards use of spatial technologies and information for ensuring food security. Geoinformation also plays a crucial role in crop insurance schemes.

The UN organisations are promoting GGIM (Global Geospatial Information Management). The thought is that land ownership or tenure etc requires a good land administration, which is the basis for more responsible and sustainable farming practices and certainly also for access to loans and investments. The UK Ordnance Survey and the Dutch Cadastre are promoting that a lot.

The Group on Earth Observations (a partnership of governments and international organizations) developed the Global Agricultural Monitoring (GEOGLAM) initiative in response to the growing calls for improved agricultural information. The goal of GEOGLAM is to strengthen the international community’s capacity to produce and disseminate relevant, timely and accurate forecasts of agricultural production at national, regional and global scales through the use of Earth Observations (EO), which include satellite and ground-based observations. GEO’s GEONETCast programme uses free satellite imagery obtained through low-cost receiving stations is used for detection of agricultural pests. The World Food Programme (WFP) of the United Nations uses geospatial data and technologies for assessing crop vulnerability.

The Web site of NASA’s SEDAC offers a variety of interdisciplinary data and related resources grouped under socioeconomic and Earth science themes. The Agriculture and Food Security theme spans global data holdings and resources that touch on the proportion of cropland and pasture, the extent of poverty, biodiversity, environmental indicators, and human consumption measures.

Another interesting programme is GODAN – Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition. Global GODAN works to support global efforts to make agricultural and nutritionally relevant data available, accessible, and usable to deal with the urgent challenge of ensuring world food security.

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network is a leading provider of early warning and analysis on acute food insecurity. It was created in 1985 by the US Agency for International Development. FEWS NET is a longtime user of Esri technology and creates maps showing areas vulnerable to food insecurity.

The World Resources Institute has a free mapping tool called Global Forest Watch Commodities that provides forest-related data and analysis of various commercial agricultural products. It was created for the WRI by Blue Raster LLC in partnership with Esri and is being used to support analysis related to agriculture and deforestation.

There are a lot of initiatives to do some kind of ‘wall-to-wall’ mapping of agricultural productivity using MODIS and other satellite data. But also in measuring rainfall – like to ‘old’ ARTEMIS programme of FAO. Europe is famous for its MARS project, which monitors agriculture with remote sensing (check box) . And USDA has a website called VegScape with weekly vegetation index imagery from MODIS. MARS, or the Monitoring Agricultural ResourceS Unit Mission Focusing on crop production, agricultural activities and rural development, provides timely forecasts, early assessments and the scientific underpinning for efficient monitoring and control systems. The work serves the Agriculture and Food policies of the European Union, their impact on rural economies and on the environment, encompassing the global issues of food security and climate change.

The Dutch government has started a programme called Geospatial for Agriculture and Water (G4AW). This has the ambition to use geospatial data to reach out to smallholder farms to improve their productivity. It has projects in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Mali, Kenya and more.

In Africa these initiatives are also moving fast. The Gates foundation is supporting a big research project STARS — Spurring a Transformation for Agriculture through Remote Sensing – which is looking for ways to use remote sensing technology to improve agricultural practices in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The project hopes to significantly advance the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in some of the world’s poorest countries. Through its Seeing a Better World Program, DigitalGlobe is partnering with scientists of to provide better information in order to increase productivity and decrease vulnerability for millions of family farmers who often have plots of land no bigger than a football field, and may face insecure tenure on that land.

Geospatial information has always been there (soil maps, vegetation maps etc), but in recent years the ability to take that georeferenced information in to orchards or fields have given us the ability to make real time decisions that has drastically increased the sustainability and profitability of the fruit industry globally.

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Geospatial World Forum 2016 offers opportunities to conduct workshops as part of the conference programme.

Who Can Submit Workshop Proposal?

  • Are you coordinating a new collaborative project and need to gather all stakeholders in one place? Or you just completed one and need to present the results?
  • Are you preparing a policy paper and looking for inputs and feedbacks from
    multiple experts?
  • Are you planning for a new product release and would like to share the updates to maximum number of users?

Take advantage of the biggest geospatial congregation in 2016! Workshop proposals submission is open till 30 November 2015.

The document discuss the future direction of Earth Observation instrumentation in the UK with a wide community.

The evaluation

The CEOI-ST programme has been funded by the UK Space Agency to develop UK capabilities in future space instrumentation for Earth Observation (EO) through the teaming of scientists and industrialists since 2007.

UKSA are undertaking an evaluation of the outcomes over the last 8 years and want to discuss with a wide community the future direction of Earth Observation instrumentation in the UK.

This evaluation outcomes will be two fold to determine:

a) What has been the impact of previous funding, requiring case studies to examine the science, social and financial benefits of CEOI programme.

b) Where the UK industry and academia see EO instrumentation capability in 2030. For this we want to collect comprehensive information on what EO technical capabilities currently exist in the UK and to gather community views on which are the ones to focus on in the future.

Recommendations shall be presented to UK Space Agency Executive Board early December 2015.

The themes

There will be six technology themes around which the evaluation (evidence gathering and the workshop) will focus:

  • IR detectors and systems
  • UV/visible detectors and systems
  • Lidar technologies and systems
  • Active microwave technologies and systems
  • Passive microwave technologies and systems
  • Support technologies for sensing systems

Your participation

This is an opportunity for UK industry and academia to inform the UK Space Agency’s future decision making process and your input will be valuable in helping to shape future funding of Earth Observation instrumentation capabilities in the UK.

Please complete the evaluation evidence in the Survey Monkey link provided below and indicate whether you would like to attend the workshop on the 12th & 13th November at Alexandra House, Wroughton. Please note that due to space constraints at the venue, there will be a limit on the number of people invited to attend, with no more than one or two from each organisation.

Complete your submission no later than 5pm Tuesday 27th October to provide us with your written input and to confirm your attendance. Ideally we would prefer a single response from each organisation.

Places at the workshop are free but as stated limited.

The event will start around 1pm on Thursday 12th and finish Friday afternoon. A more detailed agenda will be issued to the invitees at a later date.

Details for the venue can be found here: http://www.swindonalexandrahouse.co.uk/ We look forward to hearing your views which you can tell us here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/72JW5Q7

Key contacts for questions on the evaluation / logistics etc
UK Space Agency: Charles.mccausland@ukspaceagency.bis.gsi.gov.uk CEOI –ST: mick.johnson@airbus.com

Source UK Space Agency

[Via Satellite 10-12-2015] Weather Analytics, a commercial weather data company, has invested in remote sensing startup OmniEarth, and also intends to become a customer of PlanetiQ when its constellation is active. Bill Pardue, chairman and CEO of Weather Analytics, said Oct. 8 that the company is confident in the ideas presented and is eager to see small satellites providing space-based weather data.


“We’ve already signed up to be one of the first clients of PlanetiQ once they get up and running,” Pardue said at the Hosted Payload and SmallSat Summit in Washington, D.C. “We are also an investor in OmniEarth, which we also have a lot of confidence in.”

Pardue described Weather Analytics as a big believer in small satellites, highlighting several markets where the company envisions applications for data provided from Low Earth Orbit (LEO). He said Weather Analytics has had recent discussions with the United Nations (UN) and the World Bank on practical ways to implement weather data, particularly among countries in Africa where preparedness for meteorological phenomenon is low.

“They are in desperate shape to get information that they can use to make a difference in people’s lives and we firmly believe at Weather Analytics that satellites, especially small satellites, offer an acceptable proxy for weather monitoring,” said Pardue.

Both PlanetiQ and OmniEarth have announced significant progress with their SmallSat constellations in the past year or two. PlanetiQ partnered with spacecraft manufacturer Blue Canyon Technologies and entered talks with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) for its constellation of GPS Radio Occultation (GPS-RO) satellites. In June PlanetiQ successfully tested its Pyxis GPS-RO sensor, and anticipates fielding 12 satellites by 2017, reaching 18 by 2020. OmniEarth teamed up with Ball Aerospace to build imagers for its satellites, with Spaceflight Inc. for rideshare opportunities, and acquired IRISmaps to bolster analytics capabilities. OmniEarth also opened an office in California to focus on drought mitigation, and joined forces with Dropcountr to enable digital water conservation outreach for the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority (SAWPA). Several other SmallSat ventures focusing on Earth observation, weather, and other data, such as Spire, Planet Labs, UrtheCast, BlackSky Global, and GeoOptics, have also gained traction.

Weather Analytics collects data from a variety of sources and has more than three decades of archived information. In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit organization that invests in technology that could benefit the U.S. intelligence community, made an investment in Weather Analytics in March 2013.

Pardue said the World Bank is evaluating ways to leverage feature phones — mobile phones that are more capable than traditional cell phones but not as advanced and costly as smartphones — to bring weather information to people in Africa. This could allow people who are beginning to develop financially to prepare for inclement weather that could otherwise destroy only recently accumulated wealth.

“This can be active and transformational, and the key to all of it, we believe is small satellites,” he added.

Though ready for an influx of new data from SmallSats, Pardue cautioned that based on his observation, not many are adequately prepared for the gargantuan quantity of data that these operators are soon to create.

“One thing that strikes me is there are way more pitchers than there are catchers. There are a lot of people getting ready to generate huge mountain loads of data nobody has ever seen before. I don’t feel like most organizations that can actually use this data to great advantage are remotely prepared to catch it. I don’t think they are,” he said.

Pardue said Weather Analytics’ data engine is prepared to ingest not just weather data, but oceanic, agricultural and other data forms. Being “data agnostic” helped the company build a Web-enabled, all-cloud repository for data, he said.

Weather Analytics is targeting the insurance community as one of its main customer bases. Pardue said this vertical takes longer to decide on being a customer compared to others. In March 2015 specialty insurance underwriter HCC Specialty reached a strategic alliance with Weather Analytics for access to historical and real-time global hourly data for more than 100 weather variables and indices. Weather Analytics has more than 100 customers and partners, according to its website. Pardue mentioned other markets such as government and agriculture as interesting to the company, with the surprise standout being retail in terms of the market with the most potential.

“Retail is really interesting because of the insights you get from consumer behavior. When you get five to 10 years of one square kilometer weather to understand what the different buying behaviors were at this store and that store and how it correlates to non-obvious relationships, such as wind and cloud cover, that gets really interesting. That’s the biggest single sector,” he said.

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Geoff Sawyer, Secretary General of EARSC was a guest of honor at the Copernicus Marine Service User Workshop that took place in Brussels last September 8th 2015.

During the interview he granted, he expressed that among the 75+ EARSC members, a lot of companies are already using the Copernicus Marine Service and he was expecting their interest to grow as shown in a survey launched between 2012 and 2014 where the number of respondents who declared being interested in CMEMS as the basis for future business doubled.

For Geoff, CMEMS is for to help develop the economy, the industry and to position Europe in the world. 65% of service today is for public sector so the other opportunity to grow the other segments in commercial area, other industries, export, and potentially citizens is enormous.

To him, we are on a verge of an exciting new era of data explosion where we can see the potential for new markets so he believes that EARSC and Mercator Ocean and CMEMS can work together to design, to improve, to address those new markets, and to build a big benefit for Europe in economy growth and jobs.

Watch the interview of Geoff Sawyer, Secretary General of EARSC https://youtu.be/z5lUuh9wOS4

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