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The principal objective of the SUCE project is to define a concept and architecture, and provide the prototype permitting to retrieve an optimal EO image product sets suitable for user defined mapping and monitoring activities avoiding both manual filtering and transfer of useless data.

The SUCE Engine aims at providing users with the ability to perform suitability analysis on archived datasets based on metadata, return suitable results (as metadata maps), analyse potential gaps & allow modifying the criteria, and finally use the metadata to directly download archived dataset needed for defined mapping product.

End-to-end use case scenarios and associated requirements are being identified in order to define SUCE architecture at system level and the software requirements and architecture engineering at subsystem level. Three general use cases and their combinations are presumed:

  • single image retrieval
  • seamless spatial coverage
  • temporal coverage

EO product metadata analysis will be the subsequent task. Each of the repositories established by the Earth Observation (EO) data providers permitting the access and the download of selected satellite imagery shall be identified and analysed.

The core development activity is represented by the SUCE prototype design. It includes implementation, verification and deployment of the system architecture with the aim to provide a scalable and modular SUCE Engine. The entire software development process follows an open source approach. The prototype validation and evaluation will cover three scenarios: validation against use cases, validation based on simple use cases built on top of simulated metadata and validation involving end-users.


SUCE GUI mockup

SUCE project is led by GISAT as prime contractor and it is supported by Advanced Studies and Research Center (ASRC) as subcontractor. This 18-months project is funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) through the GSTP programme.

Gisat provides wide range of geoinformation services based on Earth Observation technology. It focuses on operational application of satellite mapping to monitor various aspects of our environment and development of dedicated web based platforms for geoinformation analysis and assessment
Web // E-mail // Tel:+420 271741935 // Fax: +420 271741936

GISAT has got a new contract with the World Bank to provide further consultation services for its web based exploration platform PUMA – the Platform for Urban Management and Analysis.

PUMA, originally developed with focus on needs of the East Asia and Pacific Urban Development and Disaster Risk Management unit of the World Bank’s Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience Global Practice (GPSURR), will evolve into the global platform supporting the bank activities in the context of the World Bank Global Urban Growth Data initiative. The objective of the Global Urban Growth Data initiative is to develop harmonized, comparable urban reference datasets and populate them with selected standard information on historical spatial expansion of cities, disaggregated demographic information over urban districts based on census data, and other relevant socio-economical and environment data. The core of the current GISAT’s assignment is therefore to expand use and utility of the PUMA platform to serve for such public and global use, include key global and regional urban data and ensure the sustainability and evolution of PUMA for day-to-day World Bank operations.

PUMA is a web based geospatial software platform developed using GISAT WebTool framework to support the World Bank urban development practice in exploring and analyzing integrated spatial data. PUMA adapts open-source software and allows users with no prior GIS experience to access, explore, visualize, analyze and share urban spatial data from a variety of sources in an interactive and customizable way.

Please, find more about the World Bank PUMA at puma.worldbank.org

Gisat provides wide range of geoinformation services based on Earth Observation technology. It focuses on operational application of satellite mapping to monitor various aspects of our environment and development of dedicated web based platforms for geoinformation analysis and assessment
Web // E-mail // Tel:+420 271741935 // Fax: +420 271741936

The European Association of Remote Sensing Companies (EARSC) is updating the survey to provide stakeholders with up-to-date information on the activities carried out by the EO sector and an assessment of its effectiveness

In 2012/2013 EARSC conducted a survey to map the state and health of the companies providing EO services in Europe. Results can be found at this link (http://earsc.org/library/). The study provided some essential lines to understand the complexity of the Earth Observation (EO) industry.

EUROPEAN COMPANIES: We are now updating the Industry Survey. The first part has been launched and companies should have received an invitation to complete the core survey through an on-line questionnaire. The survey has a real foundation and constructive goals for all the companies engaged in EO services.

Access the Industry survey

Last days to contribute

PUBLIC SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS: As part of the update, EARSC has also launched a dedicated survey to extend the coverage to understand wider employment in the sector to include public sector organisations (PSB’s) generating or using geospatial information products. This dedicated questions aim to complete the information which will help understand the full impact of the Copernicus programme.

Access the Public Sector organizations survey

Many public bodies have a responsibility to supply their governments with the appropriate information for policy decision­making. Given the considerable number of persons engaged in this activity throughout Europe, it is important to understand the scale and scope of the role. With a combined picture of the private and the public sector service providers, a better understanding of the impact Copernicus is having in Europe and how future policies may be implemented can be developed.

INTERNATIONAL COMPANIES: An understanding of the industry and how it operates is important in order to take the right policy decisions. Today, no information exists on the global industry. This survey will also address companies world-wide to try to understand how much they benefit from access to the Sentinel data.

Access the International Industry Survey

EARSC invites Companies and Public Sector Institutions to complete the questionnaire.
The survey will be on-line and controlled through survey monkey as we did in previous occasion. Open collectors will generate a dedicated link codes per entry. Once past the first page, organizations can go right through the survey and can return to complete the survey on several visits. For further information on both surveys (Industry & Public Sector Institutions), please contact Mrs. Mónica Miguel-Lago (EARSC executive secretary) at secretariat_at_earsc.org.

The individual results will be kept confidential and only collective, analysed results will be published. A full report will be generated and will be publicly available.

“EARSC is a non-profit-making organisation created in 1989 with the mission to foster the development of European Geo-Information Service Industry. Our main objective is to stimulate a sustainable market for geo-information services using EO data.”

extracted from Geoff´s Blog (06March2015)

The EP held a stakeholder meeting on Wednesday to gather views on the High Resolution directive which the EC has proposed. The EP rapporteurs had called the meeting to get a better understanding of what the directive would mean for the industry.

I guess most people are aware but the EC looks to introduce legislation to regulate the internal market for the dissemination of high resolution imagery in Europe. Each Member State is required to introduce a law in the case that a satellite operator is based in their country. The law is intended to bring transparency to the process when there are security controls on the distribution of data.

EARSC position has always been quite neutral in that we do not see a strong benefit from the legislation. It is true that transparency may be useful as could a common understanding in all MS as to where the security threshold will apply. In this respect, if Digital Globe are able to distribute 25cm without security controls then we feel that EU operators should be given the same opportunity. However, we have not had any company come to us saying that they think it will improve their business; rather a few are concerned it could have negative consequences.

Overall, we have said that it could be useful provided that there is no additional cost, nor additional delays in company’s ability to supply imagery and hence we consider this is more an issue for MS to discuss than industry since it touches on security issues. In general, from an industry perspective, we should like to remove as much legislation as possible to help companies do business. This can help if it sets the security limits lower and hence frees up imagery down to sub-metre resolutions to be disseminated freely (note NOT for free!!).

The MEP’s seem to be generally in favour of the proposal based on their understanding / belief that it will open up the internal market. The EC are already convinced and it remains for the Council ie Member States to decide. Here there has been a strong division of opinion with UK, NL and others strongly opposed, Germany in favour and others asking for more information on the consequences (ie Impact Assessment).

From our perspective, we feel that there are more important issues to spend energy on. We support the process and are providing detailed comments to the EP on which to base their opinion. But let us quickly move on to address the question of how to enable the EU industry to capitalise on the public investments made into Copernicus.

Source

extracted from Geoff´s Blog (14Feb2015)

Last Tuesday I was at a workshop on GEO in Washington. It was billed as A Roundtable Discussion on Advancements in Information Technology and the Next Ten Years of the Global Earth Observation System of System, but the main objective was to discuss the private sector participation in GEOSS.

Despite this, the majority of attendees were public sector representatives and, without counting, there would have been about 10 private sector people present out of around 40 in total of which we were 4 from Europe. A similar meeting called by the EC last September has attracted an audience of around 80 people with 25 from the private sector; none from the US.

Clearly, bringing private sector interests together into GEO/GEOSS will be a complex matter given the diversity of interest, the different understanding of what “private-sector” means and particularly its international nature. It is hard to imagine US companies traveling to Europe and vice versa or elsewhere in the world without a strong motivation.

It seemed that, amongst the US companies, there is a similar lack of understanding of what GEO is and what its objectives are, as had been the case for those in Europe at the EC meeting. There was a very patchy appreciation of how GEO could help the private sector and vice-versa. This was certainly picked up by the US-GEO organisers who concluded that GEO needs to employ some communication specialists.

Nevertheless, overall, many of the conclusions were the same;

  • Avoid competition between GEO and private companies
  • Reach out to users to understand what they want
  • Who are the “users” of GEOSS?
  • GEOSS can be a conduit from EO providers of data and information towards the public sector stakeholders.
  • Need to get more than just scientists involved in the service provision.

In discussion, we agreed that the users of GEOSS are the public sector stakeholders, but the world has changed greatly since GEO was founded (in 2003) and the impression remains that, today, its stakeholders have divergent ambitions for what it should become. As industry, we should start to become clearer in what we should like GEO to do and especially how the public and private sectors can engage in a global context.

Source

Director General from MERCATOR OCEAN

Firstly, can you give us a picture of Mercator Ocean and what you do?

Mercator Ocean is the French center for ocean monitoring and forecasting. We deliver a worldwide service providing three-dimensional digital information on the ocean state with real time bulletins and data for the past periods. We design, develop and run forecasting systems based on ocean numerical modelling fed by ocean observations, to describe the physical and biogeochemical states of the ocean at any time, above and beneath the surface, at global and regional scales: temperature, salinity, currents, sea surface height, thickness of ice, chlorophyll, nutrients…We are a privately-owned non-profit company, funded by five major French institutions involved in operational oceanography, our privileged users : CNRS (National Center of Scientific Research), Ifremer (French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea), IRD (Institute of Research for Development), Météo-France and SHOM (Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service of the French Navy). The staff counts about 60 people, we’re based in Toulouse in France, I am the Director General.

Mr Bahurel, could you tell us a bit about the history of Mercator Ocean, how your organization started and what is your mission?

Our story started 20 years ago, when a group of thirty or so scientists and oceanographers decided to achieve a common goal: the operational depiction and forecasting of the ocean, in the same way that a weather forecast depicts the atmosphere. And we set directly the ambition to the level of a worldwide coverage with a high-resolution capacity for monitoring eddies and current meanders. The idea was to take stock of continuous observation of the ocean by the altimetry satellites such as Topex/Poseidon (Fr/US) and the ERS series (European Remote Sensing, Europe), of research studies at the leading edge in numerical ocean modeling and data assimilation and of the first pilot models of forecasting systems. This ambitious concept of an operational oceanography system capable of real-time description and forecasting of the entire ocean, both in terms of surface and depth, was first expressed by the group in 1995 through the creation of the “Mercator project”, named after the Flemish cartographer of the sixteenth century who mapped the world, produced one of the very first atlases and bequeathed one of the most widely-used map projection systems to today’s oceanographers. I became “Mercator project” manager.

What has been the greatest challenge Mercator Ocean encountered?

In the beginning, I would say patience. From prototypes to prototypes, we had to wait 6 years until the first Mercator bulletin rolled off the production line in 2001! From that day, the dream of a real-time operational oceanographic system meeting the needs of users finally came true. The bulletin images published on Internet with 800 maps every week describing currents, temperature and salinity in the North and Equatorial Atlantic, from the surface to the bottom and up to two weeks ahead of time. It was a first step but still, we achieved the first objective to demonstrate the feasibility of operational oceanographic forecasting and this has led Mercator Océan to become a public interest group, funded by our current shareholders and the French Space Agency at that time (CNES). After the second essential step in 2005 (the first global model with a full coverage of the oceans and a resolution of ¼°, i.e.around 28 km at the equator), the deal changed and Mercator Océan started its European endeavor at the same moment when the European Union and its GMES programme (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security/ former Copernicus appellation), with the European Space Agency undertook to provide Europe with the capability for operational monitoring of the environment. This was ten years ago and another story was starting…

When I cast my mind back, I see that the greatest challenge was probably to balance at every step an uncompromising demand for scientific quality – which means patience and carefulness, and a strong determination for developing and delivering operational services, free quickly the data, secure the production, engage the users. I’m happy today to observe that “operational oceanography” in Europe has clearly found this balance and is known for this at the international level.

Can you describe briefly the main services which Mercator Ocean provides?

Mercator Ocean today proposes two levels of services:

  • A highly qualified and customized oceanographic service, adapted to any user needing to receive regular or one-off ocean information in specific area at the right time, delivering tailor-made products, maps, or expertise.
  • A scientifically qualified service “on the shelf”, i.e. an open and free access to the Copernicus Marine Service via a single point of entry, a dedicated portal that gives access to a catalogue of a more than a hundred oceanography products (Observations and Models) that are regularly updated and which cover the global ocean and six regional seas.

The first one was established with the creation of Mercator Ocean and, with its tailored approach, forms the foundations of our service driven by user needs.

The second one, driven by our EU Copernicus mission, is operational since May 2015, taking over from a long and successful demonstration phase since 2009 with the European “MyOcean” research projects (April 2009- March 2015), coordinated by Mercator Ocean. It was accessible in a pre-operational mode via the MyOcean portal having succeeded to gain almost 5000 subscribers worldwide, about 20% of which from the private sector.

The Copernicus Marine Service offers the guarantee of providing the latest scientific knowledge through a permanent dialogue with a community of specialists in operational oceanography, whether they be producers of data or experts.

Who do you consider are the main customers for these services?

Our service is voluntarily designed to be a “core” service, ie a service delivering generic information targeting a wide range of downstream applications. We take care of the complex transformation required to build a simple and consistent depiction of the ocean from the combination of multiple sources of information that are space, in situ observations and models, we assess the quality of this information, we simplify the access, and we stop here in the value chain: we leave to our users the value created by the customization of this generic information to meet the specific needs of their users.

Their application areas cover a wide scope of domains, from marine environment to living ressources, climate issues and short-term operational matters.

The first users of the Mercator Ocean “native” services are their 5 French funders and stakeholders, that are themselves involved in many different fields. Researchers, operators of public or commercial services, industrialists, academics, analysts and regatta competitors around the world also access personalised Mercator Ocean services. They are a few thousands living in about 100 different countries on the globe.

Setting up the Copernicus Marine Service for EU has confirmed and fostered this tendency with a strong uptake of users in all application areas of this ‘core’ information as soon as it is of quality and simple to access. But the major target of this service are these companies operating downstream services, making added-value services based on our core marine service, to the benefits of end-users. A few MyOcean users are belonging to the EARSC association for instance.

Open data is a very strong theme in European policy making at the moment, does Mercator adhere to this policy? Are all the products which you offer “free and open”?

You are right, the European Commission supports and encourages open data for a few reasons, two of which being directly linked to our domain:
1. public data has significant potential for re-use in new products and services and
2. more data openly available will contribute to discover new and innovative solutions addressing societal challenges. This is also the vision of the EC DG Growth that drives the Copernicus Services and the European Delegated Act on Copernicus data and information policy entered into force in 2013 end. This Act provides free, full and open access to users of environmental data from the Copernicus programme, including data from the Sentinel satellites. This is the case for the Copernicus Marine Service which data will be also available “as is” from other portals. The only condition will be the duly mention of the EU Marine Service origin. The effect of making it easy to access the data and lowering the entry barriers for new businesses and entrepreneurs will automatically develop new products and services and lead to a source of economic development.

We made a very clear choice in this matter when we designed and kicked-off the MyOcean pilot service for the Copernicus Marine. We broke on purpose some existing habits, and we imposed without exception, an “open and free” data policy for every data on our catalogue. We were a bit ahead of time and the strong service uptake has proven us to be correct.

This business model is in line with the Mercator Ocean general-interest and non-profit model. We decided since the very first days to deliver a free service for science-related end-uses, considered as yet funded by our public stakeholders. We can invoice commercial-related end-uses, even if the amounts are quite limited, in particular when a specific work is required.

Do you have connections with companies which are innovating new products and services based on the products which you offer?

All users are handled equally but we are always keen, through the service desk, the collaborative forum or the user workshops, to be in close contact with companies creating new products and services powered by the Copernicus Marine Service. These “intermediate” users are a precious source of information: their requirements contribute to upgrade our service.

COPERNICUS MARINE SERVICE

Can you describe what becoming an “Entrusted Entity for the Copernicus Marine Services means for Mercator Ocean?

In November 2014, Mercator Ocean has been entrusted by the EU to implement the “Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service”, ie the marine service component of its EU Copernicus capacity.

Practically, it means that EU delegates to Mercator Ocean the role and responsibility of implementing the EU budget for delivering the service on its current multi-annual financial framework 2014-2020. We manage on behalf of EU and report to the Commission. We organize the design, development and operations of the service with our own skills and the support of contractors duly selected through open competition, we engage users in the design, we report to EU Members States, we manage the corresponding expenditure. We went through thorough audits in 2014 that proved our capacity.

The level of trust and confidence of the European Commission for a small body like Mercator Océan to manage such an important component is noteworthy. We are very proud of it, as it rewards our scientific developments so as our role as MyOcean project coordinator for 6 years. It is therefore our duty to ensure that we meet all statutory requirements of the EC and to commit to the highest standards of corporate responsibility. We know also that this confidence is a recognition of our way of working, made of cooperation, partnerships and engagement of skilled communities.

MyOcean has been the FP funded preparatory programme leading to development of the Marine Services can you describe how are you preparing for the transition from MyOcean to Copernicus Marine Services? How will the “system” change?

Mercator Ocean has no ambition to fulfill all Copernicus Production and Service Elements. This can only be achieved through partnerships. The elements that Mercator Ocean will not to undertake on its own in the frame of the EU Copernicus Marine Service will be therefore undertaken through comprehensive, open and transparent networking, by entrusting the development of services to expert partners from all backgrounds: the private sector, research institutions or public service operators. Concretely, we are and we shall issue a range of calls for tender to create the necessary strong network of partners.

Do relationships already exist between Mercator Ocean and other Entrusted Entities? For example, are there plans to coordinate activities between organisations in terms of the technical provision of services (for example EMSA with respect to oil spills, EEA for coastal etc), the procurement activities and the evolution of the services?

The Copernicus Marine Service has been designed to serve many purposes including major EU policies such as the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, combating pollution, protection of marine species, maritime safety and routing, sustainable exploitation of ocean resources, marine energy resources, climate monitoring and hurricane forecasting. As a consequence, agencies like EEA or EMSA were first and foremost key-users of MyOcean. Our data and specific developments have been contributing to their activities and missions (Eye on Earth, MSFD, CleanSeaNet…) for a few years and this will continue.

The Land Monitoring Service (entrusted to EEA) and the Security Services/ maritime surveillance (entrusted to EMSA) are complementary to the Marine Service (entrusted to Mercator Ocean). Worth being noticed that the InSitu data coordination, entrusted to EEA, will lead to other contacts with the Environmental Agency given Observations at Sea is a key upstream data supply, exactly as for ESA with Satellite data.

It is evident as well that there is an inherent link between the Marine, the Atmosphere and the Climate Change components, these two latter components being led by ECMWF, and we have a dialogue open with ECMWF to adjust our plans and cooperation.

We shall develop further these partnerships, taking advantage of this new contractual framework, with entrusted entities duly identified and a 6-year period before us.

What plans are there for controlling the provision of reliable, timely and up to date information related Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring services? And the quality of the products?

Reliability, Timeliness, Up-to-date data, Quality assessment have been pillars of the Copernicus Marine Service development during the MyOcean project phases. All Copernicus Data producers chosen through an open call process have been asked to prove and demonstrate their capabilities in terms of Quality/Validation. Excellence in this domain is not an option for Mercator Océan. This won’t be an option too for our subcontractors.

As I explained at the beginning, we designed “operational oceanography” in Europe with a strong scientific DNA, which means a close link with the research community. They are our first providers and users, indeed very demanding on the quality of products.

Mercator Ocean has led with his European partners the definition of standard metrics to assess the quality of metrics and pushed for their adoption as international standards, now applied in the US, Australia, China, Japan, Canada, …

How do you see the evolution of the Copernicus Marine services and how can all stakeholder views be taken into account as the services change?

The keyword here is again “Partnership”. Mercator Ocean has always worked in partnership, pooling resources and developing cooperative projects. This strategy is one of its major strengths enabling our small team to rise boldly to challenges well beyond the reach of a single company working on its own.

The Copernicus Marine Service encompasses two major Framework Service Elements which will power the Copernicus Marine Service developments: User Uptake (addressing downstream services) and Service Evolution (addressing the scientific progress of the Service). Building these blocks will go ahead first through Workshops and consultations, starting in fall 2015.

INDUSTRY & PROCUREMENT

How do you plan to cooperate with private sector service providers for the implementation of the marine services?

Mercator Ocean undertakes to successfully implement and develop a user-driven core service expected to contribute to European innovation and competitiveness and help build the Blue Economy. So far, the private sector represents about 20% of the Marine Service users. To improve this rate is a strategic priority for Mercator Océan echoing with the EC DG Growth General objectives. The recent EARSC study in 2012 shows that the Copernicus Marine Service is not widely spread in your community, in comparison with the Copernicus Land Service for instance. We consider this as a huge opportunity for improvement

As during the MyOcean project phase, we shall organize regular Regional User and Training Workshops each year. They will be subcontracted through tender process and be open to all communities able to federate users and prospective users in a region.

The User Uptake framework service element will be crucial to link the CMS and private companies given the calls will enable the development of downstream applications or of technical demonstrators in Maritime safety, Marine resources or Coastal environment. A dedicated InfoDay will be organised in May and June 2015 to present the User Uptake and the Service Evolution framework.

How can industry be prepared to participate to tenders issued by Mercator? For example will you be able to provide briefings on procurement plans and timescales well in advance of tender actions?

For the sake of transparency, openness and accessibility, we have created digital tools enabling communities to freely join and contact us and to learn about our progress:

  • A monthly Webcast InfoDays sessions
  • A Copernicus Marine Service Partnership Meeting Place group on Linkedin allowing call for tenders potential candidates to meet, discuss, and eventually form partnerships.

In a general way, Mercator Océan respects open and free competition and cannot give preferential treatment to any user. However, we intend to develop contacts with many User communities serving the Marine and Maritime Sectors such as EARSC, whose members are known to develop EO innovative solutions, in order to raise their awareness of the CMS. This interview is precisely meant to promote the CMS plans among your members and I thank you for this.

Industry has expressed concerns through EARSC position papers that cost will become the primary or only criteria used to evaluate competing bids. How will the Mercator procurement process balance the cost with quality and sustainability of service? Will you also be able to prioritise the composition of the team making the offer?

Our contract awards process is the object of particular scrutiny from our side. Costs cannot be the sole criteria to evaluate competing bids by far. Management ability, compliance with quality standards, innovative skills, competence and resource matching, extensive experience, result-oriented culture will play their part in the scope. Moreover, independent third-party experts are implied in our contract award process.

FUTURE

How do you see Mercator Océan changing over the next few years?

We have just passed a major milestone, haven’t we? It is maybe too early to look yet into the next future. However, we know yet that the delegation agreement to Mercator Océan has been conditioned by the European Commission, to the enlargement and the europeanisation of our board of shareholders. As Director General, my priority is given to the success of the CMEMS implementation by Mercator Océan while ensuring a balanced development of the company resources.

At the end of the interview, here is the opportunity for your final thoughts and how your activities could contribute to the future development of the EO geo-information service sector?

My thought can be summarized by a simple wish: that many EARSC members will open and gain new markets (UE and Export) thanks to innovative developments based on the Copernicus Marine Service.

TerraNIS is designing, developing and selling geoinformation services based on Earth Observation in the field of agriculture and environment. The arrival of Sentinel images will drastically change the paradigm for the development of such services. TerraNIS is anticipating this change by preparing its production chain to these new data and by creating a network of SMEs across Europe (so called EUGENIUS network) in order to share each SME know-how, among the partners, with the objective to address new regional markets in a cost effective manner.

TerraNIS SAS is a new company, created in March 2014 and located near Toulouse – France. TerraNIS is designing and delivering geoinformation services, based on Earth Observation, to its customers in the field of agriculture and environment.

TerraNIS operates and sells worldwide the Pixagri and *Œnoview services, respectively dedicated to precision farming and precision viticulture. Those two services were originally developed by Astrium (which became Airbus Defense and Space in 2014) in collaboration with INRA and ICV respectively. TerraNIS and Airbus have signed a partnership agreement early 2015 which allows TerraNIS to use and further develop this original technology.

TerraNIS is also the founder and the operator of EUGENIUS TM . The EUGENIUS TM initiative (which stands for European Group of Enterprises for a Network of Information using Space) aims at creating a network of SMEs distributed across the different European regions in order to deliver geo-information services in the regions where they are located.

ŒNOVIEW and PIXAGRI services

Œnoview is a comprehensive service, available worldwide, that helps winegrower detect sub-field and inter-field variations at veraison stage (veraison represents the transition from berry growth to berry ripening, and many changes in berry development occur at veraison).

The Œnoview® cartography measures the variability of vine vigor through the anlysis of multispectral optical satellite imagery (resolution less or equal to 1,5m) and the level of internal variability of each vineyard. Zoned maps are produced, which can be used for the improvement of the technical management (fertilization, harvest, pruning, bunch thinning…) of the vineyard. On a large scale, groups of vineyards presenting the same characteristics can be created to improve harvest organization.

Œnoview is based on a software application called Overland ^™ , which uses a unique image processing methodology that doesn’t depend on local and weather conditions. Our crop experts, namely oenologists, systematically check maps before they are delivered.

The maps are delivered in image formats compatible with most geographic information software, thus allowing you to conduct sub-field and inter-field analysis from the office or in the field. Map files are interoperable and supported by a wide range of mobile and on-tractor systems. 

We also deliver fully annotated and printable maps in PDF format at field level, highlighting the intra-field variability.


Figure 1: Field-level map of fCover, shows the surface area of visible green vegetation

Figure 2 : Field-level map of zoned fCover, segmentation of field-level fCover map

Pixagri is quite similar to Oenoview but it is dedicated to large crops e.g. wheat, soya, rape seed etc. It gives farming professionals more control over practices and inputs to achieve maximum profitability. 

The analysis of the Pixagri maps generates direct quality benefits by helping farmers to optimize investment and effort through:

  • Farm diagnosis: inter-field and sub-field variations, identification of sources of variability, analysis to determine whether practices fit objectives.
  • Support in optimizing practices to meet their short- and medium-term objectives.
  • Monitoring implementation of new practices and their effectiveness.

Similarly to Oenoview, Pixagri is using the Overland™ software suite and uses also multispectral optical satellite imagery but with a coarser resolution less or equal to 20m. The ESA Sentinel 2 data will be perfectly adapted to Pixagri and should foster the development of the service both in terms of commercial footprint but also in terms of offer. In other words, the gratuity of the data will definitely ease the commercial development of the service and, in parallel, the richness of the spectral bands of the imagery will allow an improvement of the added-value products. Overland will indeed be able to process together the whole band set of the S2 data.

Thanks to the spectral richness of the data, major performance steps are expected:

  • an accurate estimation of the crop Leaf Area Index (LAI), which quantifies the crop foliage and is the prime parameter to monitor crop development, even for high LAI values once canopy closure is reached.
  • an accurate measurement of the leaf Chlorophyll Content (Chl), which quantifies the chlorophyll accumulated in the leaves and is a dynamic, key parameter to monitor plant nutrition and stress.
  • an improved discrimination between soil and dry leaves, which allows to measure the senescent or diseased part of the crop foliage (Non-Photosynthetic Vegetation = NPV)

Pixagri customers are today located in North America and Central Europe while Oenoview customers are (so far) essentially located in France.

EUGENIUS

The EUGENIUS network is made of a set of European geo-information SMEs, implemented in European regions and expert in different thematic domains, who have decided to cooperate for building up an open network of commercial EO services platforms.

The objectives of EUGENIUS are:

  • to assemble a generic and modular regional service platform able to deliver a set of operational, sustainable, standardized and QoS certified applications in a “series-mode” approach which answer the major stakes of the Land & Natural Resources Management field, by making maximum benefit of Copernicus data and more specifically Sentinel satellites technical performances and revisit capabilities
  • to demonstrate that such a platform can be replicated in several European regions and networked to tackle the market potential of each region for such applications while ensuring lowest provision costs and more rapid delivery of EO based services thanks to a regional presence and to the reuse of well proven applicative tools
  • to use applicative tools developed by a service provider located in a given European region for generating end products satisfying users’ needs in another region. That will be made possible thanks to the same kind of platform used for “hosting” the tool, “fed” by data relevant for this region, and to the setting up of a “cooperation agreement” between the “tool owner” and the “regional platform operator”.

Finally, with these three goals successfully achieved, the EUGENIUS technical and market concept should pave the way for a quick and “low investment demanding” deployment of EO applications using Sentinel images across Europe. A new kind of “business engine” for this EO downstream market, generated by a set of cooperating SMEs, and open to other ones will have been formed.

TerraNIS

CS experts are recognised by both the French and international scientific communities and they bring adapted technical solutions to every need or evolution in the fields of Earth Observation.

These experts are aware of the latest technological innovations in their domain. The use of free and open-source software (FOSS) has been growing in the IT world for the past fifteen years. It constitutes a real opportunity for cost, time and risk reduction in the development or integration of applications. CS SI is currently leading the development of Orfeo Toolbox (OTB for CNES) and, for ESA, the Sentinel Toolbox Exploitation Platform (STEP) for all Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 Toolboxes.

Thanks to its open architecture with standardized interfaces, the GeoStorm Innovative Collaborative Platform is a perfect solution for the main base of the future European & Open Engine for Copernicus. In addition this solution could also be used for the future Ground Segments for European & National programs. Geostorm, integrating OTB and ESA Sentinel Toolboxes, could be very attractive for Copernicus Core System Evolutions and National Collaborative Ground Segment.

Developed by CS-SI, Geostorm provides a solution for Data product dissemination & Access with total independence of the data center and brings, through its Innovative Development Environment (IDE) a web-framework for the development of:

  • New image processing chains
  • New collaborative data products
  • Innovative tools & applications/services

The New European Wind Atlas (NEWA) project celebrated its kick-off meeting last 19 March at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) Risø campus in Roskilde. This project aims at delivering, over the next five years, the best database of wind characteristics throughout Europe and a new generation of flow models to exploit this database.

The NEWA project is funded through an ERA-Net Plus instrument, of the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme, leveraging national funding from eight EU Member States and Associated Countries: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Latvia, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. The total budget is EUR 14 million, of which one third is based on European Commission’s funds and two thirds is based on national funds. More than 30 institutions participate in the project, coordinated by DTU, including Fraunhofer-IWES and the Spanish National Renewable Energy Centre (CENER) as work package leaders.

This initiative will contribute to a significant reduction of the cost of wind energy by mitigating risks related to the design and operation of large-scale wind turbines based on enhanced knowledge of wind conditions. Financial risks on wind energy deployment will be better assessed based on a systematic model validation and uncertainty quantification wind atlas methodology. To this end, the project plans to carry out high-fidelity experiments in various terrain and wind climate conditions across Europe, from offshore and coastal winds in Northern Europe, to forested, complex terrain and cold climate conditions in Germany, Portugal, Spain and Turkey. These experiments will be based on conventional mast instrumentation as well as extensive use of remote sensing capabilities from the WindScanner European infrastructure network. A call for wind data will be also opened for met offices and wind industry to contribute with existing measurements in order to increase the validation range of the wind atlas.

A probabilistic wind atlas methodology will be developed, based on a multi-model ensemble of simulations, in order to produce the best long-term estimates plus uncertainties of atmospheric variables relevant for spatial planning and wind farm design applications, notably: wind resource, vertical wind shear and veer, turbulence intensity, extreme winds and wind predictability. An open-source platform will interconnect the different models participating in the model-chain using common interfacing standards.

The NEWA consortium is open to international collaboration to further strengthen its know-how and enhance the impact at a global level. The atlas will benefit from and supplement the development of the Global Wind Atlas coordinated and supervised by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Stakeholder consultation will be pursued through European Technology platforms like EERA-Wind and TPWind, as well as the IEC 61400-15 working group, in charge of the development of a standard for wind resource assessment, energy yield and site suitability. Strong synergies are found with the Atmosphere to Electrons (A2e) research initiative of the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) in relation to high-fidelity modeling, experimental campaigns and model evaluation. The International Energy Agency (IEA-Wind) Task 31 ‘Wakebench’ will be the target forum to extend model benchmarking activities to a wider range of models and coordinate a joint international model evaluation process.

In summary, NEWA starts as one of the most important wind energy projects to date, with the ambition of developing a new generation of tools for spatial planning and wind farm design, based on a long-term research roadmap established on the basis experimental campaigns of unprecedented quality.

More info: http://euwindatlas.eu/

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The latest version, 3.1.0, of the CryoSat User Tool (CUT) is now available for download.

The CryoSat User Tool is a Windows stand-alone application for displaying and downloading CryoSat products from remote FTP servers or from local directories.

The new version of the tool is compatible with the new Baseline C products, which began dissemination last week

Download the tool and find further information on the CUT web page

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