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(Dec 2014) The JRC has released a new report providing a comprehensive overview of its work in relation to disaster risk reduction and response including their policy background and context.

As a leader in natural disaster research and automated warning systems, the JRC contributes to minimising the impact of disasters in Europe and around the globe.

This report showcases the tools and methodologies developed by the JRC to help in all phases of disaster management, from prevention and preparedness to recovery and reconstruction, through to forecasting and early warning.

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(Source JRC)

(Jan 2015) INFORM, a global, open-source risk assessment tool has been launched by the European Commission and the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, a forum for coordinating humanitarian assistance between UN and non-UN partners, to identify possible humanitarian crises requiring international assistance.

INFORM will provide easily accessible and specific data on the potential risk of humanitarian crises and disasters, enabling governments and international response agencies to act on the basis of actual risk, to define accurate preparedness levels and to monitor risk trends.

The new mechanism includes risk profiles for 191 countries based on a wide range of indicators related to the risk of natural and man-made hazards, vulnerability, aid dependency, economic or gender inequality and ability to respond and mitigate disaster impacts.

Furthermore, in the context of the ten-year international disaster risk reduction plan, the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA), the use of science in disaster risk management has been highlighted as a key element in the discussions leading up to next year’s Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, to be held in Sendai, Japan.

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UN-Spider

(Jan 2015) The first telecommunication satellite Azerspace-1 will monitor the seismologic situation of Azerbaijan, which is located in a highly seismically active zone.

Azerspace-1, launched in February 2013, covers Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia and North Africa and offers digital broadcasting services, internet access and data transmission for disaster monitoring and communication exchange between the stations of the monitoring system.

The Control Systems Institute of the Azerbaijani National Academy of Sciences highlighted how satellite data can be used for the diagnosis and management of Robust Noise Monitoring, designed for seismic research and grounded on an analysis of seismic noises.

The exchange of seismic information will involve 35 monitoring stations located in the country and the system will be equipped with a special software, which transfers seismic acoustic signals directly to the server of the Institute, developed with the support of the Communications and High Technologies Ministry.

This new mechanism is capable of warning about the possibility of an earthquake within a radius of 300-400 kilometers in 5-20 hours.

Moreover, experiments are currently underway to determine the coordinates of the centers of earthquakes.

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(Jan 2015) The Japanese government is currently planning the development of an operationally responsive small observation satellite to be launched in case of a disaster or military emergencies.

The creation of this disposable satellite is part of the draft Basic Plan on Space Policy, released by the Japanese government’s Committee on National Space Policy.

As per the Basic Plan, a pre-assembled satellite, measuring 70 centimeters in length, width and height, and weighing between 100 and 150 kilograms, would be sent into orbit in case of an emergency.

The satellite would fly at a relatively low altitude to provide detailed information of the damages occurred in a specific area.

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The Sydney Morning Herald

(Dec 2014) ISO 9001 certification for its Quality Management System

SERTIT is happy to inform you that it has successfully renewed its ISO 9001 certification for its Quality Management System covering the activities of production and publication within 6 hours after reception of the first satellite data of crisis geo-information for civil protection agencies and its extension to cover the production of crisis geo-information for defense, security and insurance sectors.

More information here

(Dec 2014) Airbus Defence & Space company announced on December 2, 2014 the beginning of commercial operation of the SPOT 7 satellite. Together with Pleiades 1A and 1B, TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X satellites, SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 spacecrafts replenished the unique Airbus Defence & Space constellation, making it the sole Operator in the world, offering optical images of different spatial resolution along with radar data. SPOT 7 satellite is a “twin” to SPOT 6.

From now on, the Airbus Defence & Space company’s group of optical satellites is entirely configured and is ready to provide a unique in its resolution and performance service. This highly-detailed group’s performance is 6 million sq. km. of images a day. The Operator announced that the revisit period is once per day, so you can get daily images of any part of the planet.

At the same time the Airbus Defence & Space company reports that it delegates the SPOT 7 satellite control (which will later be renamed to “Azersky”) to the JSC “Azerkosmos” company (Azerbaijan), noting that this will not affect the quality of commercial services and will not limit access to SPOT satellites’ resources. The changes also will not affect the exclusive rights of ScanEx company to distribute data on the territory of Russia and Belarus and will not affect the availability of data to users.

On the territory of Russia and Belarus these SPOT 6 & SPOT 7 data are provided by “SCANEX“company within the framework of an exclusive distribution agreement with Airbus Defence & Space that allows providing a flexible price policy to the users. Today the SPOT 7 satellite is already fully integrated into the imaging technology of the network of Uniscan ™ ground stations of ScanEx and has been actively working on the execution of the previously placed orders.

SPOT 6 and 7 satellites’ images can be searched by anyone via the «Kosmosnimki-Search images» search engine. You may also place a request for images and order new images at sales@scanex.ru.

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(Dec 2014) “ScanEx“company has become an authorized partner of Google in Russia and the CIS countries in Google Maps for organizations and one of Google’s partners around the world.

Companies will be cooperating in developing integrated mapping solutions based on ScanEx software solutions and Google services. It is expected that services developed will allow carrying out a wide variety of business tasks: from increasing site conversion to improving the environmental performance; they will be easy-to-use and available to each organization without requiring huge investments in infrastructure, software and personnel training.

Google Maps is the most world popular geoservice that uses a user-friendly and familiar to everybody interface to display a wide variety of geographic information. Google map service solutions possibilities, however, are not limited to finding the nearest coffee shop or watching traffic jams: the same intuitive technology became available to resolve complex geospatial issues at the enterprise level.

“Maps with up-to-date data, including those generated using satellite imagery is an vivid and powerful tool for spatial information management in a variety of businesses, from retailers to emergency response services, including banking services, insurance, real estate, transportation, communal services, tourism and many more. There is a myth saying that the advantages of satellite imagery are purely for big business; we want to demonstrate that this is not true”, — said Valery Barinberg, Director General of ScanEx RDC.

Analysis of business in its geographical context is the ability to make well-weighed decisions, to optimize resource management and to efficiently use spatial information throughout an organization and beyond, since all the Google Map services are available to computers, smart phones and tablet computers users from anywhere in the world.

«There are already such clients of Google Maps solutions for organizations abroad as, for example, the American Red Cross, DHL, Allianz, Airberlin, Intercontinental Hotel Group, etc. (list of notable clients is represented on the official website of the Google map service solutions). Potential buyers of such services can be, in fact, virtually any organization: from government agencies to retailers and taxi companies. The reason for this is not so much in the popularity of Google Maps as in the fact that every business sooner or later faces geographic problems, when they have to answer questions like “where should I open a new trading point?”, “where are my customers?”, “where is the courier who was supposed to deliver an extra-urgent order an hour ago?” and answer these questions quickly, on a daily basis and at the organization level,” — says Andrew Shumakov, ScanEx’s Global Markets Director.

For now the main potential customers in Russia are the companies engaged in transportation, including telematic systems, long and short-distance passenger-and freight traffic activities, delivery of different goods, including companies that develop their own commercial products and systems for monitoring of mobile objects.

“The main advantage of the Google solutions for such companies is the global coverage with detailed mapping and satellite data, a split-second calculation and optimization of routes, the current traffic situation overview, guarantee of a fail-free operation of services regardless of the use volumes, solutions flexibility, allowing you to incorporate them into any existing system, as well as the accessibility of solutions on any device with Internet access. But, of course, other companies, including those related to tourism, real estate, financial, advertising services are part of our target audience, “ — says Eugenia Yakovenko, Head of Google Liaison Department of ScanEx RDC.

SCANEX companies group is a recognized leader in the field of satellite-based monitoring and solutions for business, regions and industries administration and management based on the satellite imagery data. The company’s multi-year experience in remote sensing, GIS and web-technologies will facilitate the adaptation of the Google solutions to the Russian reality. SCANEX specialists will provide consulting services at all stages of solutions implementation: from the very first idea to the last test, providing technical support and developing joint resolutions in Russia.

Please, do not hesitate to forward your questions about how Google can help your business to the following e-mail address google@scanex.ru or call +7 (495) 739-73-85 (ext. 536).

Explore, Examine, Engage. What Satellite Data is available through the Data Discovery Hub?

This Satellite data hub contains primarily EO data which could be as either optical or radar images and information on a vast number of areas including oceans salinity, ice thickness; crop health and air quality among a range of other products.

The other types of information from satellites include: – Communication satellites which power data on the go, from images and videos to broadband internet access. They link ships crossing the oceans, provide communications for aircraft, connect people in remote areas and enable disaster response teams to keep in touch. – Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) provide us with two essential pieces of information; position and time. Anything enabled with a GNSS receiver can also be used for navigation. Once a device is GNSS enabled it can provide a range of resilient and accurate global services and solutions.

For more information on the basics of what satellites can do and how they can help please refer to the Satellites for Everyone toolkit or email the team info@satellites4everyone.co.uk.
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The commitment to innovation, extroversion and applied research that attempts to provide solutions to specific problems of the anthropic activity, brought another positive result for Planetek group, as it was announced that Planetek Hellas is among the winners of the Horizon 2020 SME-Instrument program, of the European Commission.

The participation of Planetek Hellas in the specific call of phase1 of the program, was made through the proposal OP3C (On board Processing for Compression and Clouds Classification in hyperspectral satellite data), which aims at the creation and launch of a product (HW & SW) to be placed onboard of satellites that carry hyperspectral sensors. The component proposed will automatically recognize the cloud coverage and compress the images that these sensors will receive. This solution comes to meet specific problems faced by manufacturers of hyperspectral sensors for satellites, which lie on one hand, on the atmospheric conditions during the image capture (cloud-cover) and on the other hand, on the size of the image itself (many TB) , which make its transfer to Earth extremely difficult.

The statistics

The results, published by the European Commission, on Friday, January 9, found Planetek Hellas to be one of the only 14 winners of the “SPACE” topic of the SME-Instrument, out of 185 applications submitted from across Europe, until September 24, 2014, confirming once more the ability of the company to compete successfully at a European level (paneuropean success rate 7.57%). Especially, if one considers that for all the 13 topics of the program, there were 122 participants from Greece and only 2 that managed to get funded, the importance of the success extends even further (success rate nation wide 1.64% ).

Statements

«Our sector is highly specialized and is really great to be able to work in your own country, in an environment that allows you to claim the possibility to see your own personal effort in the years find real implementation», said 27year old Dimitrios Sykas, who along with his work engagement in Planetek Hellas, is finishing in parallel his PhD on hyperspectral satellite data processing, at the Polytechnic of Athens.

Stelios Bollanos, co-founder and director of Planetek Hellas commented: «A significant success that brings us closer to the phase2 of the SME-Instrument and the achievement of our objectives in this specific segment of the space market. We are happy to see that our strategic decision to adopt the principles of Design Thinking in every aspect of our activity is appreciated also by the European Commission. We continue with the same determination, to be able to offer to our customers’ real problem solving technology».

Few words

For the program HORIZON2020 SME-Instrument of the European Commission

The main objective of HORIZON 2020 SME-Instrument is the creation of the «European Innovation Champions League». An elite group of companies moving Europe forward in the global market of research, growth and innovation. The program is divided into 3 phases and is addressed to highly innovative small and medium sized European companies, which already have a prototype of the product that they want to introduce to the market.

See more at
Links
The map of the winners of H2020 SME Instrument
The official press release of the European Commission

(12.01.2015) Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT) has signed an extension to the existing contract for ground station support for the sentinel satellites in the European Copernicus programme.

KSAT is the supplier of polar ground station support for this European climate and environmental monitoring program. KSAT is responsible for data collection and delivery of payload data from all the six Sentinel satellites.

The first satellite, Sentinel-1a is a radar satellite with special importance for Norway since it is a prime source of data used in maritime surveillance in the northern areas. Data from this satellite is operationally used in services related to oil-spill monitoring, as well as ice- and ship detection. It constitutes a very efficient tool for Norway’s situational awareness in the northern most areas.

KSAT is providing the services from its ground station at Svalbard, Norway. The antenna installation is controlled from the Tromsø Network Operation Center in Tromsø, Norwa, the latter collocated with the company’s main offices. The contract solidifies KSATs position as the world largest provider of services related to satellite data reception and control, as well as operational monitoring services derived hereof.

The addition to the contract signed now is 18,6 MEURO. The total contract value is then 46,5 MEURO. The duration of the contract is 5 years till 31/12 2019.

KSAT is a commercial satellite centre owned 50% by KONGSBERG and 50% by the Department of Trade and Industry through the Norwegian Space. KSAT is situated in Tromsø, Norway with ground stations in Tromsø, Svalbard, Grimstad, Dubai, South Africa, Singapore, Mauritius and the Antarctic. KSAT is immaculately located for both TT&C (Telemetri tracking & Control), launch support, as well as data reception and Near real time Earth Observation services.

KONGSBERG is an international, knowledge-based group that supplies high-technology systems and solutions to customers engaged in the oil and gas industry, the merchant marine, and the defence and aerospace industries.

For further information, please contact:
President Rolf Skatteboe, KSAT. mobile phone +47 91198985.
This information is subject to disclosure requirements pursuant to §5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.

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