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RICHMOND, BC, Oct. 9, 2014 /CNW/ – MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (“MDA” or the “Company”) (TSX:MDA) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) today announced that the first use of a digital processor to reconstruct an image from Seasat, the first civilian spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite, has been recognized as an IEEE Milestone in Electrical Engineering and Computing.

This groundbreaking image, produced in November 1978 by engineers from MDA, depicts the St. Lawrence River, near Trois-Rivierès, Quebec, as seen from space. The IEEE Milestone in Electrical Engineering and Computing program recognizes technological innovation and excellence that have had significant long-term impact and benefits to society.

Virtually all of MDA’s current and planned capabilities in ground, airborne, and space radar systems can be traced back to the Company’s early achievements in SAR. MDA’s leadership in these areas include an installed base of commercial Earth observation ground stations in more than 25 different countries that process data from more than 20 satellites. The Canadian government’s early and enduring commitment to domestic Earth observation programs using space‐based SAR placed Canada at the forefront of SAR technology and made Canada a world leader in remote sensing.

MDA is also acknowledged for its ongoing contributions to Earth observation via the design, construction, and operation of the most capable space-based SAR systems in the world. From RADARSAT-1 in 1995 to RADARSAT-2 in 2007, the planned RADARSAT Constellation Mission in 2018, and advanced imaging SAR for aircraft platforms serving defence, security, and surveillance applications, MDA is recognized globally for its advanced technical capabilities, robust systems, and sensor engineering.

Don Osborne, MDA’s group vice president of Information Systems said, “MDA has played a leadership role in advancing space technology since the Company’s inception, and have many notable achievements, including the processing of the Seasat image. We commend all our employees for their innovation and valuable contributions to extending Canada’s leadership in the space industry worldwide, and appreciate this prestigious recognition by the IEEE.”

Prof. Amir G. Aghdam, president of IEEE Canada said, “This reminds us that the efforts of a small group of talented engineers can have significant long-term impact. It is a tremendous achievement that perfectly reflects the contribution of Canadian engineers to the industry, as well as the importance of this contribution to the IEEE, the largest professional organization in the world advancing technology for humanity.”

About MDA

MDA is a global communications and information company providing operational solutions to commercial and government organizations worldwide.

MDA’s business is focused on markets and customers with strong repeat business potential, primarily in the Communications sector and the Surveillance and Intelligence sector. In addition, the Company conducts a significant amount of advanced technology development.

MDA’s established global customer base is served by more than 4,800 employees operating from 11 locations in the United States, Canada, and internationally.

The Company’s common shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol “MDA.”

About IEEE

IEEE, a large, global technical professional organization, is dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. Through its highly cited publications, conferences, technology standards, and professional and educational activities, IEEE is the trusted voice on a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics. Learn more at http://www.ieee.org

The IEEE Milestone in Electrical Engineering and Computing program recognizes technological innovation and excellence that have had significant long-term impact and benefits to society. The IEEE History Committee administers it on behalf of the IEEE Board of Directors.

Related Websites
www.mdacorporation.com
www.ieee.org
SOURCE MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd.
For further information:
Wendy Keyzer
MDA External Relations
(604) 231-2743
wendy@mdacorporation.com
Prof. David G. Michelson
IEEE History Committee
(604) 822-3544
dmichelson@ieee.org

UC Santa Barbara’s NCEAS is participates in an environmental science data project funded by the National Science Foundation – See more at: http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2014/014434/data-intensive-science-single-click#sthash.x20XxVyy.dpuf

As with the proverbial canary in a coal mine, birds are often a strong indicator of environmental health. However, over the past 40 years, many species have experienced their own environmental crisis due to habitat loss and climate change, among other factors. To fully understand bird distribution relative to environment requires extensive data beyond those amassed by a single institution.

Enter DataONE: the Data Observation Network for Earth, a collaboration of distributed organizations with data centers and science networks, including the Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity (KNB) administered by UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS).

Combining bird occurrence data collected by citizen scientists with land-use data, DataONE enabled researchers to map more than 300 bird species against important environmental factors. Armed with this information, they could more accurately assess the degree of protection required for each species.

To continue such efforts and build upon its achievements, DataONE has recently been awarded $15 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of an accomplishment-based renewal. NCEAS, a DataONE partner organization, will use its portion to expand its available data to DataOne users, add key services to support researchers and repositories, improve core cyberinfrastructure and enhance operational cybersecurity.

“How does one find the data that are the best available, the most current, most appropriate for the work that one does?” asked Frank Davis, director NCEAS. “Finding the right data can take a lot of time. The best solution would be to have a service or set of services that would make that kind of data discovery and appropriate reuse as easy as possible.”

“NSF has an ambitious vision for advancing scientific frontiers through an enabling and collaborative data infrastructure,” said Irene Qualters, director of NSF’s advanced cyberinfrastructure division. “This award recognizes the accomplishments and future plans of DataONE, which, with its growing list of partners, has formed a distributed framework for earth observation data.”

Funded in 2009 as one of the initial NSF DataNet projects, DataONE has enhanced the efficiency of synthetic research, enabling scientists, policymakers and others to more easily address complex questions about the environment. In its second phase, DataONE will target goals that enable scientific innovation and discovery while massively increasing the scope, interoperability and accessibility of data.

DataONE has more than 260,000 publicly available data and metadata objects accessible through the network. It has published over 74 papers, reached more than 2,000 individuals via direct training events and workshops and connects with over 60,000 visitors annually via its website. During this second phase, DataONE will continue to engage, educate and grow its community, seek user input to ensure intuitive, user-friendly products and services and work to ensure the long-term sustainability of DataONE services as they evolve to meet the needs of researchers and other stakeholders for decades to come.

DataONE has more than 260,000 publicly available data and metadata objects accessible through the network. It has published 74 papers, reached more than 2,000 individuals via direct training events and workshops and connected with over 60,000 visitors annually via its website. During this second phase, DataONE will continue to engage, educate and grow its community, seek user input to ensure intuitive, user-friendly products and services and work to ensure the long-term sustainability of DataONE services as they evolve to meet the needs of researchers and other stakeholders for decades to come.
Contact Info:

Julie Cohen
julie.cohen@ucsb.edu
(805) 893-7220
See more at

China will launch a new “constellation” of marine surveillance satellites in 2019 to monitor ships, oil rigs, marine disasters and land-based resources.

According to Lin Mingsen, deputy director with the National Satellite Ocean Application Service, the HY-3 “constellation” will include a series of satellites that employ synthetic aperture radar technology, “capable of operating day or night… and in all weather conditions.”

The satellites will be able see meter-long objects from space and generate high-definition imagery of both land and ocean surfaces, Lin said.

He said the satellites would be used to monitor ships and drilling platforms, in addition to marine oil spills, sea ice, ocean waves and surface winds among other features.

“They will play an important role in reinforcing China’s marine rights protection, marine law enforcement and supervision, management of its offshore waters and marine disaster relief and reduction,” Lin said.

Source: Xinhua News Agency

Exprodat, the oil and gas GIS services, software and training supplier, understands that providing an environment where the best industry talent wants to work takes more than just concentrating on what happens during the working day. Staff will have outside interests and commitments that are important to them and of benefit to others.

A perfect example of this is when Exprodat staff volunteer to work in some of the most dangerous and volatile regions in the world for the charity, MapAction. Since their first deployment in 2004 following the Indian tsunami, volunteers have traveled at a moment’s notice to disasters sites all over the globe and worked to provide crucial information to emergency services and aid agencies.

As their name suggests, MapAction collates and delivers all available information in map form. This unique service provides a common operational picture that can be shared with everyone who needs information, it aids decision making and will provide a platform for managing and monitoring operations.

This remarkable work was recognised at the recent 10th Annual Third Sector Awards, where MapAction was awarded a Commendation in the Small Charity, Big Achiever category. These awards are designed to be a showcase for the talent, innovation and success of the not-for-profit organisations that do so much valuable work and MapAction’s success was a just reward for their efforts over the years.

Commenting on why Exprodat believes that releasing staff to work on MapAction projects is important to the company, Sales Director Jules Cullen remarked; “MapAction volunteers take managed risk, pursue innovation and rely on their passion to provide solutions in order to succeed; similar to the behaviours we encourage in our people here at Exprodat. Releasing staff that can leverage their skills and understanding of real-time situational awareness in support of others, who are in need of help, is a privilege and we are very proud of their achievements.”

For more information about MapAction please visit the Charity’s website at www.mapaction.org and for more about working for Exprodat, www.exprodat.com

Crowdsourcing satellite imagery for big geoint represents a new and powerful tool for those addressing questions such as how many people are affected by the conflict in South Sudan? What is the extent of damage caused by the revolution in Syria? Where should the US Navy focus its search for malasian Airlines Flight 370?

Such questions are addressed on a daily basis by geospatial intelligence professionals in their work of mapping buildings and infrastructure, identifying vehicles, people or objects, and searching for needles in a global haystack.

Extracting this geospatial intelligence at a planetary scale is an enormous challenge. For example, the Arab Spring in 2010 inspired protests in Syria in early 2011, which spilled over into revolution by 2012 and is now a full-blown civil war. Tracking the evolution of these events, mapping them across an entire nation and understanding the real-time consequences are daunting tasks for any one analyst.

However, with global challenges comes a global solution. The international community connected online, now rallies around challenges like reporting damage, counting vehicles, tracking events and mapping war zones. Using new forms of data, including satellite images, photo-sharing and social media, the “crowd” has become an indispensable producer of geospatial intelligence. But, as with any new form of data, gathering, understanding and assessing the reliability of crowd-sourced information is a new frontier for GEOINT.

Satellites and eyeballs

Satellites collect millions of square kilometers of earth imagery every day, gathering amazing data about our planet. This relentless influx of pixels contains valuable information about important locations, objects, and events across the globe. Potentially, every home and office, every car and plane, every flood and fire may be captured, recorded and extracted by satellite imagery.


Crowdsourcing satellite imagery after the devastating tornado in Moore, OK pinpointed every destroyed home (orange) and damaged roof (blue)

While we gain increasing sophistication utilizing algorithms to analyze imagery, nothing to date matches the perception and intuition of the human brain. Humans excel at identifying locations that look “interesting”, objects that are “new”, or events that seem “important”. These complex cognitive tasks, while simple for us, are very difficult to automate with machine algorithms. Exploiting human analysis at the volume and velocity of any constellation is a huge task: much of the valuable insight that is locked inside these pixels is never realized simply because of the overwhelming challenge of looking at them all.

So how can we extract rapid, reliable, human insight from trillions of pixels? By scaling the data analysis challenge across a massive human network, all working in synchrony, we can expand our understanding of what imagery tells us about the world. The idea that “many hands make light work” is the essence of crowdsourcing. Large, interconnected groups of humans, working in a coordinated effort on a shared goal can uncover insights and accomplish feats that would be impossible for a single individual.

The “ideal” is achieved by combining the efficiencies of technology with the intelligence of human analysis. One company, DigitalGlobe achieves this ideal with Tomnod, an online crowdsourcing network of thousands of volunteers who all contribute to analysis of satellite imagery.

Anyone who has ever used their smartphone to map their commute or looked up their house on Google Earth is familiar with basic GEOINT and satellite imagery interpretation. An intuitive web interface builds on this widespread familiarity and empowers almost anyone to contribute to imagery analysis campaigns. Tomnod divides massive image datasets into many small “tiles” and sends each tile to multiple individual users. Each member of the crowd is asked to identify relevant features in the tile: maybe locating homes damaged by a tornado, pinpointing cars in a parking lot or mapping religious sites in a city.

It’s impossible to guarantee that every individual in the crowd has the experience, expertise and energy to identify all the complex or subtle features in a satellite image. But crowdsourcing works by identifying consensus among multiple, independent people, each working on the same image. As users examine each pixel from each image tile and provide their interpretation of the imagery, the “wisdom of the crowd” begins to emerge. Each member of the crowd works in isolation but when multiple individuals agree about a particular location or feature, we can have confidence that something relevant has been detected.

To date, the Tomnod crowd has been deployed on hundreds of satellite imagery exploitation campaigns, including:

  • Situational awareness for Humanitarian Assistance & Disaster Response (Typhoon Haiyan case below),
  • Search and rescue support for missing people, planes and ships
    (Malaysia Airlines flight 370 case below),
  • Building damage detection for post-disaster Insurance &
    Reinsurance assessment,
  • Vehicle and human activity detection for Defense & Homeland Security,
  • Wide-area surveying for Oil & Gas Exploration, and
  • Mapping and monitoring of crucial Supply Chain Infrastructure

CrowdRank™ is a geospatial consensus algorithm that quantifies the
degree of confidence in crowdsourced information. CrowdRank works by calculating the agreement between all the individual contributors in the crowd. Every click from every user on the Tomnod website is analyzed by CrowdRank to compute two scores:

1. The confidence in each location, based on consensus among the crowd and
2. The reliability of each individual, based on their agreement with
the rest of the crowd

By assessing confidence and reliability of the crowd’s contributions, CrowdRank takes hundreds of thousands of unverified inputs and transforms them into qualified, consensus detection. The result is a ranked list of important locations that decision makers, field responders or expert analysts can exploit to understand the information contained in the pixels. CrowdRank insight is delivered or integrated into existing GEOINT workflows via shape file, KML, GeoJSON API, web feature service (WFS), spreadsheets or custom analytics reports.

Big Data problems can often be characterized by having four challenges: Volume, Velocity, Variety and Veracity. Here’s how crowdsourcing meets each of these challenges:

THE FOUR V’S OF BIG DATA
Volume Crowdsourcing mobilizes a team of hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of volunteers who can cover vast areas of imagery many times over. Using crowdsourcing as a first pass over the imagery, provides expert analysts and response teams with the clues they need to hone in on the most important regions
Veracity Everyone makes mistakes. But when consensus emerges between tens or hundreds of individuals, all pinpointing the same feature in imagery, we extract true insight from crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing gathers input from a crowd of independent humans and identifies the locations of maximum agreement. An algorithm such as CrowdRank™ computes the reliability of each person in the crowd and statistically determines the most relevant locations
Variety A machine algorithm can learn to recognize cars but it will fail to detect planes, ships, or any of the infinite variety of other interesting objects on the earth. Crowdsourcing is flexible to match the needs of the analysis by tasking the crowd to identify a variety of features such as buildings, infrastructure, objects, and natural or man-made events
Velocity Exploiting satellite imagery with human analysts is an expert process that takes time. By applying hundreds or thousands of people to the problem, crowdsourcing increases the scale and speed of analysis immensely, while still retaining the accuracy of human insight. The task of analyzing 250,000 km2 of imagery that might take a single analyst weeks, can be competed in a day using crowdsourcing

Case Study: Haiyan Typhoon

In November 2013, devastation hit the Philippines when Super Typhoon Haiyan made landfall, becoming the strongest typhoon ever recorded in terms of wind speed.

DigitalGlobe satellites immediately began to document the devastation, and captured over 100,000km2 of imagery in the week following the storm. This real-time imagery was immediately loaded onto the Tomnod
platform as it came in. The call was sent out to the Tomnod crowd, asking for their help to map thousands of affected locations and rapidly assess the damage.

Within minutes of getting access to imagery, thousands of damaged buildings, destroyed homes and blocked roads were identified. These crowdsourced results provided situational awareness to aid first responders and humanitarian groups, and delivered rapid damage assessments to assist reconstruction efforts and advise on future disaster mitigation planning.

Before and after: one of the most damaged areas identified by crowdsourcing, near Tacloban city

Case Study: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Flight 370 left Kuala Lumpur at 12:41am on Saturday March 8 2014 with 239 passengers and crew en route to Beijing. An hour later, the transponder stopped working and the plane’s location became a mystery that captured the world’s imagination. Was it hijacked? Did it crash? Was there a malfunction or was foulplay involved? Most importantly: where was the plane or its wreckage? By Sunday March 9, satellite images were captured over the Gulf of Thailand, close to the last-known position of the plane. The call went out to the Tomnod crowd and, within minutes, thousands of people were identifying evidence of oil slicks on the water or possible signs of wreckage. As search boats and planes were mobilized, new information came in revealing that the plane was likely airborne for many more hours after the transponder stopped. The search zone widened to include the Strait of Malacca to the west, the South China Sea to the east and the Indian Ocean to the south.

As more and more imagery poured in, more and more volunteers joined the Tomnod site to contribute their insight about any possible clues. At time of writing, almost four million volunteers have viewed over 120,000km2 of high resolution satellite imagery. Every pixel has been viewed by at least 10 volunteers and millions of possible clues have been tagged. CrowdRank collects these inputs and produces a daily ranking of the most likely search spots which are then vetted by expert analyst and search teams.


Search area for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Green rectangles represent areas of satellite imagery collection while yellow circles indicate the top locations of thousands of crowdsourced detections. View this map at tomnod.com

Join the Crowd!

The phenomenal response to Tomnod crowdsourcing campaigns as engaged a new kind of analysis where millions of volunteers use high-resolution imagery to search vast areas with incredible precision. Crowdsourcing illustrates a new direction for GEOINT where individuals are both producers and consumers of data, experts and novices work side-by-side and human insight is augmented by machine
automation.

Crowdsource satellite images yourself by visiting Tomnod.com. You can view results from previous crowdsourcing campaigns and, with more pixels pouring in all the time, contribute to understanding new images of our ever-changing planet.

This article was originally published by Earth Imaging Journal, Jan/Feb 2014. Find out more digitalglobe.com

The PanGeo Alliance, announced in September in Paris, is the first global alliance of Earth Observation satellite operators. With four members, the Alliance provides access to imagery and tasking opportunities from a unique and growing fleet of Earth Observation satellites, providing multispectral imagery in a range of resolutions (from 20m to 75cm per pixel), and a daily global imaging capability. All PanGeo Alliance members can provide access to the full products portfolio of the whole satellite fleet, so that customers can benefit from a global network of resellers and a unified access point to new tasking and archive imagery.

Elecnor Deimos, the technological branch of the Elecnor group, announced in September during the annual Euroconsult’s Summit on Earth Observation Business in Paris, the launch of the PanGeo Alliance, the first global alliance of Earth Observation satellites operators. The PanGeo Alliance currently federates 4 satellite operator entities from around the world: Dauria Aerospace (US/Russia), the Emirates Institution for Advanced Science & Technology (UAE), Elecnor Deimos (Spain) and Beijing Space Eye Innovation Technology (China).

The PanGeo fleet is composed of 9 satellites currently in orbit. Six are multispectral imaging satellites (DubaiSat-1, DubaiSat-2, Deimos-1, Deimos-2, TH-1-01 and TH-1-02) and three provide AIS data (Perseus-M1, Perseus-M2, Dauria-DX-1). This fleet will be expanded to more than 30 satellites in the next years with the launch of KhalifaSat, of the Perseus-O and Auriga constellations, and with the expansion of the TH-1 constellation, plus satellites brought into the alliance by prospective new members that may join in the future.

The PanGeo fleet provides multispectral imagery in a wide range of resolutions (from 20m to 75cm per pixel), with a daily global imaging capability, and it complements this offer by providing AIS data for ship identification and maritime traffic control. All PanGeo Alliance members can provide access to the full satellite fleet and product portfolio from all members.


The satellite fleet of the PanGeo Alliance

PanGeo multisatellite mission planning allows to assess imaging opportunities for all satellites in the alliance, and to directly request imaging tasking to the satellite operator. PanGeo Alliance will also coordinate the access to the archives of all members, so that each member can see what is available and directly request images from the entire Alliance archive.

The PanGeo satellite fleet provides unmatched revisit capabilities for high frequency targets, and customers can benefit of a global network of resellers and of a unified access point to new tasking and archive imagery of the complete fleet plus an extensive range of final user and data fusion products.

Elecnor Deimos
Elecnor Deimos is Elecnor’s technological area that specialises in engineering solutions in the aerospace, information systems and telecommunications sectors. Its main business areas are remote sensing, aerospace and defence systems, air and maritime navigation, satellite systems.
www.elecnor-deimos.com

Elecnor
Elecnor develops projects involving infrastructure, renewable energies and new technologies. It has 12,500 employees and operates in over 40 countries.
www.elecnor.com

DEIMOS-2, the first Spanish very-high resolution satellite and the highest-resolution fully private satellite in Europe, was launched last June. It has now successfully completed its in-orbit commissioning and it is entering the operational and commercial phase of its mission. DEIMOS-2 acquires panchromatic and 4-band multispectral images over a 12-km swath, producing pan-sharpened or stereo images with a resolution of 75 cm. DEIMOS-2 will declare Initial Operational Capability in November 2014 and will enter into Full Operational Capability in January 2015, marking the start of full-fledged, 24/7 commercial service.

Elecnor Deimos, the technological branch of the Elecnor group, successfully launched DEIMOS-2, Spain’s first very-high resolution satellite, into orbit last June 19th.

DEIMOS-2, with a mass of 300 kg and over 2 meters long, is a very-high resolution multispectral satellite which produces pan-sharpened images with a resolution of 75 cm per pixel. Its advanced imaging camera acquires panchromatic and 4-band multispectral images over a 12-km swath (which can be increased to 24 km in its wide-area mode), with a sustained production capacity in excess of 150,000 km2/day. DEIMOS-2 is also capable of acquiring single-pass stereo pairs, which allows creating 3D models of the imaged area.


Artistic impression of the DEIMOS-2 satellite in orbit.

DEIMOS-2, developed by Elecnor Deimos in collaboration with Satrec-I (South Korea), is the highest-resolution fully private satellite in Europe, and one of the very few privately-owned submetric satellites in the world.

The satellite is expected to have an operational lifetime in excess of seven years, and will contribute to projects in various applications fields, from agriculture, environment and climate change monitoring, to monitoring of natural crisis and civil protection (fires and floods), as well as defence, intelligence and borders control.

After the by-the-book launch and early orbit phase, DEIMOS-2 has successfully completed its in-orbit commissioning, which included the orbit maneuvers campaign to reach its nominal operational orbit, and the in-flight calibration of the payload.

During this period, DEIMOS-2 has acquired more than 2,000 images to support its payload calibration and to test all operational acquisition modes across their envelope.

To demonstrate its capacity of mapping large regions in a short time, DEIMOS-2 has acquired the full Community of Madrid (more than 8,000 km2), cloud-free, within the month of August. The production of the resulting 75-cm pansharpened mosaic (14,300 megapixels) also served as a stress test for its process4EO processing chain, which has been fully developed by Elecnor Deimos as part of its gs4EO® (Ground segment for Earth Observation) suite of products.

Elecnor Deimos will declare DEIMOS-2 Initial Operational Capability in November 2014 and will enter into Full Operational Capability in January 2015, marking the start of full-fledged, 24/7 commercial service.


Mosaic of the Madrid region (8,030 km2), composed of DEIMOS-2 75-cm pansharpened images acquired in August 2014.


Detail of the Four Towers of Madrid, the highest buildings in Spain. Pansharpened DEIMOS-2 image acquired in August 2014.

Elecnor Deimos
Elecnor Deimos is Elecnor’s technological area that specialises in engineering solutions in the aerospace, information systems and telecommunications sectors. Its main business areas are remote sensing, aerospace and defence systems, air and maritime navigation, satellite systems.
www.elecnor-deimos.com

Elecnor
Elecnor develops projects involving infrastructure, renewable energies and new technologies. It has 12,500 employees and operates in over 40 countries.
www.elecnor.com

We are inspired by unleashing hidden possibilities embedded into location information. This is increasingly important in the world that wants to seek and know more and more.

We aim to become a premium provider of location-based solutions in the Eastern Hemisphere for telecom, transport and infrastructure sectors.

Reach-U has four fields of activity: mapping, geospatial data, geographical information systems (GIS) and mobile positioning.

In GIS software development area our uniqueness is the ability to deliver software together with the data that is fit for the purpose. Our software development is based on Mapinfo, Oracle and proprietary web mapping tools. Our optimization solutions for transport and logistics business offer guaranteed ROI by combining software, data and consultancy together.

In geospatial data area Reach-U owns and maintains the most detailed geospatial database of Estonia and the Baltic States. The accuracy is up to 1:2 000 in urban and 1:20 000 in rural areas, including building addresses. Streets and roads are connected to logical network, attributed with turn restrictions and other relevant data for logistical analysis.

Reach-U runs the biggest internet map server in the Baltic States since 1997. In addition to selling access to our own data, Reach-U renders geospatial data processing services to our clients. Clients are mostly utilities and the public sector.

Mapping unit creates hundreds of maps on demand based on Reach-U´s own database. Majority of tourist publications, information boards, wallmaps etc. feature cartographic products made by Reach-U. Reach-U publishes the best selling road atlases for Estonia. We are trained to make maps that are beautiful, readable and accurate at all scales and for all purposes.

The fourth area of activity is location-based services and mobile positioning middleware. Our unique company background delivers everything needed for launching location-based services, including software, maps and support. Our goal is to help our clients to achieve the record high usage numbers of their services, and in many countries they have done so. Reach-U has global sales and distribution agreement with Ericsson, our clients are mobile operators in Slovakia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Mexico, Ukraine and Estonia.

We are largest European provider of LBS to Mobile operators, covering 17 operators globally and serving 300 million subscribers. Our main product in this area is Demograft (http://www.demograft.com/solutions/) that has also won Global Mobile Award 2014 (http://www.demograft.com/demograft-wins-global-mobile-award-2014/)

Reach-U consolidates competences in the following areas and technologies:

Experience on putting geospatial data to work for enterprises

  • Geographical Information Systems (GIS)
  • Oracle Spatial
  • Mapinfo programming
  • Symbian development
  • Geospatial database creation and maintenance
  • Online access to geospatial data

Combining wireless, IT and location-based technology with content for mobile operators and service providers

  • Mobile positioning
  • Operator-grade Java development
  • Location-based services

Creating user-friendly map products

  • Cartographic design
  • Map publishing

To sustain the competitive advantage of our products, Reach-U spends substantial amount of the revenue on R&D. We participate in number of EU FP6 projects.

Forest change monitoring service based on Sentinel 1a

Reach-U is starting the demonstration phase with Sentinel 1a based forest monitoring service.

Concept to use satellite images for forest change detection has been proved in many times in studies and in the market there are several companies providing forest monitoring service from commercial images. Our goal is to reduce the delivery time of forest alerts to two weeks and help the forest owners to make decision in critical times where waiting an overview of forest can’t be measured in months.

With the possibility from 3. October to get data from Sentinel data hub (https://scihub.esa.int/) we can move from testing phase of algorithms to live demonstration of the capabilities. As more data from Sentinel 1a comes available we can step by step widen the area where forest change alerts can be generated and put into validation.

Image1: Example of the forests alerts generated from Sentinel 1 data
Our focus is developing downstream services for forestry based on near real time satellite data. The goal is to involve forest owners (companies/institutes) in the validation phase of the service so that the added value could be tested.

Quality

Reach-U was founded in 1990 and has currently nearly 100 employees. Regio / Reach-U is ISO 9001:2008 certified.

Contact

Gisat has been awarded as one of the EO information service providers within the joint ESA and World Bank initiative EOWORLD2.

The project follows up its successful precursor EOWORLD where Gisat was involved into mapping of metropolitan cities in Bangladesh and India. Now, the focus moved to other metropolitan cities in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

The World Bank is currently performing number of studies to better understand the extensive urban growth in the metropolitan areas in South Asia. Urbanization in South Asia is expanding rapidly as increasing numbers of people migrate to towns and cities in search of economic opportunity. Slums now account for 1/4 of all urban housing and many are situated near employment centers in the inner city, unlike in most other developing countries. Meeting the needs of soaring urban populations is and will therefore continue to be a strategic policy issue both for the World Bank and South Asia region countries.

In this context, the service case requested aims to contribute to these activities in selected four metropolitan areas in the region by generating land use mapping products with focus on urban expansion, its spatial and temporal patterns and land use change dynamics. Exploiting satellite imagery represents ideal and efficient source of such information while providing the necessary spatial attributes at the city level, which could be combined with Bank’s database on social and economic indicators, environmental attributes and demographic statistics. Similarly to the former project, the service will provide information on the land use dynamics within last decade (between 2000-2002 and 2010-2013 time horizons) but thanks to availability of very high resolution optical images also at better spatial detail. Improved granularity enables detection of desirable land use classes also at higher accuracy.

ESA and the World Bank has already long and successful track in collaboration to explore the potential of Earth Observation for the Bank’s operations. Based on the previous promising outcomes, Earth Observation information support is continuously scaled up and more and more incorporated into World Bank activities in the marine environment, water resources management, urban development, urban and disaster risk management, and agriculture and forestry.

In this assignment, Gisat capitalizes its long standing worldwide expertise in EO based land cover / land use applications in urban domain as well as previous practical experiences with EO based support of international financial institutions (e.g. World Bank, EIB, ADB,…)

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 tropical rain forests round the sprawling Maya site of Calakmul (Mexico) was recognised as natural world heritage site at the UNESCO summit held in Qatar in June. Calakmul joined the select circle of places that can call themselves “mixed cultural and natural world heritage” sites. This new recognition was made possible thanks to an advanced information system for heritage sites, made in Belgium.

Challenge

Managers of major heritage sites are often faced with the same challenges:

how do you manage efficiently the enormous amount of information about the site?
How do you document how the site has evolved through time?
What actions are necessary to ensure the preservation of the site?

Initiative

To provide an answer to such questions, the Belgian Science Policy (BELSPO) concluded a framework contract with UNESCO. This agreement provided for a series of research and development projects geared to managing UNESCO heritage information better.

Heritage in 4D

A Belgian consortium headed by GIM, a Belgium-based firm specialised in GIS software and Earth Observation services, delved into improving the information management for the Calakmul site in Mexico.

Together with the Universities of Leuven, Ghent and Liège, GIM developed an instrument that enables the managers of Calakmul to collect, manage and disseminate all available information on the site. The geographic information system uses technology such as satellite images and 3D models to map the sprawling heritage site and its natural environment.

One unique feature is that the time dimension can be integrated in spatial analyses. This gives managers insight into the ecological and archaeological developments through time. Because of this extra dimension, the system was christened “Calakmul 4D GIS.”

Temporal evolution analysis

High resolution land use maps (representing the situation in 2002-2003 and 2008-2009) of the entire Biosphere Reserve were generated by GIM, based on new Formosat 2 and archive SPOT satellite images. These land use maps can be used to analyse the temporal evolution of the land use/land cover in the area. The new land use maps were compared to each other and to the available old land use map (1996-2000) to detect the changes and identify potential threats.

Formosat-2 imagery was also used to investigate the potential of remote sensing to document Maya ruins and detect evidences of the presence of archaeological remains in a tropical forest environment. This data set has been processed using innovative object-based image analysis techniques.

About Clakamul 4D

Calakmul 4D GIS is based on the GIM GeoCMS, an advanced Content Management System (CMS) that combines the traditional properties of a web CMS (management and publication of information via the Web) with the spatial analysis and display features of a Geographic Information System.

Results

Calakmul 4D GIS enables managers of large heritage sites to document, monitor and manage the archaeological and ecological situation of the heritage site. The system features a virtual visit to the site as well as support for the time dimension. A special module was recently created to compile a comprehensive nomination file for UNESCO world heritage. Managers can now create their nomination file in the format required by UNESCO at the push of a button. This was demonstrated with two successful UNESCO world heritage nominations in 2014: the Calakmul site in Mexico and a first transnational portion of the Silk Roads in Central Asia.

Contact

Vincent Tigny, Team Manager Earth Observation, GIM (Geographic Information Management nv). vincent.tigny@gim.be. telephone +32 16 40 30 39

Brigitte Decadt, International Cooperation, Belgian Science Policy (BELSPO) / Joost Vandenabeele, Space Research and Applications, STEREO Programme, Belgian Science Policy (BELSPO)

Links

Ancient Maya City and Protected Tropical Forests of Calakmul, Campeche: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1061

CALAKMUL BELSPO project: Development and use of a 4D Geographic Information System to support the conservation of the Calakmul site: http://eo.belspo.be/Directory/ProjectDetail.aspx?projID=838

About GIM

GIM – Geographic Information Management nv – specialises in products and services for the management of geographic information. It pools its expertise in geographic information systems, geomarketing, geo ICT, geo data and Earth Observation to provide unique insights into the spatial dimension of its customers’ activities. A multi-disciplinary team of nearly fifty geographers, engineers, physicists and IT scientists at the facilities in Leuven and Gembloux works on smart geo products and solutions for companies and governments. (www.gim.be)

About Belspo

The Belgian Science Policy and the ten federal scientific institutes are tasked with capitalising to the maximum on Belgium’s scientific and cultural potential for the benefit of policymakers, industry and citizens: “a policy by and for science.” BELSPO has been supporting the “Earth sciences” at UNESCO for several years, pursuant to a UNESCOEAS agreement geared to encouraging the use of earth observation satellites for the monitoring of world heritage sites. The involvement of BELSPO means not only direct support for the World Heritage Centre, but also through the financing of projects, namely the national Earth Observation programme STEREO, which enables scientists and Belgian companies to develop their expertise and apply it in innovative fields (use of satellite images, GIS and GPS, 3D modelling, etc.). (www.belspo.be)