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ECOPOTENTIAL has landed at the European Parliament in Brussels! From 8 to 12 January 2018, the Place du Luxembourg building hosted the exhibition “SPACED: Using Earth Observations to Protect Natural Landscapes”.

Through the 26 exposed panels it has been possible to know more about the protected areas studied in the project, among the most beautiful in Europe and in the world, and the research activities carried out by the project partners. Beautiful pictures and satellite images, accompanied by short texts, illustrated how researchers and managers of protected areas are working together to study mountain, arid, coastal and marine ecosystems.

The panels of the exhibition illustrate in simple language the scientific work, and in particular the use that is made of satellite data, but also the beauty of the places, making immediately grasp the importance of scientific research aimed at improving the conservation of our natural environments.

After the European Parliament, the exhibition has been hosted again in Bruxelles at the Council of the Regions during the month of February.

We are evaluating other opportunities to let the exhibition travel in other locations in Europe and translate it also in other languages. Stay tuned for further developments! Take a look at the photo gallery: click here and read the article on the EASME Website.

Source

GeoVille is delighted to announce the release of the first, validated Sentinel-2 based land cover map. It’s the first national implementation retrieved via landmonitoring.earth, a fully-automatic land monitoring solution set-up by GeoVille. The homogenous and seamless land cover map was produced for entire Austria covering an area of 84,000 km².

In order to meet the reporting obligations from international conventions, European directives and national legislations, countries are required to produce up to date, detailed and harmonised information on their land cover and its use, at different scales and for different domains of applications. Although Europe can build upon a long experience of land cover and land use mapping, most of the existing national datasets respond to different needs and have been produced with differing standards and methodologies. Thus, they lack comparability across sectors and are in many cases outdated.

To this end, GeoVille set-up a unique solution for monitoring every country in Europe in high spatial resolution and in dense time intervals. This fully-automatic, dynamic, land-monitoring solution is based on highly-advanced processing technologies and is available as a direct service on landmonitoring.earth or as B2B API services, ready to be integrated into client workflows or business solutions. Thereby, it enables continuous information feeds to web-based Land Information Systems (LIS), geoportals, platforms or any analytical IT systems.

The first national implementation is a validated Sentinel-2 based, homogenous and seamless land cover map for entire Austria covering an area of 84,000 km². The map is integrated into the Land Information System Austria (LISA) that was implemented with the objective to achieve a national consensus on how to perform a continuous mapping of the national land cover and monitor its change. The dynamic product is available at a monthly frequency and comprises information such as agricultural activities, changes in ecosystem conditions and the management intensity of grassland areas. Thereby, it reduces the existing lack of information is various fields such as spatial planning, forestry, agriculture, water as well as environmental protection and conservation.

The full system implementation was funded by the Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (bmvit) through the Austrian Space Applications Programme (ASAP) as well as the European Space Agency (ESA).

For more information please visit:
landmonitoring.earth
https://www.landinformationsystem.at/#/lisa/overview
http://www.copernicus.eu/news/first-validated-sentinel-2-land-cover-map-austria

EARSC is organising a Trade Mission to Australia, traveling with seven European companies.

EARSC organised a Trade Mission to Australia, traveling with seven European companies: AIRBUS , e-geos , Earth-i , Geospatial Enabling Technologies , GMV , and Planet Labs , Sinergise. The mission took place at Brisbane, Canberra and Sydney, between the 5th-9th of March, 2018

You can find here:

the mission summary.pdf

presentation summary.pdf

The goal of the mission was to connect with businesses, in order to form partnerships focused around EO Services. Attendees participated to an extensive program of networking events, briefings, introductions to EU remote sensing firms, investors and customers.

This mission has also allowed both European companies and Australian to build new market opportunities globally.

“It was my best experience in this kind of activities and I thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to be part of it.”

Engaged, enthusiastic, and effective organization. You could feel all the people in the meetings rowing in the same direction. – Antonio Tabasco Cabezas, Remote Sensing Applications and Services Division Manager at GMV

Great initiative: Meeting ‘old’ friends, making new ones and establishing future business connections; Europe and Australia need to work more closely – there is much in common. – Peter Hausknecht, Chief Scientist at Earth-i

This mission also coincides with a visit by Elżbieta Bieńkowska, EU Commissioner for the Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs. She oversaw the signing of a MoU between EARSC and the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information (CRCSI). For more information about the MoU click here

The first of our next series of studies into the benefits driven by Sentinel satellites is published. This looks at a service provided by start-up Fieldsense in Denmark using Sentinel 2 data to offer precision farming products.

We are always looking for new cases which must be “operational” ie in use by a customer organisation, use Sentinel data (essential), and open for detailed discussions and publication of reults.

See the case study

20 March 2018. EARSC publish today its position paper on Usage of Open Street Map versus National Data for CORINE Land Cover plus (CLC+) – “CLC Backbone.

In the context of the evolution of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS), the European Environment Agency (EEA) is preparing a major upgrade of the European Land Cover/Land Use (LC/LU) information basis: the “2nd generation CORINE Land Cover (CLC) product”. The EAGLE1 group has proposed a conceptual design based on four complementary elements2. The first one of these, the “CLC-Backbone” is foreseen as a spatially detailed, EEA-39 wide inventory in vector format, providing a geometric spatial structure for landscape features with limited, but robust EO-based land cover thematic detail on which to build further elements. The second element will be the “CLC Core”, a grid database repository populated with land cover/land use (LC/LU) and ancillary data. From the first two elements, a new LC/LU monitoring product shall be created as third element: the “CLC+”. As a forth element, the “CLC Legacy” shall ensure time series continuity of the current “traditional” CLC product. DG GROW has expressed that industry shall have an initial role in the production of the CLC-Backbone, and an Open Call for Tender is expected in 2018.

The EO services value-adding sector has a strong interest in the evolution of the CLMS. Therefore we welcome the proposed CLC upgrade towards an independent, high-resolution, cross border coherent, up-to-date information basis for the EEA-39 area, and expect industry to become a core actor for CLC-Backbone production and further activities towards CLC+. A wide range of new commercial as well as scientific and academic applications are expected to emerge from the availability of such state-of-the-art, free and open LC/LU dataset.

In particular, the CLC-Backbone will address a baseline object delineation, building upon and complementing the coverage of the already available CLMS Local Component products (currently 1/3 of EEA-39). CLC-Backbone will resemble persistent features (‘hard bones’, i.e. settlements or linear networks such as roads, railways and rivers) as well as a subdivision of more dynamic
features using multi-temporal Sentinel-2 data (‘soft bones’). By definition, in order to meet the standard requirements for the CLMS products (high thematic and geometric quality, comparability of spatial detail and thematic content across borders within EEA-39, temporal consistency in defined time steps), the selection of relevant input data for establishing the ‘hard bones’ is crucial.

In that sense, the usage of INSPIRE compliant Member States’ reference data for that purpose, as proposed by EuroGeographics in an open letter to the Director-Generals of the EC in December 2017, is seen critical, as the exact role and capabilities of such data remains unclear. It is acknowledged and very much welcomed that Member States made significant efforts to implement the INSPIRE Directive. In operational pan-European implementations of the CLMS so far, however, the actual use of national in-situ data has been limited to supporting the interpretation of difficult classes and for quality checks. Direct large-scale integration of national in-situ data into pan-European CLMS products has so far not been feasible, as Member States’ relevant reference data are often either not fully coherent across borders, have varying
recording times, are not regularly updated, show significant coverage gaps or have different thematic contents and spatial resolutions. Moreover, there are still issues in several countries in terms of free data accessibility and licensing conditions.

The above issues have been experienced by the EO value adding industry in the past years with national geodata made available via national geodata portals, and also with those being offered additionally via CORDA (Copernicus Reference Data Access). CORDA serves as a single-entry point for finding and accessing many international and national geospatial reference data across Europe specifically for Copernicus service implementation. Although these datasets have proven valuable for supporting several aspects of the CLMS production, most of the datasets listed on CORDA exhibit a high heterogeneity in terms of the above listed criteria and are not accessible on a full, free and open basis, preventing direct integration.

In order to make such reference data usable in a cost-efficient manner for CLMS productions, a European-wide data harmonization as foreseen when the INSPIRE implementation will be finalised, would be indispensable. We are convinced that only such pan European coordinated effort can ensure that technical specifications in terms of geometry, consistency and thematic content would match with the specifications of the CLMS products.

Operational production experience in previous CLMS mappings has confirmed that quick access to reliable data is key to support the mapping at various stages of the production process. Thus, in the current absence of coherent national data on a pan-European level, the use of proven production processes supported by alternative datasets that do fulfil key requirements, such as Open Street Map (OSM) data, is encouraged. Several studies have compared OSM data with authoritative datasets and showed that they are increasingly gaining in quality, especially in densely populated urban areas where a high number of contributors are active (see e.g. Brovelli et al. (2016); Ludwig et al. (2011), Zheng (2014)). OSM data are consistently available for all Member States with proven thematic quality at high spatial resolution under a fully open license (ODBL – Open DataBase License), are up-to-date and have a full-time history. Therefore it can be deduced that through integration of OSM with existing Copernicus data (CLMS products and Sentinel imagery), ‘hard bones’ can be efficiently established without leading to significant product inconsistencies along national borders.

*As a conclusion, the EO downstream sector strongly suggests for the next generation of European Land Monitoring products the use of proven production processes building upon the CLMS portfolio and any full European coverage ancillary data that are fit for purpose. On the short term, open source data fulfil this need, whereas it is expected that on the longer term (upon finalisation of INSPIRE) national in-situ data will become available and accessible as consistent pan-European coverages in appropriate quality. Therefore EARSC supports the approach as proposed by EAGLE in November 2017.

Source

Toulouse, 10 April 2018 – Airbus has entered into an agreement with Twenty First Century Aerospace Technology Co. Ltd (21AT), the Chinese commercial satellite operator, for the distribution of the images acquired by their TripleSat constellation.

The TripleSat constellation consists of three identical very high-resolution Earth observation satellites set 120° apart, travelling around the same orbit. They offer daily monitoring of any place on Earth revealing details as small as 80 centimetres. The satellites were specifically designed to map large area coverage and will therefore reinforce the Pléiades and SPOT satellite capacities, improving access to information in critical situations.

On the optical side, Airbus’ constellation already comprises the very high-resolution Pléiades 1A and 1B, the high-resolution SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 satellites as well as the DMC constellation. On the radar side, weather-independent satellites such as TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X were recently joined by the PAZ radar satellite. The constellation is also reinforced by satellite partners such as KazEOSat. These partnerships complement the offering and service for demanding applications.

Source Airbus

Copernicus is Europe’s most ambitious Earth observation programme and provides full free and open access to data for the development of applications in a wide variety of domains. It is estimated that investments in the programme will increase to EUR 7.5 billion by 2020, while the economic benefit is expected to double in value. Every euro invested in Copernicus activities by public authorities, results in a EUR 1.4 benefit to the whole economy. The Copernicus Masters awards applications and ideas that are using Copernicus data to tackle important challenges faced by business and society, with 2018 submissions opening 1 April

Oberpfaffenhofen, 28 April 2018 – 10 Petabytes of free Earth Observation (EO) data is generated by the Copernicus Programme every year. This data enables the Copernicus services to deliver near-real-time data on a global level, contributing toward the sustainable management of the environment. The data is sourced both from the family of Sentinel satellite missions, contributing missions (existing commercial and public satellites) and from a multitude of in situ sensors. Big data from space holds great potential for the development of ideas and solutions in many (non-space) sectors. As these ideas continue to develop into commercially viable solutions, the economic benefits continue to grow.

The Copernicus Masters 2018 – Europe’s leading innovation competition for Earth observation (EO) – is searching for such outstanding ideas, applications, and business concepts from future-oriented SMEs, startups, universities and individuals in the fields of business, research, and higher education.

From 1 April to 30 June, participants of the Copernicus Masters can submit their innovative EO ideas to 16 challenges offered by the largest number of world-class partners since the competition started. Partners of the 2018 edition are the European Space Agency (ESA), the German Aerospace Center (DLR), CGI, Planet Inc., BayWa AG, Stevenson Astrosat Ltd., Airbus, Satellite Applications CatapultLtd., and the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI). “The Copernicus Masters has developed into an important innovation driver for Earth observation. Solutions submitted to the competition not only benefit citizens but also bring multiple socio-economic advantages into various economic areas,” states Josef Aschbacher, Director of ESA’s Earth Observation Programmes. ESA is an initiating partner of the Copernicus Masters and has set a challenge for participants every year since 2011.

Participants can demonstrate their innovative use of Earth observation data across a wide variety of challenge topics, including the fields of the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, energy, health, sustainable living, smart farming, disaster management, maritime, defence & security, forestry, and smart farming, digital transportation, as well as smart cities.

For the second year running, the European Commission (EC) offers six additional European challenges, covering the topics of sustainable development, government, data access, B2B applications, land monitoring and emergency management. Participants also have the unique opportunity to build their solutions with additional satellite data sources offered by the new partners of the competition.

Together with cash prizes, challenge winners will receive access to an international network of leading Earth observation organisations, substantial satellite data quotas, crowd investing platform, and business development support worth more than EUR 600,000 in total. Additionally, the Overall Winner receives a VIP trip to a Satellite launch in Kourou valued at EUR 10,000.

“We’re proud of the active role the Copernicus Masters is playing in the commercialisation of Earth observation services,” adds Thorsten Rudolph, Managing Director of AZO, the competition organiser. “Since 2011, the competition has selected 87 winners in total. They were chosen out of more than 2700 entrants from 73 different countries, who submitted over 1100 cutting-edge business ideas. This is an excellent demonstration of how the innovation competition functions as a European deal flow pipeline for Earth observation.”

In addition, the Copernicus Masters is complemented by the Copernicus Accelerator to empower the transformation of great ideas into commercially viable solutions through a tailored 12-month business coaching service. All winners of the Copernicus Masters 2018 will gain access to the Copernicus Accelerator if eligible.

For more details on this year’s challenges, prizes, and partners, please visit www.copernicus-masters.com.
For more information, please see space-of-innovation.com.
Additional information on the Copernicus programme is available at: www.esa.int/copernicus and www.copernicus.eu.

A South African manufactured nanosatellite orbiting Earth since May last year is doing so well that it has generated sales of some of its sub-systems on the international satellite market.

The satellite called nSight-1 is a product of the Somerset West-based SCS Aerospace Group (SCSAG), Africa’s largest privately-owned group of satellite design and manufacturing companies with more than 25 years of experience in this domain. It was launched from the International Space Station during May last year with 28 other satellites as part of the European Space Agency’s QB50 project which collects research data from the earth’s lower thermosphere.

“We are delighted and extremely proud of the performance of our satellite nSight-1. It is in a stable and healthy state and the various on-board payloads are working well and have resulted in a number of major sub-systems sales to international clients,” says Francois Denner, Managing Director of the SCS Aerospace Group.

“The success of nSight-1 certainly strengthens our position to play a leading role in forging a new satellite business cluster in the South African economic sector. Our group now has the ability to manufacture up to 80% of small satellite components locally. We are proudly South African,” says Denner.

The three companies in the SCS Aerospace Group which are directly involved in providing commercial satellite solutions are Space Advisory Company SAC their satellite programme and systems consulting and engineering house; SCS Space which provides satellite mission solutions as well as satellite systems; and NewSpace Systems which develops and manufactures high-quality space components and sub-systems. The group employs some 90 highly trained satellite specialists such as electronic, systems, software and mechanical engineers.

According to Hendrik Burger, CEO for SCS Space, the primary contractor for the nSight-1 nanosatellite, the Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS) used on board is one of the most advanced used in a satellite this size. This is another South African product designed and manufactured by CubeSpace (www.cubespace.co.za). It has given the satellite a high degree of pointing accuracy to orientate in its orbit some 400km above Earth. They are now looking at extending the expected orbit lifetime of the satellite from 18 to 24 months due to its low drag, specific mass and orientation control.

The milestone achievements for their satellite so far are the following:

· Their primary science payload (FIPEX) to feed regular data for thermosphere analysis to the Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics is working well by providing double the contracted data volume;

· The Gravity Wave Experiment is producing measurement data that is being processed by Mr. Philip Wagner (the South African creator of the experiment);

· Ongoing radiation impact detection results are being monitored by the Radiation Experiment and delivered to the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) for interpretation;

· Their SCS Gecko Multispectral Imager has been seamlessly producing high-quality pictures that are made freely available. The Space Advisory Company was awarded with the “Best Innovation Concept for a medium enterprise” award for the Gecko imager development during the 2017 Da Vinci Top Technology (TT100) Awards, South Africa’s foremost technology innovation awards;

· The Grabouw-based ground station that controls the satellite is autonomously operating and will in the future form part of an international network of satellite ground stations servicing the ever-growing need by Lower Earth Orbit satellites.

“The nSight-1 mission demonstrates the ability of the SCSAG to leverage the capabilities in the South African space industry cluster. Thank you to all the South African project partners including SCS Space, Space Advisory Company, NewSpace Systems, Pinkmatter Solutions, the Department of Trade and Industry, Stellenbosch University, CubeSpace, Denel Spaceteq, DeltaV Aerospace, Simera Technology Group, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and the Amateur Radio Society, who made this possible,” Denner concluded.

Are you providing training courses related to Earth observation (EO) / Geoinformatics (GI)?
Are you working in the EO and/or GI sector (in a private, public or academic organization)?

You have 6 weeks to contribute with 5 minutes of your time to the development of an innovative strategy for skills development and capacity building in the Earth observation (EO) and Geoinformatics (GI) field, supporting Copernicus user uptake.

The Earth observation and Geoinformatics sectors are evolving rapidly. This requires the adaptation of EO/GI training for matching the demanded skills on the market.

EO4GEO invites all organizations operating in the space and geospatial sectors to participate in its surveys on supply and demand of education and training in EO/GI.

5 minutes to help define a long-term sector skills strategy for the near future!

SURVEY ON EO/GI TRAINING SUPPLY

EO4GEO wishes to:
analyze the existing and planned training educational offer in the sector
identify the organizations which can contribute to improving skills for the uptake of Copernicus data and services by new users.
The survey focuses on the supply of academic and Vocational Education and Training (VET) in Europe in the space and geospatial sectors.

SURVEY ON EO/GI SKILLS DEMAND

About eo4geo:
How to bridge the skills gap between supply and demand for education and training in the European space / geospatial sector? A hand to understand how to tackle the problem comes from the EO4GEO project, funded under the Erasmus + program, which includes 26 partners and 22 initial partners, including EARSC which will be leading the Skills strategy.

Source

Brussels, 7th March 2018: The European Association of Remote Sensing Companies (EARSC) and the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information (CRCSI) through Spatial Information Systems Research Ltd (SISR), signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). Representatives from the EARSC member companies AIRBUS, e-geos, Earth-i, Geospatial Enabling Technologies, GMV, Planet, and Sinergise attended the ceremony.

This MoU aims to establish a formal cooperation initiative between EARSC, responsible for promoting the use of Earth Observation (EO) technology and supporting companies in Europe which offer EO-related products and services, and SISR which is the management company for CRCSI, a collaborative R&D organisation which conducts user-driven interdisciplinary research in spatial sciences to accelerate industry growth, improve social wellbeing and build a more sustainable environment. The CRCSI has delivered measurable benefits across the health, defence and security, energy and utilities, urban development, agriculture, natural resources, and climate change sectors.

The main beneficiaries of this MoU should be organisations and firms located in Europe and Australia willing to develop partnerships and joint projects, and that are interested in benefitting from the sharing of best practices and exchange of experience, information, people and technologies related to EO which are not available in their home locations. This exchange should be supported by EARSC and SISR.

“We are really pleased to be able to work with CRCSI and Geoscience Australia to organise the first trade mission between European and Australian Earth Observation companies. Copernicus is an exceptional program offering fantastic opportunities to work together. We are looking forward to some successful partnerships emerging.” Stated Geoff Sawyer – Secretary General of EARSC.

“Missions such as these provide a fantastic opportunity to meet and build genuine collaborations, enhanced by mechanisms such as H2020 and facilitated by partnerships such as have been established via this MOU.” Stated Graeme Kernich – CEO of the CRCSI

About the European Association of Remote Sensing Companies (EARSC)
EARSC is a non-profit organisation aimed to promote the use of Earth-observation (EO) and European companies which offer EO-related products and services. Formed in 1989, the organisation has over 100-member companies from throughout Europe with a secretariat office in Brussels. EARSC is actively involved in coordinating and strengthening the EO chain and promoting the European geo-information industry, and also providing a unified voice on wider European and global issues of importance to the industrial sector.
For more information contact Natassa Antoniou: natassa.antoniou@earsc.org
Website: www.earsc.org
Twitter: @earsc
LinkedIn: EARSC

About the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information (CRCSI)
CRCSI is an international research and development centre set up in 2003 under the Australian Government Business Cooperative Research Centres Programme. CRCSI conducts user-driven research in spatial information that addresses issues of national importance in Australia and New Zealand. There partners include government agencies, universities and over 50 companies.
For more information contact Stephanie Pradier: spradier@crcsi.com.au
Website: www.crcsi.com.au
Twitter: @crcsi
LinkedIn: CRC for Spatial Information