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Survey reveals that 66% of defence and government organisations plan to upgrade their GIS technology by 2016

We’ve just finished the first Defence and Intelligence Survey and thought it would be of interest to you.

This study was conducted in September 2013 with 322 senior-level defence and intelligence professionals from defence and government organisations worldwide. It was designed to help benchmark the current ‘state of the industry’, looking at what their current requirements and concerns are and where they see future trends heading. We hope these results will bring new insight to the industry as to precisely what the key decision makers are focusing on and how they see their budgets shifting.

The survey highlights a challenge faced by virtually all ‘big-data’-driven industries: Where to put data and how to use it. 44% of respondents have said that their main requirement for the next 1-2 years is for data to be available in a timely manner. With 66% of respondents planning to invest in new GIS technology in the next 3 years, could we expect a step-change in the industry?

Download The DGI 2014 Benchmarking Survey Here

Dan Mellins-Cohen.nEditor – DGI 2014

Roscosmos has prepared proposals for the Ministry of Defense, the meaning of which is to ensure that restrictions on the distribution of satellite data at resolution of less than 0.5 meters from the Russian civilian satellites are lifted.

MOSCOW, October 1 – RIA Novosti. Roscosmos expects that the restrictions on the distribution of satellite imagery in Russia will be lifted before the end of the year, said Advisor of the Russian Space Agency Valery Zaichko.

“We are for the lifting of all restrictions, because it constrains us. The spacecraft is up and running, but you cannot distribute its data. We have agreed that we give information for free to the federal executive authorities, but commercial distribution is restricted. We hope that by the end of the year, this issue will be cleared”, – said Zaichko to the journalists behind the scenes of the “Earth from Space” conference.

According to him, the Federal Space Agency has prepared proposals for the Defense Ministry to ensure that restrictions on the distribution of satellite data at resolution of less than 0.5 meters from the Russian civilian satellites are lifted.

“This requires a presidential decree. Roscosmos hopes that this issue will be resolved before the end of the year,” – he added.

Source RIA Novosti

(09 October 2013) A five-day in-country capacity building workshop on practical application of earth observation technologies for agricultural development, kick-started on Monday at the Kairaba Beach Hotel.

The workshop is being attended by senior agriculture officials, including project coordinators, monitoring and evaluation officers and technicians.

The Ministry of Agriculture and the International Fund for Agricultural (IFAD), in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and SARMP, organsied the workshop courtesy of the Participatory Integrated Watershed Management Project (PIWAMP).

The main objectives of the workshop are to share the results of the pilot project with key stakeholders, discuss the benefits of using EO services and provide hands-on training to selected government and project staff on the application of EO technologies in The Gambia.

According to officials, the forum will focus specifically on creating clarity and detailed understanding by all actors on how to implement the project.

The workshop will further cover certain topics, such as technical principles, capability and cost of space-borne EO applications for land and resources survey, notably for land cover inventories, land cover change assessment and monitoring, land degradation assessments, topography and environmental protection.

It would also discuss forestry, disaster management and background information on applications with special emphasis on new capacities.

Participants would also be exposed to the overview of the potential advantages of using SAR data for specific applications such as the generation of digital elevation models, crop mapping and monitoring, land cover changes, forest fires impact assessment and burnt areas mapping, landside and subsidence monitoring.

In her official opening remarks, the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture, Ada Gaye, hailed IFAD for once again demonstrating its commitment to taking the lead in support of the development of the agricultural sector in The Gambia by initiating yet milestone collaboration between The Gambia and ESA.

According to her, the workshop aimed at monitoring key food crops and providing essential information for better planning and decision-making through earth observations and remote sensing.

Source

I2BF Global Ventures has supplied Dauria Aerospace, a Russian satellite manufacturer and services provider, with $20m for its series-B funding round.

The funds will be used as working capital for Dauria’s existing contracts, as well as for the development of the company’s technology and towards new satellite platforms.

I2BF stated it invested in Dauria due to the increasing importance of the aerospace sector. I2BF believes the sector could have a positive effect on the agricultural industry, as well as disaster prevention and water control, due to Dauria’s development of observational technology for satellites.

I2BF is a venture capital firm with offices in New York, London, Moscow, Dubai and Kazakhstan. The firm predominantly invests in companies operating in the cleantech space.

Company
Founded in 2011, Dauria is headquartered in Moscow with additional facilities in the DLR incubator in Munich and the NASA Ames Research Park in California.

The company manufactures micro- and nano-satellites, as well as developing machine-to-machine wireless communication and earth observation technology. Dauria’s technology is designed to be a low-cost offering of infrastructure for the monitoring of ground activity.

Dauria’s satellites work alongside the company’s CloudEO product, a cloud-based platform that imports geo-data and allows developers to utilise and analyse it.

The company is due to start production of its first satellite this year, a project that is supported by the Russian Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos.

People
Mikhail Kokorich is the president and founder of Dauria, while Sergey Ivanov is the CEO. Ilya Golubovich is a founding partner of I2BF.

Source

800+ defence and intelligence professionals will be attending the Defence Geospatial Intelligence (DGI) 2014 meeting, taking place in London, 21-23 January. They will be learning from the best in the community, meeting cutting edge solution providers, networking with their peers and benchmarking against the world’s most progressive defence organisations.

The speaker line-up really reads like the who’s who of the community. This is your annual opportunity to hear and learn from the thought-leaders in the community on their needs and requirements:

  • General Richard Barrons, Commander, Joint Forces Command, UK MOD will present his vision of the future role of intelligence and geospatial data in defence and contingency planning.
  • AVM Jon Rigby CBE, Director Cyber, Intelligence and Information Integration, UK MOD will be discussing how to approach intelligence, data and geo support in contingency planning to ensure maximum security and operational capability.
  • Maria Fernandez, Director, Australia Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation will be leading a panel discussion on strategies and tactics for nations and agencies to manage defence intelligence resources more effectively.
  • Major General J.M.C. Rousseau, CMM, CD, Chief of Defence Intelligence, National Defence & The Canadian Forces will address the importance of GEO INT and multi-Int collaboration in Canadian Defence Intelligence and how to achieve true interoperability and collaboration with allies

Why attend?

Network – forge new relationships with key decision makers from across the value chain of defence and intelligence

Learn from the best in the community and in the industry – get under the skin of the strategies driving the most advanced defence and government organisations

Benchmark – stay on top of the latest trends in defence, intelligence, geo, data and a cyber security to ensure you keep your strategy on-track

Source suppliers and test new solutions – discover and try out game changing products and make the right investment for your business

Request your copy of the conference agenda to find out how DGI can benefit you and your team – email us on dgi@wbr.co.uk
Alternatively, register directly online www.dgieurope.com

05-09 MAY 2014, Geneva, Switzerland.

An excellent opportunity for geospatial users, policy-makers, technology providers, researchers, academicians and students, to present technology trends, case studies, research work and technical papers to the global audience.

Abstracts are invited on the following topics or any other topic relevant to the geospatial Industry :
Construction and Infrastructure
Climate Change
Energy
Health
Agriculture
Open Data
Disaster Management
Business Intelligence
Big Data
Cloud Computing
3D
Local Governance
Sensors
Earth Observation Systems

Submission Deadline : 1st November, 2013

CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS

  • Ministerial Panel
  • Program on LIS for Smart Cities in partnership with UN ECE
  • Program on Geospatial Industry Forging Ties with GEOSS
  • Workshop on Project Management & ROI by URISA
  • Focus on Multilateral Agencies by UNITAR
  • Joint Research Commission’s (JRC) focus on Emerging and Disruptive Technologies
  • Focused sessions on Agriculture, Energy and Building
  • Swiss Day by Swisstopo and SITG

Website : www.geospatialworldforum.org Email: info@geospatialworldforum.org

(September 2013) A landmark report says scientists are 95% certain that humans are the “dominant cause” of global warming since the 1950s.

The report by the UN’s climate panel details the physical evidence behind climate change.

On the ground, in the air, in the oceans, global warming is “unequivocal”, it explained. It adds that a pause in warming over the past 15 years is too short to reflect long-term trends.

For more information click here

Source: BBC News

(September 2013) ESA’s Directorate of Earth Observation Programmes (D-EOP) has opened a Request For Information (RFI) directed at collecting ideas for the implementation of some Thematic Exploitation Platforms (TEPs) as part of the evolution of the Payload Data Ground Segment (PDGS) operations concept.

TEPs correspond to virtual workspaces providing a user community interested in a common Earth Science Topic with very fast access to:

  • (i) large volumes of data
  • (ii) computing resources
  • (iii) processing software
  • (iv) general platform capabilities

For more information click here

Source: Earthnet Online

Sansa will debut satellite imagery tools called mini Fundisa, which aim to launch schoolchildren “into the world of geospatial information”.

The South African National Space Agency (Sansa) will on Tuesday, as part of Global Space Week, launch Fundisa: satellite imagery tools to support the high school geography curriculum.

Earth observation and space science are seen as important ways to monitor South Africa’s land usage, resources, urban development, among many other things, but a lack of skills in the field is a constant problem, both in government, research institutions and the private sector.

At the launch of Global Space Week on October 3 at the Hartebeesthoek site, Sansa chief executive Sandile Malinga was more effusive when addressing learners: “These are the new technologies, the new skills that will drive our country and our economy. It requires learners to step up to the plate and rise to the challenge. The opportunities are there for you.”

The Fundisa education programme and disc – already distributed to universities – “are set to help increase understanding of Earth observations among grade 10 to 12 learners”, Sansa said. “These resources, which include a portal for students, will also help raise awareness about the value satellite imagery adds to geographic information system analysis.”

In Fundisa, there is a “wealth of imagery, open-source processing tools”, Malinga said. Sansa disburses this resource every year to universities, but this is the first time that it is going to schools. We call it mini-Fundisa,” he said. “We want to initiate [school learners] into the world of geospatial information. You don’t just want them to see a pretty picture. [In the long run, once they have graduated], we want them to extract information that will allow us to plan better, mitigate disasters better and stimulate the economy.”

Sansa is the country’s major hub of satellite imagery, which it shares with many groups in South Africa. Sansa Earth observation managing director Jane Olwoch said: “Sansa provides the satellite data, products and services from various earth observation satellites to government department and other stakeholders for use in addressing numerous societal deficiencies such as provision of formal housing while understanding the movement of informal settlements, managing our scarce resources like water and providing real-time data for monitoring and management of disaster and recovery.”

‘Investment in space science’

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s information and communications technology unit, the Meraka Institute, uses imagery provided by Sansa to track, monitor and predict fires around the world. Government departments on both a national and provincial level also receive satellite imagery so that they can better plan and deliver services.

“Space impacts our daily lives and it is important to understand that investment in space science and technology is important for our people and economy,” said Humbulani Mudau, chief director of space science at the department of science and technology.

Space is one of the department’s grand challenges; it is seen as a way to train highly skilled researchers and professionals, and to get young people interested in science, technology and engineering-related fields

Source

Berlin, Germany, September 18, 2013 – RapidEye, a global leader in high-resolution wide-area satellite coverage is proud to announce their contribution to Esri’s ArcGIS online platform. Users will now have access to RapidEye’s newly launched premium content services including RapidEye Mosaics, RapidEye Living Image Multispectral, and RapidEye Living Image Basemaps.

These products are now available through the user-friendly ArcGIS Marketplace which makes finding and buying premium content more convenient than ever before. The announcement of RapidEye’s inclusion as an early adopter in the program was made by Esri’s President Jack Dangermond during the 2013 Esri User Conference plenary address in July, but is ready to go-live with its full range of features for US and Canadian customers.

“RapidEye has unparalleled capabilities for rapid revisit imaging and wide-area swath coverage with excellent ground sample resolution. In addition, the extensive RapidEye archive can now be leveraged through Premium Content Services and can be easily accessed by ArcGIS Online users” said Lawrie Jordan, Esri’s Director of Imagery.

“RapidEye will have added 5 billion square kilometers of imagery to its archive by January 2014 and is very pleased to make this wealth of content available to the Esri user community through the ArcGIS Marketplace”, said Ryan Johnson, CEO of RapidEye.

RapidEye’s premium content will be available from September 18th for Esri users in the United States and Canada with an ArcGIS Online annual subscription. RapidEye Living Image content will provide consistently updated five meter multispectral and basemap (three-band, true color) imagery for any area of interest, whereas RapidEye Mosaics will make available a recent and seamless picture of full countries. For more information, visit http://marketplace.arcgis.com

About RapidEye

RapidEye is a leading provider of quality high-resolution satellite imagery. With a constellation of five Earth Observation satellites, RapidEye is able to image up to five million square kilometers of earth every day, and adds over one billion square kilometers of imagery to its archive every year. Online searching and viewing of its massive collection of imagery is quick and easy with EyeFind, RapidEye’s archive discovery tool (eyefind.rapideye.com).

With an unprecedented combination of wide area repetitive coverage and five meter pixel size multi-spectral imagery, RapidEye is a natural choice for many industries and government agencies. RapidEye: Delivering the World. www.rapideye.com.

RapidEye Contact
Nicole Heringer
Marketing Communications Manager
Kurfürstendamm 22, 10th floor
10719 Berlin, Germany
press@rapideye.com
(49) 030 609 8300 516