Skip to content

The Airbus-operated SpaceDataHighway has begun regularly relaying data from the Sentinel-2A satellite, after the successful end of the commissioning period. This marks the start of the SpaceDataHighway service using all four Copernicus Sentinel satellites and the beginning of a new era for space-based imagery users.

The relay satellites are designed to lock on to low-orbiting satellites via laser and collect their data as they travel thousands of kilometres below, scanning Earth. SpaceDataHighway then immediately sends the collected data down to Europe from its higher position hovering in geostationary orbit, acting as a go-between.

The first two sets of Earth-observing Copernicus Sentinels-1A and -1B and -2A and -2B are signed up to this service as SpaceDataHighway’s anchor customers under an agreement between the European Union and the European Space Agency (ESA) as owners of the Copernicus programme, and Airbus as the owner and commercial operator of SpaceDataHighway.

Since using the SpaceDataHighway, the Sentinel-1 constellation has increased the amount of data it produces by about 50%. The service is also able to bring operational added-value to Sentinel-1 users by greatly improving the data timeliness for observations outside Europe. This is an important asset for users, especially when it comes to the routine monitoring of remote areas in the domain of maritime applications or assessment of natural disasters and first line response for emergency.

The SpaceDataHighway is the world’s first “optical fibre in the sky” based on cutting-edge laser technology. It will be a unique system of satellites permanently fixed over a network of ground stations, with the first – EDRS-A – already in space. Each day, it can relay up to 40 terabytes of data acquired by observation satellites, UAVs and manned aircraft, at a rate of 1.8 Gbit/s.

The relay satellites are designed to lock on to low-orbiting satellites via laser and collect their data as they travel thousands of kilometres below, scanning Earth. SpaceDataHighway then immediately sends the collected data down to Europe from its higher position hovering in geostationary orbit, acting as a go-between.

This process allows the lower satellites to continuously downlink the information they are gathering, instead of having to store it until they travel over their own ground station. That way, they can send down more data, more quickly.

The SpaceDataHighway is a public-private partnership between ESA and Airbus, with the laser terminals developed by Tesat-Spacecom and the DLR German Space Administration. EDRS-A, the first SpaceDataHighway relay satellite launched in January 2016, offers coverage from the American East Coast to India.

A second satellite will be launched in 2018. It will double the system’s capacity and extend the coverage and redundancy of the system. Airbus is willing to expand the SpaceDataHighway with a third node, ERDS-D, to be positioned over the Asia-Pacific region.

Source

Precision agriculture aims to optimize returns by automated observation of crop fields using small unmanned aerial vehicles. The challenge is to provide a complete system that combines very high spatial resolution and detailed spectral measurements to extract the information you need.

Let me tell you how a compact camera, like ButterflEYE LS, combined with our new spatiospectral processing chain allows you to image agricultural fields to analyse vegetation down to the individual plant level, while detailed spectral measurements allow early detection of vegetation stress and diseases.

Raw image as captured by a spatiospectral imager, measuring different wavelengths along the vertical axis

DESIGNING A MINIATURE HYPERSPECTRAL IMAGING SYSTEM

To make this happen, two elements are essential! A small and lightweight camera that fits the platform and a powerful processing solution that turns the data into useful products. Ideally, hardware and software are developed in tandem, so they can be optimized together to generate high quality results. That is why we developed the spatio-spectral imager, a very innovative spectral imaging concept to build a miniature camera. It combines strong points of push-broom and frame based imagers and is ideally suited to capture images with both high spatial and spectral resolution. As a result, it collects more information per gram camera weight than competing systems.

The core of the camera is a frame sensor with a large number of hyperspectral filters deposited on the sensor pixels, with different spectral bands arranged in lines. A raw image taken with such a sensor looks a bit odd: it resembles a regular 2D image, but in fact every few lines it captures a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

THE CHALLENGES OF COLLECTING DATA

To collect full spectra at each spot of the terrain, images are captured at high speed. Conventional frame cameras on drones typically acquire images at much lower speed, e.g. 1 per second. To avoid motion blur, the integration times are much shorter, e.g. 1/1000 second, so the camera is only collecting light for a very small fraction of the total flying time. By acquiring images much more rapidly, a spatiospectral camera can extract much more information in the same time.

The dense image sequences looks like an aerial movie which gradually explores an area. However, with every new image, the spatiospectral camera does not just capture new locations, but probes additional spectral information for all points in sight. A beautiful concept, but also a big challenge on the image processing side since the spectral information of one point on the ground is coded in multiple raw images.

SOLVING THE SPATIOSPECTRAL PUZZLE

So how do we unravel the spectral information and produce high quality image products? We had to rethink the entire processing flow to solve this. Based on solid photogrammetric principles to ensure geometrically accurate results, we developed a unique and innovative set of methods containing dedicated tools to handle dense spatiospectral image sequences.

The processing includes:
- aerial triangulation
- bundle block adjustment and outlier detection
- camera calibration
- dense point cloud extraction
- detailed 3D digital surface model generation

The spectral information at all wavelengths is extracted from the input images and is projected onto hyperspectral layers so it becomes aligned at pixel level. Radiometric and spectral corrections are applied to generate reliable spectral reflectance products, from which maps containing useful information such as vegetation indices and biophysical parameter estimates are derived for precision agriculture and environmental monitoring. All this bundled in a generic automated processing solution which can be adapted to various camera systems.

CAMERA SYSTEMS GENERATING USEFUL INFORMATION

Currently, we are developing several spatiospectral cameras which benefit from this processing. The first result is the ButterflEYE LS camera, developed together with German camera builder Cubert gmbh. For this camera, the processing creates hypercubes with orthomosaiced hyperspectral reflectance maps.

For all our spatiospectral cameras, the goal is to provide a complete system which enables the users to concentrate on carrying out their flights, and be assured that the processing system takes care of the spectral data. The magic performed under the hood transforms this data into detailed useful information.

Source

Descartes Labs and Planetek Italia have announced a partnership to transform big data from space into actionable knowledge for global users. The agreement brings together Descartes Labs’ machine learning algorithms and computer vision tools with Planetek’s monitoring services based on the Rheticus® cloud platform.

Under the agreement, Descartes Labs and Planetek Italia will develop new remote sensing applications in areas such as precision farming and sustainable development. This partnership follows the paradigm shift of Earth observation services, moving from a project-based model to an information-as-a-service model.

Thanks to the automatic analysis of satellite big data in the cloud, the creation of analytics with a spatial dimension becomes dynamic. This is possible by combining the capabilities of Descartes Labs’ artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cloud computing, with Planetek Italia’s more than twenty years of experience and activity in the design and development of Earth observation services related to Copernicus, the European Union flagship program for Space.

“I have no doubt that our partnership with Descartes Labs will boost the value of our Rheticus® platform tremendously. Thanks to this partnership, our customers will benefit from the improvement in our geoanalytics production, offering superior value to our customers worldwide,” said Planetek Italia Chief Executive Officer, Giovanni Sylos Labini. “This agreement also gives us the ability to follow the path toward an information-as-a-service model, drown by Europe with the Copernicus Data and Information Access Services (DIAS). The European Space Agency has been far-sighted in favoring the meeting between European companies and companies like Descartes Labs at the last Future EO conference in May 2017.”

“We are very pleased to partner with Planetek, a company that is aligned with our business and acts as a compliment to the work we’re doing in geospatial science,” said Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Descartes Labs, Mark Johnson. “Planetek’s team is using Copernicus and ESA’s state-of-the art imagery to raise the standard in mapping, change detection, and applications of remote sensing to agriculture. Our goal is that by working together, we can more quickly and accurately diagnose some of the world’s most plaguing forecasting problems.”

Companies’ assets and agreement highlights

Descartes Labs has created a cloud-based supercomputing platform for the application of machine intelligence to massive data sets. Capitalizing on the confluence of advances in AI and high-performance cloud computing — along with the rapid increase of sensors capturing information all over the globe — Descartes Labs has created an enterprise data refinery. Today, Descartes Labs uses satellite imagery to model complex systems on the planet, like forestry and agriculture. The company processes data flows from all the major satellite constellations at scale to provide instant access to analysis-ready images of the entire world in a massive, searchable, on-demand interface.

Planetek has created Rheticus®, an automatic cloud-based geo-information service platform, designed to provide fresh and accurate data and information on our changing world. Rheticus® provides timely information that fits the needs of a growing number of business applications. The information is provided as a service and includes maps, reports and geospatial indexes, designed to monitor several phenomena: territorial changes, urban dynamics and land use changes, ground displacements (landslide and subsidence), infrastructure stability, new infrastructure and construction areas, wildfire burned areas or coastal seawater quality.

Thanks to this agreement, Planetek Italia will expand the range of monitoring services and geoanalytics provided by Rheticus® on the web on a global scale through an international network of Rheticus® partners. Descartes Labs will find potential new applications and research areas, positioning both partners to fully unlock the value of big satellite data from Space and create significant new value for customers.

Source

Planetek Hellas and Planetek Italia have signed a framework contract with the European Union Satellite Center (SatCen), for the provision of Earth Observation based Very High Resolution Reference Mapping products in support to FRONTEX, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency.

The information products to be provided will enhance border surveillance, a current challenge for the European Union as regards migration and security. The Reference Mapping Service aims at providing a background of geographical context, including relevant information on hydrography, topography, land cover, infrastructure and population. The service will support the monitoring of border areas and the improvement of decision-making and response capabilities of the authorities responsible for controlling and monitoring European borders.

“Being the only SME’s within this group of large companies that have signed the same framework contract is certainly a challenge for us”, said Giovanni Sylos Labini, CEO, Planetek Italia and Planetek Hellas. “We are thankful to SatCen for the trust that has shown to Planetek Group and we are committed to provide the best possible services to this highly esteemed EU Entrusted Entity”, he concluded.

“We are very pleased and at the same time very conscious about the responsibility we undertake, to be able to contribute to such a delicate issue for the European Union. The fact that our countries, Greece and Italy, are among the most affected ones from the situation in the wider neighbouring region, increases the level of our commitment to perform well,” said Stelios Bollanos, Director of Planetek Hellas, who is the leading company of the consortium.

Source

Hurricane Irma was the largest Atlantic storm in the last decade. It was the 5th costliest hurricane on record in the U.S.A, causing $5 billion of damage after hitting the south west coast of Florida and moving up through Atlanta and Georgia. A 3m storm surge in the Florida Keys caused damage to approximately 90% of all buildings and collapsed 25%. Disaster response teams struggled for weeks to clear debris and distribute aid. A key requirement for dealing with the destruction was access to timely, accurate information about ground conditions after the storm.

Image: Marco Island, Florida, captured on 18 September 2017 by KOMPSAT-3A

Satellite derived Earth Observation (EO) data can fill this need and has become an indispensable part of disaster response and management. The International Disasters Charter, which provides EO data in the case of a disaster, has been activated 6 times in 2018 already. When hurricane Irma hit in 2017, the charter was activated, and a variety of EO analysis initiatives were started by groups including M.I.T. and Oxford’s Machine Learning Group. A mix of crowd-sourced and machine learning methods were used to guide the rescue efforts of “Rescue Global”, a disaster risk reduction and response charity. The crowd-derived results were analysed using machine learning algorithms to generate heat maps of areas where aid was needed most. Such a “Planetary Response Network” is an excellent example of how remotely sensed data can be an invaluable tool in disaster response, however, it is still reliant on user input. What if new data could identify damage automatically, and create data products for disaster response teams without manual interpretation?

Research has attempted to address this issue, but, a fundamental problem of damage identification is that, in many cases, it cannot be seen from above. Collapsed roofs, for instance, are notoriously difficult to identify because, without height information, collapsed and intact roofs can look very similar. If a digital surface model (DSM) could be generated from one satellite pass shortly before a disaster and another after, the change in height between the two could be used to identify building collapse. This would require stereo data acquisition from a constellation with rapid re-visit times and an automated system for generating DSMs, something that is not currently viable.

“Video from Space” could change this. Multiple frames from a video sequence can be used to derive accurate DSMs –through photogrammetry. Earth-i’s new Vivid-i constellation, with revisit times of up to 4 times a day, will be able to generate accurate DSMs several times a day. In disaster hit cities this information could be an invaluable tool for identifying damage and planning response. Even without high level processing, timely video feeds could show traffic movement and other local ground activity vital for disaster management. The human activity level, visible in a time based video sequence will help immensely with the response activity.

Earth-i is looking to maximise the utilisation of EO data. We are redefining the limits of what Earth Observation can do with new technology and innovation. Our work will provide unique solutions to the global challenges we face today. To have an exclusive ‘first look’ preview to the first video imagery captured by VividX2, please enter your email address below.

Source

Watch the latest Earth-i video blog as members of our technology team discuss how we’re delivering brand new types of data that provide full motion 4D context to space-derived Earth Observation intelligence. With detailed analytics and insights capabilities, innovators, policy makers, and geospatial professionals can make more effective decisions, more rapidly.

Watch video

Border Areas are at the centre of today’s geopolitical challenges and geopolitical developments. Terrorism, illegal immigration and trafficking, proximity to crisis zones, EEZ monitoring and the need for in-depth ISR are some of their current defining characteristics. Also, the multi-faceted threats generated within border geographic neighbourhood are ever-changing and blended. In the last five years, we have seen major crises in neighbouring regions, especially in the Middle East and Africa, that bring wider European implications and the likelihood of unpredictable developments, which necessitate an early warning and constant monitoring system.

Currently, border area control systems are structured in networks of base stations (pylons) carrying radar and EO/IR sensors. These pylons are based in suitable selected locations, which offer a line of sight (LOS) surveillance to the Area of Interest (AOI). These systems are commonly supported, especially in terrestrial cases, with special fences or ditches adding a considerable amount of investment, labour and time for their design, construction, operation and maintenance over several years. They are mainly effective in covering tactical requirements or short-range surveillance up to 20km and they are vulnerable to external threats if they are not guarded or secured on a 24/7, 365 basis. The morphology of ground, the type of land-cover and the infrastructure available to the last mile of the sensor is highly influential in the design and the total number of the ground sensors required. The proximity to areas of political instability in the greater region will determine the need for an augmented solution with complementary components that are reliable and deter multiple threats.

The economics behind a border security system must include the securing of a country’s borders for national security and simultaneously an economic imperative to protect the nation’s trading interests, both EEZ protection and strategic deterrence. The ideal system must provide a proactive surveillance – intelligence driven, offering monitoring and surveillance beyond the borders, in depth and persistent. It must have a dual-use character covering Civil security: illegal immigration, environmental disasters, trafficking, fire-fighting; and Military security: intel, early warning and advance functionality. It must focus its assets on anticipated “hot spots” and provide early preparation for targeted asset mobilisation, early detection and early interdiction beyond the horizon. It must be of high fidelity and allow sharable and actionable intelligence. It must support regional and international collaboration and enable the sharing of timely, accurate and decisive intelligence among multi-national agencies.

All such fixed border infrastructure comes at a high cost and is not always as cost-effective as proponents of such physical infrastructure would like us to believe. Given the squeeze on most government budgets the imperative now is to find less asset-based and more data-driven technology solutions to the ever-growing challenge of maintaining border security. So what role might satellite-based sensors play in the future?

Earth-i is building the Vivid-i Constellation, a unique European space-based surveillance system comprised of a constellation of many small satellites offering dynamic monitoring based, for the first time, on full-colour High Definition video and unprecedented daily revisit to any AOI. Vivid-i can be considered as the space-based multi-purpose solution complementing ground-based border control systems and augmenting their capabilities for improved proactive intelligence, pre-frontier and frontier control, terrestrial and maritime situational awareness, early warning, surveillance and monitoring, and environmental security.
The Vivid-i Constellation will be comprised of a minimum 15 small, but highly capable optical satellites, deployed in various orbital planes. Beyond this initial scale, it will grow in batches of 5 satellites depending on customer demand, This will provide un-paralleled space-imaging capabilities offering daily multiple revisits, data fusion potential, high collection capacity and availability, combined with an operationally flexible service. Built on data-as-a-service principles, Vivid-i will provide autonomous and secure real-time satellite tasking and rapid data downlink to allow customers C2 facilities to perform a range of data processing, analyses and integrations to better serve defence, civil, and commercial users.

In summary, Vivid-i is a world-class information system enhancing customer national security and its role in ensuring regional stability. It is expected to support European Security and Space Policy and assist border control projects that demand the use of the high spatial and temporal resolution with a reliable flow of geospatial data on a 24/7 365 basis, on and beyond the borders.

With an unmatched 10-meter resolution at the global scale, PlanetSAT Global #2018 mosaic provides accurate geographic information for any part of the world. Users benefit from a seamless view of the Earth in high quality natural colors, for an enhanced visual experience!

PlanetObserver has selected best available multi-source data to process version #2018 of PlanetSAT Global mosaic. Very recent Sentinel-2 imagery at 10 meter resolution is used to update all largest urban areas across the world and all capital cities. Continents are updated with new Landsat 8 imagery. All our imagery is color-corrected, optimized and ready-to-use in different professional formats.

PlanetSAT Global #2018 mosaic will continue to bring great value to our users across different industries. The mosaic is easy to use in many military, commercial and consumer applications for visualization and simulation solutions, aircraft simulators, geo-intelligence solutions, web-mapping apps, to broadcast and weather graphics systems.

“With PlanetSAT Global Version #2018, we offer a completely improved product with higher spatial resolution and more recent imagery. On top of that, users save time with ready-to-use imagery, easy to implement in their solutions”, said Laurent Masselot, CEO of PlanetObserver
To find out more about PlanetSAT Global imagery basemap , visit PlanetObserver website at www.planetobserver.com.

VITO Remote Sensing distributes processed Earth Observation data to users worldwide. In this blog, we are giving the word to Action Contre La Faim (ACF) describing their use of PROBA-V data for monitoring West-African cattle herders. Their work is an interesting example of how global Earth observation data can be used to support pastoralists locally.

MONITORING WEST-AFRICAN CATTLE HERDERS

Action Contre la Faim (ACF) is an international humanitarian aid organization with operations in 50 countries with a focus on Food Security, Nutrition, Water/Sanitation and Advocacy. Since 2007, the organisation has been monitoring the resources of cattle herders (pastoralists) in West Africa. The food security of this population is highly dependent on livelihood shocks and the loss of their herds. With natural biomass as the only source of forage for their cattle, these pastoralists are particularly vulnerable to drought.

These herders represent 30% of the population in Sahelian Countries, contribute up to 40% of agricultural GDP and handle between 70 and 90% of the Sahelian livestock. These herds are a critical source of income and protein for local populations. When droughts hit, the pastoralists are often the first to be affected, but the impact is quickly spread to the rest of the population.

FROM EO DATA TO HUMANITARIAN RESPONSE

ACF uses “PROBA-V“http://proba-v.vgt.vito.be/en: based products, provided by the Copernicus Global Land Service, such as NDVI, Dry Matter Productivity (DMP) and Small Water Bodies (SWB). These images serve as input for added value products generated by data integration software developed by ACF. The “BioGenerator” uses PROBA-V’s DMP and NDVI to create annual biomass data. Surface water datasets on the other hand are created with another tool called, “HydroGenerator”.

Thanks to the annual biomass data we can isolate areas of drought after the Sahelian rainy season (July-September). This means that we have 6 months to prepare for the places that will be the most affected by drought. Between the period of October-March, natural resources produced by the rainy season (pasture and water) will dry up and cattle herds will move to find these resources. If we know ahead of time which areas are going to be the worst hit, we can prepare humanitarian response and assist the herders for various purposes such as:

- veterinary care
- distributions of cash or animal feed
- destocking and restocking of herds
- water provision
- …

SPREADING THE INFORMATION

The EO data is made into maps and reports that are published on our web portal, www.sigsahel.info. The data is shared with UN Agencies, NGOs, Government actors and herder organisations to help plan interventions. The new and interactive portal provides EO data (PROBA-V, SPOT-VEGETATION, … ) in interactive format alongside field data showing the concentrations of cattle and results of field surveys. We also publish the data in raster and tabular formats on the Humanitarian Data Exchange. make sure the data, maps and information is consumable for the end users, we provide trainings on how to interpret and use the data. For example, the National Early Warning System of Mali has appropriated our methods to make their own biomass analyses every year.

BENEFITS OF EO DATA

The importance of this data is that it allows us to quickly assess a situation and make important predictions. Without it, we would have to rely on field measurements, which are too costly and time-consuming to do regularly across all of West Africa. As a result, ACF and its partners have access to fast information on Biomass and Water that allow us to target areas for humanitarian intervention. We have begun work with partners to provide this information directly to the herders. To serve the cattle herders in Northern Mail, we (ACF together with SNV, Orange, Hoefsloot Spatial Solutions, Project Concern International, Tassaght (A Malian Pastoralist Organisation) and the Malian Government) set up a call center. Herders can easily contact the center to receive information on the biomass and water for an area of interest. This helps herders plan their movements. Our goal is to go beyond institutional work with humanitarian actors and democratize this data for herders all across the region.

Source

For a food secure world, agriculture needs to get digital, i.e. we need “smart” agriculture to ensure food for all. Combining and analyzing this “Big Data” sets to monitor agriculture is key for a sustainable future.

The Copernicus Programme is a cornerstone of the EU’s effort to monitor the Earth and provides tremendous amount of data available on a full free and open basis. This amount of data is causing a paradigm shift in the remote sensing community. No longer is the data being brought to the user but the user and his/her knowledge is brought to the data. It is our goal to develop innovative and user-friendly platforms as an answer to this Big Data Challenge we are all facing. ESA’s Thematic Exploitation Platform on Food Security (TEP-FS) is a potential solution.

NO PLANET B! NO PLAN B!

SDG nr2: End Hunger, Achieve Food Security and Improved Nutrition and promote Sustainable agriculture is high on the worlds agenda. At the One Planet Summit earlier this week we were once again faced with the hard facts. We only have one planet. One planet to provide everything we need to grow food and live healthy lives.

With a growing global population food production will need to increase in a sustainable way by at least 70% by 2030. Food production systems will need to optimize the use of water, energy and fertilizers, reduce pollution and soil degradation, and at the same time maximize high quality agricultural yields under increasingly unstable environmental conditions.

ESA’S TEP-FS PLATFORM
It is clear that, to monitor and track this progress a Big Data is needed. Earth observation data has an important role to play here, but EO data alone is not enough. To provide correct information you also need other data e.g. meteo data, soil data, etc.

The challenge is to combine all this data and make it available. That’s why ESA created the Thematic Exploitation Platforms (ESA-TEPs) of which the TEP-Food Security (TEP-FS) is one. The TEP-FS provides services and applications through a user driven online platform. where the full power of Copernicus Sentinel-1 and -2 satellites as well as additional datasets are required.

Via this platform users can:
- Access the Copernicus Sentinel data;
- Process data on a cloud platform;
- Download information products.

The TEP-FS platform is a federation of public cloud infrastructures where the full Sentinel archive is available as well as the PROBA-V MEP platform which offers state-of-the-art data analytics capabilities on time series.
Click here to find out how the PROBA-V MEP platform brings you closer to the data.

AN INTERFACE BASED ON THE NEEDS OF EXPERT USERS

The platforms has different levels of engagement to the users.

– Free & open interface
For experts users there is a free and open interface that serves as the entry point to the functionality of the platform including fast and easy access to satellite and ancillary data as well as the tools to explore, analyse and process these datasets.

– Mobile friendly
The second level of user engagement is a Viewer. This will allow the on-site visualization of EO information products and their time series via smartphone and is designed for easy and intuitive use.

– Customized and confidential data management
Third level will provide additional, user-adapted information and interfaces for the monitoring and management farms as well as confidential data management in a secure environment. In order to demonstrate the platform’s ability service pilots are implemented: two on agriculture in Europe and Africa, one on aquaculture in Africa.

WATCHITGROW (WIG) EXPANSION

The first pilot includes crop monitoring and the derivation of advanced biophysical parameters and yield predictions to increase efficiency of agricultural production on farm level in Europe and Africa.

In support of the Belgian potato industry, VITO Remote Sensing already developed the WatchItGrow application where all processing is done at our data centre. WatchItGrow is an online monitoring tool for everyone in the potato value chain aimed to increase the production in a sustainable way. WatchItGrow is pointed as a demonstrator (pilot) of the strength of the platform and cloud computing behind the TEP-FS. The Belgian application is being expanded to the Netherlands, demonstrating the scalability of this kind of services making use of federated platform and processing on the public cloud.

Discover more about WatchItGrow in our previous blog WatchItGrow ® for the future of the Belgian potato chain.

Source