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(2013-01-07) Metria continues to strengthen the co-operation with national agencies in need of updated land cover and land use information. Our heritage of using Earth Observation data to map nature types and landscapes will ensure high-quality mapping as well as developing of efficient tools.

Metria co-operate with the main national agencies to gather user requirements for an updated national mapping of land cover and land use. The existing land cover database is outdated and there are several needs for using updated land cover information, for example in environmental monitoring and statistics of land use.

The project is funded by European Space Agency (ESA) and started with a two-day joint workshop where all users discussed their requirements for the mapping, but also for updating of the information.

It is inspiring with the broad user interactions, says Camilla Jönsson , Metria project manager

The two-year contract will map about 100 000 km2 of Sweden, but also develop tools for efficient land cover and land cover change alert mapping.

Source

In November 2012, INSA has been selected by the European Space Agency to continue with the work carried out for SMOS for two more years.

Since the launch of the ESA’s SMOS mission in November 2009, a French team and a Spanish team are responsible for its operations. The Spanish team is at the European Space Astronomy Center in Villafranca del Castillo, where the Mission’s Operations and Data Processing Center is located, consisting of the Agency’s operations personnel and professionals from INSA.

During these years, the mission of the European Space Agency which aims to improve our understanding of our planet’s water cycle making global observations of soil moisture and salinity levels in the oceans, has provided valuable information to the scientific community.

The extension of the contract with the Agency has been possible thanks to the quality of the work of INSA, thereby strengthening the confidence of the ESA in the Spanish industry.

Source

IncREO – Increasing Resilience through Earth Observation is a collaborative project under the call FP7-SPACE-2012-1 in support of emergency response management and risk-preparedness. The IncREO project will kick off at a meeting scheduled at EC/REA in Brussels, Belgium, from 23 to 24 January 2013. The event is closed to the public.

The overall objective of IncREO is to provide actors responsible for disaster management, risk prevention, civil protection and also spatial planning with EO-based solutions contributing particularly to an improved preparedness and mitigation planning for areas highly vulnerable to natural disasters and already noticeable climate change trends. These solutions will be adjusted to the users’ and end-users’ needs and will also reflect on short-term climate change scenarios and related legislature – at the national, supranational and European level. As a multi-risk oriented concept, “per se” all types of natural disasters are addressed. However, selected use cases (dam failure, storm surge and wave height, flood, earthquake and landslide) and the transfer of solutions to a specifically multi-risk prone test site will also be covered. From a technical point of view, the IncREO solutions will be based on state-of-the-art methodologies, implemented by means of up-to-date mapping and modelling/procedures and, finally, appropriately disseminated to the relevant stakeholder groups.

The UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe, Venice (Italy), will support public awareness in natural risk-preparedness, in particular floods and geo-hazards. The UNESCO Venice Office will be responsible for the interface of the scientific partners of the project with the end-users community; in particular, the Civil Protection Department of the Veneto Region – according to the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for co-operation activities signed, and the Albanian Ministry of Interior Affairs (Civil Protection Department) as project demonstrators. The Office will provide its consortiated partners with an unprecedented highly-defined satellite-based map to improve the identification capacity of territorial vulnerabilities in order to increase the resilience of communities and nations to natural disasters.

Besides UNESCO, the official partners of IncREO are: Spot Image S.A. SISA (France), Geomer GmbH. (Germany), GeoVille Informationssysteme und Datenverarbeitung GmbH. (Austria); University of Twente (Netherlands), National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology NIMH of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences BAS (Bulgaria); Météo-France (France); Romanian Space Agency ROSA (Romania); and, Infoterra GmbH Ltd (Germany).

Source

According to a recent study, the influence of soot (also known as “black carbon”) on global warming, has been greatly underestimated and could be twice previous estimates.

The report finds black carbon is a significant cause of the rapid warming in the Northern Hemisphere at mid to high latitudes, including the northern United States, Canada, northern Europe and northern Asia. Its impact can also be felt further south, causing changes in rainfall patterns from the Asian Monsoon.

Some of the co-authors of the study are directly involved in MACC-II, working together on improving the aerosol monitoring and forecasting system. This part of the Copernicus Atmosphere service will contribute to help reduce uncertainties on black carbon and its impact on climate and air quality.

Read more…
See news item on MACC-II website
(Source University of Leeds & MACC-II) & Copernicus.eu website

(December) The fourth edition of the Charter Newsletter is now available

The International Charter “Space and Major Disasters” published the fourth issue of their newsletter. The publication is available online on the Charter’s website and covers the following topics:

  • CNES takes over chairmanship of International Charter (incl. an article from the CNES Ethics Adviser)
  • The International Charter promotes Universal Access
  • JAXA leadership for the Charter from April to October 2012
  • Landsat 5 (end of service)
  • Pleiades 1b satellite successfully launched
  • Training Course on International Charter at ESA’s ESRIN facility with Chinese delegates
  • USGS PM Training Course in Russia

Read more at Charter December Newsletter

Operational satellite-based Earth Observation services support the forestry sector.

The challenge

The forestry sector is having to quickly adapt on a regional basis to economic, social and environmental changes. Certain areas are under increasing pressure from human activities while others are becoming settlement deserts. Renewable energy targets are also part of the picture. One big question is how forests can maintain the multi-faceted range of services they offer. Furthermore, in a changing natural environment climatic events are also taking a toll through storm related windfall damage, droughts and conversely waterlogging, and fire events. Parasite attacks can also affect already weakened forests. All of this is occurring during a period of budget cutbacks that make the management of Europe’s vast forests even more complicated. Forest fire monitoring, la Réunion using RapiEye imagery, SERTIT 2011

Through long-term R&D collaboration (Interreg and public conventions) and now contracts with SERTIT, the forest sector in NE France (Alsace-Lorraine) accepts that satellite remote sensing can offer solutions, tools to help them manage their forests. The challenge is to continually foster and expand this collaboration and to provide operational results. Moreover, the forest bodies realise that remote sensing does not replace them, but is a useful, timesaving and complementary tool to their work and can be integrated into their workflows. The results often make their work possible and open-up new horizons. As one can expect, part of the challenge as always is to fund this work; with SERTIT and its private and public partners exploring ways to source finance for both R&D and production activities.

Benefits to citizens

Forests and trees provide numerous services from building material and fuel, contributing to many industrial products. Together with grasslands and other permanent natural land surfaces, forests provide precious habitats and corridors for the movement of fauna and otherwise contribute significantly to biodiversity. Forests and trees also provide healthy leisure amenities, enrich the landscape and reduce urban heat islands. They break-up urban landscapes providing diversity and reducing stresses including noise, visual and chemical pollution. Indeed, terms such as green infrastructure are being used to describe our environmental assets of which forestry is a very important part.

Remote sensing derived geographical information can help in the sustainable management of these forests, highlighting trends in forests, an integral part of many European citizens’ landscapes, locating where they are developing or are under pressure, being conserved or exploited. It is recognised by the forest sector that this information would often be too expensive to obtain in the field. Importantly, the regional forestry sector’s viewpoint towards remote sensing is improving as useful inputs and solutions to forester issues are coming on-line.

The space-based solution

Earth observation provides a near instantaneous view of forests on a given date. When used for mapping, very precise and exhaustive reference geo-information can be obtained. When combined with archives, trends over fifty years can be mapped to analyse landscape changes from the 1960s to the present day. Forest clearings and plantations and resources monitored can also be aided by remote sensing. Trends like the higher pressure on small forests, and hence the threat to green infrastructure can be illustrated. Storm windfall or fire damage can be mapped to indicate damage extents. Valuable information can be provided on parasite attack die-offs. This work is validated in situ by foresters.

Specifically, in mountainous terrain satellite imagery helps monitor tree-felling amongst the private small-holder plots of the Vosges Mountain Range. This prized resource is diminishing with little replacement being observed by the foresters inciting the sector to establish replanting funds with calls for this and the remaining resource to be regularly monitored through remote sensing. Here SERTIT works with private forester bodies (CRPF Lorraine-Alsace and Cosylval). In another development the Fédération Interprofessionnelle Forêt-Bois Alsace (FIBOIS Alsace), has funded a multi-disciplinary storm preparedness dossier, including tree-type and 3-D information on forest plantations in-part derived from remote sensing data, to improve post-storm responsiveness. The overall aim is to facilitate the planning and preservation of forestry landscapes and resources with satellite imagery being used to objectively monitor forestry dynamics.

In areas of high human pressures on forests, SERTIT has proven the capacity of satellite imagery to efficiently pinpoint tree-felling and whether they lead to changes, with trees often being replaced by other land-uses (urban, primary resource extraction and vineyards)

This long-term 20-year service has been supported, validated and the results used by the Regional Delegation of the Agricultural and Forestry Department (DRAAF) within the application of Regional Forestry Policies (ORF). Recently, SERTIT has worked on mapping tree die-offs contributing to the Ministry of Agriculture, Agri-food and Forestry’s (MAAF) work in the aftermath of post-storm bark beetle infestations. This along with windfall mapping and fire mapping constitute part of our broadening extreme event and emergency portfolio. Forest clearing in Alsace over 20 years using SPOT imagery, SERTIT 2011

Outlook for the future

The continuity and expansion to other geographical sectors of the above-mentioned regional services is envisaged. More regular imaging at a lower cost by ESA’s Sentinel satellites should enhance the possibility of remote sensing services providing pertinent, more detailed information on the richness of our forests. The forest sector is requesting information on volume estimates and hence 3D applications will probably come on-line facilitated by, amongst others, the French Pléaides constellation and German Tandem-X resources. In other areas, emergency-mapping services will improve provision to civil security authorities and foresters alike.

It must be stated that Interreg and to a lesser extent GMES projects have helped co-fund R&D developments which have fed into better services for the forestry sector. One such Interreg project, backed by the Alsace Regional Council, concerning the Sweet Chestnut tree in the Upper Rhine Valley, has led to a rethink by foresters on the resource’s viability (Cosylval) after SERTIT highlighting chestnut tree concentrations. This could promote chestnut tree conservation as they become valued. Generally, at the request of foresters, SERTIT will look further into tree species and structure mapping.

Furthermore, SERTIT is exploring the use of sub-metric optical imagery (Pléiades) in suburban and urban tree mapping as regards land-planning, green-infrastructure and endangered biotope mapping. A considerable effort is made to automate much of the required procedures, with the Strasbourg Urban Community working with SERTIT in this domain.

Finally, and further to the monitoring of forests, SERTIT will investigate 3-D forest resource mapping, post-fire potential effects on soil plus die-offs and regrowth, and perhaps the effects of extreme events in terms of lost tree volumes. It must be said that the CNES, the French Space Agency, and the European Space Agency have given SERTIT a helping hand wherever possible and over many years notably concerning access to data and technological developments.

Cost justification and Return on Investment

As is often the case in this domain it is difficult to come up with hard and fast figures in a quantitative cost justification. The main justification comes in the form of user groups being satisfied and continuing their collaboration while suggesting more avenues to explore. In certain terms satellite remote sensing facilitates work that would otherwise be too expensive to carry out by traditional means giving extensive yet precise information on forests and their dynamics.

From SERTIT’s point of view, the long-term return on investment is evidenced by the increasing number and range of forestry related activities in which foresters include satellite remote sensing derived information.

Another positive point is that the forestry sector is becoming increasingly exigent and coming-up with requests in new domains and with new, more precise demands using more precise satellite data. They increasingly understand the limits but moreover the benefits that remote sensing derived work can bring to their working environments. They also understand that the most expensive part of geographical information related work is the initial costs of establishing and validating an application or service. The costs reduce over time leading to a certain return on investment and an increased usefulness of the accruing information. In the past this work was nearly always financed through R&D and there definitely was air of techno-push surrounding it, whereas increasingly remote sensing derived geo-information layers are seen as part and parcel of the everyday working environment.

SERTIT
300 Bd Sébastien Brant, 67412 Illkirch, France
sertit@sertit.u-strasbg.fr
+33(0)368854640

I wrote last time about our study into a free and open data policy (FODP) for the GMES Sentinel data. The final report, entitled GMES and Data : Geese and Golden Eggs is now available from the EARSC web-site. In it we take a look at the benefits such a policy could bring and also at what we can learn from other digital data domains where open data policy has been or is being applied.
This leads us to the strong and growing evidence that a free and open data policy (FODP) yields benefits to all parties; it leads to increased economic activity and hence employment and tax revenues by reducing entry barriers and encouraging entrepreneurship, it allows more business to be done in value adding by reducing input costs and it stimulates innovation in new products and services. It is very much a win-win policy.

Of course it is based on the premise that the underlying costs are already justified by public-sector needs. In the case of GMES / Copernicus the cost-benefit analyses that have been performed all show this to be the case. Both PwC and Booz & Co reports demonstrate a very positive return factor, at around 3.7 times the investment, on public tasks linked to environment and security – especially information linked to climate change. These do not consider the commercial benefits but a recent study (1) does and is forecasting the creation of 83,000 jobs by 2030 and a market in downstream services of around €1.8b.

But there are some consequences of an FODP and in particular where investment has been made in commercial systems. It is clear that there will be some substitution affecting existing data sales of commercial satellite operators; some customers will accept lower performance with free data than to pay for a higher performance. Those offering a performance closest to Sentinel 1 or 2 will be the most affected. But the goal is to stimulate the market so that all players in the EO geo-information services sector will benefit. If we are correct in the view that GMES / Copernicus will act as a market stimulus; raising awareness and bringing new, operational services to be offered, then the (hopefully) small loss in direct, data sales will be more than compensated by new opportunities.

Exploiting these opportunities will be the key and this is where there is work to be done. EARSC continues to build links with other industry sectors. Unfortunately we are only a micro-organisation so the number of fronts that we can work on is limited but the signs so far are good and progress is being made. This year for the first time we shall start looking at export openings and find where there is a possibility for the industry find new partners.
There are two other items that should be mentioned this quarter.
Firstly, we are organising a workshop for April looking at certification in the EO geo-information services industry (see the announcement in eomag). This initiative results from the links mentioned above and customers calling for a certification scheme to be established. Is the industry ready for this yet? It is a sign of maturity that the question is being asked but what do companies think? We shall be asking both suppliers and customers their views.
Secondly, we are about half way through our survey of the industry. We have been very pleased with the response so far and many thanks to those who have responded. However, there are still some 200 companies that have not opened the survey and I re-iterate how important it is that you should do so. Answering even a few of the questions will help us understand what part you play in the sector. If you can answer the full survey, then that will be really, really appreciated. If you are a company, in geo-information services and you have not received a mail asking you to complete a questionnaire then please do get in touch. The survey should be completed in March and results will be published around the middle of 2013. These will be vital to help us and decision makers understand what are the issues facing the industry and how to respond to them.

It remains to wish you a happy new year. I have been very gratified by some of the mails that I receive encouraging EARSC in the work we are doing. We are always seeking ways to help serve our members better. Do not hesitate to contact either myself or Monica if you wish to make suggestions or, if you are part of a company that is not yet a member, to come and join the Association!

Geoff Sawyer
EARSC Secretary General

(1) Assessing the Economic Value of GMES: Spacetec Partners for the European Commission.

Linked to the OGEO platform, a workshop is being organised on 18th/19th February in Frascati to help identify capabilities for the O&G industry to respond to oil spills focusing on practical and technical monitoring capabilities from satellite, aerial and surface platforms.

The scope includes remote sensing technologies and capabilities, collaborating with other industry working groups to ensure international applicability. Lessons learned from recent incidents will be incorporated in the review (Macondo, Gannet, Bonga etc), including the need for additional planning, improved capabilities (e.g. response times across relevant locations) and further research to optimise monitoring and characterisation of oil spills using remote sensing techniques.

The overall objective is to provide the energy industry with an understanding of current and planned surface surveillance capabilities, along with gaps, and thus to improve industry readiness for future incidents. This will be facilitated by information gathering at the workshop, involving presentations (including industry requirements), break-out sessions and 1 to 1 interviews.

Any company with relevant observing capacity to offer that is interested to participate please contact us at secretariat@earsc.org

Pleiades 1B, the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) Earth observation satellite, has captured its first images using e2v high performance imaging sensors.

Two types of e2v sensors (for panchromatic and multispectral imaging) equip the satellites high-resolution optical imaging instrument; these were selected by Thales Alenia Space, who is providing the HR instrument to Astrium, developed under CNES contract.

Pleiades 1B has been designed to provide dual use optical observation coverage with a 70-centimeter resolution.

It was launched into space from French Guiana on 30 November 2012 and has accompanied its twin, Pleiades 1A, which was launched into space in December 2011.

The Astrium division of EADS built both Pleiades satellites for the French CNES space agency for use by the French and Spanish defence ministries, civil institutions, and private users. They are based on smaller, cheaper, more agile platforms than their predecessors – the highly-successful Spot satellite series.

The 200kg, high-resolution optical imaging instrument on board Pleiades is equipped with a panchromatic and multispectral focal plane.

Five e2v CCD98-50 imaging sensors equip the panchromatic focal plane; the sensors have 6,000 pixels each (giving 30,000 pixels per line), are back-thinned to improve sensitivity and have Time Delay Integration (TDI) functionality to enable them to capture high resolution images (70cm on-ground resolution).

The multispectral focal plane is made up of five e2v AT71554 imaging sensors. These imaging sensors cover four spectral bands, made up of 1,500 pixels each, with each spectral band providing 7,500 pixels once installed in the focal plane.

Bertrand De Monte, marketing manager of high performance imaging at e2v commented “We are very pleased to be continuing our successful relationship with Thales Alenia Space, Astrium, and CNES by supplying high performance image sensors for Pleiades 1B.

“e2v has provided image sensors for a number of Earth observation satellites including the original Pleiades 1A and SPOT 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. We look forward to seeing yet more high resolution images of the Earth, made possible by e2v solutions.”

Source Spacedaily

(Nov 2012) Once again, the lookouts for the Vendée Globe, single-handed, round-the-world yacht race will be standing watch some 800 km above the skippers. These hi-tech satellites, shining like small stars in the night sky, act as telescopes for the teams at CLS (Collection and Location by Satellite), a CNES subsidiary based at Brest and Toulouse.

CLS, the original operator of the Argos system, is also expert in space-based oceanography, radar surveillance and satellite-based positioning. Since last May, it has been inspecting the route that the participants in the Vendée Globe will be following. With the help of satellite radar imagery, CLS oceanographers and image-analysis experts have spotted the largest icebergs, which will be a significant risk to the skippers as they navigate the southern oceans next December and January. This valuable information has helped the Race Management, working closely with CLS, to set the route and select the most suitable iceberg-free routes around the Antarctic.

From the moment the first skipper arrives in waters where icebergs are a threat, more than a hundred radar images, 500 kilometres square, will be acquired by Canadian MDA satellites along the route followed by the fleet, for processing and interpretation by CLS analysts. This will enable the Race Management to warn the skippers if the level of risk becomes too high and, if necessary, move the “Ice Gates” further north to make the route safer.

CLS

450 employees around the world, 16 offices and subsidiaries, projected turnover of €80 million for 2012, 80 instruments carried on 40 satellites, 2 centres for the acquisition, processing, interpretation and distribution of satellite data, 60 oceanographers and 25 radar experts.

Source CLS