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(October 2012) At the invitation of the Minister for Water and Energy of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, the Representatives of the African Union Commission (AUC), the Regional Economic Communities (CEMAC, ECOWAS, IOC, IGAD, SADC) and the Secretariat of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP Secretariat) Group of States, declared their support to the Addis Ababa Declaration.

This was declared in the presence of the Deputy Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and of representatives of the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the African Centre for Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD) and the European Union (EU).

The Addis-Ababa Declaration

Through the Addis-Ababa Declaration, the signatories have agreed to support the development of an African regional implementation plan for the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS), which should be endorsed by an [External link]Extra-ordinary Congress of WMO later this month.

The main goal of the GFCS is to enable better management of the risks of climate variability and change and adaptation to climate change, through the development and incorporation of science-based climate information and prediction into planning, policy and practice on the global, regional and national scale.

The Addis-Ababa Declaration also calls on the European Commission to support the implementation of the GFCS in Africa through its introduction as an element of the joint Africa-EU Strategy.

The stakeholders are convinced that the implementation of GFCS in Africa will further enable African institutions to contribute to, and benefit from, the results of the international cooperation efforts in the area of climate services. In particular, they will benefit through better access to knowledge and technologies in climate monitoring, prediction and projection.

During the declaration ceremony, Alain Ratier, EUMETSAT’s Director-General, said: “With this declaration, Africa demonstrates its willingness for a coordinated effort to generate valuable climate information. It encourages EUMETSAT strengthening its collaboration with Africa on climate monitoring and generation of climate services.”

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Irish marine science and technology company TechWorks Marine has secured a contract to lead a European Space Agency (ESA) research project on monitoring coastal outlets.

Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin-based TechWorks Marine is to lead the ESA earth observation project. Earth observation is the gathering of information about the earth’s physical, chemical and biological systems from satellites orbiting the planet.

Today’s news is the first time that such a project will be led by an Irish group. It comes as a result of four years’ work by TechWorks Marine, while Enterprise Ireland also helped secure the project.

Minister of State for Research and Innovation, Sean Sherlock, TD, said today that the win was a “significant” one for TechWorks Marine. “It clearly indicates that Irish SMEs have the capability and expertise to lead projects in this highly competitive sector,” he said.

TechWorks Marine itself was set up in 2002 by Charlotte O’Kelly and Philip Trickett. The company specialises in the development of real-time marine data platforms for clients in the maritime industry.

For the ESA project, TechWorks will be pioneering satellite earth observation products for developers and operators of wastewater treatment plants and desalination plants, with the aim of helping them reduce their environmental impact.

Specifically, the project will be looking at the coastal effects of wastewater treatment plants in Ireland, especially in Donegal Bay.

O’Kelly, managing director of TechWorks Marine, said that coastal zones are highly complex to monitor from space. This, she said, was due to the close proximity of coastal areas to land and also the sensor pixel resolution of the images.

However, O’Kelly said improvements in sensor technology mean it is now possible to develop earth observation products specifically aimed at areas of coastal activity.

“These products can be used to analyse the effect of wastewater treatment plant outfalls in the coastal environment, or ensure that water close to the intakes of desalination plants does not have harmful algal blooms which could be a health hazard to humans,” she explained.

O’Kelly also said the ESA contract has enabled TechWorks to recruit new staff with specific earth-observation expertise. The plan is to grow this team in the coming months.

During the project, she said TechWorks Marine will be working with companies such as the Veolia group, which manages three wastewater plants in Donegal, to help them develop products.

Dr Barry Fennell from Enterprise Ireland said today that more than 80 Irish companies have secured ESA contracts worth in excess of €80m since 2002.

“Ireland is currently developing significant expertise in using data collected by satellites orbiting the earth to understand climate change, detection of illegal waste dump sites, prediction of volcanic ash clouds and tracking of vessels to assist in drug interdiction,” he said.

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Enterprise-Ireland

As the newly appointed Head of Unit for GMES, could you briefly explain what GMES is all about?

As I’m sure you know, there are two European Flagship Programmes for space, Galileo and GMES. GMES stands for ‘Global Monitoring for Environment and Security’ and is a long-term Earth Observation (EO) programme jointly undertaken by the European Commission, the Member States, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Environment Agency (EEA). GMES aims at providing continuous and reliable information about the state of the environment to European policy makers, the business community and to the general public. GMES consists of three components:
(i) a satellite constellation for the collection of EO data from space,
(ii) an earth-based observation infrastructure (ground-based, airborne and ship- or buoy-based sensors) and
(iii) a network of services which will deliver EO information relevant to six different domains (Atmosphere, Climate Change, Land Monitoring, Emergency Management, Marine and Security).

Could you briefly explain your daily activities in the GMES Unit and the liaison with other programmes, Units and Directorates?

My Unit is working on achieving the transition of GMES from a set of preparatory activities based mainly on R&D funding to a sustained and user-driven set of operational services. GMES has already progressed from a mere notion through numerous research projects to a more sustained operational programme. Indeed, today two GMES services are already operational. The GMES Unit is responsible for enabling and coordinating that development path.

This implies that we have to liaise with representatives from different user communities, listen to their needs, develop a policy and consult with various other parts of the European Commission. Of course we also deal with the budget issues and our aim is to establish services that deliver the information needed by the user communities when and where it is most needed. We should not forget that we are working for European citizens and that is why we are giving ordinary citizens an opportunity to see what GMES is all about by contributing to the European Space Expo exhibition, which is currently touring various European venues.

As a coordination unit, we develop our policies in close relation with the other units in our Directorate-General (DG), notably the Aerospace, Maritime, Security and Defence Industries Unit, and also with other DG’s. As an example, the new Emergency Management Service has been established in close collaboration with the Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the DG for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (DG ECHO).

Can you comment on the evolution of GMES and the latest EC communication?

As I said before, GMES has moved from research to operations with the implementation of the GMES Initial Operations (GIO) in the period 2011-2013;
two services are now operational,
(1) the Land monitoring service for which the EEA ensures the technical coordination and
(2) the Emergency Management Service. Other pre-operational services continue to be financed by the EU’s 7th Framework Programme (FP7) funding, for example monitoring the marine environment (MyOcean2) and atmosphere monitoring (MACC-II)

The Commission believe that GMES is so important that it warrants special budgetary provisions. This is why the proposal was made to finance it from a fund outside the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). We will require large investments over a long period to further develop the GMES space infrastructure, and, when taken together with the large budget foreseen for Galileo, this could be very problematic to achieve within the constraints of the MFF.

The Commission believe that GMES is so important that it warrants special budgetary provisions. This is why the proposal was made to finance it from a fund outside the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). We will require large investments over a long period to further develop the GMES space infrastructure, and, when taken together with the large budget foreseen for Galileo, this could be very problematic to achieve within the constraints of the MFF.

At the present time we are awaiting a decision on funding by the Member States in the Council and the elected representatives in the Parliament. This does not mean that we have stopped working, of course, as the Commission remains committed to preparing the necessary regulations on GMES operations in a timely manner, in order to avoid any disruption of the programme schedule caused by the funding debate.

What is your idea for the governance scheme and the related business model to be adopted?

One of the keys to success for the operational GMES services is to have an appropriate governance and robust business model. The business model for us is very clear. GMES will provide free and open information and in that sense it will trigger business initiatives.

In order to stimulate business development, we also need to create awareness about the programme and its potential benefits. This is why we developed the GMES Masters competition and this was also a motivation for us, together with the UK Space Agency, to organise the Space Solutions Days planned for London in December 2012.

The full, open and free data policy should allow businesses to exploit the market opportunities offered by GMES. Then it is up to industry to be entrepreneurial and translate the data into their business models. It is precisely here where EARSC has an important role to play by identifying business opportunities in order to further develop the downstream market.

What do you look for in cooperative efforts between European Institutions and Industry and in particular the GMES Unit and industry?

The GMES Unit is part of DG Enterprise and Industry, so the link with industry is strong. The focus of DG ENTR right now is to stimulate growth and employment and we are embracing that aim in our objectives.

The Earth Observation industry is made up of distinct segments. We should distinguish between the upstream sector, which includes space-based and earth-based infrastructure and data providers, and the downstream sector, which consists of the many services and market products that can be developed thanks to the availability of continuous and accurate EO information. In between, we have the midstream sector represented by those operators that exploit space-based and earth-based systems to produce and sell EO data. The GMES Unit has relations with representatives from all three sectors. Studies show that midstream and downstream can be eight times bigger than upstream. So there is a multiplication effect on the investments in the upstream sector.

In 2012, DG-ENTR launched several initiatives to support the development of downstream services, in the framework of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (EIP). Some €2.5 million was made available through a call for proposals to support two demonstration projects at regional level, as well as the distribution of innovation vouchers for the development of innovative services relying on GMES information and GNSS signals (Galileo/EGNOS). This approach focuses on finding solutions and systematically creating entrepreneurial opportunities for the wider use of innovative technologies, goods and services by involving a wide range of stakeholders, industries and technologies. As a result, new skills may be shaped in the regions, leading to competitive advantages offering global market opportunities.

How could cooperation on space research be better integrated for the development of EU industry?

The Commission has financed through the FP7 programme the GMES Academy whose role it is to bridge EO-research with EO-industry. The Academy was launched in Salzburg, in September 2012. In order to facilitate the bridging, research sheets have been prepared on all projects oriented towards the business developers and will be made available through the GMES Academy website.

The Commission has proposed an ambitious programme for research and innovation (Horizon 2020), which will give a strong boost to the competitiveness and technological leadership of our industry. Horizon 2020, starting in 2014, will continue to fund space research projects at an enhanced level, with a focus on research and innovation, providing opportunities to top European scientists and engineers, and preparing the ground for next generation space systems. Within the next Multi-Annual Financial Framework (2014-2020) the EU proposes to invest €1.7 billion in space research and innovation.

What measures will be taken to ensure that there is adequate funding to maintain GMES operational activities and what do you see as the next steps for GMES?

I have described the current funding debate above. At this stage there is no reason to assume that GMES is under threat. As I mentioned before, the Commission clearly indicated in its budget proposals the importance of GMES, and hence we are committed to agreeing a solution for long-term funding.

While the Sentinel satellites are currently being developed specifically for the needs of the programme, the various GMES Contributing Missions are already providing a wealth of data for the services. There is no reason for the downstream sector to have to wait – it should already be proactive and look for business opportunities secure in the knowledge that the provision of long-term sustained services is being tackled by the Commission with its utmost conviction.

The first dedicated satellite, Sentinel 1A, should be ready for launch in October 2013. The Commission has always expressed itself in favour of the timely launch of Sentinel 1A as it will preserve the current launch schedule, avoid overruns and minimise the risk of discontinuity. The available budgets from FP7 and GIO allow the funding of planned activities until well into 2014. So, there is no reason to suppose that there will be any discontinuities. We are still on track!

So, you’re optimistic about the future?

“Optimism is a moral duty”, as Karl Popper once said, but there is indeed reason to be optimistic. Over the period 2014-2030, GMES is expected to lead to benefits estimated to be between 4 and 10 times bigger than the amounts invested. A huge number of applications are already developing, from such areas as better urban planning for housing, for public transport development, to finding best renewable energy sites, predicting pollution and implementing mitigation measures, etc. GMES is a unique programme which has huge potential for businesses and citizens alike. The European Union will be the first and perhaps the only organisation to have such a complete monitoring system and such a comprehensive set of operational services.

Dr. Reinhard SCHULTE-BRAUCKS joined the European Commission in 1981. He worked in a number of areas such as anti-trust, completion of the internal market, enterprise policy and space research.
In June 2012 he took up his present position as head of the GMES Unit in the Commission’s Enterprise and Industry Directorate-General. He is responsible for the development of the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security system (GMES). The latter consists of a space component as well as satellite based services in the areas of land observation, emergency, oceanography, atmosphere, international security and climate change monitoring.

Images provided by GMES Bureau

(3 October 2012) The use of data from Earth-observing satellites in the insurance business is still in the early stages, but pressure to be ready for more frequent extreme-weather events is increasing.

Flooding is expensive for the insurance and reinsurance market. Last year’s flood in Thailand cost the insurance industry $15–20 billion – the most expensive flood ever in terms of insured losses.

Accurate and timely information about a flood’s extent can help insurers to assess the impact and prepare to meet the claims.

In an innovative business approach, a consortium of insurers and reinsurers, including Swiss Re, Munich Re, Allianz, Willis and Guy Carpenter, has teamed up with Zurich-based PERILS to assess the use of receiving realtime flood extent information based on data from a constellation of six European and Canadian remote sensing satellites.

During the next 12 months, the inundation area of significant floods will be delivered to a web-based platform hosted by PERILS for the business partners.

This trial is part of ESA’s activities to develop the industrial use of Earth observation-based services to stimulate growth within the European service sector.

“This project is going to satisfy a longstanding industry need for detailed flood information during and after large events,” said Eduard Held, Head of Products at PERILS.

“While it has been possible to access satellite images in the past, this is the first time that insurers will be able to access images that have been standardised to better suit their specific requirements.”

Depending on the scale and duration of floods, high-resolution flood boundaries will be made available on a daily basis while the events are unfolding, allowing an immediate assessment of the possible impact.

After the flood, a map showing the maximum extent of the flooding will be produced.

PERILS is an independent, Zurich-based company that provides industry-wide catastrophe data for the insurance industry.

Source ESA

RICHMOND HILL, Ontario, Canada—October 3, 2012: PCI Geomatics, a world leading developer of geo-imaging software and systems, today announces the release of Geomatica 2013; the latest version of the company’s complete and integrated desktop image processing software featuring tools for remote sensing, digital photogrammetry, geospatial analysis, map production, mosaicking and more.


“With this year’s release, we have really added tools that will speed up the processing workflow in many different areas of the software,” said Peter Hazlett, Product Manager for Geomatica. “It is not uncommon for projects of hundreds to thousands of images in size that need to be processed in a single block. New tools have been added and performance has been improved for compute intensive algorithms, saving you hours in processing time”.

Geomatica 2013 adds incredible performance improvements to streamline your workflow like never before. Starting with Focus, new, wizard based workflows have been added for Atmospheric Correction that will allow users to automatically detect cloud and haze in imagery – which will make producing seamless mosaics in cloud plagued areas more intuitive. In OrthoEngine, users will see incredible improvements in handling large projects, including Quality Assurance panels that automatically update, Ground Control Point (and Tie Point) visualization, leading edge automated seamline generation, and the best algorithms to match images to each other automatically through new automatic ground control collection algorithms that can achieve registration accuracies down to 1/10th of a pixel!

Included in the Geomatica 2013 release is a set of new, redesigned algorithms to automatically extract Digital Elevation Models from single or up to hundreds of stereo pairs collected by high resolution sensors. In addition, creating DEMs from multi-source elevation data (billions of lidar points, contour lines, breaklines) is now possible through powerful new tools for DEM creation from vector data. All DEM generation algorithms have been implemented to leverage OpenMP, which means customers will see big performance improvements (3x to 4x faster than previous).

In addition to the great new and improved tools, Geomatica 2013 will also offer a unique, new tool to help customers improve the way they work with their large, complex data holdings. Geomatica Discover, which will be available in a Geomatica 2013 service pack, is a standalone, web based data discovery tool, will crawl your local or system drives to automatically create footprints for geospatial raster and vector data. The interface allows for map based or advanced text based querying, allowing customers to quickly and efficiently discover their data holdings to help organize production work.

Geomatica 2013 is available for 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows (Windows XP/Windows 7/Server 2003/Server 2008) starting today. A Linux version will be available in the coming weeks. For more information on Geomatica 2013, please visit www.pcigeomatics.com/geomatica

About PCI Geomatics

PCI Geomatics is a world-leading developer of software and systems to process aerial and satellite imagery. The company provides integrated Esri imagery workflows, standalone image processing capability, and large volume processing throughput, giving customers the ability to produce high-quality image products and derived information for any project. Find out more at www.pcigeomatics.com/geomatica

Press Contact

Kevin R. Jones
Director, Marketing and Product Management
T: 819-770-0022 × 214
E: jones@pcigeomatics.com
Web: www.pcigeomatics.com
Twitter: @pcigeomatics

Highlights in Geomatica 2013

Atmopheric Correction
Industry leading Atmospheric Correction Tools, with an all new wizard interface including workflows for:

  • Haze detection and removal
  • Cloud detection and masking
  • Ground reflectance map generation
  • Surface temperature mapping

Digital Elevation Model (DEM) Extraction

  • 3x to 4x better performance (OpenMP enabled)
  • Higher accuracy, better results
    -New filtering, terrain selection options
    -Better handling of large elevation jumps
    -Productivity improvements
    -New simplified workflow in OrthoEngine
    -Automatically work with 100’s to 1,000s of stereo pairs
    -Dramatic improvements in generating DEMs from vector data (billions of Lidar points, breakline, contour lines)

Speedy Workflows
OrthoEngine includes key improvements that will improve productivity:

  • More control over large projects
  • Faster, more efficient QA
  • Easier point selection / deletion / editing
  • Improved seamline generation methods (fewer vertices per line)
  • 2D DEM editing capability in Focus to quickly address quality issues with DEMs

Format/Sensor Support
PCI Geomatics is proud to be consistently first-to-market with new format and sensor support. In Geomatica 2013, adds support for the following:

New Sensors

  • Pleiades
  • UAVSAR
  • Sentinel-1

Updates to existing Sensors

  • Deimos
  • ZY3
  • CBERS02C

New Formats
Along with new formats, Geomatica 2013 includes multi-sensor metadata collection capability which has been redesigned, with the emphasis on simplifying workflows down the road since many parameters are automatically populated. New data formats include:

  • Esri Arc Geodatabase Vector Support
  • Panorama SXF
  • Envi (improvements in handling of format)
  • Pyramid file support for ENVI and Erdas image formats

Data Visualization

  • FLY! Has received improvements, including upgrading it to be OpenMP enabled, improving performance up to 4x
  • Focus includes improve mulit-layer selection capability, as well as setting and changing the default band combination for multiple images at once
  • Ability to generate a Spot blue band (to make natural color composites)
  • Profile tool improvements for displaying multiple channels at once

SAR Improvements
PCI has a long and rich tradition of developing tools for SAR Sensors. Geomatica 2013 includes the following improvements:

  • Improved performance for SAR algorithms (OpenMP implementation)
  • Automatic water body delineation based on new methods developed at CCRS
  • Improved user interaction capability for SPW (editable text, 2D, 3D, Static output)
  • Intuitive processing (workflow based on available data and parameters)

Copyright © 2012 , All rights reserved.
Our mailing address is:
PCI Geomatics
50 West Wilmot Street
Richmond Hill, Ontario L4B 1M5

Due to the population increase the last years, cities in Egypt are experiencing various problems: loss of agricultural land due to urban sprawl, development of informal settlements, etc. EUROSENSE demonstrated, through the project SCARABE (Service: Change Analysis over Rosetta And its urBan Environment) that urban mapping services provide useful information on urban growth for urban planning.

Products

In a first service, Urban Atlas maps (present ‘2010’ and historical ‘2003’) and the change map for Rosetta City (Egypt) are created using VHR (very high resolution) optical imagery (Quickbird (0,7m resolution), 2003 and WorldView-2 (0,5m resolution), 2010).

The Urban Atlas maps help to understand the past and present developments in the city. Land use and changes are analysed by the creation of statistics, graphics and indicators. The Urban Atlas provides an up-to-date digital urban reference layer. It provides a spatial view on the distribution of urban infrastructure and can thus be used as an input for urban planning. The map is a necessary step towards a good planning and management of the cities.


Figure : Urban Atlas maps; Rosetta (Egypt) (1/10.000) (background change map: Quickbird 2003)

In a second service, HR (high resolution) Landsat images of years 2011, 2002, 1984 (30m resolution) and 1972 (60m resolution) are used to develop urban extent and land cover maps; these provide an assessment of the regions’ land cover changes. A pixel-based classification approach in combination with manual delineation of masks (e.g. urban extent maps) is used to carry out this HR land cover mapping.

The HR urban extent and land cover maps, produced by EUROSENSE, enable an urban change analysis over the last 40 years. These maps can be used to monitor land cover conversion and general land take trends over several time periods.


Figure : HR Land cover maps (1972-1984-2002-2011) showing the cover conversion and general land take trends over a time period of 40 years (background: Landsat imagery)

Lessons Learned

Although the thematic detail of the Urban Atlas is highly dependent on the availability of ancillary data (of which the acquisition is often difficult and time consuming), visual image interpretation of VHR data already offers a valuable amount of info on the land use. As the used legend is easily adaptable, the availability of reliable ancillary information (high scale topographic maps, GCP’s…) will lead to a more detailed map while still maintaining the same thematic accuracy.

The area of interest (Rosetta, Egypt) is known to be highly affected by coastal erosion during the past decades. A pattern of coastal erosion (the regression of the shore line) could already be detected by using the HR Land cover maps. Earth Observation can be a valuable tool to do a more detailed and quantitative analysis.

The SCARABE project is one of the service trials of the Gazelle project (http://plangazelle.info). This project belongs to the EOMD programme (Earth Observation Market Development) which is devoted to foster the use of geoinformation products and services within new markets and sectors. The aim of Gazelle is to analyse the current situation of EO sector in the Mediterranean Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia) in order to draw a Strategic Plan to steer activities during the following 5 years. The project is financed by ESA and lead by Indra (Spain).

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Eurisy presented this publication during the third edition of the Toulouse Space Show.

It stressed the crucial role played by cities in addressing the challenges of urban mobility and urban sustainability – highlighting them as essential actors of the diffusion satellite navigation applications for these purposes – but not only.

Pioneering cities are already using such applications, and the paper highlighted a series of operational examples related to health and air quality, urban, green and multi-modal transport and accessibility for all.

The Toulouse Space Show, organised from 25th to 28th June, gathered over 1000 participants from more than 50 countries. The event showcased current and future space applications and highlighted the potential of satellite information and services for Europe’s welfare and future development.

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Eurisy, 11 Sept. 2012. Graz, Austria.

In the context of the Europe 2020 energy targets and the increasingly competitive market for renewable energies, this one-day conference was the opportunity for entrepreneurs to learn about innovative and operational satellite applications for the estimation of the energy potential of renewable sources (sun, wind, biomass, water), the optimisation of supply chains and the remote monitoring of energy production plants.

Discussions on the day highlighted that, in order to be able to identify, implement and benefit from operational satellite applications, SMEs need to have access to readily available and concise information about how these applications can help them adapt to business challenges, as well as convincing business cases. SME representatives encouraged policy makers and the space community to extend the dialogue with end-user SMEs in order to bridge the gap between satellite service development and SMEs’concrete business needs and challenges.Entrepreneurs experienced in the use of satellite applications shared their good practice examples, and participants could network with providers of satellite solutions, policy makers and SME representatives.

To complement the debate on operational satellite applications and their benefits, the conference also provided information about existing national and European support mechanisms, ranging from business matchmaking over organisational support to dedicated funding mechanisms.

The conference was co-organised by Eurisy, FFG – Austrian Research Promotion Agency and ICS – Internationalisierungs Center Steiermark, and was held in the premises of the Economic Development Institute in Graz (Wirtschaftsförderungsinstitut Steiermark/WIFI).

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Upcoming Eurisy conference: 18 October 2012, Lille, France.

This conference will provide a platform for confirmed and potential end-users to provide their feedback on their hands-on experience in exploring the usefulness of satellite applications for environment management.

Environment professionals, satellite-application experts, decision-makers are invited to join.

The event is hosted by the Region of Nord Pas de Calais, with whom Eurisy has been working for the last three years on a case-study on satellite-derived alternatives to aerial mapping of habitats.

Source

Eurisy: Satellites Going Local is a collection of non-technical examples of cities, regions and SMEs using satellite services operationally.

Following the success of the first edition of the publication, over the first half of the year we have been working to find fresh examples for an entirely new edition 2012.

As investments in programmes to develop satnav, Earth Observations and satcom capabilities for Europe continue, this publication is a snapshot of the impact of such investments on a grassroots level, in terms of end-user take-up of operational EO-, satnav- and satcom-enabled services.

While by no means an exhaustive review of operational cases, these examples do translate well what works for cities, regions and end-user SMEs in Europe, and will hopefully inspire more of their peers to follow in these footsteps.

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