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(Jan 2009) Written by Vector1Media


Energy
The continuing interest in environmental issues is spurring increased growth in investment, political change, and the development of new technologies related to the exploration, research, monitoring and education of energy related technologies. This will become increasingly important to the geospatial community. From geographic information systems (GIS) to building efficiency and energy exploration, geospatial technologies will provide primary benefits in the renewable and traditional energy fields.

Cartography for Online Differentiation
The continuing competition among online mapping portals such as Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, MapQuest, Microsoft Live Search Maps, etc. will lead to innovations around graphic presentation and cartography. To date, some of the most visually appealing online map content belongs to the free and editable map product OpenStreetMap. Growing competition will lead to innovation in style and presentation of online mapping content that may spark a resurging interest in the art of cartography.

Coordinate Systems and Data Quality
The focus on coordinate systems and data quality will increase as data integration in GIS/CAD rises. The emergence of geo-referenced infrastructure systems will further the integration of GIS / CAD while linking indoor and outdoor features into one seamless scalable geo-referenced coordinate system. The foundation for this integration will couple directly to GPS enabled permanent reference networks and will also take advantage of high resolution satellite imagery capable of being used at the 1-5m level. Data quality will be an important ingredient of this integration, particularly as investments will be more closely scrutinized.

Crowd Sourced Data
The explosion of handheld mapping devices will lead to many innovative campaigns to channel the data gathering capacity of citizens and customers in order to improve decision making. Crowd-sourced information could be extremely helpful to gain a better understanding of dynamic situations or rapidly changing situations such as emergencies. A number of innovative companies will crop up in the coming year with solutions to take advantage of human sensors.

INSPIRE
There is little doubt that the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe Directive (INSPIRE) will be a focus of attention across Europe during the next year as it is required to be implemented in early 2009. Each member country is required to implement the Directive, thereby enabling a seamless spatial infrastructure across the European Union. Many view this initial step as the beginning steps toward a more widespread and deeply engaged spatial data infrastructure (SDI).

3D Visualisation (software and hardware enabled)
Recent developments in visualisation technologies at both the computing hardware and software levels are furthering the development of street-level visualisation and photo-realistic visualisation. We are now beginning to see a connection of mobility technologies combining 3G telecommunication technologies that link directly to mapping and spatia databases. 3D will finally emerge as a workable techology with suitable support and acceptible speeds in 2009.

Geographic Design
GIS visionary Jack Dangermond has spoken about the need to add design capability into the geospatial toolset, and both Autodesk and Bentley are moving toward large-scale detailed visualization tools and environments for geographies at the city scale. This new interest in visualisation and design at a broad scale will lead to a healthy competition that will spur innovations in tools that will make geographic design a reality, but will also further muddy the line between the capabilties of GIS and CAD tool sets.

Transportation
Several city leaders and politicians have jumped on infrastructure as an investment route in late 2008 with the hope these projects lift economies from a recession. Transportation technologies are uniquely placed because they cross both spatial technologies and energy efficiency initiatives at the same time. Rail, freight and passenger efficiency are poised to become major areas of focus in 2009 as the continuing shift toward efficiency grows and cost-minded consumers seek alternate modes of travel against growing energy costs.

Augmented Reality
The ubiquity of handheld devices with mapping and multimedia capabilities is leading to a growing interest in turning these devices into more intelligent agents. There are a number of research projects that are exploring new ways to use mobile devices to assist and augment navigation with discoverable information that could greatly enhance travel and fieldwork. A few such projects have proven the ability to recognize an image taken by a device’s camera that can then be matched and filled with hyperlinks that allow you to further explore any item within view.

Wide-Scale Infrastructure Spending
Plans across the globe for wide-scale investment in infrastructure to spur the economy will lead to a number of opportunities for geospatial and design firms. The interest in quick action with efficient allocation of resources and transparency in the process begs for greater CAD and GIS integration throughout the process. The speed and efficiency of this enormous investment requires the dawning of a new era of collaboration that will be spurred by government mandated requirements.

(Nov 2008) The International Charter “Space and Major Disasters”, launched by CNES (the French Space Agency) and ESA, and signed on 20 October 2000, is a global disaster response system dedicated to delivering satellite data through an established and organised user base, the so-called authorized users.

The latter are mainly disaster management centres in Europe such as national Civil Protection agencies and the Monitoring Information Centre (MIC) of DG Environment.

In November 2008 the ESA, in association with CNES and BNSC (the British National Space Centre), organised a workshop to promote and optimise the access and use of satellite imagery for disaster response. The main aim of the workshop was to collect feedback from the authorised users, while the main topics discussed concerned the submission of requests for data to the Charter and the utilisation of Charter-based results by the broad range of end users.

Finally, representatives from ESA and CNES summarized that the functions of the Charter are simple and include Earth Observation (EO) missions in response to requests from a pre-defined user list, making EO data available rapidly and free of charge, and organizing the base of pre-defined users. Seen from the user’ side, improving access to the Charter is a priority which requires efforts to raise awareness around Europe and worldwide.

Today other capacities to provide functions similar to those of the Charter are already available or under preparation. Amongst such examples, the GMES Emergency-Response (ERCS) will provide geo-information services to support preparedness, rehabilitation or reconstruction efforts, as well as enhanced crisis observation methods using systematic and anticipative approaches, end-to-end-service validation, etc.

This evolution will significantly help to better address overall disaster management issues. The cooperation between the Charter and the GMES Emergency-Response is building up.

Source GMES.Info

“More information at”: www.disasterscharter.org/new/workshop_e.html

By combining the use of satellite observation data with exogenous data and modelling techniques, EUROSENSE offers several customized services consisting in the production and maintenance of geo-information to support decision making in risk management duties.

This service portfolio of flood risk analysis products is fully in support of the requirements of the EU Flood Directive and is indispensable in the prevention, crisis or post-crisis phase of flood risks and emergency situations. Within the project RiskEOS, customized Flood Risk Analysis products were provided to risk management duties of Slovakia and Bulgaria, respectively for the Danube River Basin and the Maritsa Catchment.

Over the last decennia many regions in Europe have suffered from natural hazards. Disasters like e.g. floods are affecting people more than ever. The threatening of human life and property enhances the need of an effective risk management. The “Flood Risk Analysis” services of EUROSENSE comprise information about past and potential flood events as well as an estimation of potential damages and losses. By integration of these data into management systems an efficient and supportive use of information is enabled.

One part of the Flood Risk Analysis services of EUROSENSE comprises the mapping of “Past Flood Events” .These products are not generated in real time, but from archive data. Based on satellite observation data this product identifies the flood extent of former events at the time of image acquisition. The resulting geo-information is very interesting among others for flood risk preparedness and the planning of protection measures e.g. construction of dams and infrastructures.

Fig.1 represents the Past Flood Extent of the flood event occurred in August 2002 in Slovakia (background (Fig.1A)© SPOTimage; (Fig.1B) CORINE2000 Land Cover

Besides the mapping of “Past Flood Events” EUROSENSE offers the simulation of “Flood Hazard Maps” . Flood hazard modelling provides a multiplicity of information on flood risk zones. Historical or statistical hydraulic data together with topographic information and land use information are used as input to a quasi-2D hydraulic simulation model. The Flood Hazard Maps give an idea on the potential flood extent and expansion, the run velocity and the run direction. This product can be used by the customers to analyze the consequences of possible scenarios (dam failure, extreme events…) and to calculate the potential damage.

The damage assessment product also called “Flood Risk Map”, is also contained by the Flood Risk Analysis portfolio of EUROSENSE. The damage calculation can be based on the simulation results of the “Flood Hazard product” but also on ”Past Flood Maps”, respectively resulting in a potential damage assessment map or a past damage assessment map. The calculation of “Flood Risk Maps” is modeled using – among others – damage functions, land use information and ancillary data. Damage functions express the relation between the susceptibility of assets at risk and certain characteristics, example given the inundation depth.

The cooperation with several end-users proved their interest in the Flood Risk Analysis services. Moreover the Flood Risk Analysis products offered by EUROSENSE are all required for the implementation of the Flood Directive.

Fig.2 represents the city of Bratislava, situated along the Danube River in Slovakia. Fig.2A: the inundation depths for a simulated dam break event, Fig.2B: the potential damage map, Fig. 2C: detailed view on the potential damage map (background imagery © EUROSENSE)

Fig.3 represents the city of Pazardzhik, situated along the banks of the Maritsa River in Bulgaria (© EUROSENSE). Fig.3A: the land use map for Pazardzhik, Fig.3B: the simulated inundation depths for a flood event, Fig. 3C: the potential damage map (background imagery © IRS).

A main input to the Flood Risk Analysis services are land use maps. They can be used to take into account the friction of the several land use classes influencing the propagation of a flood in the Flood Hazard Modelling process. Detailed and up-to-date land use information enhances the estimation of the flood damage to a certain region. The land use maps can also be used as background for the visualization of the past flood maps. EUROSENSE is experienced in EO-land services and developed a specialized classification procedure, based on satellite or digital aerial imagery, which results in detailed and accurate urban/regional land-use and/or land-use change maps.

In regions with a lot of new developments and changes, the existing cartographic material which represents the actual situation is not updated frequently (every 5 or 10 years) and can’t catch up with the changes on the terrain. This can have disastrous consequences when acting in a crisis-situation. The service “Detection and Monitoring of Elements at Risk” of EUROSENSE provides a regularly updated cartography of urban areas in a fixed period of time, depending on the customer requirements. This service makes it possible to frequently provide several end-users with up-to-date maps. The overall focus of the service is to locate and to identify all civilian elements contained by areas prone to risk of natural disaster.

This portfolio shows EUROSENSE’s thorough experience in risk management services. All these described services were also produced and delivered in the frame of the GMES-project RISK-EOS, funded by ESA. Besides Risk-EOS, EUROSENSE is actively involved in several other GMES-projects including the development of the European Urban Atlas product (project GMES Urban Services & GSE-Land).

For more information on these services, we refer to the following contact information:

EUROSENSE Belfotop N.V Belgium
Address: Nerviërslaan 54, B-1780 Wemmel, BELGIUM
Phone: +32 (0)2 460 70 00
Fax: +32 (0)2 460 49 58
Website: http://www.eurosense.com
EUROSENSE S.R.O. Slovakia
Address: Kutuzovova 13, SK-831 03 Bratislava, SLOVAKIA
Phone: +421 (0)2 49 20 37 40
Fax: +421 (0)2 49 20 37 41
Website: http://www.eurosense.sk
EUROSENSE EOOD Bulgaria
Address: Gioeshevo Street 83, Business Center Serdika, 1330 Sofia, BULGARIA
Phone: + 359 (0) 2 920 04 77
Fax: + 359 (0) 2 920 02 59
Website: http://www.eurosense.com

COCOS
The project aims at making significant progress towards a global carbon observation system by linking the European observation research initiatives relevant to carbon-cycle assessment with similar existing initiatives in other continents/countries.

DAMOCLES
DAMOCLES is designing an integrated ice-atmosphere-ocean monitoring and forecasting system, for observing, understanding and quantifying climate changes in the Arctic.

DevCoCast
This project aims to involve developing countries in the GEONETCast initiative. It will disseminate existing environmental datasets from sources in Africa, South and Central America and Europe via GEONETCast to a range of user communities in developing countries.

ESONET
ESONET is an observatory network that investigates global processes, such as the dynamics of the oceanic lithosphere and thermohaline circulation in the ocean.

EBONE
EBONE is working to design and test a biodiversity observation system integrated in time and space.

e-SOTER
As the European contribution to a Global Soil Observing System, e-SOTER will create a web-based regional pilot platform to deliver soil information that can be used directly by policy makers and managers; it will also make available the methods and techniques that have been used to create the information.

GEOBENE
This project is developing methodologies and analytical tools to assess societal benefits of GEO in the domains of: disasters, health, energy, climate, water, weather, ecosystems, agriculture and biodiversity.

TENATSO
TENATSO will support pre-operational atmosphere and ocean observation capability in the tropical Eastern North Atlantic Ocean. This region has little data but plays a key role in air-sea interaction.

YEOS
Its aim is to strengthen the GEOSS cooperation between EU and other key GEOSS players by jointly building up a prototype Yellow Sea observation, forecasting and information system.

Keystone to replace ESA WMS image server and Spacemetric at 2008 MARS Annual Conference


Keystone to replace ESA WMS image server

(Jan 2009) The European Space Agency (ESA) is transferring the Web Mapping Services (WMS) of its satellite imagery catalogue onto Spacemetric’s Keystone server.

The move to Keystone introduces a new generation of technology that offers enhanced capabilities and new options for future extension of WMS services.

Keystone replaces the existing WMS image server (MUIS2WMS) that was developed for ESA by Spacemetric in 2004. The WMS image server provides orthocorrected image quicklooks in response to queries to the ESA catalogue of satellite data. This enables the results to be displayed in a map view by a WMS client so that relative coverage and content of each image can be reviewed in their true geographical context.

The new Keystone server will be delivered to the Agency during the first quarter of 2009.

Spacemetric at 2008 MARS Annual Conference

(Dec 2008) Spacemetric attended the 2008 MARS Annual Conference co-chairing a session on data serving and winning the conference prize for Best Software Demonstration.

Spacemetric attended the 2008 MARS Annual Conference “Geomatics in support of the CAP held in Ljubljana, Slovenia from 3rd to 5th December 2008. This fourteenth annual conference dealt with CwRS (Control with Remote Sensing), area aid checks in general and the LPIS (Land Parcel Information System). It was jointly hosted by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food of the Republic of Slovenia.

As part of Spacemetric’s conference participation the company’s CEO, Lars Edgardh, co-chaired the session Technical 2: Image processing, data serving together with Pär Åstrand of the JRC. Spacemetric also won the conference prize for Best Software Demonstration for Saccess, the Swedish national satellite image database and the Keystone image server that is used by customers including Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd and the European Space Agency.

Highlighted at the conference was the Community Image Data (CID) portal. The CID is a focal point for management and distribution of geospatial imagery within the JRC to which Spacemetric has made significant contributions including catalogue and image geometrical processing capabilities.

About Spacemetric
Spacemetric is a Swedish company providing image management solutions for satellite and airborne imagery. Customers include the Swedish cadastre, mapping and land registry authority, the Swedish Air Force, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. and the European Space Agency.

CONTACT: Ian Spence
EMAIL: is@spacemetric.com
TELEPHONE: +46 8 594 770 83
www.spacemetric.com

(January 2009) SPOT Image Corp. has been awarded a contract from the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) to sell SPOT satellite imagery and related products and services to federal, state and local government agencies at pre-negotiated rates.

Offered under the GSA Information Technology (IT-70) Schedule, the new SPOT contract greatly simplifies and accelerates the acquisition process for the multitude of government entities that rely on satellite imagery and derived products to better serve the American public.

SPOT applied for the GSA contract to assist our government customers with the need to immediately acquire time sensitive and mission critical imagery information,” said Antoine de Chassy, President of SPOT Image Corp. “By negotiating attractive pricing and terms, GSA has streamlined the purchasing process for both new and long-time government users of SPOT and FORMOSAT-2 image products.”

Government users of geospatial information will be pleased to find that nearly the entire catalogue of SPOT products has been offered in the GSA contract, including new and archived 2.5m – 20m standard SPOT images in a variety of scene sizes, geo-coded and ortho-rectified SPOTView custom mosaic products, Reference 3D data sets, Digital Elevation Models, SPOTMaps off-the-shelf mosaics, and Vegetation data. The GSA offering also includes some special processing services as well as new and archived imagery from the Taiwanese FORMOSAT-2 satellite.

The contract is effective immediately and will continue through 2013.

About Spot Image

SPOT Image Corporation of Chantilly, VA, is a fully-owned North American subsidiary of Spot Image. With three operational Earth observation satellites in orbit and three more under development, Spot Image is a leading supplier of geospatial information. Headquartered in Toulouse, France, with subsidiaries and offices in Australia, Brazil, China, Japan, Peru, Singapore and the United States, the Spot Image group leverages a global network of ground receiving stations, partners and distributors to bring an extensive variety of geographic information products and services to public- and private-sector decision-makers worldwide.

(source: Spacenewsfeed and SPOT Image)

(January 2009) At the end of the old year, Oman signed a licence agreement with Eumetsat for access to data from Eumetsat’s Indian Ocean Data Coverage (IODC) service.

Oman thus agreed to pay 300,000 euros a year for IODC data for official duty use for three years starting on 1 January 2009.

Under the agreement, Oman will receive IODC data from Meteosat-7, which is in geostationary orbit over the Indian Ocean. These data provide important information on monitoring cyclonic systems, dust storms and other meteorological phenomena in the Indian Ocean region.

As part of the IODC service, the Meteosat-6 satellite relays tsunami warnings covering the Indian Ocean region. There are some 40 data collection platforms in the region contributing to the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System and data from these platforms are relayed to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii, from where tsunami alerts are issued. Oman, which was hit by a destructive tsunami in 1945, is one of the nations benefiting from this service.

The Eumetsat Council will be asked in 2009 to extend the IODC service beyond 2010.

(Source: Spacenewsfeed and Eumetsat)

From Blog Ralf Grahn: Earlier we noted that the Lisbon Treaty added ’space’ to the Title on research and technological development. Now we turn to the new provision on European space policy.


TEC
The current Treaty establishing the European Community (TEC) has no separate Article on space policy, which is included in the research and technological development policy. Cf. the latest consolidated version of the treaties, OJEU 29.12.2006 C 321 E.

European Convention

The European Convention proposed a new provision on space policy in Article III-155 of the draft Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (OJEU 18.7.2003 C 169/57):

Article III-155 Draft Constitution
1. To promote scientific and technical progress, industrial competitiveness and the implementation of its policies, the Union shall draw up a European space policy. To this end, it may promote joint initiatives, support research and technological development and coordinate the efforts needed for the exploration and exploitation of space.
2. To contribute to attaining the objectives referred to in paragraph 1, European laws or framework laws shall establish the necessary measures, which may take the form of a European space programme.

Constitutional Treaty

The intergovernmental conference took over the Convention’s proposal and added a third paragraph on the relations with the European Space Agency (ESA), OJEU 16.12.2004 C 310:

Article III-254 Constitution
1. To promote scientific and technical progress, industrial competitiveness and the implementation of its policies, the Union shall draw up a European space policy. To this end, it may promote joint initiatives, support research and technological development and coordinate the efforts needed for the exploration and exploitation of space.
2. To contribute to attaining the objectives referred to in paragraph 1, European laws or framework laws shall establish the necessary measures, which may take the form of a European space programme.
3. The Union shall establish any appropriate relations with the European Space Agency.

Original Lisbon Treaty (ToL)

Article 2, point 142 inserted a new Article 172a (OJEU 17.12.2007 C 306/86).

SPACE

142) The following new Article 172a shall be inserted:

‘Article 172a
1. To promote scientific and technical progress, industrial competitiveness and the implementation of its policies, the Union shall draw up a European space policy. To this end, it may promote joint initiatives, support research and technological development and coordinate the efforts needed for the exploration and exploitation of space.
2. To contribute to attaining the objectives referred to in paragraph 1, the European Parliament and the Council, acting in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure, shall establish the necessary measures, which may take the form of a European space programme, excluding any harmonisation of the laws and regulations of the Member States.
3. The Union shall establish any appropriate relations with the European Space Agency.
4. This Article shall be without prejudice to the other provisions of this Title.’.

Differences

In comparison with the Constitutional Treaty, the Treaty of Lisbon made the following changes:
Paragraph 2 added mentions on the ordinary legislative procedure and the exclusion of harmonisation of the member states’ laws and regulations.

Paragraph 4 was an addition.

Renumbering the Treaty of Lisbon (ToL)

As we have noted earlier, the Table of equivalences of the original Treaty of Lisbon tells us that Title XVIII first became Title XVIII with the addition of space in the TFEU (ToL), and later renumbered Title XIX Research and technological development and space in the consolidated version.

The new Article 172a or Article 172bis TFEU (ToL) was renumbered Article 189 TFEU in the consolidated version of the Lisbon Treaty (OJEU 17.12.2007 C 306/217–218).

Lisbon Treaty consolidated

Article 189 TFEU
The new Article was renumbered. Article 189 TFEU appears like this in the consolidated version of the Treaty of Lisbon (OJEU 9.5.2008 C 115/131–132):

_(TITLE XIX
RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT AND SPACE)_

Article 189 TFEU
1. To promote scientific and technical progress, industrial competitiveness and the implementation of its policies, the Union shall draw up a European space policy. To this end, it may promote joint initiatives, support research and technological development and coordinate the efforts needed for the exploration and exploitation of space.
2. To contribute to attaining the objectives referred to in paragraph 1, the European Parliament and the Council, acting in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure, shall establish the necessary measures, which may take the form of a European space programme, excluding any harmonisation of the laws and regulations of the Member States.
3. The Union shall establish any appropriate relations with the European Space Agency.
4. This Article shall be without prejudice to the other provisions of this Title.

Summary of legislation

The Commission’s Scadplus page with a summary European space policy (last update 17 July 2006) is available here

A European space policy is a more or less similar web page, with differences mainly in details, but it includes a link to the Resolution on the European space policy of 22 May 2007 (web page last updated 25 May 2007)

Commission space activities

News, activities and background on European space policy can be accessed through the Commission’s DG Enterprise and Industry web pages European Space Policy

There are links to information about GMES, Galileo, Sapce Research and Development (FP7), the European Space Agency ESA, Key documents, News. Events, Publications etc.

Council resolution

To know how far the member states are on board (the spacecraft), you can look at the latest Council Resolution.

The 5th Space Council or more ordinarily the Competitiveness Council Resolution ‘Taking forward the European Space Policy’ from 25 to 26 September 2008 (Council document 13569/08), is available here

European Space Agency

European space policy would be unthinkable without the European Space Agency. ESA has a portal with information about many aspects of its work

For the legally minded: The Convention for the establishment of a European Space Agency, signed 30 May 1975, entered into force on 30 October 1980. The ESA Convention is available here

SOURCE

The European Space Agency is throwing its full support behind an initiative spearheaded by the Portuguese National Health Institute for the development of a Health Early Warning System (HEWS). This system will enable the timely detection and tracking of emerging threats to public health and safety via satellite.

Originally the brainchild of the Portuguese National Health Institute (INSA), the HEWS promises to be a boon not only for Europe but also for the world. HEWS is being developed as an integrated management platform devised to support epidemiologic surveillance, public health monitoring, crisis management and civil protection programmes.

Giorgio Parentela, ESA Telemedicine Task Force Manager, spoke at length about the importance of HEWS. ‘At the ministry level, interest was shown in the use of (the) HEWS system, not only for endemic pathologies that periodically plague the country, for example cholera, but also for health programmes that are part of the basic health interventions in African countries,’ he said. These are ‘usually sponsored by the World Health Organisation (WHO), such as the vaccination programme, to which HEWS could be easily adapted’.

HEWS involves a consortium of Portuguese and Italian companies, notably, Tekever (Portugal) and Ridgeback (Italy) along with ESA and INSA. Currently INSA is responsible for its scientific and management aspects.

Recently, HEWS was put to the test in the south-eastern African country of Angola, a former colony of Portugal. This involved the collaboration of local health institutions and the involvement of higher-level Angolan institutions such as the Ministry of Health. The scenario for this test was a simulated surge of the Marburg virus. This scenario followed on from an earlier one conducted early last year in Lisbon, Portugal.

In both these scenarios, the HEWS system demonstrated the added value of satellite communications in situations in which there are threats to public health. Both scenarios offered a demonstration of the developed modular HEWS system that can add institutions, customise data input, implement early warning alert systems and response to health situations with automated distribution of the respective alert information, and guarantee all required security levels of information.

What is important to note in the test case in Angola is that it was conducted in the small town of Caxito; located in north-western Angola it is the capital of Bengo Province and has a population of approximately 719 people. More importantly for the test, is that the town has no reliable means of communication. Communication via satellite is currently the only fully viable solution, not only for emergency situations but also for regular health, epidemiological and administrative reporting.

Currently, team members are exploring the possibilities of making the HEWS service suitable for the needs of the population with the Angolan authorities. The scenario conducted in Lisbon involved the staging of a bio-terrorist attack at an international conference. During the staged attack, Bacillus anthracis spores or anthrax were released, causing panic among the population, traffic jams and the saturation of the mobile telephone network.

Through the course of events it was determined that HEWS played a crucial role in two areas; the release of a powder in a public square and the isolation and storming of a building. HEWS would be able to maximise the coordination of the information flows between the several institutions involved, overcome communication difficulties and increase the efficiency of the response effort.

‘The major points of relevance were considered to be the fact that the HEWS system is a reliable and versatile communication system and (that it) has the potential to act as a manager and distributor of information between the institutions,’ says Mr Parentela.

Source

(Jan 2009) It’s rarely a problem to tell how rough the sea is when you’re afloat on it. But gauging conditions from a distance and across a wider area has always proved much harder.

Now scientists have pioneered a way to use signals from satellites in navigation systems like Global Positioning System (GPS) or Galileo to measure the intensity and direction of ocean wind and waves from space.

GPS signals are found constantly everywhere in the world, and if properly interpreted could dramatically improve our ability to monitor the oceans, providing a large amount of data on conditions at sea to marine scientists and meteorologists. This would help improve advance warning of storms and weather forecasts.

Specialised satellites can already provide data on wind speed and direction, but the global coverage is daily at best. Taking advantage of GPS signals could give scientists access to far more measurements closer to real-time.

The researchers hail from the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS), private company Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd and the University of Sannio in Italy.

Surrey Satellite Technology developed a small, lightweight instrument that can be installed on a satellite in low Earth orbit to measure the signals bouncing off the planet from the network of GPS satellites orbiting far above. The researchers’ findings appear in Geophysical Research Letters.

‘This is a great achievement as it demonstrates the capability of this low-cost technology to provide ocean roughness data’, says Dr Christine Gommenginger, a specialist in exploiting satellite data for oceanography who supervised the project at NOCS, adding that this information is expected to complement rather than replace the data gained from dedicated Earth observation satellites.

The technique involves detecting signals from global navigation satellites after they are reflected from the ocean’s surface. The idea, known as Global Navigation Satellite System-Reflectometry, or GNSS-R, was first proposed in 1993 but its spaceborne implementation is only now becoming a reality.
Satellites of opportunity

‘The GNSS-R instrument doesn’t need to generate its own sounding signals; it can therefore be very small and has low power requirements, so it could piggy-back on any satellite,’ adds Gommenginger.

‘In the future we would like to be able to put this kind of Earth observation payload on commercial satellites, such as telecommunication satellites, taking advantage of these as platforms of opportunity in space in the same way as in oceanography we now gather data with instruments on ships of opportunity.’

One such opportunity could have been on the Iridium NEXT constellation of telecommunications satellites, which was seeking Earth Observation instruments to include in their payload, but the timescale proved too short to make this a reality.

Work is now underway to build the next generation of GNSS-R receivers with improved performance in a project funded by the Centre for Earth Observation Instrumentation led by SSTL. The team hope that such a GNSS-R receiver will be included in the payload of the follow-on to the European Space Agency’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission – SMOSOps.

Researchers first proved the concept from space in 2005, but this early work gave information only on ocean roughness; the new work establishes for the first time that reflected navigation signals can also provide information about the direction of roughness.

Navigation satellites orbit around 20,000 kilometres above the ground. For this research their signals bounced off the sea surface and were collected by a receiver on Surrey Satellite Technology’s UK-DMC satellite, which orbits at just 680 kilometres. The UK-DMC satellite was part of the SSTL Disaster Monitoring Constellation, which main function is global imaging primarily for disaster monitoring purposes.

Just one second’s worth of GNSS-R data gives the scientists the information needed to build a picture of conditions at the sea surface. As well as directional wind and wave information, the reflected signals could also be mined for information about the mean sea level to perform ocean altimetry.

The researchers compared the satellite results with model predictions and against in situ wave data from the US National Data Buoy Center. Earlier research had collected reflected navigation satellite signals over the Mediterranean using a receiver on an aircraft, but the technique needed to be demonstrated from satellites which make it possible to achieve global coverage and does not depend on a time-limited aircraft mission to take measurements.

Source