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While recent advances in geospatial technologies offer great promise, the specifics of whether and how data and information are used too often remain a black (magic) box; spatially enabled decision-makers are a bit like idealised unicorns.

Without a keen knack for navigating political and administrative influences, spatial enablement can at times seem like the stuff of magic and unicorns – a fantasy. Simply creating and providing useful information does not mean that it will be used, or used wisely.

Similarly, a ‘partnership framework’ for spatial data infrastructure can seem like a mythical item. Harold Seidman, a 20th-century public administration scholar, likened the quest for effective inter-agency coordination to the mediaeval search for the philosopher’s stone…:“If only we can find the right formula for coordination, we can reconcile the irreconcilable, harmonise competing and wholly divergent interests, overcome irrationalities in our government structures, and make hard policy choices for which no one disagrees.”

Thankfully, GSDI members – Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation, University of Twente [1] and KU Leuven—University of Leuven [2] – conduct interdisciplinary and longitudinal research that is advancing our understanding of the geospatial data ecosystem. These institutions grapple with complex issues affecting data collection, data sharing and interoperability – namely, adaptation and cultivation. Both are co-authors of papers in the recently published special issue on innovative geoinformation tools for governance in the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information [3].

One paper, entitled ‘Evolving Spatial Data Infrastructures and the Role of Adaptive Governance’, emphasises the importance of having a mixture of governance approaches to support inter-agency coordination. The authors found that central governments are simultaneously expanding their ability to steer, while still enabling dialogue and participation. Another paper, entitled ‘Tensions in Rural Water Governance: The Elusive Functioning of Rural Water Points in Tanzania’, shows the significance of a cultivation approach, which allows for improvisation. The authors stress that the development of administrative, financial and computing technologies best not be viewed as a well-defined process with pre-configured start and end states; unforeseen consequences and drift from the expected are inevitable. Both papers are open access, and GSDI encourages the geospatial community to take a look.

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NAIROBI, (Xinhua) — Scientists started a three-day international conference on Wednesday by calling on sub-Saharan Africa to adopt geo-spatial technologies to help achieve United Nations anti-poverty goals.

The director general of the Regional Center for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD), Emmanuel Nkurunziza, said such technologies offer avenues for governments in fast tracking decision-making in achieving 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“Once policy-makers in the region resort to application of science, the goals will be achieved within a given time frame,” Nkurunziza said during the opening of the first space science conference in Nairobi.

He told policy-makers to upscale the application of the science since RCMDR has experts who are ready to help them explore the possibility of prioritizing space science to help spur growth in their countries.

The RCMRD was established in Nairobi in 1975 under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the then Organization of African Unity (OAU), today African Union (AU).

The inter-governmental organization now has 20 “contracting member states” in eastern and southern Africa regions—Botswana, Burundi, Comoros, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somali, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

NAIROBI, (Xinhua) — Agrina Mussa, Malawi’s Ambassador to Kenya speaks during the Regional Center for Mapping of Resources for development (RCMRD) First International Conference in Nairobi. XINHUA PHOTO: CHARLES ONYANGO

Nkurunziza noted that the technologies are capable of helping people cope with climate change and food insecurity, two problems that affect agriculture in east and southern African countries.

“The technologies are a benefit to human kind and this generation cannot afford to miss the applications of space science and earth observations since they remain connected to the base where real lives are lived and the true value of scientific and technological advancements is realized,” he added.

The scientist noted that RCMRD will continue living up to promoting sustainable development through generation, application and dissemination of geo-information and allied ICT services and products to member states and beyond.

Nkurunziza said the RCMDR is currently providing primary service in drought monitoring, frost forecasting in tea growing areas, stream flow and flood prediction, land cover mapping and vulnerability assessment.

Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Land and Physical Planning Jacob Kaimenyi said the country is establishing a state-of-the-art positioning system, known as Kenya Geodetic Reference Frame (KENREF), for data acquisition and processing.

This, Kaimenyi said, follows a recommendation by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the UN Global Geospatial Information Management (UNGGIM).

He said Kenya now uses space technology to ascertain proper boundary rights registration and issuance of title deeds to millions of citizens.

China showcases literature on tropical diseases, ancient printing at Kenya fair

By Ben Ochieng’and Wang Xiaopeng NAIROBI (Xinhua) — A delegation of Chinese publishing sector on Wednesday showcased books on how to prevent and treat tropical diseases that have ravaged Africa during the opening day of the five-day Nairobi International Book Fair, which is on its 20th edition this year.

“The book fair is very famous in China. We prepared adequately for the event and the stand proved popular on the first day,” Chen Yingjie, an official with the delegation told Xinhua. “We anticipate the crowd to grow in the subsequent days.”

The book fair, which is organized by the Kenya Publishers Association, is one of the leading exhibitions in Africa, drawing writers of creative works or factual texts that serve as reflection of society.

Chen said exchanges of literature among nations was one way of enhancing friendship between peoples of different backgrounds, adding that both Kenyan and Chinese have the aspect of friendship as a common denominator.

The medical books, set to be on sale at the tail-end of the event, shed light on how tropical diseases like tuberculosis, malaria, diarrhea and scabies among others can be contained in the tropical region of Africa, which is more severely ravaged by infectious diseases in comparison to the temperate world.

There was also display of woodblock printing by artist Wei Lizhong. He demonstrated the ancient Chinese color printing art at the stand, which proved very popular with visitors to the fair, some of whom participated in the printing under the guide of Wei.

The activity attracted more than 300 visitors by midday, Chen said. Sofia, a primary student, was one of them. She said she liked the Chinese art because it was very interesting.

According to the organizers, the Chinese event was one of the highlights at the fair, which has drawn a total of 76 exhibitors including 16 international presenters this year.

“The number of visitors to the fair has been growing exponentially over the years. Last year we received over 26,000 guests and we anticipate the figure to be surpassed this time round if the trend continues,” said James Odhiambo, the Executive Officer of the Kenya Publishing Association.

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The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) is set to re-launch a modified version of its open online course known as ‘Monitoring the Oceans from Space’ next week.

The course has been funded by the European Union (EU) and aims to teach how satellites contribute to a better understanding of the world’s oceans, which currently cover 70% of the Earth’s surface.

It will be provided free of charge and intends to explain the role of satellites in monitoring the influence of global oceans on weather systems and climate.

EUMETSAT training manager Dr Mark Higgins said: “Data from Earth observation satellites are crucial to efforts to better understand the health of our oceans because only satellites can give that truly global perspective.”

EUMETSAT is currently engaged in the daily operation of the Sentinel-3 satellite, as well as processing and disseminating the satellite’s marine data stream.

Sentinel-3 was launched last year and forms part of the EU’s environmental monitoring programme, Copernicus.

It has been providing additional Earth observation data for a greater understanding of the interaction the world’s oceans, as well as weather systems and climate activity.
“Data from Earth observation satellites are crucial to efforts to better understand the health of our oceans because only satellites can give that truly global perspective.”

Sentinel-3 also supplies data to the Copernicus Marine Environment Service, where experts interpret and distribute data relating to four key application areas, including marine resources, maritime safety, coastal and marine environment, and climate monitoring.

The Earth-related data provided by the satellite is free and open for use by everyone.

EUMETSAT notes that the recent devastations caused by hurricanes and the fluctuations of marine phytoplankton in the oceans, as well as the impact of sea surface temperature in the Pacific on Europe’s weather, are all interconnected via oceanic activity, despite having seemingly little in common.

The company also stated that a range of orbital Earth observation satellites are currently helping the people on Earth to identify and understand these phenomena better.

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(3 October 2017 – ESA) From the barren Sahara to lush jungles, the first high-resolution map classifying land cover types on the entire African continent has been released.

The map was created using a year’s worth of data from the Sentinel-2A satellite.

Africa Land Cover© ESA

At a resolution of 20 m per pixel, you can now explore African’s diverse landscapes from grasslands to croplands, water bodies to deserts

Land-cover mapping breaks down the different types of material on Earth’s surface. This information is important for understanding changes in land use, modelling climate change extent and impacts, conserving biodiversity and managing natural resources.

The map released this week comprises 180 000 Sentinel-2A images representing 90 terabytes captured between December 2015 and December 2016. Considering the size of the map – about six gigabytes – a web interface was developed to visualise the data.

The map was developed under ESA’s Climate Change Initiative (CCI) Land Cover project, and users are invited to provide their feedback on the new map through an online form.

“The prototype high-resolution land cover map at 20m over Africa is an impressive demonstration of the Sentinel-2A data availability and of the present capabilities for the processing of such huge volumes of data,” said Frédéric Achard from the Joint Research Centre. “The community dealing with land resources in Africa will surely look forward with great interest to this prototype and to its future development.”

ESA has been coordinating global land cover maps since 2002 through its GlobCover and CCI Land Cover projects at a resolution of 300 m. While the latest map of Africa is based on observations from one of the twin Sentinel-2 satellites, the launch of Sentinel-2B in March has put the possibility of a global map at 10 m within reach.

The pair of Sentinel-2 satellites offer ‘colour vision’ for Europe’s Copernicus programme. They each carry a multispectral imager with 13 spectral bands that can be used for agricultural and forestry practices and for helping manage food security. Satellite images can be used to determine various plant indices such as leaf area chlorophyll and water content.

The PanGeo Alliance, the first global alliance of Earth Observation satellite operators, announced Geoinformation Systems of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus as the latest new member of the alliance. In addition, PanGeo celebrated 3 years since its launch in Paris, as all the members gathered in the French capital in September to commemorate the formation of their collaboration and to evaluate its results and look to the future.

The current space assets of the new member include a new multispectral sensor, BKA-1, with a spatial resolution of 2.1 metres. The PanGeo Alliance fleet now consists of 13 operational Earth Observation sensors, providing multispectral imagery in a wide range of resolutions, from 20 m to 75 cm per pixel. With 7 operational very-high resolution satellites, the PanGeo Alliance manages the largest virtual constellation of submetric satellites in the world. This unprecedented collaboration assures a daily global imaging capability, with multiple revisit opportunities per day over any target.

Additionally, the imagery acquired by the different satellites are fully compatible, enabling a seamless exploitation of the consortium’s data.

The satellites, located in different orbits, allow the capture of the same area of interest several times a day, and at different hours, boosting the possibilities to acquire cloud-free imagery in short periods of time. This is key for a wide range of applications, especially those requiring a real-time response and frequent monitoring over the same area of interest, such as border and maritime surveillance, emergency services and defence and security.

Since its launch in September 2014, the PanGeo Alliance has carried out several joint projects, such as large country coverages for mapping, demonstrating the added value that working together presents for both the members and the customers.

The PanGeo Alliance is an unparalleled consortium of several entities working synergistically as one single body. The international character of the alliance, which transcends borders, represents a valuable asset that enables it to target businesses and stakeholders in a wide range of sectors, worldwide.

“We are delighted to join the PanGeo Alliance in a collaboration that, we believe, can significantly accelerate decision making in a wide range of fields benefiting end users. Making BKA-1 imagery available within the PanGeo portfolio will expand the market for us and give opportunities for new and existing customers,” said Sergei Zolotoi, Director of the R&D enterprise Geoinformation Systems of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.

For more information, visit http://www.pangeo-alliance.com/


PanGeo members welcome new member and celebrate 3 years of achievements

Deimos Imaging and its parent company UrtheCast Corp., announced a broad partnership with Esri, starting with a new UrtheCast imagery service which is powered by Esri: Kanvas. The service enables all Esri users to access timely, reliable and quality assured imagery, directly into their apps and desktops. The on-the-fly imagery service curated by Deimos imaging, is a precursor to the upcoming UrtheDaily™ constellation which is expected to image the entire Earth daily at 5m resolution, complimenting Sentinel-2 and Landsat applications.

Since July 11, 2017, when Kanvas was presented at the Esri User Conference in San Diego, anyone with the ArcGIS platform had free access for three months to the multi-season time series of medium and very-high resolution satellite imagery, over the whole of Spain and California. Hosted in Amazon Web Services using ArcGIS, Esri users can utilise the multi-temporal imagery service and start building valuable apps for monitoring, change detection, precision insights and more.

“We are very excited about the broad partnership with UrtheCast and for our users to explore the potential of Kanvas using ArcGIS. Allowing users to create simple, quick, insightful apps, based on timely and qualified imagery, will inspire new solutions in GIS” said Lawrie Jordan, Director of Imagery at Esri. “We fully support the upcoming UrtheDaily constellation and see significant interest from our users. Delivering daily coverage of the Earth as geo-analytic ready imagery directly into the hands of our users, means that mapping the Earth daily is now a step closer, and the intelligent map a future reality.”

“We see that easy-to-use value-added products and services with geo-analytics capabilities are significantly broadening the utility of Earth Observation data. The future is in user-focused, real-time apps”, said Jamie Ritchie, Business Development Director at UrtheCast and Deimos imaging. “The goal of Kanvas is to bring imagery to life by leveraging machine learning algorithms in an integrated environment. By partnering with Esri, we are delighted to make available our imagery in ArcGIS, to significantly accelerate decision making in a wide range of fields.”

Figure 1: Kanvas imagery service enables users to extract analytics and build valuable apps including change detection, precision insights and monitoring

Air & Space Evidence was founded in late 2014 to provide an investigatory service to clients by using EO imagery from satellites, drones and aircraft as evidence in formal situations such as in courts of law. We help individuals, companies and governments with image sourcing and analysis so that the data can be used as evidence to resolve legal disputes, and we also advise on using EO in dedicated monitoring and compliance programmes.

The Company’s origins lie in academic research undertaken at University College London by Ray Purdy (a lawyer with an interest in evidence from EO) and Professor Ray Harris (an EO specialist with an interest in legal applications for EO), and although we are still an SME we now have an unrivalled blend of academic and military intelligence expertise in the legal, security and technical fields of EO. Fast Company listed us as one of their top 15 “World Changing Ideas” of 2015

Team photo. L-R: Jon Carver, Peter Hjerp, Ray Purdy (centre), Ray Harris, David Tellett

The company is deliberately very distinct from other organisations operating in the space sector. When we started out we decided the company would be built on four key ideas.

1. It would be deliberately interdisciplinary and focus on law and EO.

Unusually, we bring unrivalled interdisciplinary expertise in both Earth observation technologies and the law. Our approach is legally orientated but purposely holistic, and this enables us both to source imagery for clients and to interpret the findings from the imagery. We offer advice on EO data policy issues and the management, control and authentication of imagery to be used as evidence (including appearing as expert witnesses in court); the assessment of the correct technical procedures to apply to EO data and the implications of privacy legislation and search warrants; and the implications of implementing EO monitoring into regulatory, policy or industry programmes.

2. It would seek to help encourage the greater use of EO to some industry sectors that do not utilise it (and could do).

We believed that the opportunities for evidence collection presented by EO would become progressively more important to those working in fields where formal evidence was important (e.g. law firms, insurance companies, regulatory bodies). Our experience in academia was that many of those working in these sectors had little awareness, knowledge or understanding as to what EO technologies can offer, its limits and its value as evidence. Further, we received many calls to the university from law firms and regulatory bodies asking how they might get imagery, which could potentially be used in evidence in legal disputes. These sectors had little idea where EO imagery could be sourced from or the evidential implications of using it. Spotting a gap in the market, Air & Space Evidence sought to bridge the link between the imagery from EO technologies and those working in a legal context. We spend a lot more time going to events which have prospective clients rather than interacting with other members of the EO industry – not because we don’t want to talk to other people in our sector, but because we want to focus spending our time finding out what potential applications there might be for the data. Our largest number of enquiries relates to criminal investigations and also environmental regulation.

3. It would give greater opportunities for the general public to use EO data.

There are significant opportunities available in looking back in time and EO archives are important as they can often provide historical (legal) evidence that would be otherwise unavailable. We wanted to seek to help move commercial remote sensing from the world of intelligence uses by the military and government agencies to the world of commerce. The general public is a huge market and we considered that there would be interest in a service whereby they could get access to EO data that could be used in an evidential context. To enable this, we marketed ourselves in a way that we thought would be understandable and engaging to the public at large – we styled ourselves as the World’s First Space Detective Agency. We have found that the public is very interested in EO as evidence. Most of our cases relate to planning disputes, but we deal with a large volume of different types of enquiry. One key problem we have encountered is managing people’s expectations following TV programmes like Homeland, Spooks and Hollywood films like Enemy of the State.

4. It would seek to communicate the value of EO to the media.

We also felt that the EO industry can sometimes be viewed as being in a bubble that doesn’t always connect sufficiently well with the outside world. We wanted to seek to promote the use and value of EO within the media. We also wanted to initiate debates that we considered important such as the privacy implications of EO. We have found that the media are extremely interested in EO and very willing to publish stories in this area (especially as the term ‘space detective agency” importantly did seem to strike a chord). In our short life span the company has been covered on TV, radio and the internet by national broadcasters such as BBC, Sky and CNN; national newspapers from many countries across the world; scientific publications like the New Scientist, Scientific American, Environmental Scientist; public interest magazines such as Wired, Fact Company, Quo and Vice; and industry sector publications. Whilst media communication can be time consuming and does not directly result in income, it can still be rewarding.

COMPANY GOALS AND SUCCESS STORIES

Whilst it has been extremely interesting building up the company and handling enquiries from the public and government, we also wanted to ensure that there was a regular flow of income into the company. This meant designing and selling our own monitoring services. At the same time, we also wanted to tackle a problem that was hugely problematic for society at large.

We decided to tackle the issue of waste crime, because this was increasingly causing significant damage to society and is estimated to cost the UK (where we are based) more than a billion pounds sterling a year. It is estimated to cost all EU countries €72 – 90 billion per annum. Interpol, Europol and the UN have identified waste crime as one of the fastest growing areas of organised crime. It is increasingly recognized to have the potential to rival drug trafficking in terms of scale and profits. Waste crime can also cause environmental damage to surrounding land, air and water, and poses a risk to human and animal health. Living near an unlawful waste site can also ruin people’s lives. Our aim was to try and use EO technology to significantly reduce the scale of the waste crime problem.

The key problem with waste crime was that it was often hard to detect – or to detect quickly before the damage is done and the criminal gangs have moved on. We decided to develop a semi-automated detection model, using satellite and map data from open data sources to detect unlawful waste dumping sites, whereby we could identify waste crime that governments are not aware of, bringing immense value to their work and enabling them to catch more waste crime gangs in the act.

Air & Space Evidence received funding for three projects in the last year:

  • The ASE team won a major award from the European Open Data Incubator to test the semi-automated detection model. Three sets of trials were conducted in Northern Ireland, with the cooperation of the Northern Ireland Environment Agency, to determine the effectiveness of the detection model. The model had a 71% success rate in detecting illegal waste sites.
  • We undertook a project for the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency examining remote sensing technology developments and their potential to detect waste crime. The ASE team conducted an examination of the types of waste crime problems that were taking place, and undertook a detailed technical assessment of which ones might benefit from remote sensing evidence. We then designed trials which will test the usefulness of remote sensing data in practice for detecting waste crime at both licensed and unlicensed sites.
  • ASE were part of a consortium (with Telespazio Vega UK) that won an ESA project on “Space Based Support Services for Waste Management”. The project (which has only just started) will examine how a combination of space imaging, satellite tracking and monitoring technologies can be used to tackle and enhance two specific problems facing the waste management sector – the tracking of waste and the illegal dumping of waste, and will demonstrate whether there is a business case for such a service.

An image from a potentially illegal waste site that we were investigating

We have developed a service called Waste from Space based on the work in the above projects. Finding illegal waste sites is a bit like finding a needle in a haystack. They can be concealed, be different shapes and sizes, and be in a wide variety of locations. To tackle this, we combined a variety of techniques from both radar and optical satellite sensors, aided by mapping data, to discriminate standard land use types, concentrating on anomalies. We effectively focused on finding the needle by eliminating the haystack. Our technique discards the vast majority of items in the search area and allows us to isolate a realistic number of suspicious areas for further close-up satellite investigation.

Air and Space Evidence were this year’s winners of the European Earth Observation Product of the Year award. This award, given by the European Association of Remote Sensing Companies (EARSC), was for our Waste from Space product, and was received at a ceremony in Brussels on 4 July 2017. Our product was selected because it supported the implementation of some of the key United Nations sustainable development goals (and the monitoring and reporting of these against the global indicator framework), in the most innovative way. Winning was a huge surprise and we were really very honoured to have been selected.

Receiving the EARSC Product award: Jon Carver, Air and Space Evidence and Rob Postma, Airbus and event sponsor

We are currently engaging with governments, environment agencies, EU bodies and supranational environmental compliance networks to discuss regulatory needs and the potential opportunities of implementing space based technologies into regulatory regimes to ensure better waste crime monitoring and compliance. A high-level workshop is to be held in Brussels in co-operation with DG Environment of the European Commission in late October 2017 to discuss the role of space technology in tackling waste crime. The Commission are involved as they are very supportive of the use of EO to tackle the growing problem of waste crime, and they also think our approach is very relevant to the promotion of Copernicus and the INSPIRE Directive.

Giovanni Sylos Labini, Chief Executive Officer of Planetek Italia

EARSC Company of the Year 2017

Planetek Italy is the winner of the fourth edition of the EARSC Company Award 2017. This is for the company recognised by both peers and international experts as having made the most significant contribution to the growth of the EO services sector in Europe, please tell us what this means for you and how the important the prize is for the Planetek Group?
Planetek actively supports EARSC since many years. We believe EARSC is a real authority in the EO scenario, and what makes a great association is the quality of the associates. EARSC represents the best of our industry all over the world and this makes the EARSC Company Award like an Oscar Prize within our industry, which obviously gives us enormous satisfaction!

Planetek Italia

Tell us a bit about the history of Planetek and how it has grown over the years?
In 1994 I founded Planetek with three young partners: Mariella Pappalepore, Vincenzo Barbieri and Sergio Samarelli. At that time, we were the only personnel of the company and our first year turnover was about 50,000 €. Nowdays, Planetek Group (including Planetek Hellas, founded in 2006) has over 60 highly skilled employees with a turnover that will exceed 6 million € this year.

When the company started in business, what specific idea, purpose or vision was the driving force?
The first motto of Planetek was “GIS & Remote Sensing” and the idea was to build a company focused on application design, meeting users’ needs more than following the technology push.

What has been the greatest challenge the company has encountered and how was it overcome?
At first, the greatest challenge was to explain to potential customers what our services were useful for. 23 years ago, the Internet was a new thing for tech gizmos only, and we were based in one of the most disadvantaged regions in Europe. In order to cope with these difficulties, we made strong investments in education and training of our potential customers. We also largely benefited from the Internet as a marketing communication tool and an easier and faster way to connect with our international partners.

Please tell us a bit more about what Planetek does? What are the key markets that you address?
Planetek is structured in 3 Strategic Business Units that are largely autonomous in their markets: Business to Business, Government and Security, Space Stream. This structure normally helps us in smoothing the single market cycles and in doing a serious cross-fertilization of user experiences within different markets.

What do you consider are the most important competences of Planetek that help you succeed?
Of course an obsessive user-focused approach in all our activities. I truly believe that if you ask anyone among our thousands of users and customers acquired over the last 23 years, you will easily find an overall positive impression about our services and products. We always do our best to intercept real users’ needs, rather than looking at the world through the distorted lenses of technology,

What do you see as the main challenges facing the company in the next 1-2 years?
We will continue carrying out our strategy of market diversification and growth, both geographically and in terms of applications. To accomplish this goal, we are taking advantage from the standardisation of our services and from the cloud as a way to boost marketing. Currently, we are within the greatest transition of our product focus: from geoinformation towards geoanalytics. We are well in the business and, in meantime, the IT big guys start being seriously interested in our industry. The challenge for Planetek is to balance the huge investment that IT big players are going to put in our industry with our experience on EO service design. The result of this strategy is our award-winning Rheticus® platform, which is based on our new business model.

Market Views

The quantity of data is exploding in every direction. Every individual, business and government is both generating data and consuming it. Data revolution has already started.

What are the main issues you consider may affect the evolution of the market you are addressing and where do you see the greatest opportunities for growth?
Thanks to EARSC, we are pushing more on a market development approach. At last, the EU Commission, ESA and Member States understood that in order to maintain EU autonomy and leadership in EO, they should implement a strong demand-oriented policy effort. Well, this could be a great chance for EO companies in EU, and we are ready to catch it.

Are there particular threats which you see for your business?
As already said, the EO services look central in order to exploit geoanalytics, but our industry is still small and disperse compared to the IT industry, so the risk is a commoditization of EO services that could erase our niche market.

At the moment, innovation seems to be on everyone’s list of things to promote, what is your perception of innovation in the EO services sector? How do you approach innovation within the Planetek group?
We are making huge investment in R&D, luckily supported by EU programs, ESA, ASI and so forth. Within Planetek, there is a specific internal team, the Design Lab, which takes care of the innovation agenda of our business units.

What is your vision about the democratisation of Earth Observation?
Well, if you mean an easier access of people to EO, this is obviously a benefit for our industry. It helps to build a strong opportunity towards emerging countries and towards potential consumer markets, hardly to be imagined a few years ago.

How you plan your vertically-integrated EO system (space base geospatial big data collection, processing, and information management system)?
At Planetek we think that the long-standing separation between Upstream and Downstream will not survive the technological revolution, so we are positioning Planetek in the design and development of space-stream services, exporting our capabilities in EO application service design in the space segment.

EO Service Development and Stakeholders

In the EO services sector, governments can have a strong influence over the way business develops. Aside from being a good customer, what’s the one other thing governments can do to support the development of the sector?
Like said by Marianna Mazzuccato (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Mazzucato) in her book “The Entrepreneurial State”, Governments should not limit themselves in regulate market, but they have to make precise choices in order to “tilt” the playground in the direction they believe an entire new market can flourish: “EO and Space Services” is one of these for sure.

EARSC is the European trade association dealing with the geospatial services sector; what for you are the main benefits of EARSC membership?
Trade associations have a vital role in establishing relationships among Governments, People and Industry sectors. This is crucial in the EO industry, which is made by small and disperse companies. Moreover, this is a very single point shop for good ideas and cooperation with other subjects in the field.

What do consider is the main issue for EARSC to address today on behalf of the European EO services sector?
The challenge of establishing a true strong internal market for the private sector in EO.

Future

Finally, what can you say about your outlook for the sector and how companies in this sector should be positioning themselves?
Innovate: Capitalize on progress also in related technologies. Internationalize: address extra European markets. Implement non-organic growth strategies.

The Working Group on Geospatial Information and Services for Disasters (WG-GISD) of the United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) has published a “Strategic Framework on Geospatial Information and Services for Disaster” to guide all stakeholders and partners in the management of geospatial information and services in all phases of disaster risk management.

The role of geospatial information has been widely recognized as an important aspect of all phases of disaster risk management (DRM). While calling on Member States to find solutions to improve availability and accessibility of geospatial information and services, the strategy document highlights the need for strengthening coordination and communication among stakeholders to ensure they are not collecting concurrent or inconsistent data.

The framework emphasizes sustainability, accessibility, complementarity and interoperability of geospatial information and aims to achieve the following outcome:

“The human, socioeconomic and environmental risks and impacts of disasters are prevented or reduced through the use of geospatial information and services”

In order to achieve this outcome, the document encourages Member States to make available and render accessible quality geospatial information and services in a timely and coordinated way to support decision-making and operations within and across all sectors and phases of DRM. Cooperation among stakeholders from governments, UN agencies, civil society, academia, the private sector and the media will be key in implementing the five priorities for action the Strategic Framework defines, which are outlined in detail in the graphic below.

Source

(By Andrew Spence | September 25, 2017)

The Australian government used the opening of the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Adelaide, South Australia, to announce it would establish a national space agency. The announcement follows months of lobbying by the Space Industry Association of Australia (SIAA) and the South Australian government. Details of how the agency will be set up are yet to be announced.

The heads of the world’s largest space agencies are attending the congress, all of whom praised Australia’s decision.

NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot said the agency would provide an excellent opportunity to increase the collaboration with Australia. “From a NASA perspective we’ve had a great partnership with Australia for a long time and I look forward to seeing which areas Australia decides to focus on,” he said. “I think that will be their challenge, but there’s enough room for them to participate in what we’re doing. It’s a global endeavor — we’re all here for that reason — and I think Australia not being a part of that until now is a little bit strange.”

European Space Agency (ESA) Director General Jan Woerner said having a national agency provided a good access point for space interactions with other nations.

“We welcome this very much,” he said. “There are two aspects to this: One is the national development and capacity building so you have a voice in your own country but at the same time you have a voice to the outer world. At the beginning of the ‘60s Australia was an associate member of the European Launch and Development Organization (ELDO), so we are really happy we can continue our strong cooperation.”

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) President Naoki Okumura said his agency was already working with Australia on Earth Observation (EO) satellite activities but the agency would lead to closer ties. “In the future we would like to work more closely with Australia in order to become an innovation center and strengthen our relationship,” he said.

Canadian Space Agency (CSA) President Sylvain Laporte said establishing a national space program was not without its challenges. “There’s a ton of opportunities and things you can do but there’s always limited resources,” he said. “Putting in a sound governance system that will allow the space agency to make the right decisions, to prioritize what it should do and to make sure it can make the best pitch possible to politicians to secure as much funding as is required for this country to invest in space, I think would be a good first step.”

Until now, Australia was one of the only Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries without a national space agency.

A federal government review into the long-term plan for the sector in Australia was announced in July but will not be completed until March, dashing hopes of an announcement at the congress. However, Senator Simon Birmingham, who announced the agency at the opening of the congress, said it was already clear that the case for a national agency was “compelling.”

“This agency will be the anchor for the domestic coordination and the front door for our international engagement for so many of you from across the world’s space industries,” he said. “The global space sector was growing fast and Australia needed to be a part of it … We have listened to the industry and the overwhelming response to our review has been support for a space agency.”

SIAA Chair Michael Davis said the SIAA was thrilled with the announcement and expected the agency would be a collaboration between government and industry.

“What a start to this congress,” he said. “The aim is to deliver clear economic benefit to the Australian economy and of course, to re-enforce our status as a participant of long-standing in the development of outer space. We will soon take our place at the table of space agencies as major initiatives and cooperative projects are considered and developed.”

“We have the capacity, the science, the skills, the research and development environment, the culture, the industry nous. Now we have the standing of the Australian Space Agency,” he added.

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill said the week presented an opportunity for the state to send a bold message to the world.

“We are ready to put ourselves in the service of this nation by becoming a key part of a national space agency,” he told the congress. “We are also sending a clear message to the world that we want to work with you — as our state logo suggests — as an open door to opportunity.”

The SIAA launched a white paper in March calling on the Australian government to establish a national space agency.

Last month Weatherill and ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to work together toward the creation of a Canberra-based space agency with a prominent presence in Adelaide.

The state government last week also announced a space industry center was being established in Adelaide as part of Defense Industries Minister Martin Hamilton-Smith’s portfolio to include space.

This story was originally published in The Lead South Australia. It has been edited to better serve our audience as part of a collaboration between Via Satellite and The Lead South Australia.