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EARSC has recently developed its Internationalisation Strategy and one of its objectives is to support our members by opening up new market opportunities. In other words, EARSC would like to help developing the market for the commercial products and services. This includes new commercial market sectors and new export possibilities linked to national needs in countries outside Europe.

The EARSC strategy is to improve export prospects for companies hinges around partnerships. The EO services sector is one which has business applications in many domains and we seek partners which
can help expand our reach.

In the next months, we shall start to initiate specific actions including participation at trade shows and conferences. We shall organise participation to these events in order to promote the Earth Observation services industry.

Download the Strategy here

The COSMO-SkyMed constellation is one of the most innovative Earth Observation programmes with four identical SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellites that “watch” the Earth day and night, under any atmospheric condition, thanks to the high-resolution X-band radars.

Funded by ASI (the Italian Space Agency), the Italian Ministry of Defence and the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Scientific Research, the constellation was realised in stages. The first satellite was launched ten years ago on June 7, 2007, followed by the second in December 2007, the third in October 2008 and the fourth in November 2010.

In its first decade of service, COSMO-SkyMed has captured over one million radar scenes worldwide, by monitoring, for example, UNESCO World Heritage sites and generating data that is vital to understanding the phenomena that impact our Planet: assessing damage following natural disasters, such as earthquakes, landslides, and flooding; monitoring critical infrastructure, tracking the movement of glaciers, and monitoring illegal activities, such as oil spills and the trafficking of goods or people.

The Second Generation

Italian industry is now developing COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation (CSG), which foresees the launch of a first satellite in 2018 and a second one in 2019. The two new satellites of the constellation represent the top tier in radar observation from Space, in terms of precision, features and image quality.

Leonardo’s contribution

Leonardo’s Space sector has contributed decisively to the realisation of the COSMO-SkyMed system: four radar satellites realised by Thales Alenia Space Italia (Thales/Leonardo) and a ground system built by Telespazio (Leonardo/Thales) that ensures the control of the constellation, programming, acquisition, processing and delivery of the images to civil and military end-users in all mission phases.

A dual use programme

COSMO-SkyMed was conceived for dual purposes, a programme designed for both civil applications (environmental monitoring, civil protection, Oil & Gas) as well as military ones. The general features enable interoperability with other systems and use in the context of international agreements. In particular, COSMO-SkyMed is able to meet the stringent operational requirements of Copernicus , the European Earth Observation programme.

Satellite Data for Emergency Support

Following the devastating earthquakes that hit vast areas of Central Italy last year, COSMO-SkyMed’s satellite technology confirmed the vital role they are able play in emergency support, providing satellite data that help assess the extent of the damage and enable the monitoring of events, thanks to the comparison of images captured before and after.

The processing of COSMO-SkyMed’s images proved fundamental in supporting the emergency rescue services of past global natural disasters, such as the earthquakes that struck China in 2008, L’Aquila (Italy) in 2009, Haiti in 2010, the tsunami in Japan in 2011, and the typhoon that hit the Philippines in 2013.

A New Integrated Map

Thanks to the use of special algorithms capable of highlighting variations even as small as just a few centimetres, the processing of images from the COSMO-SkyMed satellites are invaluable and unique sources of information. The development of these algorithms enabled the processing of a new type of image called a damage proxy map. This map is an experimental example of the fusion of images from optical space sensors, radar sensors and data, such as that of the COSMO-SkyMed satellites, and from geolocalised social media content. It is an innovative approach that enhances the information content of radar data by combining it with the more immediate, visual content of optical images. Thus, it is the first example of the evolution of geospatial applications combined with Information Technology and the Big Data world.

COSMO-SkyMed System’s Operational Centres
The COSMO-SkyMed system, with its capabilities of control, programming, acquisition, processing and delivery of images consists of a network of operational centres spread throughout Italy and abroad:

  • The Fucino Space Centre (Telespazio) is responsible for the control and management of COSMO-SkyMed and for mission planning and coordination.
  • The Matera Space Centre (e-GEOS) is one of the three Core Ground Segment stations of Copernicus. It coordinates the programming, acquisition, processing and delivery of the products to the end-user.
  • The Centro Interforze di Telerilevamento Satellitare (the Joint Force Centre of Satellite Remote Sensing) (Defence Administration) coordinates the programming, acquisition, processing and delivery of the products to Defence end-users.
  • The Cordoba Station (Argentina) and the Kiruna Station (Sweden) form the network of telemetry, command, control and data acquisition of the COSMO-SkyMed constellation, together with the stations on Italian soil (Fucino, Matera and Pratica di Mare).
    In addition, there is the Rome Emergency Mapping Centre (e-GEOS) that coordinates emergency-related activities.

Download the press release

By Kendall Russell | June 5, 201. OGSystems announced that it has formed partnerships with both Ursa Space Systems and Earth-i to improve its BlueGlass platform.

Earth-i will incorporate video and imagery into BlueGlass, a location-based intelligence platform, while Ursa Space Systems will incorporate observation as a service.

According to Omar Balkissoon, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and co-founder of OGSystems, BlueGlass will coalesce Ursa Space System’s observations with natural language generation to perform basic imagery analysis reporting.

This partnership also follows Earth-i’s recent announcement that it will launch and operate Europe’s first commercial constellation that offers both full-color video and imagery. BlueGlass combines commercial remote sensing, Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to deliver real-time insights through situational awareness, anomaly alerting, and reporting of activities that could pose risk to user operations.

“Working closely with OGSystems is validation of our belief that the real value in high resolution satellite imagery is in the truly actionable insights that can be derived from it,” commented Richard Blain, CEO of Earth-i.

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Between the 26th and 27th of May in Gdansk an EOVation event was held. This hackathon focused on the use of Earth Observation data for applications in the Middle East and South Asia

Between the 26th and 27th of May in Gdansk an EOVation event was held. This hackathon focused on the use of Earth Observation data for applications in the Middle East and South Asia.

Since November 2016 the EOClimLab project is being realised in Poland, Czech Republic and Romania. The project is commissioned by ESA. It’s purpose is to use satellite data for a better or new perspective on the subject of climate change. Among several activities within the project, also hackathons are organised by the consortium. These events are called EOvations and gather not only programmers and engineers or Earth Observation (EO) specialists but also representatives from other fields, including humanities and enthusiasts. Together, participants of EOvations have to create a preliminary application concept in a short amount of time (ca. 24 hours).

Oriental hackaton

On the 26th and 27th of May the second Polish hackathon was held under the EOClimLab project in Gdańsk. This event, called “Oriental EOvation” was devoted to the use of EO data in the Middle East and Asia in the context of regional problems related to climate change.

Team work was carried out with the support of scientific, technical and business-investment experts. There were several preliminary challenges available for participants to choose from. These challenges concerned, inter alia, the issue of rising sea levels, the drought-related situations in the Middle East and the relationship between man and the surrounding environment.

At the start of the hackathon four teams were formed. Two of them after several hours decided to join forces, creating a new team.

Results of Oriental EOvation hackathon

After 24 hours of intensive work, on the 27th of May, in the afternoon the teams presented their results. There were three solutions, one of which was more hardware based and the other two focused mainly on data processing from Earth Observation satellites.

The “Syrian Rebuild Map” team was selected as a winner. This team proposed the use of several different satellite-data indicators to assess and prioritize the reconstruction of individual Syrian regions after the ongoing civil war. The application showed trends of places where drought will continue as well as places where it will be possible to develop agriculture more optimally. Members of this team demonstrated the basic features of the future application, which was appreciated by the jury.

The other two teams also achieved some results. The other proposed two concepts focused on optimizing pipelines of desalination water from the Gulf of Aqaba into Jordan and a general hardware + data flood warning system.

All teams have been rewarded with vouchers, time to work with experts, access to a satellite data cloud, access to office space and a set of microelectronic circuits and sensors.

The event was organised by Blue Dot Solutions in support of the Black Pearls VC Fund, the Gdańsk University of Technology Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, the O4 Coworking, the Nauka o Klimacie webservice, and the EO Cloud Technological Partner.

Next hackathons in Poland

The next dedicated hackathons under the EOClimLab project in Gdańsk will take place in the second half of this year. This time the subject will be the use of Earth Observation data for the Pomeranian region. In Warsaw, an EOvation hackathon also took place on the 3rd – 4th of June.

The consortium of the EOCLimLab from Poland is composed of Omnilogy, Blue Dot Solutions, Orange, Integrated Solutions and Kapitech. On the Czech side the partners are Czech Invest and SpaceSystems Czech, and on the Romanian side there are three IT partners: Arobs Transilvania Software, Aries Transilvania and Indeco Soft.

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Toulouse, 31 May 2017 – Airbus Defence and Space will provide SpaceKnow, a leading provider of satellite imagery analysis, with access to its One Atlas optical satellite imagery basemap streaming service.

Objective of the respective agreement is to allow online access to Pléiades and SPOT satellite imagery, and support the development of new analytics applications and services across a wide range of markets, such as finance, defence and construction.

SpaceKnow provides their customers with valuable information from analysis of satellite imagery, including multiple change detection and object tracking products. One of their most popular products, the China Satellite Manufacturing Index, measures levels of manufacturing activity by monitoring over 6,000 industrial facilities across China with thousands of satellite images.

As part of this agreement, SpaceKnow will access One Atlas via Airbus’ newest Application Programming Interface, “View API”. One Atlas is a satellite image basemap which covers the entire Earth with professional grade imagery. Available online 24/7 and refreshed regularly so that no data is older than 12 months, One Atlas provides customers with easy access to cost effective, high-quality and homogeneous imagery.

François Lombard, Head of the Intelligence Business Cluster at Airbus Defence and Space, said: “We are excited to see One Atlas become a core layer for SpaceKnow’s analytics tools, in which up-to-date and detailed Pléiades and SPOT satellite imagery will provide sharp, contextual and reliable data, to help drive analytical information.”

“The introduction of One Atlas optical satellite imagery into our suite of visual analytics applications provides SpaceKnow clients and partners with powerful new capabilities, and enables users across industries to make important decisions with an even greater degree of confidence,” said SpaceKnow CEO and Co-Founder Pavel Machalek. “We’re proud to partner with Airbus and to significantly enhance our products with the robust Airbus dataset,” Machalek added.

To learn more about One Atlas and how to gain easy access to fresh satellite imagery, please visit http://www.intelligence-airbusds.com/one-atlas/

(May 2017) Pedro Gonçalves on how EGI’s Federated Cloud supports Terradue’s operations for the Geohazards Exploitation Platform.

Earth observations from satellites produce vast amounts of data. In particular, the new Copernicus Sentinel missions are playing an increasingly important role as a reliable high-quality and free open data source for scientific, public sector and commercial activities.

ICT solutions can facilitate the handling of these large volumes of data and are nowadays modifying the expectations that organisations have on new service development and on support to Earth Observation (EO) data exploitation. Their goal is more and more to develop capacities to create added value, involving SLAs and accountability with business partners for the data products and services they bring in this process.

The Terradue Cloud Platform is addressing this topic with solutions to transfer EO processing algorithms to cloud infrastructures. The platform also provides services to optimise the connectivity of the data centres with more integrated discovery and processing methods. For example, Terradue provides the engineering and operational support for the Geohazards Exploitation Platform), an ESA-funded partnership also involving private companies (TRE-ALTAMIRA), research centres (CNR IREA, CNRS ENS, CNRS EOST and INGV) and space agency (DLR EOC).

GEP and EGI

GEP offers a rich set of ready to use EO data processing services for the analysis and monitoring of earthquake, volcanoes and landslides. The platform federates the geohazards community by creating a workplace with cloud-based models of collaboration, where data providers, users and technology providers join forces to produce scientific and commercial exploitable results.

EGI supports Terradue with matchmaking services between ICT consumers and the appropriate provider(s) across the EGI Federation and beyond. The computing and storage resources from the ReCaS Bari and BELNET-BEGRID centres are used by Terradue to help the global scale systematic production of the DLR InSAR Browse Medium-Resolution Service on the GEP. With this service, the platform produces interferograms to show where earthquakes are most likely to impact society.

Currently in a ramp-up phase, which began in September 2016 covering 20% of the world seismic mask, GEP is planned to reach its peak of 50% by the 2nd quarter of 2017 with a production rate of about 320 Sentinel-1 scenes (160 interferometric pairs) per day. This production is fully ran on EGI Federated Cloud resources .

The Service level agreements (SLAs) established with EGI Foundation enabled Terradue to extend the hybrid cloud infrastructure using a new OpenNebula OCCI driver, and provided a reliable Cloud infrastructure for the ESA Thematic Exploitation Platforms users.

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(Guildford, UK, May 2017) Earth-i, the innovative British distributor of Earth Observation imagery and services, has teamed up with Harwell-based WeatherSafe – leaders in the application of big data analytics to meet agricultural challenges – to support the coffee farmers of Burundi through Earth-i’s ACCORD programme.

ACCORD combines very high resolution satellite imagery with crop analysis to provide stakeholders with critical insights on key coffee farming decisions to improve crop quality , thereby supporting sustainable growth for coffee farmers large and small.

A staggering thirty percent of Burundi’s population depends upon coffee production as their primary source of income. So any increase in the yield and quality of this crop will have a marked effect upon the nation’s GDP and help drive economic development throughout the country.

In partnership with the World Bank and the International Development Fund, the Government of Burundi has launched a programme for the Productivity and Development of Agricultural Markets (PRODEMA), which aims to “improve food security through increased production and improved market access for agricultural and livestock products important for domestic consumption”.

To assist PRODEMA in meeting the goals of its coffee sector support project, Earth-i and WeatherSafe will fulfil a number of vital functions. These include combining satellite imagery – such as that provided by the British built DMC3 satellites – with algorithms to automatically identify coffee plantation plots from satellite imagery, as well as extracting key features such as roads and coffee washing stations and provide an estimation of the number of trees.

Earth-i and WeatherSafe will conduct analysis to estimate the yields of those farms. All of this information will be provided through a geo-referenced database.

Local ground surveys will validate the results, which are expected to provide real insights to the Burundi coffee industry, with the stated aim of helping to improve the competitiveness of the coffee industry in Burundi.

Commenting on the project award, CEO of Earth-i Richard Blain said; “We are delighted to have been awarded this important project with our partners at WeatherSafe. The combination of our technologies will provide a powerful new capability to the coffee farmers in Burundi, and a perfect example of how data from space can make a real difference to people’s lives”.

Earth-i: (www.earthi.space) is a British company dedicated to facilitating the distribution of data from the DMC3/TripleSat Constellation. As the prime master distributor appointed by 21AT, Earth-i provides a portal for data users wishing to take advantage of the advanced data and services made possible by this uniquely capable Earth Observation satellite constellation.
Earth-i is co-located on the Surrey Research Park in the UK with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, the manufacturer of the DMC3/TripleSat constellation. www.earthi.space www.sstl.co.uk

Toulouse, 24 May 2017 – Airbus Defence and Space has signed a 4-year contract with Scanex , the Russian Earth observation company, for access to optical satellite imagery via the One Atlas platform, covering 180 million km² throughout the contract.

Yandex , one of the largest internet companies in Europe, and operating Russia’s most popular search engine, will directly benefit from this agreement. Yandex feeds its Yandex.Maps portal by purchasing satellite imagery from Scanex.

The 180 million km² of One Atlas data will be integrated into Yandex.Maps, ensuring access to fresh SPOT satellites 1.5m resolution images on a global scale, and Pléiades satellite 0.5m resolution product over cities. One Atlas is a satellite image basemap which covers the earth landmasses with professional grade imagery. Available online 24/7 and refreshed within a 12-month period, One Atlas provides customers with easy access to cost effective, high-quality and homogeneous imagery. This streamed basemap facilitates the sharing of data across teams or partner organisations, with no compromise on security or privacy.

“Yandex.Maps proposes detailed maps of most countries, and satellite layer,” said Andrey Strelkov, Yandex’s head of geolocation products. “Access to the up-to-date, high-quality images of the One Atlas platform will help us to regularly improve our geo-services.”

Valery Barinberg, Scanex General Director, said: “This new agreement reinforces the long-term collaboration between our companies and brings together two organizations, Airbus and Yandex, well known for delivering quality content, expertise and innovation to the world. It was a group effort and we are excited to be a part of this team.”

“We are very happy to sign this One Atlas contract with Scanex, longterm and faithful partner, who has always trusted in our products and innovations”, said François Lombard, Head of Intelligence Business Cluster at Airbus Defence and Space.

(24 May 2017) ESA and BayWa AG are joining forces in an effort to advance the use of satellite data in farming.

The collaboration aims to optimise the use of satellite data in farming and to assess the benefit to farmers with the overall aim of improving farming practices, water resource efficiency and crop yield.

ESA will provide technical expertise about how to access and interpret data from satellites such as the fleet of Sentinels for Europe’s Copernicus programme. In particular, Sentinel-2 is providing images that can distinguish between different crop types and be used to monitor plant growth.

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Sentinel-2 for agriculture

BayWa’s subsidiary FarmFacts, which specialises in digital services for farming, will provide feedback on the usefulness and validity of the data.

“Through the collaboration with ESA we get access to state-of-the-art technology for FarmFacts,” said Klaus Josef Lutz, BayWa Chief Executive Officer. “As an agri-trading group, we are glad that we are able to help farms of all sizes to benefit from this technology.”

Josef Aschbacher, Director of ESA’s Earth Observation Programmes, added, “The swift integration of data from the Copernicus Sentinel fleet into agronomic models is a prerequisite for forecasting crop yields and other food supply issues.

“BayWa is an ideal partner for ESA to validate and improve our satellite-based models and products in this respect.”

The agreement also foresees BayWa’s participation in next year’s Copernicus Masters Prize competition through a dedicated farming/agriculture challenge to help raise awareness of satellite data in farming.

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(24 May 2017) East View Geospatial is teaming with Planet and the World Bank to identify unplanned urbanization in specific developing areas using satellite imagery.

Starting in mid-2017, East View Geospatial will begin calculating and detecting change to the Floor Space Index (FSI) for Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, with data provided by partner organization Planet. Dar es Salaam is the largest city in Tanzania and one of the fastest-growing cities in the world, with a roughly 4.5 percent average annual population increase from 2002 to 2015.

East View Geospatial analysts will enter Planet imagery and World Bank data into a proprietary automation system that will analyze multiple indicators, including infrastructure investments and residence characteristics, to determine if urbanization is planned or unplanned. Unplanned urbanization is, by definition, sudden and unexpected, leading to massive population surges that without proper infrastructure can cause adverse health effects, massive inconvenience and, potentially, social disorder.

“We are excited to team with Planet and the World Bank on this important humanitarian project,” said Mark Knapp, East View Geospatial product development manager. “Planet imagery coupled with our change-detection algorithms and big data analytics promise to revolutionize how the World Bank addresses development issues across the globe.”


East View Geospatial calculates the Floor Space Index for Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, using Planet satellite imagery and proprietary, scalable workflows.

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