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(24 May 2017 by Sarah Wild) Agreement will see the South African National Space Agency provide Earth observation products and services to Nepad.

SA’s space agency has its eyes on Africa and a new memorandum of understanding with the AU’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) paves the way for it to expand its footprint. But it takes more than data to create evidence-based policy.

The agreement, signed in April, will see the South African National Space Agency (Sansa) provide Earth observation products and services to Nepad.

Africa is the second-largest continent and its size and paucity of infrastructure makes it difficult efficiently and cost-effectively to detect changes in natural resources and land usage. Governments, business and landowners can use satellites to identify these changes and to compile data that they can use to guide their decision-making and policies.

“It’s increasingly apparent that quality and legitimate data and information is one of the most valuable resources in Africa’s development agenda,” says Martin Bwalya, a senior adviser at Nepad.

“Space science and Earth observation capacities are critical in generating information that directly affects development initiatives.”

Sansa — which has been in existence for seven years and has no satellite of its own — buys all of its satellite imagery through agreements with other countries. The memorandum of understanding “enables Sansa to provide Earth observation products and services that support the implementation of key programmes, such as sustainable agriculture and food security, integrated water resources management, as well as urban planning and infrastructure monitoring”, says Paida Mangara, acting MD of Sansa’s Earth observations unit.

Satellites have certain payloads — sensors or cameras — that allow them to view different things on Earth’s surface. Some cameras have a higher resolution and can see fine-grained details, while some sensors can see outside the visible spectrum and report back on water quality or plant health, for example.

A few products have already been agreed upon in the Sansa-Nepad memorandum of understanding.

Mangara says that Sansa will derive maps that “show the location of water bodies such as dams and rivers at a national scale. [This] is important for identifying seasonal and permanent water resources, as well as indicating whether the water levels in dams and rivers are increasing or decreasing.”

They are also able to monitor the growth of human settlements from space, displaying built up areas and city growth on a national scale.

Sansa will also offer a service to monitor the health of countries’ crops.

“These are satellite-derived parameters that assist with crop condition assessment, crop monitoring and crop damage assessment,” Mangara says. “These are key in the assessment of food security and sustainable agriculture on the continent.”

Mangara says that the costs for the products and services will be determined on “a project-by-project basis, depending on the requirements of each country”. The implementation plan will involve pilot studies to determine the costs of projects.

SA has been using satellite data for a number of years. Most national government departments have a unit using the data for planning — such as indigenous forestry protection at the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and human settlement spread at Statistics SA.

SA’s satellite, EO-Sat-1, has been in the pipeline for several years and officials hope that it will be launched in 2020.

While it is important for African countries to have data about what is happening on a national and regional level, it is of little use unless there are people available to decipher and use it as the basis of policy.

The AU — as part of its Science and Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa 2024 — established the African Observatory for Science, Technology and Innovation (AOSTI).

“The AOSTI in Malabo [in Equatorial Guinea] serves as a continental repository of science, technology and innovation statistics and a source of policy analysis in support of evidence-based policy making, thus tackling the gap in the research policy nexus,” says Hambani Masheleni, the senior policy officer for human resources, science and technology at the AU Commission.

However, repeated attempts to contact the observatory were fruitless and their website was last updated in 2014.

But Nepad’s Bwalya maintains that the continent needs more evidence-based decision-making. In terms of Earth observation, it is “in the interest of bringing genuine, legitimate and top-quality information and data into member states development planning and implementation.

“For instance, information on climate change and related extreme weather is valuable in informing development policies and investment initiatives including the allocation, use and management of Africa’s natural assets, especially land, water and forests.”

This is one of a number of collaborative projects, says Mangara. Sansa is a partner in Tiger-Net, an initiative of the European Space Agency that monitors African water resources; as well as the Monitoring for Environment and Security in Africa project, another Europe-backed initiative.

Sansa CEO Val Munsami said earlier in 2017 that he planned to position the agency to expand into Africa.

“If you look at the space policy space, there’s a transformation happening in terms of how much the governments are actually spending on science and technology.

“A few years ago, some African governments weren’t spending anything. Africa should be playing in this space.

“We don’t want foreign entities coming in and determining how things should be done. Africa needs to do this on its own,” said Munsami, who also chairs the AU’s committee responsible for developing space plans for Africa.

Source

The Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites are being used to detect and better evaluate management practices of grasslands in Estonia.

Grasslands are those areas on Earth where vegetation is dominated by grasses, which can vary in height from very short to quite tall.

Grasslands play an important role in agriculture and the economy. They cover some 37% of Earth’s land surface when calculated with shrub-lands and savannas. In Western Europe, grasslands comprise 40% of agricultural land.

Earth observation satellites are playing an increasingly relevant role in monitoring and assessing the health of grasslands, and in evaluating management practices.

Since 2015, the Tartu Observatory, its spin-off KappaZeta Ltd and software integrator CGI have actively pursued the goal of creating a system capable of detecting grassland management practices based on Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data.

Grass mowing detection

The application can have a great potential in the context of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (EU CAP), where one of the requirements for subsidy payments is regular mowing of the grasslands. So far, checks have mainly relied on inspectors, but field visits are expensive, time-consuming and can never cover the entire country. Applying satellite remote sensing for inspections is a logical technological step forward. This would also help to reduce manual labour while giving a more objective picture of the condition of agricultural grasslands throughout the EU.

As a collaborative project between the Tartu Observatory and CGI, an automatic satellite-based grasslands mowing detection system has been in development in Estonia since 2016. This year, it is being validated countrywide and in 2018 the system will become operational.

An ESA-funded mowing detection user trial project has also just been launched in Denmark and Sweden. The project, run by KappaZeta, aims to enable automatic mowing detection work in other EU countries, taking into account the varying climatic, ecological and agricultural conditions.

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data, provided by the Copernicus Sentinel-1A and -1B constellation, gives unprecedented time series of acquisitions suitable for interferometric SAR (InSAR) analysis. With a repeat cycle of six days, it is possible to evaluate changes in different land cover classes via interferometric coherence that measure temporal decorrelation. In general, forests and vegetation have low coherence values, while open and unvegetated areas can maintain high coherence over time.

SAR acquisitions are not impeded by lack of sunlight or cloudy conditions, thus allowing constant monitoring. Sentinel-1 satellites mostly operate over land in the Interferometric Wide Swath mode (IW) providing dual-polarisation data (VV + VH), with a swath of 250 km.

A study was carried-out in the Rannu parish of Central Estonia, a relatively flat area predominantly used for agriculture, to describe the relationship between the C-band SAR interferometric coherence and the mowing of grasslands.

The main focus was on the impact that temporal separation between mowing and interferometric acquisitions had on coherence values.

From May to September 2015, six grassland areas were monitored on a weekly basis, providing information about the vegetation height, wet and dry above-ground biomass, and soil moisture.

Coherence values for each of the six measurement areas where vegetation parameters were recorded throughout the summer were given for VH and VV polarisations, respectively. The time series illustrate the complexity of the relationship between mowing events and coherence.

Mowing was rarely characterised by the complete removal of vegetation, with grass of 0.1 to 0.2 m high left on the field. Very high coherence caused by coherent scattering from soil was rarely observed. Even when bare soil was present, coherence values fluctuated. A clear and statistically significant correlation between the mowing event and the increase of coherence in the Sentinel-1 time series was still observed.

Kaupo Voormansik, SAR expert at KappaZeta Ltd., says, “Sentinel-1 six and twelve day coherence has a strong potential for land applications, but is still very rarely used. For numerous applications coherence is a much more useful and reliable parameter than backscatter. Grasslands mowing detection is just the beginning.”

The Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS), which has been operational since 2012, supports applications in a variety of domains such as spatial planning, forest management, water management, and agriculture and food security. It consists of three main components (a global component; a Pan-European component; and a local component), where the Pan-European one, coordinated by the European Environment Agency, produces High-Resolution Layers describing the main land cover types: artificial surfaces (e.g. roads and paved areas), forest areas, agricultural areas (permanent grasslands), wetness and small water bodies.

Additionally, the Sentinel-2 data allows the CLMS to develop a phenology service product, which exploits the high acquisition frequency and spectral richness of Sentinel-2. This high resolution phenological information will contribute to the improvement of the quality of existing HRL Copernicus products relating to grasslands.

Whereas Sentinel-2 is the key Sentinel mission to support the generation of such data sets, the Sentinel-1 radar mission, with its advantage of systematically producing imagery regardless of clouds, potentially offers very good complementarity to optical missions. Sentinel-1 is being used for the global component of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service, for the operational retrieval of Surface Soil Moisture (SSM) information data.

About the Sentinels

The Sentinels are a fleet of dedicated EU-owned satellites, designed to deliver the wealth of data and imagery that are central to Europe’s Copernicus environmental programme.

In partnership with EU Member States, the European Commission leads and coordinates this programme, to improve the management of the environment, safeguarding lives every day. ESA is in charge of the space component, responsible for developing the family of Copernicus Sentinel satellites and ensuring the flow of data for the Copernicus services, while the operations of the Sentinels have been entrusted to ESA and EUMETSAT.

Source

(Munich, 25 April 2017) A European consortium headed by GAF AG has been awarded a contract by the European Environment Agency (EEA) to implement the geographic extension (2012) and complete update (2018) of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service’s Riparian Zones dataset. The project team consists of four experienced European service providers: GAF (Germany), e-Geos (Italy), GeoVille (Austria) and Indra (Spain). The consortium has signed a €4.2 million framework service contract with the EEA.

As part of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service’s Local Component, the consortium will provide mapping and consultancy services to EEA, delivering a consistent spatial extension and thematic update (for the reference year 2018) of the very-high resolution characterisation of riparian zones for most of Europe, including Turkey (i.e. the 39 EEA member and cooperating countries). Based on optical satellite imagery with very high spatial resolution, the consortium will produce the following, complementary riparian data layers:

  • Very-high-resolution land cover/land use in a riparian buffer zone for the reference year 2012, extending the existing riparian zones product further upstream by adding all Strahler level 2 rivers;
  • Very-high-resolution land cover/land use update of the entire pan-European riparian zones coverage of Strahler level 2-9 rivers for the reference year 2018.

Riparian zones are among the most sensitive ecosystem and biodiversity hotspots in Europe. The extended and updated dataset will assist with the systematic assessment and monitoring of related freshwater ecosystems and riverine habitats. It will specifically provide support to the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 and the related Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services (MAES) as well as the associated Green Infrastructure and Restoration objectives, the Habitats and Birds Directives, the Water Framework Directive and the European Floods Directive.

Markus Probeck – GAF’s programme manager for Copernicus services – remarks: “By also adding small river categories, this initiative will significantly increase the added value of the EEA’s unique riparian zones dataset across Europe. GAF and its partners are very pleased to be entrusted with this latest Copernicus Land Monitoring Service implementation.”

GAF is responsible for the overall project and quality management as well as for producing the very-high resolution land cover/land use product update.

Marc Tondriaux, President of the EUGENIUS association, shares the vitality of the emerging Copernicus eco-system.

The Copernicus programme provides great opportunities for the development of new, innovative and efficient local geo-information services thanks to full, free and open data from a range of sensors aboard the Sentinel satellites, and the possibility to merge data from a variety of complementary sources.

Geo-information services based on satellite data can support local public authorities and private actors to more efficiently carry out operational activities such as urban planning, environmental monitoring (water, air, and soil conditions), disaster management and mitigation, and many others.

Whilst Copernicus makes available the raw materials for the development of such services, it is up to local operators to understand the final users‘ needs, to access locally available in situ data if required, and to ensure that the appropriate quality of services is maintained. These tasks call for a wider range of tools and expertise than most individual enterprises have access to.

Recognising this need, a group of European SMEs founded the European Group of Enterprises for a Network of Information using Space (EUGENIUS) in 2016. This network of EO service providers has the ambition to jointly design, create and deliver services and applications related to natural resource management for regional and local customers, primarily public authorities. The applications will be based on the very large quantity of geospatial information made available by the Copernicus programme, as well as through numerous local and regional initiatives.

Source Eugenius & Copernicus Observer

MARKHAM, Ontario, Canada – May 9, 2017: PCI Geomatics, a world-leading developer of remote sensing and photogrammetric software and systems, announced today it has become a Planet Ecosystem Partner.

PCI Geomatics has worked closely with Planet sensors since the RapidEye Constellation, and continues to add support for the new PlanetScope data format. Geomatica 2017, released recently, includes atmospheric-correction support for PlanetScope imagery. In addition, with the Geomatica API, customers can access Planet.com imagery and integrate the data into operational workflows leveraging more than 550 algorithms available in Geomatica and GeoImaging Accelerator (GXL).

“Imagery collected with the constellation of Dove satellites opens up new possibilities for operational monitoring and Earth observation” said Arnold Hougham, vice-president of sales and marketing at PCI Geomatics. “We are already working with our clients and partners to deliver new, enterprise-level GXL workflows that leverage the powerful processing capability of the GXL platform for operational applications in agriculture, for example,” he added.

“We are pleased that PCI Geomatics has joined the Planet Ecosystem,”, said Alex Shih, director of product and ecosystem at Planet. “They bring advanced processing capability that can be leveraged by customers to develop customized workflows. We believe that by combining the rich data source from Planet with the flexible, scalable analytics, and processing capability from PCI Geomatics, we will be able to deliver the full value of daily and global data to our customers and enable them to deploy innovative solutions”, he added.

For more information about the level of support available for Planet imagery, visit support.pcigeomatics.com

To learn more about using the Python API to create custom image-processing workflows, visit the PCI Developer Zone at dev.pcigeomatics.com

To learn more about using the Planet API to develop image-access workflows, visit www.planet.com .

(18 May, 2017) The European Union Satellite Centre (SatCen) has awarded a Framework Contract for the supply of the Copernicus Service in Support to EU External Action Geospatial Production , for a maximum value of 7.5 million euro, to a consortium of European industries led by e-GEOS – a joint venture between Telespazio (80%) and the Italian Space Agency (20%).

Through this service, e-GEOS will assist SatCen to support the European Union in its external action, providing EU with geo-information on remote, difficult to access critical areas, where security issues are at stake. Copernicus will also support EU in situations of crisis or emerging crisis and to prevent global and trans-regional threats having a destabilizing effect.

To grant the large satellite imagery 24/7 production capacity required by the contract, e-GEOS will lead a European consortium including GAF and Telespazio Iberica – both part of the Telespazio group-, Airbus Defence and Space, GMV, IABG and SIRS.

Massimo Comparini, CEO of e-GEOS, said: “We are honored to drive such a European industrial team in support to the EU SatCen, one of the most important entrusted entities of the European Commission. With this contract, e-GEOS, together with its industrial shareholders, Telespazio and Leonardo, is confirming its leadership as service provider within the European Copernicus programme and the importance to establish strong and valuable partnerships with key players to provide the best services to EU”.

Download the press release

On 15 May 2017, the Copernicus service in support to EU External Action (SEA) started to deliver services in operational mode.

The European Union Satellite Centre , as Copernicus Entrusted Entity, coordinates this service, which assists the EU in its operations and interests outside EU territory, providing decision makers with geo-information on remote, difficult to access areas, where security issues are at stake. It also assists third countries in situations of crisis or emerging crisis and to prevent global and trans-regional threats having a destabilising effect. More information on application domains and types of products, can be found in the Copernicus SEA Product Portfolio.

The SEA service primarily targets European users (EU and Member States decision makers) but cooperation with key International stakeholders is foreseen.

On the 6th of October 2016, the European Commission entrusted SatCen with the operations of the Copernicus services in Support to EU External Action with the signature of a Delegation Agreement by Lowri EVANS, Director-General DG Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (GROW) and Pascal Legai, SatCen Director in order to support EU External Action with state-of-the art satellite data and technologies in a secure mode and environment.

For further questions regarding the service, you can contact SatCen at the dedicated email address: CopernicusSEA@satcen.europa.eu.

Source

Neustrelitz, Germany, May 5, 2017. GAF AG provides worldwide high and medium resolution archive and fresh data through ESA’s Third Party Mission scheme.

ESA and GAF AG , the exclusive supplier in Europe of optical Indian remote sensing satellite (IRS) data from several missions, have entered into an agreement that makes the data from several Indian missions available to scientific users via ESA’s Third Party Mission (TPM) scheme.

The agreement encompasses European as well as worldwide archive data from the IRS-1C, IRS-1D and Resourcesat-1 missions, as well as archive and fresh data from Resourcesat-2 and Cartosat-1.

Interested scientists can submit project proposals, together with associated data requirements, to ESA. Depending on the scientific relevance of the proposal, ESA will grant the project a quota for IRS data products.

This allows access at no charge to high-resolution data from the PAN, LISS-IV Mono and LISS-III sensors as well as medium-resolution data from the WiFS and AWiFS sensors, from 1996 until today. Data can be obtained at different processing levels, including Euro-Maps 3D digital surface models (DSMs) with 5 m post spacing.

For more information, please visit https://earth.esa.int/web/guest/pi-community/apply-for-data/3rd-party or contact GAF’s customer support via tpm@gaf.de.

As a result of an earlier agreement, Oceansat-2 ocean color monitor (OCM) data acquired at the Neustrelitz ground station is also available free of charge to all users worldwide via ESA’s EOLI-SA or via the Lite Dissemination Server. See
http://earth.esa.int/web/guest/missions/3rd-party-missions/current-missions/oceansat-2. .

The above activities are funded by and carried out under the Third Party Mission scheme of the European Space Agency.

The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Space Agency.

Source

(Bari, Italia – May 5th, 2017) Planetek Italia and Airbus Defence and Space have been awarded a contract for the supply of high-resolution Earth observation imagery and services by Eni, the Italian multinational oil and gas company. With the data and services provided, Eni will have actionable information at hand to improve their wide range of onshore and offshore activities.

Both companies will support the capacity of Eni to get valuable information for its planning, monitoring, analysis and reporting activities, by offering remotely sensed satellite products and value added services, as maritime surveillance and vessel detection, oil spill detection, sea ice monitoring, onshore oil and gas prospect detection.

“We are excited to start this new contract”, said Giovanni Sylos Labini, CEO, Planetek Italia. “We are given an excellent opportunity to assist a supermajor energy company such as Eni in critical operational and decision making activities, providing state-of-the-art satellite products and value added services”.

François Lombard, Head of the Intelligence Business Cluster at Airbus Defence and Space, said: “We are eager to support a big international Group like Eni with our fleet of optical and radar satellites. Thanks to our intelligence and monitoring solutions tailored for the oil and gas industry, Eni will get actionable information wherever it is needed.”

Download here the press release

Clermont-Ferrand, France – 26 April 2017 – The French company PlanetObserver , supplier of geospatial data for all civil and military visualization and simulation applications, and GIS solutions, announces the release of PlanetSAT Global #2017, the unique seamless and global imagery basemap processed with fresh and cloud-free satellite images.

Processed with current Landsat 8 source data for 40% of the global and more than 300 major urban areas across the world, PlanetSAT Global version #2017 is the high quality natural color imagery basemap that offers detailed and up-to-date geographic information, perfect for 1:50,000 scale mapping.

PlanetSAT Global imagery basemap is ready-to-use as a unique backdrop map of many military, commercial and consumer applications, from visualization and simulation solutions, flight simulators, geo-intelligence and mission preparation systems, to GIS software, web-mapping applications and graphic solutions for broadcast and weather.

Key benefits for users are:

  • Up-to-date and reliable geographic information, available immediately,
  • Plug-and-play product, ready-to-use in all professional applications,
  • Cost effective solution with special packages for continental subsets and global coverage.
    As part of our annual maintenance program, PlanetSAT Global basemap is updated every year in order to offer global data totally consistent with all local changes and enhance user experiences.

Laurent Masselot, CEO of PlanetObserver said, “PlanetSAT Global is the new generation of global imagery basemap. By adopting PlanetSAT Global imagery layer, users benefit from high quality, up-to-date and cloud-free imagery that is easy to implement in any professional solution, from GIS to visualization and simulation systems, both for civil and military applications.”

Check out some satellite images of Western Europe extracted from PlanetSAT Global imagery basemap.

About PlanetObserver

PlanetObserver offers a full range of value-added geospatial products: PlanetSAT range of global imagery basemaps, PlanetDEM global and accurate Digital Elevation Models, and on-demand service for Very High Resolution imagery and orthophotography. All products are developed internally, backed up by PlanetObserver’s know-how in geospatial data processing and more than 25 years of technological expertise.
PlanetObserver geospatial data are perfect for numerous commercial, military and consumer applications, ranging from web-mapping to 2D and 3D visualization and simulation solutions, GIS tools, cartographic mapping to audio-visual production.

Contact us by phone at +33 (0) 4 73 44 19 00 or fill in the contact form to find out more on PlanetSAT Global imagery basemap.