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Hatfield’s Dr. Andy Dean presented at the World Bank Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR) e-learning event.


Webinar Recording: Click here to watch the video

At the United National COP-21 in Paris in December 2015, the World Bank Group and the European Space Agency (ESA) signed a Memorandum of Intent addressing a series of thematic application areas, including climate resilience. This World Bank-ESA partnership helps PPCR task teams build climate resilience at scale by fostering innovative approaches, knowledge exchange, and capacity building in national hydro-meteorological services, climate services, and satellite Earth Observation (EO) at national and project levels.

In 2015, Hatfield supported the PPCR Focal Point Team with satellite EO content for a comprehensive Weather and Climate Services e-learning course, so task teams can learn directly from experienced specialists. In September 2016 a PPCR Climate Resilience and Earth Observation webinar was conducted to provide further information and a forum for discussion with experts.

The webinar was chaired by Mafalda Duarte, Program Manager of the Climate Investment Funds. James Close, the World Bank Group’s Director, Climate Change Cross-Cutting Solution Area, introduced the session. He emphasized the importance the World Bank places on building resilience in development work, and how crucial data and analytics are when making decisions on resilience and climate change. Josef Aschbacher, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programs, provided an overiew of ESA’s commitment to satellite EO through the Copernicus Programme.

Hatfield’s Dr. Andy Dean illustrated the use of ESA’s Sentinel satellites, which provide free and open data, in national climate services and climate resilience. ESA Earth Observation Data Scientist, Pierre Philippe Mathieu, further explained how climate variables can be monitored from space.

Hatfield experts will also help task teams identify opportunities to integrate satellite EO in future PPCR investments.

The webinar was Session 5 of the PPCR Learning Series. This ongoing e-learning series is jointly organized by the Climate Policy-PPCR Focal Point team, the Climate Investment Funds and the Hydromet, Climate Services and Resilience Community of Practice. The 1.2 billion USD PPCR is a funding window of the Climate Investment Funds (CIF), working with 26 countries and two regions.

For more information, please contact:

Dr. Andy Dean
Partner & Senior Geomatics Specialist
HATFIELD CONSULTANTS PARTNERSHIP

E-mail: hcp@hatfieldgroup.com
Tel.: +1-604-926-3261
Toll-Free: +1-866-926-3261

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Munich RE Taps Massive ESA Satellite Data to Insure Organizations from Natural Disasters

BARCELONA, Spain, Nov. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today, in cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA), announced the Earth Observation Analysis service, a cloud service powered by the SAP HANA® platform. The two organizations have been working together since early 2016, facilitating access to a new field of business opportunities in the geospatial context. They have done this by combining the power of SAP HANA with ESA’s accurate, timely, and easily accessible Earth observation data, especially from the Copernicus program. Today at SAP® TechEd Barcelona, reinsurance company Munich Re showcases its use of the Earth Observation Analysis service for gaining insights and predicting potential future impact from historic and current data.

“Every year, wildfires affect nature, people, their homes and businesses,” said Andreas Siebert, Head of Geospatial Solutions, Munich Re. “While the progress of a fire itself is hard to predict, this new service from SAP, leveraging satellite data from ESA, allows us to accurately calculate costs and risks related to wildfires and even gain insights into the future probability of wildfires. This will help us to keep costs down for our clients.”

Powered by SAP HANA, the Earth Observation Analysis service provides a standardized interface for quick, easy consumption of detailed analytics and clusters them according to customer needs. Government agencies and companies active in all industries, from insurance and reinsurance to mill products, mining, utilities, and retail, can leverage the application programming interface (API) delivered through the Earth Observation Analysis service. Based on continuous access to historical and real-time satellite data from around the world, they can make improved business decisions concerning elementary industry-specific questions. Questions may include where to place new power lines, where to build a new store or when to harvest crops. Ultimately, the service helps business users and data scientists reduce the complexity of obtaining reliable insights.

“Our partnership with ESA paves the way to a new field of geospatial business applications, making it possible to close the gap between traditional Earth observation and a digitalized business world,” said Dr. Carsten Linz, Business Development Officer and Global Head, Center for Digital Leadership, SAP. “That opens a bright future for space-related applications, such as digital farming, gas pipeline management, and the improved planning of smart cities – bringing businesses to a competitive edge, creating new high-tech jobs and improving peoples’ lives.”

Josef Aschbacher, Director, Earth Observation, ESA, said, “The European Sentinel satellites are the largest providers of Earth observation data worldwide. A major challenge is to convert this fantastic data into customer-specific information. Large-scale hosted processing is the next step in order to meet this challenge, thereby bringing users to the data rather than data to the users.”

ESA will benefit from the in-memory computing power of the SAP HANA platform to make Earth observation data consumable both through the newly available Earth Observation Analysis service as well as in urban and environmental use cases or even beyond in the future.

The Earth Observation Analysis service can be tested at no cost in a nonproductive environment here from Nov. 8 until Dec. 31, 2016. The service is planned to be generally available in the first quarter of 2017. It will then be offered with a consumption-based pricing model that depends on the number of API calls. A set of related microservices, also powered by SAP HANA, will help entrepreneurs, partners, customers and businesses augment and build highly flexible solutions based on SAP HANA and Earth observation data from ESA in the future. SAP and ESA intend to continue their collaboration in developing solutions and technologies based on SAP technology that leverages geospatial information.

SAP today also unveiled SAP HANA 2, the next generation of the SAP HANA platform optimized for innovation. SAP HANA 2 includes and extends the proven technology from the SAP’s breakthrough in-memory computing platform to help organizations address the fast-changing requirements of digital business. As part of the product strategy of SAP HANA 2, the new SAP HANA microservices are intended to spur developer innovation by embedding richer insight into modern applications.

About the Center for Digital Leadership at SAP

The Center for Digital Leadership organization at SAP is a leading source of insight into how to lead and drive digital transformation and innovation. Our network and partner ecosystem represents today’s and tomorrow’s leaders in digital business. Based on SAP’s digital internal transformation experiences, research and meetings with more than 200 CxO customers per year, we aim at being a digital thought leader for internal and external teams. We provide digitalization patterns and best practices to help our customers navigate through the digital transformation of their organization based on our holistic digital innovation and transformation framework, new methodologies and a thought leadership approach. For more information, check out www.sap.com/digitalleadership.

For more information, visit Center for Digital Leadership or the SAP News Center. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

About SAP

As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device – SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services enable more than 335,000 business and public sector customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “expect,” “forecast,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “project,” “predict,” “should” and “will” and similar expressions as they relate to SAP are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. SAP undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP’s future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including SAP’s most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.

© 2016 SAP SE. All rights reserved.

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(9 November 2016) ESA and the Asian Development Bank have signed an agreement to collaborate over the next five years to use information from space to support sustainable development.

The Bank aims to help countries in Asia and the Pacific region reduce poverty and improve the quality of life of their citizens. The Bank assists its members and partners by providing loans, technical assistance, grants and equity investments to promote social and economic development.

It has already been demonstrated that using information from satellites can help these efforts. Since 2013, ESA has completed 12 different activities that support a range of projects run by the Bank.

One such project focused on helping to develop public transport in Baku in Azerbaijan and Peshawar in Pakistan.

Information from satellites was used to assess the state of different transport infrastructure such as roads, railroads, ports, waterways and airports, and show how it evolved over time. In addition, land-use information and population distribution around key access points were provided.

David Margonsztern, Asian Development Bank Senior urban development specialist, said, “Satellites give us the data without having to go into the field and allowed us to scan a ‘corridor’ area completely. Everything in the corridor from one facade to the other was shown perfectly in the satellite images.

“This also allowed us to analyse how the land is used around stations that we are planning. The outcome of the collaboration was very good.”

With initial activities such as this paving the way for future developments, an agreement to extend this kind of collaboration over the next five years was signed today by Gil-Hong Kim, the Asian Development Bank’s Senior Director and Chief Sector Officer of the Sustainable Development & Climate Change Department, and Josef Aschbacher, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes.


ESA and Asian Development Bank sign agreement

The next step will be to begin scaling up earlier projects with larger, regional demonstrations. This will be coupled with a more strategic approach focusing on 10 thematic domains of international development where Earth observation can deliver key information.

Josef Aschbacher said, “In the context of the new sustainable development goals, we see increasing emphasis placed on using Earth observation to address today’s biggest societal challenges such as population growth, food security, water and energy.

“A key aspect in this work will be the close collaboration with both the multilateral development banks and their client countries in co-designing and implementing activities together, to establish Earth-observation-based products and services used as ‘best-practice’ environmental information.”

(11 November 2016) This follows the declaration made at the Group on Earth Observations’ (GEO’s) Mexico Ministerial Summit in November last year, in which the GEONETCast partners – EUMETSAT, the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA ) and the China Meteorological Administration (CMA ) – committed to continue for the next 10 years.

GEONETCast is a global network of sustained and cost-effective satellite-based dissemination systems that delivers Earth observation data and products to GEO initiatives on a routine basis.

“In the GEO Work Programme 2017-2019, the GEONETCast partners and the GEO Secretariat have identified a series of activities aimed at continuing current operations while improving links with GEO flagship initiatives and services to the existing user community,” EUMETSAT International Relations Officer Vincent Gabaglio said.

“EUMETSAT, as one of the GEONETCast partners, is taking action in close cooperation with the European Commission and the African Union Commission to increase the amount of data available through GEONETCast.

“In addition, we aim to increase the number of users, especially in Africa, as GEONETCast is particularly useful for Earth observation data transmission in regions where high-speed landlines and/or the Internet are not available.”

“EUMETSAT is taking action to increase the amount of data available through GEONETCast”

GEONETCast currently serves about 6,000 users.

Under the Mexico declaration, the GEONETCast partners committed to:

  • Operate the GEONETCast infrastructure
  • Further integrate it with other GEO initiatives and flagship projects and increase the user base
  • Improve service to users.

In the new GEO context, GEONETCast aims to:

  • Provide near-global coverage through the global network of partners
  • Deliver GEO-relevant data and products on a continuous, near-operational basis
  • Engage with regional and global stakeholders to identify needs for data and products
  • Ensure a sustained system and be an integral part of overall GEO infrastructure as a foundational task.

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Rome, November 8, 2016 – Thales Alenia Space, the joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo-Finmeccanica (33%), announced today that it has signed an amendment to the original contract for the COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation (CSG) program with Italian space agency ASI. Worth 77 million euros, this contract is vital, since it covers the remaining operations to complete the program. Thales Alenia Space Italy will receive 66 million euros of the total, while space services affiliate Telespazio will receive 11 million euros.

Thales Alenia Space Italy is responsible for the overall COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation program, including construction of the two satellites, while Telespazio is responsible for designing and developing the ground segment and providing the integrated logistics and operations services.

Leonardo also contributes to the program by supplying attitude sensors and state of the art equipment that will process and distribute electric power throughout the satellites.

This contract kicks off phase D2/E1 of the program, which entails all operations needed to complete construction of the second satellite (FM-2), the launch of both satellites and the verification and operational validation of the entire system with the two satellites in orbit. The launch of the first satellite is planned in 2018, with the second following a year later.

These state-of-the-art satellites feature the last technologies and engineering solutions. The overall system, including the ground segment, will set the performance standard for space-based radar observation systems, in terms of precision, image quality and flexible user services. It is designed as a “dual use” (civil/military) system, to meet the requirements of scientific, commercial and government customers.

Ever since the launch of the first satellite in 2007, the COSMO-SkyMed program has been an exceptional tool for observing our planet. With its innovative operational capabilities, it contributes to the continuous monitoring of the Earth’s surface, to safety-related needs and to the management of natural events, as shown recently by the damage assessment activities and support to rescue operations following the earthquakes that hit central Italy.

The development of the COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation system will guarantee a quantum leap in terms of technology, performance and service life, consequently, strengthening Italian leadership in the Earth Observation sector on a global level. Moreover, strategic international partnerships, such as those already established with France and Poland regarding the COSMO-SkyMed reception and processing of data and data products, will also be extended.

COSMO-SkyMed, financed by the Italian space agency, Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Education, University and Research, is the first dual-use Earth observation system. Its four satellites monitor the entire Earth from space, day and night, under any weather conditions, using high-resolution X-band radars. The program was developed in conjunction with both large aerospace corporations and a number of innovative small businesses. Thales Alenia Space Italy is the prime contractor, responsible for the entire system, including both space and ground segments. Telespazio developed the ground segment and hosts the Constellation Control Center at the Fucino Space Center.

About Thales Alenia Space
Thales Alenia Space brings over 40 years of experience to the design, integration, testing and operation of innovative space systems for telecommunications, navigation, Earth observation, environmental management, exploration, science and orbital infrastructures. A joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo-Finmeccanica (33%), Thales Alenia Space also teams up with Telespazio to form the parent companies’ “Space Alliance”, which offers a complete range of services and solutions. Thales Alenia Space has built up unrivaled expertise in dual (civil-military) missions, constellations, flexible high-throughput payloads, altimetry, meteorology, and high-resolution radar and optical observation, as well as space exploration. The company capitalizes on its strong legacy, while also making innovation a key to its strategy. By offering a continuous stream of new products and expanding its global footprint, Thales Alenia Space has established its leadership in today’s fast-evolving space sector. Thales Alenia Space posted consolidated revenues exceeding 2.1 billion euros in 2015 and has 7,500 employees in nine countries. www.thalesaleniaspace.com

Thales Alenia Space Press Contacts:

  • Sandrine Bielecki
    Tel: +33 (0)4 92 92 70 94
    sandrine.bielecki@thalesaleniaspace.com
  • Chrystelle Dugimont
    Tel: +33 (0)4 92 92 74 06
    chrystelle.dugimont@thalesaleniaspace.com
  • Tiziana Ebano
    Tel: +39 06 41512574
    tiziana.ebano@thalesaleniaspace.com
  • Cinzia Marcanio
    Tel: +39 06 41512685
    cinzia.marcanio@thalesaleniaspace.com

About Telespazio
Telespazio, a Leonardo and Thales 67/33 joint venture, is one of the world’s leading operators in satellite services. Its activities range from the design and development of space systems to the management of launch services, from in-orbit satellite control to Earth observation, from integrated communications, satellite navigation and localisation services to scientific programmes. Telespazio plays a leading role in the reference markets harnessing technological experience acquired over the years. Since its establishment, the company has participated in major European space programmes such as Galileo, EGNOS, Copernicus and COSMO-SkyMed. In 2015, Telespazio generated sales of EUR 632 million while employing approximately 2,500 people worldwide.

Telespazio press contact:
Paolo Mazzetti
Tel:+39 335.6515994
paolo.mazzetti@telespazio.com

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Vancouver, 5 December 2016. TRE ALTAMIRA has processed 7 years of TerraSAR-X data to measure movement on and around the Millennium Tower in San Francisco.

The 179 scenes of TerraSAR-X provided a highly precise historical record of deformation where present. The high resolution of the TerraSAR-X data provided many measurement points over the entire face of the Millennium Tower facing the satellite, and the surrounding buildings. These 600 measurement points on the tower capture motion from the foot of the building to the top. Analysis shows that the tower is moving down and away from the satellite as measured along the line of sight from the satellite to the tower at an annualized rate of 26 millimetres per year.

In the figure below projects the SqueeSAR™ derived measurement points onto the 3D Google Map optical image. The red points indicate movement away from the satellite which is down and to the west. Green points indicate neutral or no movement over the 7 years.

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Earth-i, the innovative British distributor of Earth Observation and information services, announced today that it has been awarded the contract to supply the government of the state of Queensland, Australia with very high resolution optical imagery of the entire state.

The contract covers the supply of imagery from the DMC3 / TripleSat Constellation for each of the years 2016 and 2017 and will ensure that Queensland’s Department of Natural Resources and Mines (DNRM) has a detailed base map of the entire state, updated each year.

All Queensland Government Departments, local agencies and Natural Resource Management Groups will benefit from having access to up-to-date imagery of the State to support their decision making, information analysis, environmental management and state development activities.

Steve Jacoby, Executive Director of Land and Spatial Information, DNRM, said: “We are delighted to have awarded the contract to Earth-i. They demonstrated a clear understanding of our needs in Queensland, the DMC3/TripleSat Constellation provides us and other Queensland government departments with both the wide area capability and the very high resolution imagery required to meet the needs of the user community. We were impressed with the professionalism of the Earth-i bid and the quality of data we will be able to work with to support a wide range of applications.”

Paul Majmader, Commercial Director of Earth-i, commenting on the contract award, said “we are delighted that the State of Queensland has selected Earth-i, and are confident we will deliver high quality services to the State and excellent value for money to Queensland tax payers. The scale of the area to be collected lends itself very well to the DMC3/TripleSat Constellation which excels in rapid, wide area collection of very high resolution data. We worked hard with our partners 21AT to offer the best bid, and are confident that the data will offer significant benefits to a wide base of users in Australia.”

Earth-i

Earth-i is a British company dedicated to facilitating the distribution of data from the DMC3/TripleSat Constellation. As the 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

(21 October 2016) A new service harnesses three decades of satellite observations of coastal zones made available through a cloud-based system to provide a rich information source for fisheries, one of our fastest growing sources of food.

SAFI (Supporting our Aquaculture and Fisheries Industries) is a prototype information service supported by the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme. It uses Earth observation data to support the fishing industry.

Ensuring ease of use, SAFI accesses the powerful capabilities of the ESA-backed Coastal Thematic Exploitation Platform (C-TEP), a cloud-based ‘one-stop shop’ that gathers coastal-zone satellite data, processing algorithms and computing power.

The three-year SAFI project came to a close with a final workshop in Morocco at the end of September. Here, it was announced that SAFI will continue as a commercial undertaking.

“The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation recognises aquaculture as one of the fastest growing food-producing sectors, accounting for 90.4 million tonnes in 2012 – nearly 50% of the world’s food fish,” comments Antoine Mangin of Earth-observing company ACRI, overseeing SAFI.

“There is an established need for simple user-oriented Earth observation tools to help guide the sector’s continued growth, and to set more accurate fishing quotas for coastal waters.

“Fish famers already pay very close attention to seasonal changes, to try and look for similarities between the current year and previous annual patterns. Our service – powered in turn by the C-TEP platform – supports such analysis, enabling the speedy processing of large amounts of data to make historical comparisons, statistical analysis and forecasting.

“Fish farming, for instance, needs to take place at specific temperature ranges for each fish species, among other environmental parameters such as turbidity.

“Using C-TEP, SAFI can work swiftly through tens of terabytes of data at a time to extract the temperature evolution over 20 years. Doing the same with additional variables like water transparency and wave height lets us quickly and easily pinpoint suitable farming location across the globe.
“We can also go on to calculate the environmental carrying capacity of the site, allowing users to forecast likely yields.”

Regularly updated maps of shallow-water seabeds from Sentinel-2 images can also help to site mussel and other shellfish farms.

Along with three decades of archive satellite data, C-TEP gives access to the very latest imagery from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 satellites, covering water colour, sea-surface temperature and height. Fresh data become accessible to SAFI on a near-real time basis for use in forecast models.

“We can give early warning of potential fish-killing phytoplankton blooms: green chlorophyll or red tide. In reaction, oxygen can be diffused into fish pens, although this is costly. Alternatively, fish can be harvested early.

“High waves can also be forecast, so that fish pens can be sunk deeper underwater. And, 30–50% of aquaculture costs come down to feeding. Fish eat less in lower temperatures, or when low-visibility conditions make them unhappy. SAFI allows these conditions to be forecast so operators can avoid wasting food.”

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Successful ideas competition INNOspace Masters enters the second round.
The INNOspace Masters ideas competition is officially launched at the cross-industry INNOspace symposium in Augsburg on 6 October. Innovative ideas and solutions can be submitted for the next space generation from 14 November 2016 until 13 February 2017.

The INNOspace Masters is organised by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Space Administration, and embedded in the INNOspace® initiative. Anwendungszentrum GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen, an experienced specialist in the organisation of competitions, conducts the INNOspace Masters on behalf of DLR, with support of first-class Partners.

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The European Commission has set up a High Level Group of experts who will advise on how to maximise the impact of the EU’s investment in research and innovation. The group will be chaired by Pascal Lamy, President Emeritus of the Jacques Delors Institute.

It consists of 12 personalities appointed in a personal capacity. Over 350 candidates responded to an online call for expression of interest. The group will start its work in December 2016 and is expected to issue its report in June 2017.

The High Level Group will base its report, among others on:

  • the available Horizon 2020 interim evaluation results and factual evidence
  • the results of a European foresight exercise for future research and innovation policy
  • an assessment of the economic rationale for public research and innovation investment and its expected impact on jobs and growth

The members of the High Level Group

  • Chair: Pascal Lamy – President Emeritus, Jacques Delors Institute
  • Martin Brudermüller – Vice Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors and Chief Technology Officer, BASF SE
  • Mark Ferguson – Director General, Science Foundation Ireland and Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government of Ireland
  • Lykke Friis – Prorector for Education, University of Copenhagen
  • Cristina Garmendia – Chair, Fundación Cotec
  • Iain Gray – Director of Aerospace, Cranfield University
  • Jan Gulliksen – Professor, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
  • Harri Kulmala – CEO of DIMECC Ltd, Tampere
  • Nevenka Maher – former dean, Faculty of Business & Management Sciences Novo mesto
  • Maya Plentz Fagundes – Managing Director, 50More Ventures
  • Lucyna A. Woźniak – Vice-Rector for Science and International Relations, Medical University of Łódź
  • Milena Žic Fuchs – Professor, University of Zagreb and Fellow, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts

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