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We cordially invite you to participate in the Regional Workshop of the GEO-CRADLE Horizon2020 project (www.geocradle.eu – Coordinating and integRating state-of-the-art Earth Observation Activities in the regions of North Africa, Middle East, and Balkans and Developing Links with GEO related initiatives towards GEOSS), with guest speakers Dr Haris Kontoes (Project Coordinator), and Dr Hesham El Askary (Chapman University, USA). The event is jointly organized by the Project Coordinator National Observatory of Athens and the Geography and Urban Planning Department at UAEU.


It will take place on:
February 2nd 2017, from 10:00 to 13:00
UAE University Reem Island Facility
Sky Tower, 8th Floor, Reem Island, Abu Dhabi, UAE

This regional workshop will focus on identifying the potential local challenges hindering the Earth Observation (EO) market uptake and business performances, while seeking solutions to enhance growth and innovation in the geo-information sector. Aiming to support knowledge sharing and an enhanced cooperation between academia and industry, the event will also provide participants with a unique cross-sector networking opportunity. In addition, panel discussions will be complemented with information on available EU funding in the EO sector. We are looking forward to welcoming you to this event and we are certain that your presence and input will greatly enrich our discussions.

Please register by filling in this form

For further information about project activities, please visit the “GEO-CRADLE website“http://www.geocradle.eu

The Space Placements in INdustry scheme (SPIN) has been designed to provide an introductory link for those considering employment in the space sector and space sector organisations looking to find the most talented and enthusiastic people to ensure the future success of their businesses.

The scheme is managed by the Institute for Environmental Analytics at the University of Reading and supported by the Satellite Applications Catapult and the UK Space Agency.

The value of practical experience in the workplace has long been recognised to offer benefits to the spintern, providing valuable experience of the work environment and the skills that are crucial to a successful career, and benefits to the sponsor or host organisation who can identify a project that might otherwise not be achievable, carried out with a fresh pair of eyes and perhaps a fresh perspective on their own organisation and possibly provide an informal extended interview of a potential employee.

The scheme has been running since 2013 and continues to grow in popularity. We always encourage enquiries from potential host organisations who have a short-term project (typically of eight weeks duration), and who would like to offer individuals the opportunity to gain new skills and an insight into their business.

We welcome applications from individuals from all disciplines who are enthusiastic to work in the Space sector and are keen to develop new skills, applying and building on the knowledge they’ve acquired in their studies to date.

SPIN FAQs

Many space startups are vying to take the place of the world’s governments as the pre-eminent operators of imaging satellites, but this one has a unique scheme to take advantage of orbital radar.

apella Space, which will launch its first satellite this year, aims to take advantage of a gap in current commercial satellite coverage. Most imaging satellites rely on daylight and the absence of clouds for the clearest imagery. At night or when the weather isn’t cooperating, there’s not too much to see. That big image above of the Juan Fernandez islands is beautiful, but it would be difficult to count how many boats, for example, are in the vicinity.

And many of the customers for satellite imagery want to be able to count those boats, or shipping containers in a foggy port, or trees underneath a mountain cloudbreak. The solution for that problem is a technology called synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which can be mounted on a satellite and used to create a 3D image of the landscape below.

Here’s one such image, taken by TerraSAR, a satellite jointly operated by the German space agency and Airbus: According to Payam Banazadeh, the founder and CEO of Capella, imagery like this will solve a key problem for consumers of satellite data, which is a lack of consistent coverage that isn’t disrupted by night or clouds. But SAR satellites are largely operated by government space and weather agencies.


The Panama Canal, seen by synthetic aperture radar. (TerraSAR)

Banazadeh was among the first generations of students to work on cubesats—tiny, low-cost satellites often built with off-the-shelf parts. After graduation he worked on several microsatellite projects at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Seeing the commercial potential in the technology, he sought an MBA at Stanford University. There, he met William Woods, who was finishing a PhD in remote sensing and working on the New Horizons mission to Pluto. Together, the two founded Capella to commercialize space SAR technology.

SAR satellites require larger antennae and more energy expenditure than their optical brethren because they rely on “active” imaging—rather than measuring the light reflecting from an object, Capella’s satellite will send a signal down to Earth and measure how it bounces back. The “secret sauce” at the company, Banazadeh said, is in how the antennae are cleverly folded and packaged in the satellite body, and how they manage their power supply.

Since starting the company at the beginning of 2016, Capella’s founders were able to develop their technology and demonstrate it during airplane and helicopter flights. This quick development cycle allowed them to raise several million dollars from venture capitalists, including Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, Data Collective Venture Capital, and Canaan Partners. The latter two funds have experience in the sector, with investments, respectively, in Planet, a leading satellite imaging startup, and SkyBox, a satellite imaging firm that was acquired by Google for $500 million in 2014 and is now known as Terra Bella.

Canaan general partner Deepak Kamra says a SAR satellite company is a natural next investment for his fund to “recreate our success with Skybox.” There were no fully commercial alternatives in the market, and the existing technology tended to be in the heavy and expensive satellite design paradigm (TerraSAR weighs more than a ton) rather than the light and cheap approach favored by space startups like this one.

“We think Capella has solved those problems with a cubesat, which a lot of people are surprised to hear, [but] they have some pretty unique concepts and intellectual property,” Kamra says.

To meet the expected demand for imagery, Capella expects to fly 30 satellites in total. The next step for the company, like many Silicon Valley firms with space aspirations, will be to take the data its flying sensors obtain and use machine learning and sophisticated algorithms to provide direct answers to clients. “We don’t believe our customers want to see pixels,” Banazadeh says.

For example, he says, Capella’s satellites will be able to measure changes in the ground down to the millimeter level. Oil companies already use thousands of tilt-meters placed on the ground near drilling operations to track changes that could help them improve their extraction strategies. Banazadeh says his firm will be able to deliver those measurements, from space, far more cheaply.

Quartz Media
and satnews

This editorial concerns the changing market and the way in which companies can react to it. But firstly, as we are using data coming from our industry survey a reminder to all EO services companies in Europe that the most recent survey has been launched and we really need your response. The survey is extremely important to inform the European decision makers and support their policy decisions which support the industry. If you have not already completed it, please do so and if you need any more information, contact the EARSC secretariat

Various market studies have been published which show a growing market for EO services and that support the conclusions which we draw from our own surveys. But this simple headline disguises the changes which are taking place in the structure of this market. Today, around 65% of the revenues of the companies in Europe come from public sector sources; governments. This is unsurprising given the public role and the background of the technology coming from military and defence interests.

But the expected growth is also expected to come from other types of customer even if the public sector will remain a very significant part of the market. Commercial and even consumer markets (B2B and B2C in the jargon) are growing and should continue to grow. A lot of this growth will be driven by more accessible products and services easily found and bought on-line. This contrasts with the market today which is largely for bespoke services where a product is made for a specific customer.

How important is this trend?
In our last industry survey (2015), we found a growth rate of around 10% in a market worth around €720m pa in Europe. The European market is commonly considered to be 1/3rd of the global market which means a total market of about €2.2b. This is in good correspondence with surveys published by Research and Markets and Euroconsult.

Our second survey conducted last summer finds that around 5% of the market today is for on-line services but that this will increase to over 25% in the next 5 years. This is a healthy 30%pa growth rate which seems to be worth positioning for and which is the rationale behind our initiative to create a Marketplace Alliance for EO Services (MAEOS).

MAEOS can only be possible if it is built upon an efficient and effective access to the raw data and information which is needed to produce the EO services. Happily the European Commission has recognised this reality and are investing to establish a new Copernicus Service; that for Data and Information Access (DIAS).

ESA will procure the DIAS on behalf of the EC. Bidders must show not only how it will fulfil the basic requirements to make the Copernicus data and information available on a wide basis but also how it proposes to ensure that the solution is sustainable. This requires that a credible business plan is put together for the products and services which can be built upon each DIAS. Leading to the key question of how much business can be developed around DIAS? Each bidder will need to enable the creation of an ecosystem of service providing companies. MAEOS will make a strong contribution by providing a single environment for potential customers to find the services. Nevertheless, the question remains as to how big this market will be and how will it evolve?

To address this question, we are organising a workshop in Brussels on 25th January where speakers will give their view on issues driving these trends. More information can be found here.

Finally I wanted also to draw attention to the recent MoU we recently signed with the Japanese industry represented by Japan Space Systems. We are very pleased to have the opportunity to help develop closer links between the Japanese and European industries and look forward to developing concrete steps to achieve this.

Geoff Sawyer
EARSC Secretary General

(December 2016) Conclusions from “Satellite Applications for the Alps” event held in Berchtesgaden, Germany on 27 Oct. 2016.

Potential and confirmed users of satellite applications (search and rescue organisations, national parks, geological offices and so on), as well as experts and policy makers, discussed the potential of satellite applications in the Alps, and what these could do for users in the environment, risk, and transport sectors. (Access the presentations here).

This document reflects some of the lessons learnt from the Eurisy conference held in Berchtesgaden on 27 October 2016. These conclusions are drawn from the discussions that took place during the event.

EURISY 20170112 Satellite Applications for the Alps Conclusions_FINAL.pdf

[By Juliet Van Wagenen. Via Satellite 01-12-2016] France’s government space agency, the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) has signed a framework agreement with the French Ministry of the Environment, Energy and Maritime Affairs (MEEM) with the aim to develop new space systems and applications, notably in the fields of climate monitoring and mobility.

Announced on Jan. 11, the agreement will strengthen and extend the scope of the previous agreement signed in 2011.

This new agreement reflects recent space efforts engaged to curb climate change, with the go-ahead for the MicroCarb and MERLIN satellites that will monitor emissions of carbon gases and methane. It also recognizes the creation of CNES’s new Directorate of Innovation, Applications and Science (DIA). Climate and innovation are two key thrusts of the agency’s strategy that mesh closely with the ministry’s goal of boosting ecological competitiveness, environmental protection and mechanisms for coping with climate change.

To this end, the framework agreement signed today by MEEM and CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall ties in with the National Strategy for the Ecological Transition to Sustainable Development. In particular, it is intended to help reach the goals set at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) in Paris 2015, which came with the adoption by almost all of the world’s space agencies of the New Delhi Declaration, giving satellites a greater role in efforts to curb climate change.

“The contribution that space assets are making to efforts to curb climate change, reaffirmed at the COP21 and confirmed by the adoption of the New Delhi Declaration, is clear for all to see,” Gall said after signing the agreement.

Source

In many areas of the world, subsidence related to the lowering of the water table is modifying the landscape and provoking costly environmental hazards. Major deformations of an industrial dike were analysed and quantified.

EUROSENSE considered the Dead Sea (the Earth’s lowest lake) as a model. Its water level was 395m bMSL in the 1960s. Due to water diversions in the catchment area, as of 2016, the level has dropped to about 430m bMSL. Here, as in other parts of the Anthropocene world, from China, to Iran, to Turkey, to Canada and the United States, consequences of human interventions are rapidly modifying the environment. Aggressive geomorphic processes leading to accelerated degradations are taking place and affecting landforms and infrastructures.

In Tectonic terms, the lake is a pull-apart basin resulting from the motion of the Dead Sea Transform fault. Since the 1960s, a slice of brine of about 35 km3 has been lost. The water table is dropping more rapidly in the lake than in the coastal zone creating an ever-increasing head difference. Consequently, groundwater moves towards the sea to compensate for the imbalance, provoking the reactivation of the area’s paleo-channels with subsidence, sinkholes, and landslides.

Since the 1980s, industrial-touristic infrastructure has covered newly emerging lands in geomorphic hazards-prone areas of the coastal zone. Time series analysis of high to very high resolution visible/radar satellite images acquired from the 1970s to present, revealed major landscape evolution. Such dynamic systems prevailing in recent decades permitted the study of human/environment interactions to help minimize their effects.

EUROSENSE analysed and quantified major deformations of an industrial dike. The results underline the necessity in the Anthropocene of careful analysis of relevant data sources acquired before and during subsidence, particularly in karst topography zones and prior to the development of major human activities in economically appealing environments around the world.

Source EUROSENSE

After 2 years of intense work, the H2020 CSA ConnectinGEO is finalizing to provide the main outcomes of the project. ConnectinGEO wants to continue some of these activities after the end of the project.

ConnectinGEO (Coordinating an Observation Network of Networks EnCompassing satellite and IN-situ to fill the Gaps in European Observations, H2020 Project Nr: 641538) started on 2015 with the aim to provide to link existing Earth Observation networks with science, private sector and with GEOSS and Copernicus stakeholders. Following this objective, other major achievements have been reached, mainly, the enablement of the European Network of Earth Observation Networks (ENEON), and the provision of a gap analysis among existing EO networks prioritizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the Essential Variables (EV).

The gap analysis has been performed by applying the ConnectinGEO Gap Analysis Methodology, structured in five threads:
• Top-down 1 (TDT1). Derivation of sustainability indicators needed to monitor progress towards GEOSS Strategic Targets and SDGs and infer the EV.
• Top-down 2 (TDT2). Incorporation of international programs such as the Future Earth, the Belmont Forum, and the Research Data Alliance.
• Bottom-up 1 (BUT1). Direct dialog with members of ENEON.
• Bottom-up 2 (BUT2). Through an observation inventory populated from the GEOSS GEODAB and the SEE IN (Socio-Economic and Environmental Information Needs) Knowledge Base.
• Bottom-up 3 (BUT3). SMEs participation in pilots to transfer experiences and generate new products based on open access GEOSS EO data.

The preliminary results of the gap analysis carried out in the context of the project have been collected in the ConnectinGEO Gaps Table (CGT), which is an on-line table in the ConnectinGEO wiki available at this page.

Main conclusions on this analysis are:
• The distribution of the gaps over themes is dominated the Climate theme with 52% of the gaps associated with this theme followed by the Ocean theme with 30% of the gaps (Fig. 30). This uneven distribution is mainly due to the climate and ocean communities being the most active one in contributions to the CGT.
• Most of the gaps currently in the CGT resulted from TDT2 i.e., the review of published literature from international programs such as Future Earth, Belmont Forum, the Research Data Alliance and community assessments of socio-economic benefits of Earth observations.
• BUT1 provided 20% of the gaps. These gaps come from the consultation process in the current EO networks, consisting of collaboration platforms, surveys and discussions at workshops and the involvement of citizen science.
• BUT3, i.e., gaps coming from the realization of a series of real industry-driven challenges to assess the problems and gaps emerging during the creation of business opportunities (see Section 4.5) contributed 4% of the currently published gaps.
• Concerning the gap type, most gaps are found with respect to required temporal resolution followed by temporal extent and geographical coverage.
• The distribution of the gaps over groups of EVs is heavily biased towards the Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) with 91% of all gaps being associated with this group of EVs. However, many of the ECVs are also Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) and/or Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs).

Agriculture Essential Variable (AgV), Essential Biodiversity Variable (EBV), Essential Climate Variable (ECV), Essential Ocean Variable (EOV), Essential Renewable Energy Variable (EREV), Health Essential Variable (HeV), Water Essential Variable (WaV)

Additionally, ConnectinGEO also analysed the level of maturity of the concept of EV in all GEOSS SBA Coming from a Workshop in Bari, in June 2015, and reported in the public D2.3 Proposal of EVs for selected themes In particular, 147 EVs were reviewed and analysed, leading to the following main conclusions:

  • The community that has defined the highest number of EVs is currently the Climate one, led by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS).
  • Other communities already working on a mature set of EVs are Weather (led by WMO/GAW) and Ocean, led by the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS).
  • EV discussion and related work is growing fast in Biodiversity and Water. Energy community follows. Agriculture, Disasters, Ecosystems, Health, and Urban Development, are still in the initial stage.
  • Most of the ECVs can be relevant and useful to the other GEO SBAs or themes, and so many SBA could rely on a number of EVs already available in other areas.

Moreover, analysing the SDG, only 30 indicators from 240 can be extracted with the combination of socio-economic data and Earth observation (in-situ, airborne or remote sensing), and only 9 by Earth observation information alone. For these 9, a link with EVs was proposed (results available in the deliverable D2.3 Proposal of EVs for selected themes).

ENEON , particularly focused on the in-situ segment, is created to increase the connection between the existing European EO networks and the relevant communities engaged in the assessments, forecasting, and projecting of future developments: policy makers, EC, GEO/GEOSS, Copernicus, etc.

ENEON is also a platform to promote emerging European networks and sensor development projects to provide future provisions, which may not yet be part of GEOSS or Copernicus Services. By this, ENEON ensures that all networks are contributing valuable resources to GEOSS and in the contribution to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the Essential Variables (EV).

Through ENEON, a lively, dynamic graph on existing European EO networks has been created based on JSON-LD & JavaScript. EOnetworks. The graph also incorporates the possibility of provide feedback.

ENEON wants to play a major role in developing, validating, populating, and using the Socio-Economic and Environmental Information Needs Knowledge Base (SEE-IN KB) for virtual collaboration between providers, scientific and societal users, and, in particular, decision and policy makers. For this reason, an ENEON Virtual Marketplace/Commons is created to support the sharing and reuse of digital objects in a web space.

ENEON is taking an active role in pushing in-situ observations in GEOSS through the GD-06 Foundational Task on “GEOSS non-space based Earth Observation Resources”.

Other activities have been done during the project. On one hand, interoperability experiments on providing access to in-situ measurements through a WebGIS Client based on the 52N SWE (Sensor Web Enablement) solution following OGC SOS (Sensor Observation Service) standard and GEOSS recommendation on interoperability.

On the other hand, a stimulation of the industry sector to the use of GEOSS data was promoted by means of the EO product award competition within ConnectinGEO together with EARSC.

More information on these activities at ConnectinGEO and ENEON

The latest instalment of our handbook covers user testimonials and business cases from agriculture, environment, risk management, logistics and tourism, to name a few.

They are intended to demonstrate, in a down-to-earth manner, how digital products and services that rely on satellite technology benefit professionals in all areas of activity. Get your copy on eurisy.org!

download the copy

China’s first commercial high-resolution Earth observation satellite network has begun to operate, its developer said.

China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, the country’s major space contractor, has released several images taken by SuperView 1A and 1B, the first two satellites of the SuperView system.

The images show the Potala Palace and a local convention center in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet autonomous region, as well as the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center.

The SuperView 1A and 1B were lifted atop a Long March 2D carrier rocket on Dec 28 from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi province. They entered preset orbits on about Tuesday and have sent more than 1,200 ground images back to the control center, according to the State-owned CASC.

The two are operating at an altitude of 500 kilometers above the Earth, with a panchromatic resolution of 0.5 meters and multispectral resolution of 2 meters, said Zhang Xiaomin, a senior researcher at the company’s China Academy of Space Technology, who oversees the system’s development.

Zhang said that compared with foreign commercial Earth observation satellites, SuperView satellites have better resolution, accuracy and coverage.

China now operates the Gaofen network that has four satellites in service, but the system mainly serves government departments and the public sector rather than businesses, said Yang Yike, director of high-resolution satellite projects at CASC.

The two identical satellites are part of the SuperView network of at least 24 Earth observation satellites, which CASC expects to become one of the world’s largest commercial providers of space imagery and geospatial data, Yang said. He added that the whole system will be built by 2022.

Once the network is completed, it will consist of 16 optical satellites like the SuperView 1A and 1B, four optical satellites that are more advanced, four radar satellites and several mini-satellites, according to Yang.

Source