Skip to content

The Joint Research Centre of the European Commission presented on 18 October 2016 at the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) a series of numbers extracted from a new global database which tracks human presence on Earth.

The datasets are based on more than 12.4k billions of individual image data records collected by different satellite sensors in the past 40 years.

For instance, since 1975, built-up areas have increased by 2.5 times globally, while the global population increased by a factor of 1.8. Today 7.3 billion people live and work in only 7.6% of the global land mass.

Nine out of the ten most populated urban centres are in Asia, while five out of the ten largest urban centres are in the United States.

Read more…

(Source European Commission)

The German satellite duo TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X have consistently delivered one-of-a-kind Earth observation data since 2007 and 2010, hence shaping the international research landscape.

Now, scientific users from across the globe have gathered for the TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X Science Meeting at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen, where they will discuss the results obtained from the data and define requirements for future remote sensing technology. Approximately 200 presentations between 17 and 20 October 2016 will describe state-of-the-art research, including insight from the areas of glaciology, hydrology, permafrost, sea ice, landslides, agriculture, forestry, volcanology, coastal and ocean research, geo-risks, and the methods applied to produce digital terrain models. Reporting live from the conference, the TanDEM-X Blog will present DLR talks from the Science Meeting and will outline how researchers around the world use data from the two radar satellites.

Research applications

Radar sensors are particularly important in the field of Earth observation, as they can deliver images irrespective of cloud cover and at any time of the day or night. From space, they are able to capture expansive areas of more than 100 kilometres in length. Moreover, the civilian radar satellites TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X have measured the Earth with unprecedented accuracy over the course of their missions, contributing significantly to the scientific exploitation of the data. The satellites are still in operation and may indeed continue to be in the service of science for many years.

“International research facilities and organisations have been using the data acquired thus far to analyse, among other things, natural hazards such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis. The strategies and measures developed on the basis of the data will become increasingly effective for the prevention or management of crises situations as the influential factors and correlations are known,” explains Achim Roth from the DLR Earth Observation Center.

Users in the area of environmental protection have shown, among other things, that they can utilise the radar satellites to observe systematic deforestation or illegal felling of woodland areas. This applies in particular to rainforests, as their sheer magnitude and the prevailing weather conditions mean they can only be satisfactorily monitored using radar sensors. Forested areas are among the key fields of scientific concern, as their vast reservoirs of biomass directly influence the greenhouse gas effect: a substantial quantity of carbon dioxide is extracted from the woodlands during removal or decomposition of vegetation. Large-scale slash-and-burn practices are particularly critical, as the carbon dioxide stored in the forests is released directly, producing a correspondingly high concentration of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In contrast, planned deforestation – for instance as a source of timber – releases the natural carbon reservoirs contained in the woodland areas over a longer period and with a significant delay.

Impact on future research

The view from space can provide precise information on the changes taking place in glaciers and ice shelves. The sometimes dramatic developments require regular monitoring and must be viewed in context with global warming. Here, the TanDEM-X elevation model is a true treasure trove of data; never before have Greenland and the Antarctic been surveyed so comprehensively and in such immense detail. Until now, the ice masses have been, from a scientific perspective, ‘expanses of white’ on a map of the world.

The polar regions present immense difficulties for radar imaging. Smooth, snow-bound surfaces do not contain any striking points of reference that would permit the superposition of several images. Moreover, an extremely precise allocation of the pixels would lead to image noise. “Our highly accurate data processing technologies here on the ground, combined with meticulous calibration of the radar instrument, allow us to observe glacier movements in the centimetre range, or to measure changes in elevation caused by ice melting in the metre range,” says Irena Hajnsek from the DLR Microwaves and Radar Institute.The global TanDEM-X elevation model has now given climate researchers and geoscientists entirely new perspectives and opportunities for research. The insight they will acquire, and how this will influence the international research community, will be key issues at this Science Meeting as well as at future gatherings.

Looking ahead: HRWS and Tandem-L

Successful operation of the satellites in formation flight and the outstanding quality of data yielded by the TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X missions represent a new milestone in the history of Earth observation. Seeking to expand the German radar satellite programme, DLR has set its sights on a successor programme, HRWS (High Resolution Wide Swath), to ensure continuity in Earth observation within the proven X-band frequency range. HRWS is scheduled for launch in 2022, and DLR is also involved in intense work on a revolutionary Earth observation system with the Tandem-L mission proposal.

Tandem-L, the highly innovative radar mission, aims to acquire important environmental and meteorological data on a global scale and in high temporal resolution. In the proposed mission, two radar satellites will map the Earth’s landmass in three dimensions every eight days. This would enable timely and systematic mapping of dynamic processes as they unfold across the globe. Earthquake researchers and risk analysts would be able to detect deformations in the Earth’s surface in an accurate millimetre range. Glacier movements and melting processes across the polar regions would be measurable on a more regular and therefore precise basis. The plan proposes that the Earth observation data acquired by the three radar systems should be complementary.

Tandem-L will operate in a longer wavelength compared with the two current missions. An approximately 24-centimetre wavelength permits penetration through the vegetation, hence revealing surface structures in the subsoil. New technologies and imaging methods such as polarimetric SAR interferometry also enable three-dimensional mapping of forests. This could be used to calculate forest elevation and hence to produce an indirect estimate of biomass, a factor that is currently beyond the reach of science on a global scale.

Researchers from various Helmholtz Centres involved in preliminary mission studies will now present their findings in Oberpfaffenhofen, explaining the pivotal role of Tandem-L in providing answers to challenges faced by our environment. The Science Meeting offers the roughly 300 international participants a platform to identify all necessary issues of upcoming research and to launch the future of Earth observation.

About the mission

TanDEM-X is being implemented on behalf of DLR using funds from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie). It is a Public Private Partnership (PPP) project operated in conjunction with Airbus Defence and Space. DLR is responsible for providing TanDEM-X data to the scientific community, mission planning and implementation, radar operation and calibration, control of the two satellites, and generation of the digital elevation model. To this end, DLR has developed the necessary ground-based facilities. The DLR Microwaves and Radar Institute, the DLR Earth Observation Center, the German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) and the DLR Space Operations Facility in Oberpfaffenhofen are participating in the development and operation of the ground segment of TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X. Scientific coordination is the responsibility of the DLR Microwaves and Radar Institute. Airbus Defence and Space built the satellites and is sharing the development and operating costs. The company is also responsible for the commercial marketing of the TanDEM-X data.

Access to the TanDEM-X Digital Elevation Model (DEM) is restricted – DLR supplies the data free of charge to scientific projects. Interested parties must, however, demonstrate the scientific nature of their project with a proposal and submit it to DLR. All information about this can be found on the project website. Prospective commercial users of the data should contact DLR’s project partner, Airbus Defence and Space, where they can purchase the data.

The TanDEM-X mission dataset has been created by a public-private partnership. On the basis of this cooperation, DLR provides the data to the scientific community, while their industrial partner, Airbus, is responsible for commercial distribution. It is planned that the DTM will be made generally available at a lower resolution, so that processing of the data will also be possible with standard computer technology.

Airbus Defence and Space has launched One Atlas, a new basemap streaming service delivering access to its satellite imagery over the world, fully refreshed within a 12-month period. It is powered by Google Cloud Platform.

This service is a major leap forward for enabling access to satellite imagery for our customers by leveraging the power of Google Cloud Platform and Airbus Defence and Space technologies. A completely new approach in data storage, hosting and dissemination has been implemented utilizing Google Cloud Platform to ingest the several hundred Terabytes of data annually required by One Atlas. This will bring value to all our clients for a wide range of applications such as infrastructure preparatory studies, land management, agricultural lands and crop species mapping or even tree cover change detection in regions prone to deforestation.

“Our team at Google Cloud is dedicated to helping businesses find success with public cloud and innovative technologies, such as cloud machine learning. We’re excited to collaborate with Airbus Defence and Space to create new products and transform existing business models through the power of Google Cloud Platform” said Carl Schachter, VP of Google Cloud Platform.

Google Cloud Platform was selected from seven public Cloud providers due to its high-end technology, security resilience and strategic fit with Airbus Defence and Space’s business and development roadmap.

“All satellite data collected each day are automatically processed and made readily-accessible in a global imagery library that is stored in Google Cloud Platform,” said Bernhard Brenner, Head of the Intelligence Business Cluster at Airbus Defense and Space. “Google Cloud Platform’s global scale, low latency and infrastructure capacities in Europe give us the required performance, flexibility and scalability for current and future data volumes, ensuring a high level of service for our customers.”

Additional investigations into the use of Google Cloud Platform and other Google tools are currently ongoing at Airbus Defence and Space, e.g. the integration of other datasets such as TerraSAR-X radar data and WorldDEM into One Atlas, or the development of analytics services such as change detection and automatic object extraction. Very promising results have already been obtained from using Tensor Flow, an open source library for machine learning, and Cloud Machine Learning for automatic cloud detection.

Source ADS

magazine focus for the oil & gas community

Dear subscriber,

Firstly, thank you to all who responded to my experiment. People do read the magazine and they do find it useful.

As mentioned last time, an up-to-date mosaic of Africa has been produced but what about Europe? And now that these mosaics are being produced how are you going to use them, and how do you think users will actually use them? This magazine is a communication tool for you so if you have a new product, new idea or a question about how people would use a product then submit an article.

However, with all solutions it is important to understand that they may be just a piece in the jigsaw puzzle, and so it’s important that all pieces of information fit together (open, common standards), that you don’t have the same piece twice (repetition), and you have an idea what the completed picture may look like – understanding the task.

Richard Hall (OGEO Chairman, StatOil)

13. OGEOzine (n. 13) Autumn 2016.pdf

The market for EO data and services is changing rapidly. New satellites are launched seemingly each week, new sources of data become available and new processing technologies are making it ever easier to access this growing mountain of data. In response, services are moving from being a project based market to being on-line and available on subscription; Information as a Service is the term being used.
EARSC is planning to put in place some new mechanisms which should help the industry adjust to this new market.
Supported by ESA, EARSC is studying the possible conditions for establishing a Marketplace Alliance for EO Services (MAEOS).

The study started in June and should be completed in early 2017. Two documents have been published; a strawman architecture a stakeholder analysis (link). The latter follows an extensive consultation to which we received 140 responses to the on-line questionnaire with 107 of the responses being complete and independent.

The results show strong support for setting up a closer co-operation and helped enormously to clarify the complex landscape in which we are working. As a result, we are committed to setting up the MAEOS – to be studied further but most likely as a new grouping under EARSC – and also an EOMall. The latter will provide companies with a new way to do business in on-line services.

MAEOS will promote the capability and support market analysis as well as building on EARSC activities to establish links with other communities. Companies joining the EOMall will gather additional benefits as well as the big advantage of working in closer co-operation with other suppliers.

The outcome was presented to the EARSC board on 4th October which endorsed the results and confirmed that the industry should move immediately towards establishing the Marketplace Alliance as well as the EOMall – which could be a completely separate legal entity to EARSC. The result is that every company will be able to join the close collaboration in the EOMall, work in a lighter co-operation under MAEOS or stay outside both and operate independently.

The MAEOS study will be completed early next year with a meeting in January to present the options to companies in order that they can start to take decisions on the level of co-operation each one wishes to engage in. In the meantime, the interim results, including those from the stakeholder consultation analysis, will be presented on 25th October in Frascati. For more information please go here

More information can be found on our blog

(By Stig-Are-Thrana, US Sales Director, Kongsberg) KSAT adapted ideas and solutions early on to form the KSAT lite network by understanding the mindset of the company’s NewSpace customers.

The LEO market segment has talked about smallsat’s for decades; however, this time, there was a difference that KSAT noted… that analysis resulted in the firm dedicating R&D resources to become a preferred ground station provider for the NewSpace industry, an industry that embraces new methods of approaching space and are highly motivated by competition.

While others talked, KSAT deployed ground stations and created a platform that was ready to use. The company continued hands-on learning with their clients to understand their needs, from both a technical and business perspective. The company created viable technical solutions at affordable price points and developed new business models, all leading to KSAT becoming a leading NewSpace ground station provider.

In a little more than a decade KSAT has taken the position as a world leading ground station provider for the LEO satellite market. KSAT is currently operates 20 ground station sites around the globe and runs apertures on all of the world’s continents.

KSAT owns and operates uniquely positioned ground stations that span from 78 degrees north in Svalbard to 72 degrees south in Antarctica. Between five different sites in the Arctic and the one in Antarctica, KSAT has 14 additional sites located in the mid-latitude regions.

Access To Satellite Anywhere + At Anytime

The KSAT goal is to provide their customers with access to satellites from anywhere, anytime. The company has a clearly defined philosophy to provide to customers a global network that offers a one-stop-shop, rather than a station-per-station service approach. This allows KSAT ground network customers to make use of the entire global and operational network, a service that enables satellite owners to focus on their core business, which is to deliver crucial data and information services to end customers.

Unlike other companies, KSAT already has an operational network with more than 15 dedicated NewSpace assets in place. The network, KSATlite, has been designed and implemented in just under three years and is already providing services to several of the rapidly growing smallsat constellations, and more are underway. All assets in the KSAT network are KSAT lite capable and are deliver KSATlite support from the global networks.

Ground Systems Leader

How has KSAT reached this position as the world`s largest NewSpace ground segment provider? Customer centric business models and attractive prices, that’s how. The firm determined that the best way to conquer market share is to focus directly on the customer and to understand their needs. By providing better solutions and better prices that have been adapted to the new needs of the NewSpace companies, KSAT firmly believes that the best marketing program is via satisfied customers.

Technology and service flexibility is another key factor that drives success. KSAT operated ground stations since 1969 and, therefore, has a strong core of expertise in the field. KSAT explains that optimizing solutions for constellation support was crucial to meet the industry’s new mind-set. Customer input and adapting to the NewSpace way of thinking was a key accomplishment.

KSAT also understood that challenging the engineering group to take ownership and to design the system from a commercial NewSpace approach was important. The challenge was in trying to standardize the technology while at the same time allowing for a high degree of flexibility

A plug-and-play and one-size-fits-most approach was developed—thanks to customer feedback and significant growth, KSAT has hit the target and offers a solid platform for clients, while ensuring all solutions work on the continuously moving target that continues to move this industry forward.

Ka-band in Svalbard—Less Rain, More Gain

Pole-to-pole Ka-band support from Svalbard and Antarctica is already offered by the firm and Ka-band capabilities are being incorporated into the KSAT lite network. The first Ka-band support will be ready by the fall of 2016 from Svalbard. This will be a leap forward for the smallsat community. Svalbard is by far the best location for Ka-band support, as atmospheric loss is quite low. For the client, less rain means more gain.

Fully integrated solutions are offered, including baseband units that support a variety of the most used modulation types and protocols. Users are also able to “bring their own devices” to connect into the KSAT network. This allows customers to select what makes the most sense based on their mission needs and technical designs.

By using the KSAT integrated baseband units, customers can connect to a truly global KSAT lite network, and any needed satellite access time from this global network can be provided to customers in merely a matter of days.

Bringing Home The Data

KSAT can deliver data according to customer preferences over the Internet to cloud servicing companies such as Amazon, Google or Microsoft, or access to an onsite processing and storage can be provided. Flexibility is the aim; KSAT can enable the entire value chain for the customer, who can accesses the entire network through a centralized network operations center (NOC) located in Tromsø—TNOC, 24/7.

The power of TNOC unleashed the ability to purchase satellite contacts “by the drink,”through bulk passes or with global support for constellations. All this is available through a single interface and machine-to-machine (M2M) or human-to-machine(H2M) interface via a web browser. KSAT has taken measures to ensure satellite owners can access their satellite(s) anywhere, and at anytime.
ksat.no

Source

As the result of an agreement signed in late 2015 between the Australian Government and the European Commission, Australian researchers will gain access to the imagery and data generated by the European Union’s Copernicus Earth observation programme, delivered by the European Commission with key partners European Space Agency and EUMETSAT. This data will be disseminated via research and education network infrastructure worldwide, initially through GÉANT (the pan-European research and education network) and in Australia by AARNet, in partnership with Geoscience Australia.

The Copernicus program, previously known as GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) collects vast amounts of global data from satellites and other systems which it stores, analyses and distributes for a wide range of applications such as protecting the environment, promoting sustainable resource development, mitigating the effects of climate change and managing risks and emergency response for natural disasters.

Key to the programme is enabling fast access to these data for the international community through the establishment of regional data hubs.

AARNet is collaborating with GÉANT to provide the high-speed data access for the data hub located in Australia, which will serve users in the Southeast Asia and the South Pacific region. This regional data hub, managed by Geoscience Australia will be located at the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) in Canberra. Geosciences Australia will make the data available to users through a consortium that includes Australia’s CSIRO national research organisation and the Australian state governments of Western Australia, New South Wales and Queensland.

Chris Hancock, AARNet’s CEO, says the international network of research and education networks is uniquely positioned to ensure the distribution of Copernicus data globally.

“AARNet and the international network of research and education networks is built to deliver the scalable, robust capacity that meets the Copernicus programme’s rigorous demand for bandwidth and latency, reliability and geographical reach,” said Hancock.

“We are excited to be collaborating with our partners to develop the data access infrastructure that will provide Australia and our neighbours with new opportunities to address today’s most pressing challenges and improve everyday lives.”

Source

The United States is thinking big on small satellites. At the White House Frontiers Conference — a national convening to boost innovation — hosted by US President Barack Obama in Pittsburgh this week, $50 million have been earmarked in federal funds to harness the smallsat revolution.

By receiving continuously updated imagery of the Earth through smallsats, the administration aims to increase the adoption of small satellites for commercial, scientific, and national security needs.

Of these $50 million, NASA will invest $30 million to support public-private partnership opportunities in the smallsat domain. This means that constellations of commercial smallsats will be tapped for earth science observations by the government for a variety of purposes.

NGA partnership with Planet

The news comes on the heels of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) entering into a $20 million data purchase agreement with smallsat startup Planet. NGA Director Robert Cardillo has admitted before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Sep 27 the agency is looking to purchase and co-develop alerting services and algorithms for automated object-change detection from commercial data streams.

“This will enable analysts to leverage commercial sources they would not otherwise have time to individually exploit. That’s why NGA has expanded outreach and coordination over the last year to the most mature of the ‘new space’ providers such as Planet, Terra Bella, and BlackSky Global to assess mission utility and access to operational data and services,” Cardillo had testified.

Obama pushes for innovation

Meanwhile, Obama pushed for innovation in a recent article for Wired.com as well. “We need not only the folks at MIT or Stanford or the NIH but also the mom in West Virginia tinkering with a 3D printer, the girl on the South Side of Chicago learning to code, the dreamer in San Antonio seeking investors for his new app, the dad in North Dakota learning new skills so he can help lead the green revolution,” he wrote, adding that the US must keep funding scientific, technological, and medical research.

The Co-Founder and President of Planet, Robbie Schingler — who was present at the White House Frontiers Conference — calls initiatives like this a rebirth of space activities, or the Space Renaissance. He said in a blog post, “It seems that with each passing month, there is a new space-bound company or initiative announced. This is extraordinary. It is like a new breed of aerospace entrepreneurs are forming with innovation coming from unlikely places to create new low-Earth orbit missions.”

(13 September 2016) It’s an exciting day at Planet—I’m pleased to announce that Planet has struck a deal with the innovative fintech company, FarmDrive. Based in Kenya, FarmDrive parses data from a variety of sources to provide financial services to a traditionally underserved market: smallholder farmers.

Specifically, FarmDrive applies data analytics and machine learning technologies to agricultural markets data and in-field observations to create comprehensive credit profiles and tailored loan products for farmers across Africa. Planet’s frequent satellite imagery provides a new insight-rich layer of data that can contribute to FarmDrive’s super-accurate credit profiles.

Planet and FarmDrive aren’t in this alone, however. We’ll be working in cooperation with the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) and Chicago-based firm, The Impact Lab, to assess satellite imagery’s validity as a data source for risk assessment on small farms.

I can say without a doubt that the Planet team is thrilled to have FarmDrive as a partner. Together, we’ll harness the power of frequent satellite imaging, and the latest automated analysis methods to help smallholder farmers succeed.

Learn more about Planet’s imagery products

IABG has developed the WoodCA app for digital and mobile measurement of timber stacks. Using a photo-optical method, the number of logs is determined and the stack volume is automatically calculated.

Thanks to its mobile application and clear time-saving features, WoodCA is superior to conventional methods. WoodCA works on Windows operating systems (starting from Win8), is compatible with existing forest IT infrastructures, does not require internet connection and provides an independent reference dimension for the sales process. All measurement results can interactively be edited on-site already and be archived fully automatically.

Logs had to be separately counted and volumes had to be individually determined when measuring timber stacks in the past. IABG’s new app relieves users of this laborious and time-consuming work.

An intuitive control concept leads users through the measurement of stacks and inventory assessment in three steps. Log stacks are hereby photographed using single images that are merged into a panorama view allowing to automatically detect all visible log front surfaces. The user is able to manually edit results, e.g., to add front surfaces covered by grass or undergrowth. In addition to the number of logs, WoodCA automatically determines the log volume in steres and solid cubic meters as well as the strength class distribution. For this purpose, a reference measure must be entered which was collected beforehand with a tape measure between two individual logs. The results, including the stacks’ GPS coordinates, can be archived and exported in different formats, such as pdf, csv or ELDAT.

Thanks to the clear and intuitive menu structure, the app can virtually be used by anyone, even by people with no affiliation to the forestry and timber industry whatsoever. The app furthermore requires no additional aids. WoodCA does not only document the harvested timber quantity, it also provides an independent reference dimension. When compared to the measure at mill gate, it contributes to a more transparent sales process.

IABG will present WoodCA to a broad specialised public at INTERGEO in Hamburg, the leading exhibition on geodesy, geo information and land management from 11 to 13 October. Visitors are invited to get to know and test WoodCA in hall A4 at stand B4.027.

Source