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Summary

Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT) in Tromsø, Norway, has since 1998 been a world leading provider of an operational near real-time service using satellite radar data to detect oil discharges and locate potential polluters. Extensive experience, close integration with satellite owners and end-users, and continuous innovation has made the KSAT oil spill detection service a World Class service. The development has undergone several phases R&D, through demonstrations and pilot projects with involvement from the end-users, onto todays operational utilisation. National and European (ESA) programs were important during the initial phases. The service is today used by national authorities, offshore oil and gas industry and by the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) on behalf of the European coastal states.

Issues and needs

Discharges of oil from ships, oil platforms and other sources can cause significant damage to coastlines and the marine environment in general. It is not always the largest spills that cause the worst damage, as the timing and location of a spill can sometimes be more critical impact determinants than the volume of oil introduced. Satellite radar (SAR) data can provide wide area monitoring day and night and operate independently of weather conditions and is an excellent tool for detecting oil films on the sea surface, either independently or in combination with other data.

Oil companies have a high degree of environmental awareness, social responsibility and reputation is also an important issue. Some have been accused of illegal discharges that are actually caused by dumping from bypassing ship traffic, and the service information can provide valuable documentation in case of such false accusations. The satellite based service is used for self monitoring and early warning of accidental leakages from offshore installations, or just for documentation of clean seas in areas.

The KSAT satellite oil spill monitoring service has been developed in cooperation with users, including the Norwegian offshore industry, the Norwegian Coastal Administration, the Swedish Coast Guard, the Finnish Environmental Institute, the Admiral Danish Fleet and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) of the UK. Since 2007 EMSA has contracted a satellite monitoring service, CSN, to the European service industry and KSAT has been a lead partner since the beginning.

The solution

The customer is responsible to define the areas to be monitored and the monitoring frequency. It is then up to KSAT to assure the availability of the satellite data for reception a KSAT ground station for further processing, and analysis. Time is crucial for and the KSAT oil spill analysis results and satellite images are delivered to the customer within 30 to 120 minutes after satellite acquisition, depending on satellite and user requirements.

KSAT utilises satellite data in combination with additional data to identify and discriminate oil slicks from other phenomenon in the image, pin-point the location, estimate the size and assign a confidence parameter and identify a potential source. Vessel traffic information such as terrestrial and satellite AIS (Automatic Identification System) is used for identifying possible pollution source(s). Information on offshore installations and metocean conditions (wind, waves) is also useful as support for discriminating man made slick and identifying possible polluters.

The KSAT service is provided twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week. By using our global ground network in combination with the agreements with the satellite operators we can provide very fast access to global satellite radar data, both under normal circumstances and in case of emergencies. If an oil spill is detected an alert message is delivered to the customer, either as a phone message, email report or SMS message depending on customer preference. Each customer also has access to a dedicated web portal with information on all data and products delivered.

The result of the analysis distributed to the customer includes:

  • Time of observation
  • Position in Latitude/Longitude.
  • Confidence assignment of the identified spill.
  • If a potential source could be identified, this information is included in the message.
  • Predicted wind information from numerical models
  • SAR based wind information

The KSAT web portal provides access to the oil spill service, and offers data search and retrieval functionality, map based dynamic and interactive viewing, overlaying of datasets, interactive user reporting facilities and some data manipulation functions, as illustrated herein.

KSAT supports most commercial satellites today, e.g. including Radarsat, Cosmo-Skymed and TerraSAR, but also optical missions. The actual selection might be a function of the coverage frequency at a specific location, the delivery times, local and national regulatory requirements, and budgetary constraints. KSAT has a broad expertise to carefully match what is technically possible in a given location to the needs and capabilities of the end user. 

In case of a large incident, KSAT can include additional satellites to increase the monitoring frequency, introducing optical satellite coverage, or modifying the defined area of interest. This was demonstrated during the large accident in the Gulf of Mexico.


Figure 1: SAR image from the west coast of Norway. An oil spill is visible in the middle of the image, and several vessels are also detected. The AIS positions with tracks (indicated as icons with green boats and green lines) are overlaid the image, and the potential source is identified. Copyrigth raw data ESA, 2009

Results and perspectives

Satellite radars are in general capable to detect oil spills at wind speeds ranging from app 5m/s up to 18 m/s. The detected features include mostly mineral oil, but also plant oil, fish oil, chemical spills and algae blooms. Three different confidence categories are assigned to a spill, Low, Medium or High, depending upon a set of observation feature and sea state description criteria. User verifications show that more than 2/3 of the reported High confidence spills are real spills. These customers use the service information to coordinate and perform more efficient operations of the surveillance aircrafts.

Identification of the potential source has become very important for the users. KSAT uses AIS data in combination with the satellite radar to identify and report about who might be the most likely polluting source. It is then up the user to take the next step for final identification and eventual prosecution. The figures show examples of the detected and reported features, as well as examples of combined use of satellite and AIS data.

The KSAT multimission service utilises in principle any satellite radar mission, as opposite to those relying only on a single mission. This showed very useful when Envisat was lost, where KSAT could continue to support the customers by using Radarsat and TerraSAR. Recently KSAT has included global data reception and processing capabilities for Cosmo-Skymed.

KSAT has been a pioneer in developing the service since its start. The service reliability is accepted among the customers, and new missions like Sentinel-1 and Radarsat Constellation will ensure service continuity. KSAT were the lead provider in establishing the European use and since then we have focused on the global market. Today KSAT is serving customers in Europe as well as in America, Asia and Australia. For the coming years we expect a strong global growth, and KSAT will be present to serve these markets.


Figure 2: Pipeline rupture outside India. January 2011. Radarsat satellite radar image (upper) and aerial photo documentation (lower). Copyright raw data MacDonaldDettweiler, 2011

About

Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT) in Tromsø, Norway, is a world leading provider of Earth Observation services and satellite Ground Station services. The company has been involved in satellite operations from Tromsø for over 40 years and has through several projects and service contracts demonstrated that radar satellites is an efficient tool to provide early warning to offshore operators and to assist national authorities in detecting oil discharges and locating potential polluters.

Points of Contact
Kongsberg Satellite Services, KSAT
Prestvannveien 38, BO Box 6180
N-9291 Tromsø
Norway
Phone: +47 776 00 250
sales@ksat.no
www.ksat.no

Kongsberg Satellite Services AS (KSAT) is a commercial Norwegian company, uniquely positioned to provide ground station and earth observation services for polar orbiting satellites. With three interconnected polar ground stations; Tromsø at 69°N, Svalbard (SvalSat) at 78°N and Antarctic TrollSat Station at 72°S, and a growing mid-latitude network, KSAT operates over 60 antennas optimally positioned for access to polar orbits.

Ground Network Services

KSAT is the global leader in providing ground station network services including Telemetry, Tracking and Commanding (TT&C) and Data Acquisition services, with experience all the way back to 1967. With a large number of sites and antennas available, KSAT provides the very high reliability that is needed for critical support of satellite operations.

  • Telemetry, Tracking & Command (TT&C)
  • Data Acquisition
  • Hosting Services
  • LEOP & Launch Support
  • Sounding Rocket Support
  • Data Handling

Earth Observation Services

KSAT supports most of the commercial satellites in orbit and can provide timely imagery and data independent of satellite ownership. With our unique ground station network and experienced analysts, ‘near-real-time’ operational information can often be provided within 30 minutes. KSAT’s multi-mission maritime monitoring services have been provided to coastguards, pollution-control authorities and oil companies since 1998.

  • Oil Spill Detection Service
  • Vessel Detection Service
  • Multi Mission Rapid Response
  • Ice Navigation
  • Nasjonal bruk og tilgang til data

KSAT has supplied multi-mission near real-time services for more than a decade. The main focus has been marine applications, where services for oil spill, vessel detection, wind information and real-time image access for navigation are provided. The capability of providing near real-time customized information has been a key to the success of these services. KSAT focuses on customized multi-mission services, and development of new operational services tailored to user requirements has a high priority. Services for Emergency situations, land applications and ice berg tracking are being established as part of KSAT Rapid response and Near real-time service portfolio. KSAT is now also developing new data services particularly for forestry. KSAT will ensure operational access to multi-mission optical and SAR data products e.g. at a geocoded format suitable for forest mapping and monitoring.

Multi-mission near real-time services

The distribution of SAR and optical data acquired and processed at the Tromsø Station, Grimstad, SvalSat and the Troll station in Antarctica represents a major element in the business activities. The processing facilities and distribution chain has been designed and developed for very fast deliveries of data to customers with operational needs. Near real-time is by KSAT defined as delivery of data and/or information in 30 to 60 minutes after acquisition.

KSAT process and deliver image products from Envisat, Radarsat-1, Radarsat-2, ALOS, Kompsat-2, Formosat-2 and Terra/MODIS. In addition KSAT has data distribution agreements for infoterra’s high resolution SAR satellites; TerraSAR- X and soon Tandem-X, and Digital Globe’s high resolution optical satellites; Worldview -2, WorldView-1 and QuickBird. KSAT also contributes to the Norwegian investment in the Canadian Radarsat program, providing access to data for institutional and commercial customers at favorable conditions.

KSAT has a highly qualified order and supports centre and is a one-stop access point for multi-mission data users. Our services include planning and ordering support, scheduling, data acquisition, processing, value adding and dissemination of information – all through a dedicated and well defined interface.

KSAT is continuously working to reduce delivery time for supported missions. New concepts and service chains are being developed and tested in close cooperation with satellite operators and key end users such as Norwegian Defense and UNOSAT-UNITAR. Through these activities delivery time has been reduced to less than 2.5 hours for optical satellites and less than 15 minutes for SAR satellites. The target is Near Real Time deliver for all supported missions!

Maritime environment and situational awareness

By utilizing state-of-the-art technology and experienced operators, KSAT provides satellite based oil spill and vessel detection services to coastguards and pollution-control authorities. The services are based on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) in combination with optical imagery and integrated with non-space data.

The overall aim of these services is to provide detection and early warning of possible oil spills and associated sources for regional environmental monitoring, and to provide information about vessels and associated activity in a certain area at a given time. The information is relevant for the Defense, Coastguards and for authorities responsible for fisheries or ship traffic monitoring. The
rapid delivery from the satellite service makes the information effective in support to surveillance means like coastguard vessels and surveillance aircrafts. Oil spill or detected vessels are reported to customers as fast as possible after satellite acquisition, typically 30 to 60 minutes.

The KSAT service has been used operational in Europe for many years and since 2007 a KSAT lead consortium has provided 24 European Coastal States with satellite based oil spill information through the CleanSeaNet service contract with the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA).

The KSAT Emergency response service allows rapid set-up of a complete multi- mission satellite based service for any given area. The monitoring density will be adapted to each individual case and can be adjusted as the situation develops. This service was activated and used during the first month of the Deepwater Horizon accident in Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. Such situations are characterized by a huge need for information – and short deadlines. One single satellite system will not meet all requirements, so the rapid set-up of the KSAT multi-mission service concept where end users have one access point to all applicable satellites is the optimal solution.

KSAT is continuously working on service improvement and development of new services. The new generation services is based on information derived from the satellite data, integrated with additional information such as wind, wave and current from SAR-images, numerical models information, observations, and additional geographical database information. KSAT also provides satellite imagery for measuring sea surface temperature and ocean colour. The new generation of integrated services will be a KSAT contribution to the Barents Watch system now being established in Tromsø under the responsibility of the Norwegian Coastal Directorate.

Ice navigation services

Any journey in the ice infested waters of the Arctic Ocean is a journey into the unknown with no up-to-date detailed map of the ice conditions readily available. Icebergs may represent a threat for offshore oil and gas activities as well as for commercial ship traffic and fisheries. KSAT is now developing a service where the aim is to detect and monitor the drift of the icebergs.

KSAT also provide near real – time access to the satellite images for users operating in the high North. These users can connect to the image server at KSAT in Tromsø to access the latest radar satellite image of the sea ice conditions immediately ahead of them. This enables the users to receive the very latest information on the sea ice conditions and use it for navigation.

Global Ground Station Network

KSAT owns and operates three polar ground stations. SvalSat, the world’s largest ground station for polar LEO satellites is located at 78 degrees north. SvalSat is augmented with the Tromsø station and the Troll site in Antarctica. With the new ground stations in Hartebeesthoek, Bangalore, Dubai and Singapore, KSAT offers a global network of stations for all clients.

  • Svalbard Satellite Station (Svalsat)
  • Tromsø satellite Station
  • Troll Satellite Station (TrollSat) – Antarctica
  • Grimstad
  • Hartebeesthoek – South Africa
  • Dubai
  • Mauritius
  • Singapore

General

Earth Observation

Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT)
Prestvannveien 38, 9011 Tromsø
Mailaddress; P.O. Box 6180, 9291 Tromsø, Norway
E-mail: ksat@ksat.no
Telephone: (+47) 77 60 02 50 // Telefax: (+47) 77 60 02 99

Made-in-Italy value added environmental and infrastructure monitoring services and infomobility solutions.

INNOVA Consorzio per l’Informatica e la Telematica srl is an Italian SME specialized as a service and technology provider for the Earth Observation, Remote Sensing, Logistics and Public Administration sectors.

Our mission is to provide innovative and qualitative operational services, with close attention to new market developments, state-of-the-art technological solutions and satisfying customer requirements. We count today with 18 highly qualified experts and two company divisions: Earth Observation and Infomobility. Each division is equipped with its own R&D lab.

Earth Observation Division

Our main activity lies in the Remote Sensing and Earth Observation sectors. INNOVA’s key remote sensing technologies are:

  • the elaboration of satellite images using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data for various environmental and structural monitoring applications;
  • the elaboration of Radio Occultation data used for satellite positioning using GPS technology and meteorology.

The company has had a major role in the COSMO-SkyMed (COnstellation of small Satellites for Mediterranean basin Observation) mission since its inception. It is the largest Italian investment in Space Systems for Earth Observation, commissioned and funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and the Italian Ministry of Defence (MoD), conceived as a Dual-Use (Civilian and Defence) end-to-end Earth Observation System aimed to establish a global service supplying provision of data, products and services compliant with well-established international standards and relevant to a wide range of applications, such as Risk Management, Scientific and Commercial Applications and Defence/ Intelligence Applications.

The system consists of a constellation of four Low Earth Orbit mid-sized satellites, each equipped with a multi-mode high-resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) operating in X-band. Within the programme, INNOVA has been involved in the analysis and prototyping of the focusing algorithms for the StripMap and Spotlight acquisition modes to generate Single Look Complex, Multilooked, Detected, Ground Projected and/or DEM Projected images.

With the know-how acquired in this initial activity, the company designed and developed the following processors present today in the User Ground Segment (UGS):

  • deformatting processor to generate Level 0 products from data acquired in all acquisition modes;
  • focusing of SAR raw data in the highest resolution SpotLight acquisition mode for the generation of Level 1A products;
  • processor for the generation of Level 1B products using data acquired in StripMap and Spotlight.

Highlight of said experience is without a doubt the design and development of the processor to focus very high resolution data acquired in Spotlight acquisition mode, of great interest for civil, but mostly, military defence applications.

INNOVA is currently involved in the validation and calibration activities for the commissioning phase of the constellation satellites and has collaborated with Telespazio S.p.A. during Phases A and B of the COSMO Second Generation.

INNOVA has also been actively involved in the ROSA (Radio Occultation for Sounding the Atmosphere), programme of the Italian Space Agency (ASI). One of ASI’s priorities is indeed Earth Observation and in particular understanding climate change and the water cycle.

ROSA has become the heart of a scientific mission that represents Italy’s contribution to better understand climate change. The Radio Occultation technique, with the advent of satellite constellations such as GPS and GLONASS, and the near future GALILEO, allows for a detailed global study of the Earth’s atmospheric parameters.

These characteristics render Radio Occultation an extremely useful technique for the following applications:

  • meteorology/climatology: having a good knowledge of the humidity, pressure and temperature profiles on a global scale will increase the accuracy of weather models and of Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP);
  • Space Weather (electrons density profile in the ionosphere): knowing the total electron content (TEC) in the ionosphere (from a height of approximately 80 km to 700 Km) is extremely interesting for forecasts and Space Weather modelling;
  • Solid Earth Physics: Precise Orbit Determination (POD) of a satellite is of great interest for Solid Earth Physics.

As a continuation of our scientific and industrial activities in ROSA, June 2012 sees the beginning of GIANTGMSPAZIO INNOVA Atmospheric New Toolkit, an ESA project co-financed under the GSTP programme, which has as main objective to add the capability of importing and handling atmospheric parameters derived from the Radio Occultation (RO) technique and from Ground-Based GPS measures, into a market proven commercial software for general purpose real scenario simulation, specifically AGI STKTM a software used to solve basic location and inter-visibility problems associated with land, sea, air and space scenarios.

Infomobility Division

Over the last few years the company has also focused on infomobility / fleet management systems that use GPS satellite navigation and of course, ESA’s future GALILEO. Regarding the infomobility sector, the company’s key technologies are based on satellite navigation to provide the following infomobility services:

  • monitoring of public and private transport, logistics and waste collection vehicles;
  • monitoring and integrated waste management of dangerous and non-dangerous waste materials;
  • mobility support for disabled citizens.

Significant investment has been made to develop an innovative state-of-the-art second generation web-based infomobility platform, TrackingSolution. We are today a service provider and monitor over 500 vehicles for clients in the Logistics, Transport and Waste Management sectors.

Tracking Solution can be applied to management and operational requirements of other sectors. The platform is already available for the following fields:

  • Integrated Management of the Waste Collection Cycle (Control PTO, emptying of the rubbish skips, compacting cycles, dumps, brush wheel control, integration with RFID technology for automatic recognition of rubbish skips with transponders, Android/iPhone operator software);
  • Public Transport (Dial-A-Ride transport management, integration with intelligent poles).

Success Stories

DIAN S.r.l. – a start-up is born

A definite success story, especially considering the economic crises that has been affecting Europe for the last few years, is the founding of our start-up, DIAN S.r.l. (Differential Interferometric Analysis).

DIAN operates in the advanced tertiary sector as a provider of remote sensing and non-destructive infrastructure monitoring engineering services and is the natural progression of entrepreneurial know-how and over 15 years of scientific research in the remote sensing and non-destructive monitoring fields.

The services offered by DIAN are based on the Synthetic Aperture Radar technology with data acquired by satellite and ground based radar sensors:

  • environmental monitoring services, such as landslides, landslips and land subsistence, providing measurements of the morphological changes of the land both on a large scale using satellite data and on small-scale using ground-based radar;
  • static and dynamic monitoring as well as non-destructive monitoring of infrastructures such as: bridges, viaducts, buildings, churches and any other infrastructure of particular artistic value, industrial infrastructures and wind farms;
  • infrastructure stability monitoring services of railway lines, motorways, oil pipelines, gas pipelines.

DIAN offers an innovative solution and the greatest challenge is showing how our services compare with standard techniques used in the market today. Key strengths are:

  • Speed: few minutes to measure vibrations of the whole structure
  • Accuracy: sub-millimetre precision and accuracy of interferometric measurements
  • Interactivity: results available directly in the field
  • Cost-effectiveness: a single measurement can avoid installing many accelerometers
  • Non-destructive: marker-less for structures difficult to access
  • Dense: tenths of monitored points per square meter
  • In-depth: 2D displacement maps for post-measurement numerical analysis|
Figure 1- GBSAR monitoring of slope displacements

Figure 2- DAM Displacement Map

Figure 3- Displacement Map

The first year has taken us all over Italy where we have carried out numerous test campaigns. Highlights are:

  • Vibration measurement of a bell tower;
  • Measurement of dam displacements;
  • Measurement of slope displacements;
  • Static and dynamic bridge acceptance test;
  • Terrain displacement measurement of landslide area.

Integrated Waste Collection Platform

Waste collection in Italy is going through exciting changes as Municipalities must fulfill waste collection and recycling legislation. INNOVA’s innovative solution for the Integrated Management of the Waste Collection Cycle is proving to be a successful answer to new market requirements.

Our state-of-the-art solution combines web-based, GPS and RFID technology and has been designed to help municipalities and waste collection operators monitor and manage the complete waste collection cycle.

The platform manages:

  • the waste collection vehicle fleet,
  • the waste collection containers,
  • ground crew personnel.

and monitors:

  • PTO control,
  • waste collection containers,
  • compaction cycles,
  • waste unloading,
  • road cleaning brush activation control,
  • automatic recognition of containers with transponders,
  • operator software for Android / iPhone.
Figure 4- RFID & GPS Monitoring of Waste Collection Skips
Figure 5- Ground Crew Smartphone Application

In this context, the technology platform proposed by INNOVA gives all users (municipalities, operators and residents) the possibility of knowing the type of material that is recycled and the given quantity. This information is useful for municipalities to define a reward system that incentivizes recycling, offering greater savings to more environmentally friendly users.

Innova

DMC International Imaging Ltd (DMCii) is one of the world’s fastest growing satellite imagery products and services providers. Based in the UK, we have customers in 100 countries around the globe, supplying both programmed and archived optical satellite imagery from the multi-satellite Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC).

We supply imagery for a wide variety of applications, including agriculture, forestry and environmental mapping as well as providing free satellite imagery for humanitarian use in the event of major international disasters as a member of the International Charter ‘Space and Major Disasters’.

Further growth in DMCii services offers new 2.5m imagery; whilst three new satellites are due to provide daily 1m imaging in 2015.

DMCii kicks off 2013 with a move to larger dedicated facilities, and is investing heavily in developing new ways to allow our customers to rapidly procure and receive our imagery through ever higher temporal resolution imaging services.

Mapping the urban sprawl

DMCii’s VHR service offers competitively priced high quality true 2.5m panchromatic and 5m multispectral imagery from NigeriaSat-2.

The NigeriaSat-2 satellite provides rapid response high resolution imagery at a very competitive price. DMCii supplies 20×20km images, or can acquire up to 80×80km in area mode in a single pass. For mapping larger areas, along track imaging up to 200km is possible, enabling rapid coverage of larger areas.

NigeriaSat-2’s 2.5m resolution imagery incorporates the latest developments in geometric calibration and high accuracy geo-location, providing accurate metre-level mapping that can be used to distinguish individual buildings and roads.

Imagery is delivered as L1R product, with geospatial accuracy of a few pixels enabling end-users to rapidly orthorectify to their own reference data.

This has proved an indispensible resource to Nigeria for national land use monitoring and the planning of new infrastructure to meet the requirements of a burgeoning urban population. The satellite also provides data continuity with its 350km wide swath 32m 4-band multi-spectral imagery, as part of the DMC.

For mapping landscapes or urban clutter, stereoscopic pairs are also available.

Contact DMCii at info@dmcii.com to discuss your VHR imaging needs.


New York City, USA. NigeriaSat-2 Image © NASRDA, 2012. All rights reserved.


Salt Lake City Airport, USA at 2.5m resolution. NigeriaSat-2 Image © NASRDA, 2011. All rights reserved.

Maximising crop yields with precision

DMCii’s high revisit, wide area, 22m multispectral satellite imagery provides a detailed view of farm and field that has proved a highly-valued tool for agricultural services and farmers in pinpointing variations in crop growth and condition.

This allows farmers to gain significant yield and cost benefits from variable rate application of fertiliser or crop protection. Because the DMC satellites are operated together as a constellation, they offer much more timely data than a single satellite, delivering rapid revisit opportunities every 1-2 days.

The aim is to maximise crop yield and quality while minimising production costs and environmental impact. For over eight years DMC data has been utilised by specialist precision agriculture companies for this purpose and our data is approved by the US Department of Agriculture which, since 2011, has used DMC 22m data for high temporal monitoring of agriculture in all 48 conterminous States.


The Fen, Cambridgeshire. UK-DMC2 Image © DMCii, 2010. All rights reserved.

Tracking global deforestation

A constellation of Earth observation satellites gives DMCii the unique capability to survey and image vast areas of land and to monitor changes rapidly. DMCii has been employed by the Brazilian Government since 2005, helping the authorities to quantify deforestation in the Amazon Basin and pro-actively intervene to deter illegal logging. Brazil has cut deforestation rates by 78% since 2004 and satellite data has played a significant role in this. The Brazilian Space Agency receives imagery directly broadcast from our UK-DMC2 satellite at its ground station in Brazil which is made available through its website enabling the general public to follow progress against deforestation.


Mato Grosso, Brazil. UK-DMC2 Image © DMCii, 2012. All rights reserved.

DMCii provided high-frequency imagery of Argentina for use in Geodan’s Earthwatchers crowdsourcing platform. Earthwatchers gave students an active part in stopping deforestation by giving them each access to DMCii imagery of an area of forest to monitor for changes. Due to the frequency and transparency of DMCii imagery, and the ability to monitor vast areas through crowdsourcing, Greenpeace Argentina successfully lobbied the local government to halt deforestation and protect the forest.

In September, DMCii launched a ground-breaking project with support from the UK’s innovation agency, the Technology Strategy Board, to provide more accurate and reliable information about land carbon storage and how it changes over time. This initiative will provide scientifically validated carbon market intelligence and an automated Monitoring, Verification and Reporting (MRV) system to help organisations in their efforts to reduce deforestation and degradation. This system is designed for use in supporting REDD+ initiatives and aims to significantly reduce the transaction costs incurred in trading forest based carbon.

Daily 1m imaging service

DMCii also pioneers a VHR capacity leasing service, whereby our customers can lease image capacity from a DMCii-owned and operated satellite. Under this system, customers can carry out planning and tasking without the complexity associated with procuring and operating a satellite constellation.

In 2011, DMCii signed a £110m deal with Beijing-based company 21AT, to lease 100% of the imaging capacity of three high-resolution satellites that are to be launched into a new Earth Observation constellation “DMC3”. The DMC3 satellites are being built by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) and will provide daily revisit with 1m panchromatic and 4m multi-spectral imagery. The use of the constellation will allow rapid imaging and revisit to effectively monitor the phenomenal rate of urban development in China’s cities.

The daily 1m service will be commercially available worldwide and, through DMCii, you can secure your data supply prior to launch of the system in 2014.


Fire in the Niger Delta, Bayelsa, Nigeria. UK-DMC2 Image © DMCii, 2012. All rights reserved.

DMCii is a wholly owned subsidiary of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, and part of EADS Astrium NV.

Contact:

  • Paul Stephens, Sales & Marketing Director, DMC International Imaging Ltd.
    Tel: +44 (0)1483 804299 Email: p.stephens@dmcii.com
  • Martin Philp, Sales Manager, DMC International Imaging Ltd.
    Tel: +44 (0)1483 344820 Email: m.philp@dmcii.com
    www.dmcii.com

Rather than fight the laws, the Mayor of Paragominas, Adnan Demachki, wanted to develop a plan to turn his county in to a national example for green conservation. He turned to people across different societal sectors to create alliances which developed into a solid plan to ensure that the farmers in his county can coexist with the forest.

Introduction

The RapidEye satellite constellation has proven invaluable within the scientific and governmental arenas since the first images were taken over four years ago. Its five meter multi-spectral imagery can be used for a wide range of purposes from assisting farmers in monitoring their crops to helping foresters manage beetle infestations killing their trees. In addition, RapidEye imagery has proven well-suited for projects that are important for the environment and meaningful for future generations.

RapidEye has secured a continuing role in environmental monitoring because of its high revisit capability, spatial resolution, and five spectral bands including the Red Edge band. As an added bonus, collection capabilities have recently increased from four million km² to an astonishing five million km² of data every day. RapidEye’s five satellites, capable of returning to any point on earth daily and featuring a seventy-seven (77) kilometer imagery swath width, makes the RapidEye system a leader in providing large area coverages within short time frames.

Currently, RapidEye imagery is used as a key component in important environmental programs including MALAREO (www.malareo.net), aimed at the elimination of Malaria in southern Africa; supporting the UN REDD initiative in Guyana, and helping to stem the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest.

John Ahlrichs from RapidEye and Carlos Souza Jr. of Imazon recently sat down in Brazil to discuss the background and history of the Green Municipality Program, which relies on RapidEye imagery for its solution to control deforestation in the Amazon.

CARs’ Can Save a Forest:
How Imazon and Santiago & Cintra Consultoria are Helping to Decrease Degradation in the Amazon With a Solution Incorporating RapidEye Satellite Imagery

Drawing the Line

Putting an end to illegal deforestation and forest degradation in the Amazon has become a priority in Brazil, and over the years, laws have been implemented which require a certain percentage of each rural property be set aside as a Legal Forest Reserve.

The Rural and Environmental Cadastre system (CAR in Portuguese), is a federal program that contemplates the needs of environmental sustainability as well as of agricultural production and is responsible for managing and tracking more than five million individual properties and owner compliance with the forest reserve’s rules.

While CAR has been in existence since the late 1990s, only a small percentage of properties have been registered under this system. The expectation is that the program will eventually produce a CAR certificate for each landowner.

The Economic Impact of Law Enforcement

Brazil passed a law in 2008 that placed individual municipalities with above average deforestation and degradation rates on an environmental blacklist. Just one year later, 43 of the over 900 municipalities (counties) in the Amazon basin had been blacklisted. Once on the blacklist, counties are no longer eligible for any state environmental development aid, nor are banks able to provide farmers operating loans until it can be proven that their land use is abiding by preserve regulations.

Greenpeace Brazil also became involved and insisted that the market play a role in reducing deforestation. In response to the pressure, an industry association called ABIOVE began preventing these same ranchers and farmers from selling cattle or soybeans for noncompliance with the law, which caused an immediate economic impact in the affected counties. This action by ABIOVE became known as The Soybean Moratorium.

As a result of these actions, the county of Paragominas was placed on the blacklist. Paragominas, located in the eastern Amazon, is home to more than 100,000 people and is 20,000 km² or twice the size of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, United States.

Rather than fight the laws, the Mayor of Paragominas, Adnan Demachki, wanted to develop a plan to turn his county in to a national example for green conservation. He turned to people across different societal sectors to create alliances which developed into a solid plan to ensure the farmers in his county could coexist with the forest.

In his search for resources, Mr. Demachki approached Imazon, one of the key regional NGOs working toward ending deforestation in the Amazon, to find a solution. Carlos Souza Jr., formerly the Director, now Senior Researcher and Coordinator of the Forest Monitoring Program at Imazon, has a strong GIS and image analysis unit located in Belem, in the state of Pará. Mr. Souza and his team promised to help the mayor find some answers.

A solution eventually emerged to develop a rural cadaster process for each farmer or rancher to register his land using recently-collected five meter RapidEye imagery as a background and to verify ongoing compliance with annual image collections.

As the preliminary solution went outside the funding and organizational scope of the NGO, Imazon entered into a strategic partnership with Santiago & Cintra Consultoria (SCCON), RapidEye’s sales partner in Brazil, to assist in the development.

The resulting partnership then prompted the Paragominas municipal government to implement the first county-wide land registration system in March of 2010.

What is now known as a CAR certificate can be produced to authenticate compliance with the new Forest Code. The certificate shows that the landowner has filed a map of his property and outlines the boundaries of his Forest Reserve Lands. Once the CAR certificate showing compliance can be produced, farmers and ranchers are able to have these restrictions lifted and resume their day-to-day farming operations.

How It Was Done

Recognizing the significant time pressure (as investment and agricultural sales in the country were effectively being embargoed), SCCON and the consulting company Eco-Lógica created a straightforward rural land registration solution for Paragominas.

The land registration database was built around a new series of 1:50,000 scale maps produced by Imazon using RapidEye imagery of Paragominas imaged over three months in 2010.

With five meter resolution RapidEye data, the farmers and ranchers were able to quickly and clearly validate their land holdings and the status of all of the forests on their lands. Compliance, or lack thereof, was clear and transparent. As each land holding was mapped, individual CAR certificates were issued to landowners.

As a result of these new processes, illegal deforestation has effectively been stopped in Mr. Demachki’s county, and the state removed Paragominas from the environmental blacklist. This enabled the county, which is only one of two counties to be removed from the blacklist so far, to access federal rural development funding again. In addition, growers with CAR certificates in-hand can once again receive operating loans from banks and sell their commodities.

Ten additional counties, including Ulianópolis and Dom Eliseu, both due south of Paragominas, have signed on for the program in the state of Pará. All have requested quick implementation of the same solution and are in the process of working with Imazon and SCCON. The Imazon-SCCON solution, now known as the Green Municipality Program, is expected to quickly extend to many of the other 41 remaining municipalities on the environmental blacklist.

The benefits which make this solution scalable are its simple design and built-in transparency. RapidEye’s five meter imagery provides the necessary information and positional accuracy which give landowners the ability to quickly and easily see their land holdings at an appropriate resolution for their large rural tracts.
Getting the base CAR system installed in such short time-frame took incredible effort. Now there are numerous demands to expand the system country-wide.

Automating the change detection and monitoring system which is currently a time-consuming and manual task, is the next priority for Imazon and SCCON. They’re now devising a classification-based, automated change monitoring system that would incorporate an annual coverage using RapidEye imagery.

While the bad news is that nearly 20% of the Amazon has been lost, the good news is that the expanded CAR system will help Brazil keep a firm grip on what is left. These quantifiable efforts to reduce deforestation and forest degradation not only benefit Brazil, but contribute to the betterment of the planet, now and far into the future.


Property boundary map of an area in Paragominas incorporating RapidEye imagery


Cartographic reference map of the same area in Paragominas derived from RapidEye imagery

About RapidEye

RapidEye is a leading provider of quality high-resolution satellite imagery and derived geo-information products. With a constellation of five EO satellites, RapidEye images over 5 million square kilometers of Earth every day and its archive of imagery grows by over one billion square kilometers every year. With an unprecedented combination of wide area repetitive coverage and five meter pixel size multi spectral imagery, RapidEye is a natural choice for many industries and government agencies.

Authors:

  • Kim Douglass, Marketing Communications Manager, RapidEye
  • John S. Ahlrichs, Ph.D., Vice President of International Sales, RapidEye
  • Carlos Souza Jr., Senior Researcher, Imazon
  • Iara Musse Felix, Director of Business Development, Santiago & Cintra Consultoria

RapidEye AG | Molkenmarkt 30 | 14776 Brandenburg/Havel | Germany | Toll Free (US): +1 800 940 3617
Phone: +49 3381 8904-0 | Fax: +49 3381 8904-101 | info@rapideye.com | www.rapideye.com

Why does it matter?
From environmental monitoring to environmental assessments

The Luxembourg-based company GeoVille Environmental Services was established in 2007 with the objective to add the environmental dimension to Earth Observation (EO) data. At GeoVille Environmental Services we recognise that the needs of our customers go beyond land mapping and monitoring towards environmental assessments. We help our customers to understand the processes behind land changes and their impact on ecosystems and society. Our environmental services provide the bridge from technical know-how in merging geospatial explicit data with statistics to supporting environmental analyses of what this information means for the environment.

As a member of the European Topic Centre on Spatial Information and Analysis, GeoVille Environmental Services has supported the European Environment Agency State of Environment Report 2010 (SOER 2010) as well as several technical reports with environmental analyses and policy assessments.
For the SOER 2010 GeoVille Environmental Services analysed the quality of life for more than 170 European cities. By assessing the relation of the urban green within the city and green areas in the urban hinterland an indicator for access to recreational services for city residents was established. Figure 1 illustrates the combination of “green” or “brown” cities in their respective “green” or “brown” hinterland.


Figure 1: Level of green areas inside and around European cities

As a contribution to the discussion on Green Infrastructure GeoVille Environmental Services developed a characterisation of European regions based on their environmental assets. This map characterises European landscapes according to their degree of naturalness, expressed by factors such as presence of high nature value farmlands, air quality and proximity to natural areas or rural typology.


Figure 2: Regional characterisation of environmental assets

Working tools

At GeoVille Environmental Services we certainly know our basic utensils: EO images and their processing – GIS based data analyses integrating EO derived information with other survey, statistical or thematic data – open source based data access for the client and the wider public.

We have carried out land cover mapping projects from global to local scale, working with EO data image resolutions from 300m to aerial photographs with less than 1m resolution. Amongst others we have supervised, trained and managed the implementation of Corine Land Cover (CLC) 2006 in the West Balkan Countries and carried out the CLC2000 – 2006 change mapping for such different landscapes such as Albania and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.


Figure 3: Capacity building and CLC2006 Albania

For our local customers we have mapped building footprints, artificial surfaces and other surfaces in Luxembourg for the years 2001, 2004, 2007 and most recently also for 2010. The information is used to calculate the actual surface occupied by buildings and roads compared to more general land cover maps, which often do not differentiate between built-up and non built-up surfaces within individual plots.


Figure 4: Building footprint mapping

To make our information accessible for our clients and the wider public, GeoVille Environmental Services uses proven open source technology which avoids the client’s dependency on costly licence policies.

The crop yield estimation and forecast tool (CROPSIM) has been developed in the context of a national research project. CROPSIM compares the current status with long-term averages and provides the user with information on deviation from the average for soil moisture, temperature, precipitation and plant development.


Figure 5: CROPSIM online information system

Client support & validation

Apart from land cover / use mapping and targeted environmental assessments, GeoVille Environmental Services has established a strong foothold in a third area – customer support. Through the long-term work of its managing director at the interface of service providers and user community, GeoVille Environmental Services is able to understand and translate user needs and requirements into technical specifications and vice versa.

Making use of its recognition as independent authority by many service providers and users, GeoVille Environmental Services provides independent quality assessments of land cover mapping products. For us product validation and service certification are two important components towards user satisfaction and confidence building. In our understanding quality is not only “accuracy” as the illustration from the GNU (GMES Network of Users) project shows – quality is a multi-criteria phenomenon which can take different priorities for different users and at different moments in time.


Figure 6: Quality criteria for a good EO-based (GMES) product (Source: GNU)

Contact:
GeoVille Environmental Services Sàrl
Stefan Kleeschulte
3, Zone Industrielle Bombicht
L-6947 Niederanven (Luxembourg)
Tel: +352 26 71 41 35
Kleeschulte@geoville.com
www.geoville.com

Eomag!29_Geoville Environmental Services.pdf

Flyby is an independent Italian SME company, devoted to applied research and innovative technology development in remote sensing. Interdisciplinary background and expertise in various fields allow Flyby to face complex challenges in applied research and to develop innovative products that bring a high added value to the many Institutional and Private customers.

The company conducts two lines of business: the first is represented by the constant involvement in various R&D projects funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), the Italian Space Agency (ASI), the European Commission (EC) and by other regional agencies; the second line consists in selling the commercial products that derive from prototype applications developed in the former R&D projects.

In the following are described two sample experiences of the company:

  • Flyby’s involvement in research project FISHSAT
  • The success story of the product SOLARSAT.

FISHSAT is a project funded by ESA in the framework of IAP program, with Flyby acting as Prime Contractor and UK and Italian SMEs as Subcontractors.

The goal of the project is to define the technical feasibility and the viability of a new integrated system capable to assist fisheries in their fishing and marketing operations and, at the same time, to permit a better control of the fishing activities by the sea authorities.

The second experience regards the success story of Flyby’s product SOLARSAT.

SolarSAT system uses weather satellite data to estimate the productivity of potential solar power plants and to monitor the performance of existing ones. The approach helps to give a faster return on investments in clean solar energy.

FISHSAT

Project Objectives:The Project addresses the needs of two main stakeholders: Fisheries and Sea Authorities (enforcement). Fisheries involved so far are those making coastal fishing with small-size boats.Such fleets of relatively small vessels are recognized by the Common Fisheries Policies as the best suited to perform fishing in a sustainable manner, because of their limited impact on the sea environment.

The need for better product traceability, better market prices, lower operational cost and reduction of illegal an unregulated fishing represents therefore a common ground between both stakeholders. FISHSAT can build on this, through an innovative integration of space assets with conventional information and communication technologies.

The FISHSAT feasibility study aims at designing, developing and validating a first basic prototype of a distributed system (onboard & onshore) that provides information services for more efficient, more compliant and more sustainable fishing. The study will also identify the viability (incl. legal, political, financial, technical, operational aspects) and define the business roadmap for the implementation of the FISHSAT system and its associated services towards acceptance and commercialization.

Needs:

Fisheries need to secure the long term health of fish resources and the livelihoods of the fishermen who depend on them. There is a need for lower cost, e.g. by reducing fuel consumption per catch, better prices for the fish, e.g. by better connection to market demand. Fisheries will benefit from a sustainable use of the sea’s resources, fair competition, and reliable stock estimation and quota setting. Sea Authority aim to effectively enforce law by monitoring fishing activities and by repressing illegal fishing practices.

Features:

FISHSAT is conceived as an innovative system for sustainable fishing. FISHSAT will consist essentially in the provision of information services to both fisheries and Sea Authorities by the integration of space, airborne and terrestrial technologies (communication, remote sensing, local sensing). Its services are intended to provide Sea Authorities with a more effective law enforcing capability, while providing fisheries with a tool and service that ease their activities, reduce costs and allow for more profitable sales. An appealing Quality Mark on sustainable fishing is to be defined. The Sea Authorities are currently represented by the Italian Coast Guard, the fisheries by Lega Pesca (IT) and National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations (NFFO).

The project will study user needs and requirements, design, develop and prototype a system and service, that will be validated through an in-field proof of concept involving fishing boats. A financial and non-financial viability will be performed and a roadmap towards commercial deployment, possibly via an IAP Demonstration Project, will be laid out.

Expected Main Benefits:

In the medium term, FISHSAT aims to:

  • Avoid overfishing in depleted areas
  • Ease the submission of catch reports for legal purposes, thus avoiding errors and penalties
  • Collect proof of illegal practices (for use by the Sea Authority), thus giving compliant vessels a fairer chance
  • Save cost of the Sea Authority patrol boat intervention
    In the longer term, the following benefits are targeted:
  • Reduction of fishing effort per catch
  • Improve catch strategy and market strategy, to better match market demand, obtain better prices and reduce bycatch.
  • Increase of product appeal by introducing a quality mark based on traceability and sustainability data.
  • Reduction of illegal and unregulated fishing due to more effective control by the Sea Authority.

Service Concept:

Support to Fisheries

  • Improve fishing capability.

- Biological and physical sea parameters derived from EO imagery will be used to assess the presence of fish in the permitted areas. The suggestion of most productive zones should contribute to reduce the fishing effort.

  • Improve marketing capability.

- Data on catches will be anticipated to fishery ground centre while vessels are still at sea, in order to setup an early marketing strategy. – A quality mark will be devised based on data acquired during the fishing session. Product traceability will account for both its healthiness and sustainability. Products will be labelled with such a mark.

  • Improve crew safety.

- Message exchange between shore and fisheries will be possible in case of critical situations. – Support to the respect of fishing regulation. – The onboard system will include an electronic logbook of catches. The mandatory Catches Report will be submitted automatically to the Sea Authority ensuring compliance.
Sea areas where fishing is forbidden will be displayed to boat crew in real time. A warning will be raised in case some illegal activity is initiated in such areas.

Support to Sea Authorities

  • Improve the Sea Authority monitoring capability.

- A SatCom based AIS forwarding system installed on the fishing vessels will let the Sea Authority know also about the position of some boats whose AIS signal would be beyond reach from coast. – Data sensed onboard about e.g. the status of net and line deployment will allow the Sea Authority to know about fishing boat behaviour. Sea temperature and other data for statistic analysis can be collected through the fishing vessels. – Catches data recorded onboard will allow the Sea Authority to know about catch amount and type

  • Improve the Sea Authority capability to fight illegal fishing practices.

-In case some specific illegal practices are initiated by the boat, the Sea Authority would be informed immediately and could rely on the recorded data as a proof of crime.
-An unmanned helicopter UAV, launched from a coast guard vessel could be used to identity an unrecognized boat.

Space added value:

EO satellite data will be used to estimate several sea parameters and to derive meteorological information in support to conventional forecasts. Such data will support the identification of most productive regions, thus allowing a more effective catches strategy.

Satellite communication will be used to complement terrestrial wireless technology in offshore areas, where the latter is not effective.

GNSS – The Global Positioning Systems (possibly the future Galileo system) will be used to track vessels and to collect the geo-references for catches traceability.

FishSat service concept

Current Status:

The project has kicked off in September 2011 and is currently in the stage of detailed interaction with the users to map user needs and requirements.

SOLARSAT: Flyby’s SolarSAT system uses weather satellite data to estimate the productivity of potential solar power plants and to monitor the performance of existing ones. The approach helps to give a faster return on investments in clean solar energy.

Background Project. Making the EO satellite information available to photovoltaic plant design & monitoring is a result of the ENVISOLAR project, funded by ESA within the framework of its Earth Observation Market Development Programme and supported by the German Space Agency DLR. ENVISOLAR project gave birth to a suite of commercial products whose brand is ‘SolarSAT’. ESA’s technology transfer broker D’Appolonia then helped Sonepar Immobiliare e Servizi (SIS) S.p.A., an Italian distributor of photovoltaic (PV) plants, to integrate Flyby’s SolarSAT solution in their systems, with successful result for several plants in Italy.

Market needs

Since solar power is one of the cleanest methods of energy production, the worldwide interest has pushed the research and development of innovative tools capable of improving the reliability and efficiency of plant design and monitoring. EO satellite imagery represent one powerful source of data to assess the amount of solar energy reaching the earth and hence the PV panels.

PV Plant design

Most people willing to setup a photovoltaic plant in a specific locality have this main concern: how long will it take to return from the investment? Of course this depends mainly on two factors: the solar energy typically available for that locality and the plant efficiency in exploiting it. The latter factor can be described by modelling the plant in terms of cells technology, panel orientation w.r.t. the sun, efficiency of the various components, etc. Instead, the typical local solar energy, depending also on meteorological conditions, is not so straightforward to obtain, unless dedicated in-situ measurement campaigns have been performed during several years, which is unlikely to have happened in most cases.

PV Plant monitoring

Photovoltaic plants do not always operate optimally due to accidents like malfunctions affecting some plant parts or environmental events that degrade the collection of light (e.g. panel shadowing, panel coverage by dust, snow, leaves, etc.). Getting production data by logging to the inverters does not always allow to detect a malfunction (e.g. a broken panel). Also the plant system cannot recognize by itself the occurrence of any environmental drawback. Generally speaking, the only easy way to assess that some trouble is affecting the energy production is to compare it with the producible energy. The most common way to calculate the producible energy is to measure it by means of a separate system of local sensor, typically made of irradiance, wind and temperature sensors. Apart from their cost, local sensors require maintenance (e.g. calibration). Moreover, irradiance sensors may be subject to same environmental drawbacks affecting solar cells.

The proposed Solution

The amount of solar energy reaching the earth (i.e. the irradiance) can be calculated by feeding EO data into an algorithm that takes into account the interaction between solar light and atmosphere, soil and sea. One of such algorithms was developed by Flyby and is applied to available EO data, i.e. data that are collected directly at Flyby’s premises, via a satellite link. Irradiances of areas whose EO data are not directly available to Flyby are supplied to Flyby by major European institutions through commercial agreements.

Both historical irradiances and current irradiances are exploited: the former are used to define the energy typically available for the location, by averaging data along 10 or 20 years; the latter are used to define the reference producible energy to which the actual production must be compared.

Upon Envisolar project completion in 2007, Flyby came up with a solution where weather information from satellites is used first to plan investments in future installations and then to check if the solar cells in a photovoltaic plant are working well and producing the expected amount of electricity.

During the phase of planning new photovoltaic installation Flyby’s SolarSAT PV-Planner allows customers to design their PV plants using a simulation tool that exploits historical satellite irradiances for any given location. It estimates the potential of the electricity production and helps identifying the optimal size and position of the solar panels, information needed for the economic analysis and evaluation of a new installation.

PV plant daily power (simulated Vs. measured) The SolarSAT PV-controller tool is the other Flyby satellite-based solution for monitoring remotely the status and efficiency of PV plants. It retrieves the working status, monitors the produced energy and compares it with the expected one (producible energy), which derives from the available solar radiation at any given moment. Such radiation can be derived from either satellite data or from irradiance sensors installed at the plant. If there is a misalignment between the two producible energies or if the actual produced energy is very different from them, the system sends an alarm to the plant owner so that maintenance can be arranged.

The actual produced energy is read from the plant inverter(s) by a SolarSAT datalogger which can also read the irradiance sensors if any. All acquired data are sent by the datalogger via GPRS wireless link to the central station, where they are processed and displayed on the customer web pages.

The attractiveness of the system

Starting from the prototypal achievements of the ENVISOLAR project, two products have been developed and refined: the ‘PV-Planner’, a simulator tool allowing the design of a PV plant, and the PV-Controller, a monitoring tool allowing the production check of existing plants. Such products are now steadily present in the market and are especially appreciated by companies managing big PV plants or plant farms.PV-Planner attracts new customers by proposing a solution for the potential PV plant, with technical and economic aspects fully characterized.PV-Controller allows a reduction of the PV plant management cost (consisting typically of 1% of plant full cost each year) by giving an early warning on malfunctions and drawbacks and thus allowing a prompt intervention, so that the maximum productivity is not significantly reduced SolarSAT irradiance sensor mounted at solar panel

Plant design

PROS CONS
satellite based lower cost (satellite imagery are acquired systematically and are multipurpose), wide area coverage, historical data retrievable for any zone no HW waste to dispose of lower accuracy (relative error: down to 8% with clear sky, up to 18% with cloudy sky) accuracy degraded by cloud presence (atmospheric modelling issues)
sensor based higher accuracy (5% relative error), accuracy not affected by cloud presence higher cost (setup of measurement campaign), punctual coverage, historical data come only from past measurement campaigns (if any) sensor HW waste disposal required

Plant monitoring

PROS CONS
satellite based lower system cost (0.5% of 50kW plant cost), no maintenance required (e.g. satellite sensor calibration performed by satellite owner), no HW waste to dispose of lower accuracy (relative error: down to 8% with clear sky, up to 18% with cloudy sky), lower sampling rate, accuracy degraded by cloud presence (atmospheric modelling issues)
sensor based higher accuracy (5% relative error), higher sampling rate, accuracy not affected by cloud presence higher system cost (0.7% of 50kW plant cost), sensor maintenance required (e.g. calibration, cleaning), light sensor affected by same problems as solar cells (e.g. dust, snow), sensor HW waste disposal required

Accuracy: little difference between the two systems in clear sky conditions. Satellite system is more competitive if applied to areas characterised by such condition.
Area coverage: satellite system allows worldwide coverage and continuous, so it is the only way to get irradiance maps of any area and for any past period of time.
Availability: satellite acquisition rate, though less than that achievable by a sensor, is quite enough for design and monitoring purposes
Cost: satellite imagery yearly subscription becomes cheaper than the cost of N sensor packages, as soon as N = 33 (assuming Sensor_Package_Cost=300€, Satellite_yearly_subscription = 10 k€). Maintenance costs should be also included: they account for ¼ of sensor cost each three year.
Maintenance: no HW to maintain when exploiting satellite data. Instead local sensors require calibration and cleaning.
Environment friendliness: both systems have no impact on the environment when in use
Sustainability: plant design requires no HW at plant. Plant monitoring requires only a small datalogger to get produced energy. So there is little or no HW waste disposal when system expires. Data retrieval from the datalogger is normally done automatically via GPRS link, otherwise data can be stored in the datalogger and downloaded manually.

The successful Results

After a development phase, with the participation of the Italian energy leader Enel, the SolarSAT PV-Controller system has been installed on several photovoltaic plants in Italy (for example on a 59 KW plant in Rome, on a 49 KW plant in Milan and on a 26 KW plant near Messina).

SolarSat is currently a commercial Product that operates in all Europe and in the southern Mediterranean area.
In all sites a higher production resulted, as malfunctions have been located and corrected faster with the system.

Contact Information
PhD. Eng. Andrea Masini, Remote Sensing Department
Flyby s.r.l. via Puini,97-int 26/26A, 57128 Livorno, Italy
Tel: (+39) 0586-505016 | Fax: (+39) 0586-502770 | Mobile phone: (+39) 329-9175587
www.flyby.it

Eomag!28_Flyby (Italy) (Winter 2011-2012).pdf

GRAS provides innovative mapping solutions worldwide based on satellite and aerial imagery


ABOUT GRAS

GRAS is specialised in earth observation, satellite image processing and GIS analyses for assessment of natural resources, environmental impact assessment and very high resolution mapping. Water quality monitoring and mapping of land cover, urban areas, vegetation and coastal change has been carried out in most parts of the world and often in interdisciplinary project settings in close collaboration with engineers, botanists, coastal experts, anthropologists etc.
Since 2000 GRAS has completed more than 150 projects in 50 countries worldwide. Most of these projects are related to environmental assessment and detection of changes based on time series of satellite images. Examples of the diversity of the scope of services include sea ice and vegetation mapping in Arctic areas, detailed mapping of urban environments in Europe, land cover and forest cover mapping in South America and mapping of water quality and turbidity in South East Asia.

GRAS has a long track record of delivering high quality services both within satellite based water quality monitoring and land cover and vegetation mapping. Furthermore GRAS is an official distributor of all the most popular satellite images and also maintains a number of operational processing chains delivering image data in near real time to clients around the world. GRAS is owned by DHI – an independent, international consulting and research organisation specialised in water, environment and health – but also closely associated with the Department of Geography and Geology at the University of Copenhagen. GRAS works closely with universities, research institutions and commercial partners in order to develop improved and cost effective methods that can be applied in projects. Map of GRAS activities

EO SERVICES AND PROJECTS

Monitoring

Remote sensing is a unique tool for extracting information about oceans, lakes and other water bodies. With Earth Observation satellites it is possible to map large areas instantaneously and systematically which enables the user to monitor the development in ocean parameters such as sea surface temperature, and chlorophyll-a or sediment concentrations. Remote sensing is a very cost-effective method for marine monitoring and the relevant information can be delivered in near real time. The method can also be applied to land areas where dynamic features such as snow cover, land surface temperatures, flooding and vegetation status can be monitored.

GRAS is specialised in setting up operational systems for monitoring the environment. Satellite images are automatically processed to the relevant products and several times a day and delivered via ftp or email to clients anywhere in the world.

Project example: Operational monitoring of suspended sediments

GRAS has been involved in several mapping and monitoring services related to detection of total suspended matter (TSM). For the areas of interest automated mapping of TSM for historic time series has been conducted. Daily automated maps and data of TSM have been produced and delivered in near real time to the clients. This information is important for monitoring environmental compliance or for model calibration.

Mapping and feature extraction

Land cover mapping represents perhaps the most common and useful application of satellite remote sensing and land cover mapping is used within a wide range of applications including natural resource management, urban planning, hydrological modelling and exploration of oil, gas, and minerals. GRAS has profound expertise in mapping of land cover and feature extraction of desired objects in various regions worldwide. GRAS is using state-of-the-art object-based image analysis for mapping and feature extraction.

Project example: Vegetation and snow mapping in West Greenland

GRAS has performed vegetation and snow mapping in an area located in Western Greenland for use in the preparation of a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) for the construction of a large hydroelectric plant.

Change Detection

The access to historical data makes it possible to detect land cover back in time and the continued supply of new image data allows monitoring and detection of changes in land cover in the observed period of time. Up-to-date land cover maps and change detection maps are often used in environmental impact assessments.

Project example: Change Detection of Forest Cover in Peru

GRAS has performed land cover mapping and change detection in a rain forest environment in Amazonas, Peru. GRAS has worked with archaeologists, anthropologists and botanists to synthesise land cover changes over the past 500 years, with detailed analyses supported by satellite images and GIS to document changes over the past 35 years.

Training and Capacity building

Capacity building is an essential part of our activities and we assist the implementation of projects through training. In this way the methods can be developed and customised to match the actual needs of the client. Based on long term and thorough experience with GIS and Image Analysis, GRAS offers training courses within GIS and Remote Sensing software and applications. The training courses can be customized to the user’s specific needs and ideally involves local case stories and data from the users. Often the image analysis applications are accompanied by collection of ground truth data with GPS. GRAS has a broad experience with collection of ground truth and teaching within these subjects as well.

Project example: Remote Sensing and Mobile GIS to assist health survey

GRAS was responsible for implementing the use of Remote Sensing and Mobile GIS in a research project related to health surveying in Ghana, Western Africa. Following land cover mapping and development of Mobile GIS applications, GRAS has been building local capacity and transferring of knowhow to local stakeholders through workshops and training sessions.

Further information at www.grasdk.com
GRAS – Geographic Resource Analysis & Science A/S
Geocenter Denmark, Øster Voldgade 10
1350 Copenhagen K, Denmark
Phone: +45 3532 4175
gras@grasdk.com
www.grasdk.com

Eomag!27_GRAS (Denmark) (Autumn 2011).pdf

Grace Ltd, an independent Athens-based Space consultancy firm offers a set of services focusing on the marketing of valuable solutions and the set-up of sustainable projects, including but not limited to Earth Observation (EO).

The company operates in the zone of the Eastern Mediterranean covering the Balkan Peninsula as well, with Greece as the focal point.

Overview

Grace Ltd is a young Greek SME established in late 2008 in Athens. The mission of the company is to provide independent technology and consulting services, promoting and guiding the space industry development and directing its benefits to the society and the environment in Greece and the greater Eastern Mediterranean region. The company is a dynamic partner contributing to local capacity building.

In 2009 Grace joined EARSC, taking the benefit of privileged access to global information and valuable interaction concerning European policy, strategy and industry issues in Space matters.

Through the performance of targeted market studies, various partnerships and continuous interaction with local actors in its zone of activity, Grace consolidated its knowledge of the local and regional tissue in 2010 and extended its networking capabilities. In parallel, through the Programme of the European Commission for Young Entrepreneurs, the company acquired solid competence accompanied by experienced EO actors possessing worldwide operations and global view.

The company has chosen a cooperative approach permitting the access to a very large zone and today is an active partner of P.L.A.N. Inc www.planinc.com and Mea Intuis SARL www.earth-observation.com , which are two top-caliber consulting firms in the sector of Earth Observation with over 15 years of successful experience worldwide. In parallel the firm has established strong ties with a number of players of the European and not only Space market and industry, several high-level experts and consultants as well.

Today the company activities are concentrated in the business development and marketing of programmes, projects, products and services and in building up capacity. GRACE has the ability to rapidly assembly a team of commercial, industry or research actors and to successfully face any challenge concerning the implementation of sustainable EO ventures.

Regional Competence

Grace has made the strategic choice of targeting the international market since the beginning of its operations and to focus in a well defined zone as well, in the crossroads of Europe, Africa and Asia. In this much heterogeneous and sensitive region, very rich on history and culture, Earth Observation and other Space technologies could provide a substantial progress on the local and regional environment. The company has progressively acquired a thorough knowledge on the needs, perspectives, risks, opportunities and challenges of this zone.

Marketing and Capacity Building Competence

One of the essential skills the firm displays is related to marketing/business development activities. Grace has a dedicated team of experienced consultants with strong background and long track record in the matter. Promotion and international marketing of Space-related technology and capacity is the cornerstone of the company operations.

Grace consulting activities focus on capacity building and the master of required analysis, management, deployment and follow up. This competence also marks the firm’s philosophy and vision which is the achievement of long term progress through the use of Space assets, especially for monitoring and protecting the environment and the society.

Space and Earth Observation Expertise

The company disposes of an internal capacity and also of a large network of consultants and experts in the field of Space and in particular in the applications sector. This team, involved in various large-scale Programmes for the last 20 years is able to provide value and to offer independent advice and customized consulting services.

The thematic areas of expertise comprise a wide range of activities from policy deployment and Programmes development to commercial assistance and business development, and from infrastructure and organizational purposes to support on contracts, market studies, business plans or specific technical guidance.

Our consultants possess a deep knowledge of the Space sector and in particular of the Earth Observation market challenges, products, services and players and an outstanding experience as for the use of satellite infrastructure for a multitude of purposes.

Industry and Market View

Europe has certainly done steps forward in Space applications and Earth Observation, but still remain several drawbacks, inertia, overlap, confusion. Funds are not missing but often driven by research and technology push rather than users’ real needs. Costly Programmes haven’t convinced yet. Discussions and events about regional development are taking places all over Europe but not the results. Much money is used for developing methods, tools and process in small scale; why not allocate more for allowing end-users in need to use the technology in larger scale as well?

Our continent’s industry receives funding through a multitude of ways and this is certainly a necessary support and a demonstrated interest from the policy makers. But what is the true outcome and return on investment if this industry has difficulties to convince markets outside Europe and even provide sustainable solutions for the European end-users? In Earth Observation sector, for European products and services, the sales in Europe are 5 times more important than in all the rest of the world (from recent Eurospace Facts&Figures). Inefficient industrial and commercial strategies over the export markets combined with fierce international competition could bring additional trouble. This is Grace’s synthetic look at today’s European industry.

Being in between European zones under development and neighboring markets, the firm underlines the necessity for more competitiveness, efficient cooperation, sustainable development and tangible results in regions outside Europe.

Perspectives and Expectations

Grace has been created in an extremely harsh environment and has been directly affected by the financial crisis in the Euro zone and precisely the economic slump in Greece and the Balkan countries, the Arab unrest in North Africa as well. Despite those facts, the company maintained and diversified its activities, enlarged its partnerships base and focused on well understanding markets and customers.

“Gaining and efficiently exploiting access to European funding will be a key issue in order to implement capacity-building projects in our zone of activity” according to Mr. Dimitris Matsakis, Chairman of Grace. “The needs and intentions of end-users for building up things are often here, but national contribution is hard to find in a large number of countries, and the money usually goes to other priorities”.

Grace priorities are strengthening position in the overall area on the one hand and focusing on a set of identified and specific market needs on the other.

“We do not exclude to merge our activities and our competences with those of our partners, which would lead to establish a strong network capitalizing the expertise, skills and presence in 3 continents and more than 20 countries” adds Mr. Matsakis

Contact:
Grace Ltd, Athens – GREECE
For further information please contact Mr. Dimitris Matsakis, Chairman: dmatsakis (at) graceapplications.com or visit www.graceapplications.com

PDF:grace-efficient-and-focused-consultancy-services

The geo-referenced in-situ component of EO can be a powerful enabler for remote sensing. It can help verify EO data, complement observations, improve resolution and calibrate remote sensing. Geo-referenced photos, video and sensors are relevant in-situ sensors, and they can be on the ground or flown at low altitude using for example microdrones. In-situ observations can identify the need for further remote sensing data or vice versa. However, a common challenge with in-situ is the availability of it – and specifically the rapid availability of it. The latter is due partly to communication challenges in remote regions, or in general for situational awareness.

Rapid availability of both in-situ and satellite data is clearly required during disasters and emergencies, and AnsuR is working closely with both the UN and the EU Civil protection here.

Crowdsourcing, using geo-tagged and time-stamped images can be a powerful element in situational awareness, and can help both verify satellite observations or trigger the capture of such in order to verify in-situ data in a broader perspective.

Synchronized in-situ and remote sensing using prepositioned microdrones is in focus as well. We see this as particularly suitable as a component to GMES.

About AnsuR Technolgies AS

AnsuR Technologies AS is a Norwegian SME, specifically working on rapid access to in-situ data and possibilities for EO integration for use in the context of emergency and disasters, rapid mapping or commercial operations. AnsuR are further leading work in integrated satellite solutions in EU, and builds further on two of its innovation award winning solutions, ASIGN and BirdNest.

ASIGN is the optimal solution for rapid and reliable access to high resolution in-situ data for real-time or near real-time operations. BirdNest is a microdrone docking hangar with remote control options.

AnsuR is initiator and coordinator of the FP7 SPACE Project GEO-PICTURES, and has projects with ESA in the Value Added EO Elements area. Specifically AnsuR has several projects with UN/UNOSAT-UNITAR.

AnsuR is also covering activities when using Smartphone solutions for in-situ visual data, various sensors including climate measurements in the Amazonas and Unmanned Areial Vehicle (UAV) solutions (with Quadro-copters) in the AnsuR BirdEye subsidiary. AnsuR BirdEye is responsible for the BirdNest UAV hangar and the SW control systems. BirdNest can be integrated with ASIGN and coordinated with EO data acquisition.

The goals of AnsuR within EO is the:

  • Integration of real-time in-situ data
  • Coordination and synchronization of in-situ and remote sensing data capture
  • Use of microdrones both to complement space and in-situ observation
  • Offering in-situ and EO data for situational awareness, like emergency, disaster management
  • Raid distribution of in-situ and EO observations to field users

ASIGN in-situ for Situational Awareness and Rapid Mapping

ASIGN from AnsuR is the award-winning solution for optimized transfer of high-resolution geo-referenced multimedia information, video streaming, video files, photos and sensor in-situ data. The main challenge is that one can not rely on stable connections, and have to expect narrowband communication links frequently.

Developed for applications such as disaster and emergency management, damage assessment, surveillance, situational awareness, quality management and photo-journalism, ASIGN images are bearers of important and urgently required information.

Situational awareness cannot be limited to areas of good broadband connection. Therefore, ASIGN can be used over any communication link, a true “anywhere, anytime”, including mobile satellite systems like BGAN. When terrestrial communication links have broken down, or coverage is poor, communication via satellite may be the only viable option. In any event, crisis and emergencies are likely to generate significantly more than usual load on networks.

The in-situ data can form a powerful verification and calibration tool for earth observation and rapid mapping. With the rapid availability of in-situ geo-tagged images from AnsuR in the GEO-ASIGN project UNOSAT is able to better assess and verify findings from satellite data when we do rapid mapping for humanitarian operations for UN.

The fact that ASIGN as such operates with practical communications links, that can be low rate and unstable, is essential for field use.

Figure 1: Rapid Integration of in-situ and EO data in an operation center server, and coordinated distribution to field users.

Figure 2: Illustration of how the ASIGN system works in two steps for providing initial previews and then high resolution data. The same concept is used for the EO browser.

Figure 3: Images from Haiti.

Figure 4: Video capture as a storyboard.

Micro-drones in EO Settings

Use of small microdrones / UAV with photo or video camera, or sensors, can provide aerial in-situ data. With ASIGN integrated into the payload, multimedia data can also be directly transferred while the UAV is in flight. The control of the flight track can be either manual or automatic based on navigation waypoints – or a mix of the two. Quadro-copter UAVs can function both as a very high camera tripod for oblique photos, or as a very low “satellite” helping to do small scale rapid mapping. Measurements can be done several hundred meters up. Currently the UAV sector is the most innovative part of the aeronautical business.

Figure 5: Remote, Aerial and ground sensors.

Figure 6: Microdrone docking hangar control can be coordinated with EO data orders.

EO browser for low bandwidth

Earth Observation images are large files relative to some typical low rate communication systems used in disaster management, such as Inmarsat BGAN. However, rapid mapping and rapid assessments often need to be communicated to the field. AnsuR has developed an efficient EO data browser, based on ASIGN technology, for low bandwidth channels for such use cases. The ASIGN EO Browser thus allows field users to access large satellite images rapidly.

Figure 7: Snapshots from the rapid and light bandwidth optimized EO data browser.

Synchronized in-situ and space-abased data

With the help of KSAT a few years ago, the first synchronized data acquisition was done with Radarsat-2 and in-situ ground photos (in this case as sea), where we captured two boats in the Oslofjord at the same time as the satellite captured a Radar Image. Since then AnsuR has focused further on the value of synchronized EO and in-situ data capture of visual and sensor data. We believe this concept carries significant value within several sectors.

Figure 8: Synchronized in-situ and space data capture.

Smartphone All-in-one in-situ assessment solution

Disaster assessment professionals have requested an all-in-one solution for in-situ data capture. Therefore AnsuR has developed a first version based on Android smartphones that are successfully used in the field with e.g. UN and EU Civil protection. Several hundred images were sent by UN from Haiti after the earthquake for rapid verification of assessments done from space based observations.

User feedback shows that close to all users would be happy with an all-in-one integrated field assessment unit that could help provide in-situ data.

Figure 9: Smartphones are excellent for light and convenient in-situ data capture.

In-situ Crowdsourcing

A specific crowdsourcing version of the Android ASIGN application has been released with the EMSC in Paris, for public help and collaboration following earthquakes. The RICHTER application allows witnesses locally to rapidly contribute with geo- and time-stamped in-situ image material. Hundreds of users are testing this RICHTER application as of Q1 2011, and feedback is very positive.

User Status and Feedback

There are more than 100 Crowdsourcing users for EMSC, and an overwhelming majority says the solution is useful and will keep it. United Nations are using ASIGN in the context of GEO-PICTURES all over the world, and has plans to ramp up in humanitarian and disaster management. EU Civil Protection is regularly using ASIGN in their training courses in order to prepare users for live action. Brazil has increasing focus in use of ASIGN in civil protection and environmental disaster management with additional local development.

Contacts
AnsuR Technologies AS, NORWAY
For further info please contact Dr. Harald Skinnemoen, Founder and CEO: harald(at)ansur.no, or see also www.ansur.no