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A clear and common description of EO products and services will help suppliers and customers arrive at a common understanding of what can be offered

By proposing a common language, the taxonomy should also provide a translation between the world of EO services and the world(s) of their customers.

The aim is to present and explain the rationale for the EO taxonomy that is proposed and to address the common products and services from two perspectives:
(1) A market segmentation will provide a tool to help classify and understand the markets for EO services as well as to define the type of customer
(2) A thematic segmentation provides a tool to help describe and classify the products that are offered by the service providers.

Taxonomy for EO services market.pdf

(Brussels, 7th June 2012) EARSC letter to Mr. Durao Barroso, President of the European Commission, concerning the funding for GMES and the importance that the programme is moved forward after the recent failure of Envisat.

Dear President Barroso,

I am writing concerning the delays to the GMES programme and the urgency to proceed following the recent loss of the Envisat Earth Observation satellite.

Following our industry concerns expressed in a position paper last July, we were pleased to receive reassurance in your letter of 30th September 2011 that the funding impasse would be resolved by proposals to be adopted “in the coming months”. However, notwithstanding the recent Commission note (COM 2012-218), there is no agreement yet in sight. Our industry is at a crucial stage of development. It depends on satellite data for its business and we regret the high uncertainty on what data will be available and when. The delays to GMES undermine investments made in commercial business.

The situation is now exacerbated by the unfortunate failure of Envisat which has reliably delivered data for over 10 years; 5 years longer than was envisaged when it was launched in 2002. Envisat data was being used commercially for a wide variety of critical applications including environmental monitoring, emergency response, oil spill detection. agriculture irrigation and water use, water quality, ship detection and ship routing through ice. Envisat’s loss leaves a gap that cannot be filled quickly. Some of the data will be replaced by non-European sources, which drives up industry and users costs but most services will no longer be possible before the GMES Sentinels are operational.

Whilst these losses are important, the lack of a follow on satellite will cause the biggest damage as customers are reminded that data continuity has not been assured and will hesitate before committing to take up new services. GMES was intended to fill that gap and the delay caused by the lack of funding further threatens the development of the industry.

I enclose two recent articles from the mainstream press that illustrate very well the concerns:

On 12th May, the Washingtom Post published an editorial calling on the US government and governments everywhere to pay more attention to the role that satellites play in watching the Earth. A recent report considers that by 2020, the US fleet of Earth Observation satellites will have fallen to 25% of its size today so vastly undermining the capability of man to understand the Earth and the changes being wrought upon its (our) environment.

On almost the same day, The Economist published an article “Something to watch over us” acknowledging the strong role that Envisat has played in monitoring environment change and regretting that the European governments have not planned for its follow on.

You have recently been developing the idea of a 3rd Industrial revolution and space is identified by Commissioner Antonio Tajani as being a key sector. On behalf of a growing and important industry, we urge you to take all the necessary steps to find the funding for GMES as a European programme funded within the Union budget. A first and very important step would be to encourage ESA to launch the first Sentinel satellites as early as possible,
Yours sincerely,

Han Wensink
Chairman
European Association of Remote Sensing Companies (EARSC)

EARSC letter D. Barroso (20120531).pdf
Earth-observation satellites_ Something to watch over us _ The Economist.pdf
Satellites at risk – The Washington Post.pdf

After two successful workshops at ESA in Frascati, please join us in Sept. 2012 in Perth, Australia for the 3rd workshop on Earth Observation for the Oil & Gas industry.


Themes for the 1 day event will include but are not limited to: Environment / MetOcean / Geomatics / Infrastructure and will highlight the potential and best practise of using Earth Observation data and derived products for the Oil & Gas industry.

The workshop is open to members of the oil and gas industry, service providers and researchers involved in Earth Observation and related geo-information technologies.

Preliminary program with confirmed speakers

Session 1: Overview

  • OGEO, overview: Peter Hausknecht, Woodside, Australia
  • ESA, GMES programme: Ola Grabak, ESA, Italy
  • OGP, OilSpillResponse JIP update, Surface surveillance: Colin Grant, BP, United Kingdom

Session 2: Environmental

  • Coastal area and water quality monitoring and using RS data: Arnold Dekker, CSIRO, Australia
  • Change detection time series using WorldView2 high resolution satellite data: Leah Glass, GeoImage, Australia
  • Remote sensing of the coastal transitional zone: Rasmus Borgstroem, Grass, Denmark
    * The importance of the first 24hrs in oil spill monitoring: Paul Whitaker, KSAT, Norway

Panel Session

Lunch

Session 3: MetOcean

  • Oil Spill Response: MetOcean and Satellite data integration: Cedric Michel, Total, France
  • Mapping solitones with satellite data: Jan Flynn, Shell, Australia
  • Looking ahead 5 years: What satellite data services do we need for MetOcean: Jason McConochie , Woodside, Australia
  • Tbd

Feedback session: Open session in topic groups

Session 4: Geomatics and Infrastructure

  • Coastal bathymetry from WorldView2 satellite data: Thomas Heege, EoMap, Germany
  • Satellite assessment and monitoring for infrastructure, environmental and engineering applications: Michael Hall, Astrium, UK
  • Satellite monitoring and airborne mapping integrated: Tbd , AAM, Australia  
  • Supporting Oil and Gas in WA from a distance: a View From Landgate: Mat Adams, Landgate WA, Australia
  • The use of UAV technology to complement satellite imagery for benthic habitat assesments: Peter Mellor, WorleyParson, Australia

Note: The titles of the presentations are only indicative and may change for the final program

More information at www.esa-ogeo.org

Utilizing opportunities Maximising the benefits
14 Sept. 2012, Perth – Australia


After two successful workshops at ESA in Frascati, please join us in Sept. 2012 in Perth, Australia for the 3rd workshop on Earth Observation for the Oil & Gas industry. Themes for the 1 day event will include but are not limited to: Environment / MetOcean / Geomatics / Infrastructure and will highlight the potential and best practise of using Earth Observation data and derived products for the Oil & Gas industry

This event will provide an opportunity to network and discuss with colleagues the challenges and benefits Earth Observation technology can provide to the Oil & Gas industry.

The workshop is open to members of the oil and gas industry, service providers and researchers involved in Earth Observation and related geo-information technologies.

With ever more Earth Observation systems (satellite and airborne) available, novel and advanced methods of working with the EO data are required. Extracting the maximum value from the derived products and integrating the results with other geo-information has become an opportunity for the O&G industry to improve business procedures and add value to existing approaches. Industry wide applied practises and commonly accepted procedures will help to standardize the EO methods and support their business value.

Venue: Woodside Energy – Auditorium
240 St. Georges Tce., Perth, Western Australia
Time: 8:30–17:00; Morning / Afternoon Tea and Lunch included

For more information
Registration Info will be announced soon – Please express your interest already to: secretariat@earsc.org

Numbers are limited and final participation list will be decided by the OGEO steering committee

A clear and common description of EO products and services will help suppliers and customers arrive at a common understanding of what can be offered

A clear and common description of EO products and services will help suppliers and customers arrive at a common understanding of what can be offered. By proposing a common language, the taxonomy should also provide a translation between the world of EO services and the world(s) of their customers.

The aim is to present and explain the rationale for the EO taxonomy that is proposed and to address the common products and services from two perspectives:
(1) A market segmentation will provide a tool to help classify and understand the markets for EO services as well as to define the type of customer
(2) A thematic segmentation provides a tool to help describe and classify the products that are offered by the service providers.

Taxonomy for EO services market.pdf

A market place between Earth Observation industry and users

The Earth Observation value added Industry is quickly evolving. It has a pool of resources and services which must be organized, catalogued and presented in a unified tool. eopages.eu has been designed for this purpose. EOpages is a brokerage platform to help potential customers find suppliers whilst service providers will be able to promote their products.

EOpages also included a section on success stories and a photo gallery for you to illustrate possible services to different market sectors; agriculture, forestry, oil & gas, infrastructure, environment, emergency, transport, urban planning, etc. The success stories demonstrate that service companies have the resources, capabilities, knowledge and ability to address and contribute to the goals of different communities.

The 2nd OGEO workshop was organised following on from the success of the first conference in 2010.It was hosted for the 2nd year running by ESA in Frascati but this time as part of the Geological Remote Sensing Group’s (GRSG) annual meeting.

This meant that for the first time we had 3 Communities all coming together; oil and gas companies, EO service companies, geological researchers. Many of the attendees expressed their pleasure at the unique opportunity this presented to interact.

Over 200 persons were registered for the 3 day meeting. The GRSG met on the 1st and 3rd days with the middle day devoted to the OGEO workshop which was opened by the OGEO chair Peter Hausknecht (Woodside). The first session dealt with the setting up of the OGEO and the progress that had been made in the year. Colin Grant (BP) explained the Joint Industry Project (JIP) run under the Oil and Gas Producers Association (OGP) and Geoff Sawyer (EARSC) explained the OGEO-Portal and how people could have access and use it.

Technical sessions were then presented on Oil Spills and general applications of EO for the O&G industry. Thomas Heege (EOMAP), Charlotte Bishop (NPA-Fugro) and Jerry Helfand (Exxon) chaired the 3 sessions.

Full details of the workshop and a report will shortly be available on the ESA web-site.

The OGEO working group met afterwards to assess the results of the workshop and to decide on follow-up actions. It was agreed to consolidate the activities with an agreement between the main parties; OGP, EARSC, and ESA. Given the welcome boost from association with the GRSG it was agreed that the chair of the GRSG should also participate to enable links with the geological research community. It was then agreed to continue to develop the OGEO-Portal as well as publicising the results of OGEO. An early action will be to consolidate all the standards available and used for EO products relevant to the O&G sector. A third workshop will be organised in 2012.

Thanks were expressed to ESA (Stephen Coulson and Ola Grabak as well as many others) for organising and hosting the event so successfully.

Workshop 2011 Presentations

September 2010 event.

A detailed understanding of the Earth Observation sector and the trends is essential to help stakeholders to plan their activities and to assess the effectiveness of their actions. Industry has a strong interest to ensure that accurate and up-to-date information is available.

The European Association of Remote Sensing Companies, EARSC, that represents the EO geo-information services sector in Europe is making a first step towards conducting a full survey by trying to identify as many companies as possible in Europe which are involved in providing EO geo-information services.

Once identified, companies will be contacted to interview and establish industry facts and figures that can be assessed on an annual basis to provide information on the industry trends. We aim to gather as full a picture as could be possible.

… as stakeholder, as part of the industry… if you have an overview about companies engaged in Earth Observation business in Europe & Canada or any reports that bear on the sector and that can be used to provide some cross-checking with the industry survey results

Thank you very much and please do not hesitate to contact us if you require any further information.

EARSC position papers in 2011

Example of EARSC presentations in 2011

EOpages is a brokerage platform to help potential customers find suppliers whilst service providers will be able to promote their products.

Ogeo-portal is the forum for information exchange between the oil and gas and geoinformation communities.

In March 2011, EARSC published a position paper that provided views on how the European EOServices industry could support and benefit from a publicly-owned GMES infrastructure * ; the goal being to maximise the overall economic return from the substantial pubic-sector investment.

One of the main conclusions and recommendations from that paper concerned the need to establish a suitable policy for the data generated by the GMES space component and the information products generated by the GMES Services.

The European Commission will shortly prepare legislation to define the GMES Data Policy. EARSC, as the organisation that represents the EO geo-information services industry in Europe, puts forward the views of its members on some details concerning such a data policy.

In our previous paper, we recommended to establish a clear data policy, with appropriate procurement budgets for satellite data, core GMES services and GMES value-added, downstream services:

  • Raw data from Sentinels should be free and open.
  • Data from commercial satellite operators should be procured under appropriate license conditions.
  • Core services to be freely and unconditionally available to all users and downstream partners.
  • Downstream services should be procured commercially on a fair and competitive basis.
  • A registration system for GMES users should be put in place to ensure that basic quality conditions are met and licensing conditions are respected as well as achieving fair competition on the international market.

In this paper, we build upon these recommendations.

EARSC positon paper on GMES data policy