Skip to content

…airborne video, ENVI Orthorectification, OGC and Spacemetric…


Airborne video coming to Keystone

(7 April 2009) Spacemetric is working with the National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR) (www.nlr.nl) in the Netherlands to provide an airborne video data management and processing system based on the company’s Keystone server. This will form part of an NLR capability to provide a flying testbed for demonstrating Unmanned Airborne Vehicle (UAV) technologies that avoids the exclusion of UAVs from normal airspace by using a piloted aircraft.

The Keystone system will manage and geoprocess the airborne video imagery. On board the aircraft this will allow the video coverage to be reviewed during the flight. Meanwhile, the video imagery will be downloaded to the ground by radio link and be geoprocessed in near real-time to simulate a range of operational capabilities. The Keystone video functionality will support the NATO STANAG 4609 video standard.

Airborne video is an important new capability for Keystone and complements existing support for a wide range of airborne and spaceborne imagery. “We expect airborne video to be an attractive new addition for current and future defence customers” noted Lars Edgardh, Spacemetric CEO.

ENVI Orthorectification uses Spacemetric technology

(30 March 2009) ITT Visual Information Systems (www.ittvis.com) has announced the release of the ENVI Orthorectification Module incorporating methods from Spacemetric for rigorous image orthorectification.

At its core the new ENVI module uses the rigorous orthorectification technology developed and validated over many years by Spacemetric and its customers. This same technology is a core component of Spacemetric’s Keystone image management systems and provides high-accuracy image orthorectification for both satellite and airborne sensors.

The new ENVI Orthorectification Module provides a wizard-based approach to image orthorectification as an add-on to ENVI 4.6.

“The ENVI Orthorectification Module is unique because it was made specifically for non-photogrammetrists,” commented Ian Spence, Spacemetric’s Sales and Marketing Director. It offers a range of features including support for a broad range of sensors, block bundle adjustment, mosaic and cutline functions and workflow automation.

The ENVI Orthorectification Module is a clear example of the tangible value provided by Spacemetric’s technologies in the management and processing of geospatial imagery. Similar benefits are already being enjoyed by other Spacemetric customers in both the civilian and defence sectors.

Spacemetric joins Open Geospatial Consortium

(19 February 2009) Spacemetric announces that it has recently become a member of the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc ® (OGC) (www.opengeospatial.org), the international industry consortium that leads the development of standards for geospatial and location-based services. Spacemetric has joined the OGC at the Technical Committee level, giving the company an active role in defining, approving and maintaining OGC standards.

Practical experience of using OGC standards at Spacemetric goes back more than five years and started when the company developed a Web Map Service (WMS) interface for the European Space Agency’s catalogue of satellite imagery. Today Spacemetric’s image management solutions are used by a growing list of customers and make ever increasing use of OGC standards. Commenting on the new affiliation, Spacemetric’s CEO Lars Edgardh noted that “joining the OGC as a voting member marks our commitment to OGC standards and indicates their key role in the systems and services we deliver to our customers”.

Spacemetric’s OGC membership makes the company an active participant in the development of geospatial standards and best practice. As a voting member of OGC, Spacemetric is almost unique in Scandinavia and joins a group of just thirty organisations in Europe and eighty worldwide with this level of involvement.

About Spacemetric

Spacemetric is a Swedish company providing geospatial image management solutions. Its customers include the Swedish cadastre, mapping and land registry authority, the Swedish Air Force, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. and the European Space Agency.

CONTACT: Ian Spence
EMAIL: is@spacemetric.com
TELEPHONE: +46 8 594 770 83

Source Spacemetric

Recent News om KSPT MEOS Polar, vacancies, KSPT Dis development kit…


(2009-03-27) KSPT MEOS Polar L/X band and Meteosat-8 ground station to Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) in Rome, Italy

KSPT has signed a contract with Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) on MEOS Polar.

Kongsberg Spacetec has signed a contract to deliver a complete Multi-Mission MEOS Polar L/X-band and Meteosat-8 (MSG) Ground Station to INGV in Rome, Italy.

The delivery includes a 3.2 m L/X band antenna and also reception capabilities through Eumetcast.

The MEOS Polar ground station system is Kongsberg Spacetec’s multi-mission, flexible and modular turnkey system for acquisition, archiving, processing, analysis and distribution of meteorological data. The missions supported in this delivery include MODIS Terra/Aqua, FY-1, METOP and Meteosat-8.

For more information about the customer: INGV

(2009-03-06) Job vacancies at Kongsberg Spacetec

Job vacancies for system developers
Read More…

(2009-02-16) KSPT DIS Development Toolkit for Taiwan

Kongsberg Spacetec has signed a contract with National Space Organization (NSPO) Taiwan on the DIS development Toolkit for the Formosat-5 ground segment. The system will be used by NSPO for payload data acquisition from the Formosat-2 and -5 satellites.

The Formosat-2 satellite is currently in operation and Formosat-5 will be launched in 2011.

For more information about the customer: National Space Organization (NSPO) Taiwan

(2009-01-05) KSPT contract with European Space Agency on SWARM

Kongsberg Spacetec has signed a contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) on the SWARM Payload Data Facility and the Archive and Processing Facility Implementation.

SWARM will be a constellation of three satellites and will be launched in October 2010.

The objectives of the SWARM mission are to provide the best survey ever of the geomagnetic field and the first detailed description of the way this field changes on time scales from a day to several years.

Kongsberg Spacetec will be the prime contractor and has Werum Systems, Germany, as a sub contractor.

For more information about the customer: ESA

SOURCE KSPT

Young, experienced and not done yet – 10 years of Geomatics Research and Education at the Institute of Geomatics

Ten years have passed since the Institute of Geomatics in Castelldefels, close to Barcelona, Spain started operations in Applied Research and Education in Geomatics. Time went quickly, yet, a lot things have happened and the sector keeps growing. Who would have thought in 1999 that ten years later everyone can navigate his car with satellite guided navigation projected on digital maps? Who would have thought that billions of people could have free instantaneous access to satellite imagery and superimposed maps, including 3D representation of selected environments, all that from home? And who would have been sure that within almost only one year digital cameras would revolutionize cartography and every day’s life?

Some of you would, and so did we somehow. That is why we, together with our stakeholders, public and private partners and friends, have been looking for ways to contribute a little bit to these kinds of small technological miracles during the last 10 years. And, this is what we want to continue doing for the future, with even more ambition and joy.

Source Institute of Geomatics

News on Terrasar, classify oil slicks, Expressmap, rescue…

02 April 2009
Bedfordshire & Luton Fire & Rescue Service selects Imass to provide a hydrant management system

Imass Ltd, an Infoterra company, has been selected by Bedfordshire & Luton Fire & Rescue Service to implement a fire hydrant and water source asset management system. This will be utilised by the service’s water officer and will provide accurate information to front-line fire crews on location via their Imass vehicle-mounted data systems.

Read press release in english

01 April 2009
Infoterra and Spot Image launch EXPRESSMaps, An online service to deliver detailed maps in 6 hours

This world’s first online service, which covers over three quarters of the Earth’s land surfaces, creates basemaps at a scale of 1:50 000, which can be delivered electronically to users in the space of just 6 hours

View website
Read press release in english or french

19 March 2009
Infoterra to map and classify oil slicks over Baffin Bay Greenland

Infoterra has been appointed to undertake an oil slick mapping and interpretation project over Baffin Bay – 240,000 km2 area – for Nunaoil, the National Oil Company of Greenland.

Infoterra’s team of experts will characterise and rank all oil slicks as probable natural seepage or man-made pollution immediately the satellite imagery is received and will report the results to Nunaoil on a weekly basis. The team will also map the location and movement of all sea-ice and icebergs visible on the imagery.

Read press release in english

12 March 2009
TerraSAR-X performance confirmed by US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)

NGA’s CCA Project Group evaluates and verifies TerraSAR-X’s
outstanding geolocation accuracy
Infoterra’s commercial radar satellite data at 1m and 3m resolution exceeds NGA’s purchase requirements

The superb accuracy defined in the TerraSAR-X data product specifications has now been confirmed by the Civil and Commercial Applications Project (CCAP) Group within the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA): The group published the results of their geolocation accuracy evaluation of TerraSAR-X radar satellite imagery during the ASPRS Annual Conference in Baltimore this week.

View website
Read press release in english

11 March 2009
World’s largest claims management provider deploys innovative Infoterra solution

Infoterra has developed a powerful browser-based desktop survey solution for Crawford & Company to deliver improved risk intelligence for their National Subsidence Unit.

Read press release in english

SOURCE INFOTERRA-GLOBAL

GMV led the design, development and maintenance of the ground system of satellite monitoring and control.

On Monday 17 March the European Space Agency (ESA) successfully launched from Plesetsk (Russia) the GOCE mission (“Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer”)

The European Space Agency mission will enable the earth’s gravitational field to be observed and measured with great precision, helping us to understand climate change

GOCE is the first in a series of earth observation satellites called Earth Explorers, designed by ESA to address a series of enigmas that have been puzzling the scientific community in the earth sciences field, seeking better knowledge of the earth’s main components such as its interior, the atmosphere, the biosphere, the hydrosphere and the cryosphere. GOCE will without doubt meet these requisites. Its elegant hi-tech design has adopted many trailblazing technologies for mapping the earth’s gravity fields as never before.

As main contractor, Thales Alenia Space has led an exclusively European 40-company consortium to prepare the mission and construct the GOCE satellite. In Spain GMV originally took charge of the mission analysis. Subsequently, in a project for ESA’s Space Operations Center in Germany (ESOC), GMV led the design, development and maintenance of the ground system of satellite monitoring and control. This system is responsible for generating the control orders and receiving the satellite-sent telemetry for checking the functioning of the onboard equipment. To ensure smooth operation of the developed system, a 4-person team from GMV is going to give direct support in ESA’s operations center during the initial launch phases. Likewise, GMV engineers have participated in the development and operation of the orbit control system that ensures correct GOCE orbit at each moment.

The GOCE mission, which will map the gravity field with unprecedented precision, will input a great variety of new and fascinating possibilities for the fields of oceanography, solid earth physics, geodesy and sea-level studies. This will greatly help us to understand climate change.

Source GMV#

In the age of digitalization and quickly changing markets, knowledge on where your customers are is the cornerstone of successful business. This information is delivered by geomarketing, which is the integration of geographical intelligence into marketing aspects.

It involves the geographic analysis and visualization of company and demographic data in order to spot trends and relationships that would otherwise go unnoticed. Geomarketing thus comprises the ideal basis for sound location- and sales territory planning, for more effective and efficient operations and decision-making. Similar concepts are found and applied in other industries, such as the telecom sector, where knowledge of fine scale population distribution is critical for network but also business development planning.

In reality, poor data on population distribution often hinders the best marketing and business development concepts. Usually, aggregated statistics from the census are employed on the basis of irregularly shaped administrative units, assuming a uniform population density within each administrative unit The marketing or planning efforts based on such data usually result in very poor geographic precision and often lose the original purpose. The mechanism is amplified in the countries with very poor census data. This is where EO data can not only help but increase the efficiency, impact and range of applications dramatically.

ESA to support service development and roll-out

The Value Added Element (VAE) program of the European Space Agency (ESA) has the purpose to support the industrial community in the use of Earth Observation data, and as such is contributing directly to fulfilling the high-level objectives of the EO Envelope Programme Development & Exploitation component. The VAE is the evolution of the market development element (EOMD) of EOEP-1 and 2.

In context with the requirements and needs of the geomarketing and telecom industry for highly detailed demographic data, ESA supports through its VAE program the demonstration, validation, market expansion and promotion of an EO based service that significantly improves existing census data through a modelling approach based on land use information derived from satellites. The proposed EO-STAT PopLoc Day/Night service (EO derived information for sharpening socio-economic STATistics and Population Location at Day and Night, hereafter called PopLoc©) acts like a pencil sharpener and disaggregates statistical information to arrive at the “real world population”.

PopLoc©

With PopLoc marketing companies will be able to know any time during the day and night where people are actually “spatially speaking”. This significant improvement has become possible through a GeoVille model development after completion of EO-STAT. The service is of great interest to geomarketing and one Pop-Loc service case will be customer funded through E-Plus, the largest mobile Telecom provider in Germany.

In short, PopLoc© will build an interface between – EO derived information, – census data (and socio-economic data), and – the road network data base of Tele Atlas
to provide a product for next generation geomarketing and for reaching new customers in the private and public sector.

The PopLoc© service will be available as both a raster based layer at 25, 50, and 100m resolution as well as a network resolved information layer linked to the Tele Atlas MultiNet® Product palette.

Geoville Group

Tel: +352 26 71 41 35
Fax: +352 26 71 41 35
Email: info@geoville.com
Web: www.geoville.com

GeoVille Group is a private sector enterprise located in Austria and Luxembourg. GeoVille Group specialises in products and services related to Earth Observation (EO) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications.

GeoVille is Europe’s leading company in using satellite data for spatial planning applications

Our services provide the bridge from user needs to technical implementation – merging geospatial explicit data with statistics – to the analysis of what on-going processes and trends mean for real world applications.

TeleAtlas

Tel: +41 56 416 30 80
Fax: +41 56 416 30 99
Email: Norbert.Hackner@teleatlas.com
Web: www.teleatlas.com

Tele Atlas delivers the digital maps and dynamic content that power many of the world’s most essential navigation and location-based services (LBS). Through a combination of its own products and partnerships, Tele Atlas offers map coverage of more than 200 countries and territories worldwide.

The company was founded in 1984 and has approximately 2,000 full-time staff and contract cartographers at offices in 24 countries.

Today, Tele Atlas maps are developed with the insight of a community of millions of GPS system users worldwide, who are adding to the company’s unmatched network of sources to track and validate changes in real time, and deliver the best digital maps and dynamic content.

More Geoville news

Latest news


March 2009

GeoID kicks off the TourCap project and will build a virtual geographic world of the Bucegi mountains (Romania) and its points of interest. The objective is to promote tourism in the region. The project is cofinanced by the Foreign Policy of the Flemish Government.

February 2009

GeoID participates in the European SAFER project aiming to support humanitarian aid with satellite imagery information products.

Source GEO-ID

Solar Energy. SolarSAT: solar radiation analysis, dimensioning, design, cost estimation, control and management of a photovoltaic plant in a single website

SolarSAT is a new integrated system, fully customizable, for companies that design, install and sell photovoltaic plants, companies and bodies in charge of their maintenance, inverter manufacturers, manufacturers and distributors of photovoltaic modules, agencies and bodies that promote renewable energy systems.

By accessing both archive and real time satellite data the SolarSAT system offers two types of functionalities that can be distributed either as independent or as combined services: PVPlanner and PV-Controller.

SolarSAT PVPlanner

PV Planner SolarSAT PVPlanner is a web service that allows to evaluate the feasibility and convenience of a new plant and gives the cost/profit estimation for it. To the potential customer who wishes to consider the opportunity to setup a photovoltaic plant, PVPlanner will at first provide the expected productivity, taking into account the typical solar energy available in the chosen locality. Such evaluation is made possible by the availability of solar irradiation hystorical satellite data of the last 10 or 20 years.

With PVPlanner the potential customer, or the designer himself, can dimension and design the plant according to the required energy needs or the desired nominal power, combining in the best way the various components (modules, inverters, …) chosen among those made available by the company supplying the service. PVPlanner then takes into account the features and prices of the selected components, the fiscal parameters imposed by the current law, the maintenance costs, the incentives and savings linked to the producible energy. At the end PVPlanner provides a series of economic parameters that allow to evaluate the investment convenience (e.g. Net Present Value, Internal Rate of Return, breakeven point, etc.).

SolarSAT PVController

SolarSAT PVController is an integrated hardware-software system that allows the remote control and management via web of photovoltaic plants of any size.

PVController keeps under control the plant efficiency and provides the comparison between the produced hourly energy and the expected one. The latter is calculated after the effective solar irradiance derived from either satellite data acquired in real time or from local measurement by dedicated sensors. In case there is a significant difference between produced and producible energies, the people in charge of plant maintenance are warned by e-mail or SMS and can then decide for a possible intervention. PV Controller

To the PVController service is associated a family of dataloggers and sensors of the SolarSAT series. They can be adapted to plants of any kind and size and interfaced to any inverter. With PVController a whole PV park can be managed with a single, simple and effective web interface.

Installing the dataloggers is simple and usually does not require any configuration by the operator, as this is done via web-GPRS. Moreover, thanks to the GPRS data link, there is no need for a fixed phone line at the plant. The various datalogger models can be used for both satellite monitoring and for monitoring by local sensors, to measure the plant physical parameters.

Capitalizing on its background of environmental monitoring and manufacturing of spectroradiometers for solar radiation measurement, Flyby has selected those components which are at the same time reliable, with high performances and easy to install.

The SolarSAT integrated system is available in several configurations and is fully customizable for the company or Body that is willing to distribute it to its customers.

Click here to visit the SolarSAT site

SOURCE FlyBy

On the nights of the 2nd, 16th, 17th and 18th March of 2009, EUROSENSE executed four aerial flights covering the city of Antwerp and 20 surrounding municipalities for the creation of a thermographic map. Covering an area of approx. 700 km², it is one of the largest thermographic projects in the context of energy efficiency of buildings ever executed in Europe!

The thermographic map, foreseen to be ready in early summer of 2009, will give an indication to the inhabitants of Antwerp and surrounding municipalities regarding the state of their roof insulation. By means of an easy-to-follow interpretation key and a corresponding interpretation legend, the inhabitants themselves can check if potential problems exist in the roof insulation of their building. Based on this information and supported eventually through subventions from the city or community, concrete actions can be undertaken to improve their roof insulation. This way it is an excellent mean to support the local and national energy efficiency policies.

Local, regional and national press (newspapers & television) actively reported on the project. Also the involvement of hundreds of volunteers (through questionnaires & temperature measurements during the night) was highlighted extensively.

EUROSENSE is for already several decades very active in different types of thermographic projects. In the context of energy efficiency of buildings, it is currently involved in several operational projects for several European cities/regions (like e.g. Brussels, Antwerp and Genk in Belgium and three areas in France). Furthermore, Eurosense is active in the continuous enhancement of the service towards specific customer needs and use of future sensors, within the DUE (Data User Element) project “Urban Heat Island and Urban Thermography”, funded by ESA

For more information on these services, we refer to the following contact information:
EUROSENSE Belfotop N.V Belgium
Address: Nerviërslaan 54, B-1780 Wemmel, BELGIUM
Phone: +32 (0)2 460 70 00
Fax: +32 (0)2 460 49 58
Website: http://www.eurosense.com

Via the following link, you can find a movie report from the Flemish Television (VRT) regarding the ground measurements: http://www.deredactie.be/cm/de.redactie/mediatheek/1.490419?mode=popupplayer

Source EUROSENSE Belfotop

LandBase™ provides classification down to individual property level

Leicester, UK / Munich, Germany – March 5, 2008 – Infoterra Ltd, a leader in the provision of geospatial products and services, uses Definiens’ market leading object-based image analysis to produce land cover classifications at the highest resolution, down to individual property level.

Infoterra’s new land cover mapping product, LandBase™ demonstrates the trend among geospatial data providers towards the provision of value-added products and services. Products such as LandBase are becoming an increasingly important differentiator in a competitive marketplace. Definiens technology is a key value-adding enabler in this process.

“Definiens software was an essential tool to our land cover classification process. The enterprise architecture allows us to develop solutions within our R&D team which can be easily adjusted in the production process. Together with the robust client-server architecture, the delivery of high quality value-added products is much faster” stated Andrew Tewkesbury, Product Development, Infoterra Ltd. “The semi-automated solution we developed for LandBase provides us with a successful model for delivery of future value-added products.”

“Infoterra’s LandBase product demonstrates what can be accomplished with an effective deployment of the Definiens Enterprise Image Intelligence® Suite, which is specifically designed to enable the development of value-added products,” states Ralph Humberg, VP Earth Sciences at Definiens. “We believe that LandBase will provide an enormous advantage for Infoterra in the UK.”

Definiens Enterprise Image Intelligence® Suite -http://www.definiens.com/image-analysis-software-for-earth-sciences_45_7_9.html
Infoterra’s LandBase™ – http://www.infoterra.co.uk/data_landbase.php

About Infoterra Ltd
Infoterra Ltd is a leading provider of geographic information products and services. Its portfolio of geographic information solutions includes airborne and satellite data acquisition, geo-information creation, database management and outsourced hosting. Infoterra provides geospatial knowledge to companies worldwide to help them make informed decisions. The company has major customers in government, insurance, utilities, engineering, defence and oil, gas & mineral exploration.
Infoterra Ltd, which incorporates Imass Ltd, is part of the Infoterra Group, which also comprises companies in France, Germany, Hungary and Spain.

About Infoterra Group
Infoterra, wholly owned by Europe’s leading space company Astrium, is a leading provider of geo-information products and services for managing the development, environment and security of our changing world. With entities in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain and Hungary, its customers include international corporations, governments and authorities around the globe, and organisations such as the European Commission (EC) and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Infoterra holds the exclusive commercial exploitation rights for the high-resolution radar satellite TerraSAR-X, and plays a leading role in geo-information services within the European GMES initiative of the EC and ESA. Infoterra, together with Spot Image, form the Earth Observation Division of Astrium Services.

Definiens in Earth Sciences
Definiens enables organizations involved in Earth Sciences to quickly extract accurate geo-information from any kind of remote sensing imagery. The company assists data collectors, service providers and end users in integrating earth observation and remote sensing data to generate accurate GIS-ready information. Definiens’ intelligent feature extraction capabilities accelerate mapping, change detection and object recognition–delivering standardized and reproducible image analysis results.

About Definiens
Definiens is the number one Enterprise Image Intelligence company for analyzing and interpreting images on every scale, from microscopic cell structures to satellite images. The Definiens Cognition Network Technology®, developed by Nobel laureate Prof. Gerd Binnig and his team, is an advanced and robust context-based technology designed to fulfill the image analysis requirements of the Medical, Life and Earth Sciences markets. The technology is modeled on the powerful human cognitive perception processes to extract intelligence from images. Definiens provides organizations with faster image analysis results, allowing deeper insights enabling better business decisions. The company is headquartered in Munich, Germany and has offices throughout the United States. Further information is available at www.definiens.com.

Definiens, Definiens Cellenger, Definiens Cognition Network Technology, Definiens eCognition, Enterprise Image Intelligence and Understanding Images are trademarks or registered trademarks of Definiens.

Press Contacts
Infoterra Ltd
Sarah Haslam
+44 (0)116 273 2300

Definiens
Eva Tietz, Manager Corporate Communications
etietz@definiens.com

SOURCE DEFINIENS