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Deimos Imaging, its parent company UrtheCast Corp., and SI Imaging Services (“SIIS”), a leading provider of remote sensing satellite data and exclusive worldwide marketing and sales representative of the KOMPSAT series, announced the signing of an agreement for the mutual global distribution of their respective product portfolios on December 21, 2017.

The space assets of Deimos Imaging and SIIS include Deimos-1, Deimos-2 and the KOMPSAT series KOMPSAT-2, KOMPSAT-3, KOMPSAT-3A and KOMPSAT-5, resulting in a wide portfolio of X-band SAR and optical data in a wide range of resolutions, from 22 m to 0.4 m per pixel.

The combination of radar with very high-resolution optical imagery will allow observation of the Earth day and night, regardless of weather conditions, and is intended to provide a constant asset monitoring service. This is key for a wide range of applications, especially those requiring frequent monitoring over the same area of interest and real-time response, such as emergency services, border and maritime surveillance and defence and security.

Additionally, this collaboration is expected to provide customers with an exceptional level of decision making data, and to create a unique and crucial benefit for users in various sectors while strengthening the positions of both companies in their respective markets.

“We are delighted to be an authorized distributor for Deimos Imaging”, said Mr. Wookhyun Choi, Vice President at SIIS. “This is a great opportunity to broaden our reach and widen our geospatial data distribution options, as we are introducing Deimos Imaging’s imagery to our resellers while presenting KOMPSAT to their networks. This will allow us to provide our customers with more precise answers to their needs.”

“We are very pleased to be partnering with SIIS as this collaboration supports and strengthens our data strategy to meet a growing range of customer needs by providing them with fast, customized and ready-to-use solutions”, said Fabrizio Pirondini, CEO at Deimos Imaging. “This agreement confirms the importance of partnerships and alliances with other stakeholders to significantly accelerate decision making in a great variety of fields. In addition, this joint service increases our portfolio of sensors and our market reach with new geo-intelligence products thanks to the combination of SAR and very high resolution optical data.”

The assets of SIIS now combine with the recent strategic partners aligned with Deimos Imaging, resulting in a multi satellite, multi resolution virtual constellation, to deliver imagery services and geo-analytic applications to customers globally. These strong partnerships are designed as ‘win-win’ to secure the success and sustainability of all the partners involved in the ever developing and growing Earth Observation industry.

Toulouse/Daejeon, 20/12/2017 – After four months at the Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) test facilities in Daejeon, South Korea, during which intensive testing was performed by a joint team of KARI and Airbus Defence and Space, the GOCI-II ocean colour imaging instrument has been delivered to the customer.

On the left GOCI-II sensor unit, inside on-ground supporting structure, with electronics © Airbus 2017 | On the right: Example of GOCI images for monitoring of turbidity. GOCI-II is planned to be launched in 2019 and will continue GOCI mission © KARI_KIOST

GOCI-II will be mounted on the GK2B satellite and will be launched in 2019 from Kourou on an Ariane 5. From its geostationary orbit, GOCI-II will analyse the colour of the ocean around the Korean peninsula, in order to detect, monitor, quantify and predict short-term variations in the characteristics of the coastal regions, for scientific and industrial purposes.

GOCI-II offers greater functional, geometrical and radiometric performance than its predecessor, launched in 2010 on the COMS satellite. It will acquire images of the Earth in 12 spectral bands between 380 nm and 865 nm, with resolution of about 250 m at Nadir. It will also be able to provide images of the Earth’s entire disk as well as the Moon and stars for calibration.

Source: Airbus Defence and Space

15 December 2017. The world’s first full-colour, full-motion video satellite is scheduled for early January launch.

British ‘New Space’ pioneer Earth-i today announced that images and video from its new prototype satellite due for launch early January 2018 will be managed, catalogued and geometrically corrected using software from Swedish photogrammetry and imagery specialist, Spacemetric.

Earth-i is building the first commercial constellation in the world to provide full-colour video; and the first European-owned constellation able to provide both video and still images.Footage recorded by Earth-i’s fleet of satellites will be available for analysis within minutes of acquisition.

Spacemetric’s Keystone software will be installed at Earth-i’s Data Processing Centre in Guildford, UK and will perform two vital processes:

  • Pin-pointing the precise location of each pixel of every image and video frame
  • Correcting for distortions owing to the motion of the satellite, the shape and rotation of the Earth and effects due to the Earth’s terrain.

Spacemetric CEO Mikael Stern said “Earth-i is an exciting and innovative New Space company with unique requirements served well by our technology and expertise. We are proud to be part of their constellation which is raising the bar in the EO industry and flying the flag for the European space industry.”

Earth-i is at the forefront of an era known as New Space which is being driven by commercial and governmental organisations that want to use high-quality, timely images and video from space to improve investment and trading decisions, monitor and track their assets more cost-effectively, track changes or activities in critical locations – and predict future events with more certainty.

Earth-i has already ordered the first five satellites for its constellation from SSTL (Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd) – and chosen Norway’s KSAT (Kongsberg Satellite Services) to provide ground network services.

Richard Blain, CEO of Earth-i, said: “We are making good progress as we await the imminent launch of our next prototype satellite. Spacemetric joins our roster of partners and suppliers who represent the space industry’s most innovative and dynamic companies.”

Earth-i’s constellation will be a major leap forward for the Earth Observation industry providing a number of innovative capabilities including:

  • The provision of high-frame rate images with resolutions better than one metre for any location on Earth.
  • The ability to film moving objects such as vehicles, vessels and aircraft in ultra-high-definition colour video.
  • Revisiting the same location multiple times per day with agile satellites that can be pointed to image specific areas of interest.
  • Rapid tasking of satellites to take images or video, and fast data download within minutes of acquisition.

Bari, 18 December 2017. Planetek Italia has signed an alliance with two Polish companies, Creotech Instruments SA and Wroclaw Institute of Spatial Information and Artificial Intelligence (WIZIPISI), with the aim of developing cooperation in the field of Earth Observation (EO) and research, as well as in the development and commercialization of joint solutions.

The agreement was signed at the “Big Data in Space Sector” workshop, which took place on December 6 at the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Rome. The day, dedicated by the Embassy to the theme of Space, also hosted a bilateral Italy-Poland meeting with the aim of sealing the cooperation among companies in the Space sector.
During the meeting the representatives of the three companies signed a letter of intent in the presence of Marta Zielińska – Śliwka, Chargé d’affaires a.i. at the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Italy.

The three companies can be rated as an excellence at European level in the change of paradigm of Earth observation services, which today exploits Cloud computing and Big Satellite Data to provide geospatial information as a services.

Creotech Instruments, together with the company CloudFerro, has in fact created and successfully developed a unique satellite database combined with fast cloud computing: the Earth Observation Cloud (EO Cloud). Data and computing power are available to anyone interested in using them for both commercial and scientific purposes. The EO Cloud platform was created as part of a project implemented by a consortium for the European Space Agency. On EO Cloud servers there are constantly updated and archived data, among others, from Landsat, Sentinel and Envisat satellites.
In December 2017 Creotech signed biggest contract in polish space industry history. Company will build advanced cloud platform “EO DIAS” which give unlimited, free and complete access to Copernicus data and information for European Commission and ESA.

Planetek has created Rheticus®, a cloud-based platform that delivers automated geoinformation services designed to provide accurate and constantly updated data and information about our changing world. Rheticus® provides timely and detailed information for the needs of a growing number of businesses (applications). The information is provided as a service and includes thematic maps, reports and geospatial indexes, designed for the monitoring of various phenomena, such as urban dynamics and land use changes, ground surface movements, landslides and infrastructure stability, new infrastructures and areas under construction, burnt areas and quality of marine-coastal waters.

WIZIPISI has been collaborating since last year with Planetek Italia as an authorized distributor of Rheticus® services in Poland, and successfully markets Cloud services for the monitoring of land surface movements and the control of landslide and subsidence areas, and of the stability of infrastructures.

“The letters of intent signed in Rome is the basis for future cooperation between our three companies,” said Adam Iwaniak, President of WIZIPISI. “In this specific technological constellation, whose common denominator is satellite data, Creotech and Planetek focus on aggregating and sharing satellite data, with the Creotech’s EO Cloud and Planetek’s Rheticus® platform; in the meantime, WIZIPISI has specialized in the creation of specific applications based on this data and in the provision of final services to corporate customers “.

“Together with our Italian partner, we have decided to bring our cooperation to a higher and more strategic level. We will determine the basic skills of each of the parties in the field of Earth observation, in which specializations our company will develop and in which areas we want to build and strengthen skills, to compete successfully on the European market together,” said Grzegorz Brona, CEO of Creotech Instruments SA.

Giovanni Sylos Labini, CEO of Planetek Italia, adds “This trilateral cooperation agreement is in line with Planetek Italia’s strategy to benefit from the extraordinary contribution of Copernicus to the growth of our industry. Together with our partners we will be more competitive in our countries, in Europe, but above all in the rest of the world”.

Contacts for the Media:

  • Creotech Instruments: Dawid Michnik, Tel. +48 603504709, Email: d.michnik @ attentionmarketing.pl
  • WIZIPISI: Tomasz Berezowski, Tel. +48 717297819, Email: tomasz.berezowski @ wizipisi.pl
  • Planetek Italia: Antonio Buonavoglia, Tel. +39 0809644200, Email: buonavoglia @ planetek.it

1 December 2017. British ‘New Space’ pioneer Earth-i today provided another update about its progress in building the first constellation in the world to provide full-colour video – and the first European-owned commercial constellation able to provide both video and still images

KSAT’s ground station at Svalbard, ideally located at 78´north

Last week Earth-i announced that it had ordered the first five satellites of its constellation from SSTL (Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd).

Today the company has confirmed that its prototype satellite is now en route to launch provider Antrix in India with the launch planned for late-December on a PSLV rocket. This satellite will be used to test performance and confirm capabilities for the future constellation including tasking, data downlinks to ground stations, and image and full-colour video capture from space.

In addition, Earth-i has chosen Norway’s KSAT to provide ground network services for its new Earth Observation (EO) constellation.

Footage recorded by Earth-i’s fleet of satellites will be received direct to KSAT’s ground stations around the world within minutes of being recorded.

From the KSAT ground stations, images and videos will be immediately accessible to Earth-i’s headquarters in the UK to begin processing and running analysis on the data. The information gathered will improve decision-making and response times in a wide variety of scenarios from change detection to object identification, from disaster response to infrastructure monitoring.

KSAT president and CEO, Rolf Skatteboe, said “Earth-i is an innovative, exciting and ambitious New Space company whose constellation will move the EO industry forward immensely.”

Richard Blain, CEO of Earth-i, said: “Selecting KSAT as part of our ground segment ecosystem is a big step forward in our growth. Working with KSAT will ensure that we can deliver the high-temporal resolution that our clients need to guarantee they have the images and video data they need, when they need it.”

Earth-i is at the forefront of an era known as New Space which is being driven by commercial organisations that want to improve investment and trading decisions, monitor and track their assets more cost effectively, track changes or activities in critical locations – and predict future events with more certainty.

Earth-i’s constellation will be a major leap forward for the EO industry providing a number of innovative capabilities including:

  • The provision of high-frame rate images with resolutions better than one metre for any location on Earth.
  • The ability to film moving objects such as vehicles, vessels and aircraft in ultra-high-definition colour video.
  • Revisiting the same location multiple times per day with agile satellites that can be pointed to acquire imagery of specific areas of interest.
  • Rapid tasking of satellites to take images or video, and fast data download within minutes of acquisition.

Élancourt, France 22 November 2017 – La Direction générale de l’armement (DGA), the French Defence Procurement Agency, has entrusted the firm tranche of the 10-year SYSENV contract to Airbus Defence and Space and its four partners, for the production of the “SI GEODE4D” information system for the French Armed Forces.

This system is an essential component of the “GEODE4D” programme (geography, hydrography, oceanography and meteorology for defence) and will be available via a single and secure portal. It will allow all Ministry of Defence actors to access and share the same geophysical environment data and select and present them in a coherent way, according to the “one card for all” principle.

“This programme shows the confidence of the DGA in Airbus and its partners for the construction of this information system for the French Armed Forces,” said François Lombard, Head of the Intelligence Business Cluster at Airbus Defence and Space. “One of the major challenges for the “SI GEODE4D”, which can truly be qualified as the active digital map of the 21st century, is also to assist our armed forces with their digital transformation.”

It is vital to reinforce the ability to manage information and intelligence for early threat detection and identification. To provide an appropriate response to these varied and constantly changing threats, an accurate understanding of the geophysical environment is crucial for deployed forces. In future, the “SI GEODE4D” system, consisting of various services and applications, will provide the armed forces with an interoperable, coherent and shared vision of the geophysical environment, consistent with the NATO REP concept (Recognised Environmental Picture).

The consortium is headed by Airbus Defence and Space and built around four innovative and specialised partner companies: Magellium for geography; Météo France International for meteorology, hydrography and oceanography; Bertin for the tool providing decision-making aids; and Deloitte for change management.

The contract also includes the refurbishment of the geographical and meteorological–oceanographic data production centres in Creil, Haguenau and Toulouse. In particular, this refurbishment is designed to meet the need for the increased volume and transmission rates involved in the visualisation of all the environmental data on the future GEODE4D portal.

Source: Airbus

Warsaw, 23/11/2017. CloudFerro – Polish technology company – won an open tender organized under the Copernicus program. It has defeated the European market leaders, won a € 1.3 million contract and will provide an innovative solution for the European Center for Medium-Term Forecasting (ECMWF).

Hybrid cloud from Poland

ECMWF is an international organization for weather forecasting and climate analysis. In May this year, it announced the creation and operation of a satellite data acquisition and processing system for climate change monitoring (Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) for which it is responsible within the framework of Copernicus – the European Earth Observation Programme. Aligned with the European Cloud Computing Strategy, adopted by the European Commission, the Copernicus strategy foresees an incremental and fast adoption of cloud based infrastructures. In line with these aims, and taking into consideration the huge volumes of data needed to be transferred into the system, it has been decided to host the CDS on a fully managed On-premises Private Cloud with an additional Public Cloud service to allow for further growth – the Hybrid Cloud solution. The data repository will be made available to a fully managed local private cloud with additional public cloud service, allowing for further growth. Twelve companies, including European market leaders, participated in an open tender where quality and price of the solution were of equal importance. CloudFerro’s hybrid cloud – a combination of a private and public cloud – proved to be the best and the Polish company signed a contract with ECMWF worth 1.3 million euros. The contract has been signed for 15 months with the possibility of extending it and increasing the scope of services provided by CloudFerro.

Innovative and reliable

We have proposed an innovative cloud solutions, which have been successfully used by customers in Poland and abroad. By winning the tender we have confirmed the highest quality of our technology and services based on it. It is more valuable for us to have achieved this by competing with European market leaders. It also shows that our solutions perfectly meet the needs articulated in the European Cloud Computing Strategy emphasizes Maciej Krzyżanowski, CEO of CloudFerro.

Thanks to the CloudFerro technology, ECMWF will use its own private cloud while having access to the public cloud at eocloud.cloudferro.com, created by the Polish company. Both solutions are based on OpenStack’s open source cloud-based system and are entirely managed by CloudFerro. The reliability and flexibility of the solution offered is extremely important since it will be at the heart of the C3S infrastructure. The system is designed to provide a consolidated view and point of access to climate data distributed over multiple data suppliers. All C3S data will be catalogued in the CDS, and augmented with quality information that allows data users to easily appraise, discover and select appropriate data. The private cloud at ECMWF will have about 1 PetaByte (1 000 TeraBytes) of storage space linked to the computing environment.

EOCloud – the biggest and the best

The unique base of satellite data combined with the fast computing cloud – EO Cloud – has been created by CloudFerro as a result of a bid for the Earth Observation Innovaitive Platform Testbed (EO IPT). The company won it jointly with Polish Creotech Instruments SA and German Brockmann Consult in late 2015 as a consortium member responsible for technology development. It is one of the biggest and best cloud solutions on the market. CloudFerro’s repository has recently reached 5 PB – it is an equivalent of disk space of ca. 5000 laptops – with daily receipt of 15 to 25 TB of new data.

EO Cloud has nearly 5 million satellite imagery products from Earth observations made by European satellites within Copernicus project. It provides Sentinel 1 radar observations, transmits multiple optical images of Sentinel 2 and delivers meteorological observations of Sentinel 3 satellites. The EO Cloud also includes historical data from Landsat, Envisat and Sentinel satellites. All data may be searched in a simple, quick and convenient way at https://finder.eocloud.eu and viewed with http://apps.eocloud.sentinel-hub.com/eo-browser

Should you need any further information regarding CloudFerro’s products and services, please do not hesitate to contact Maciej Krzyżanowski: mkrzyzanowski@cloudferro.com

21 November 2017. Innovative British Space Company prepares for launch of next prototype satellite.

British ‘New Space’ pioneer Earth-i today announced that it has ordered the first five satellites from SSTL (Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd) for its new Earth Observation (EO) constellation.

Earth-i is building the first constellation in the world able to provide full-colour video – and the first European-owned constellation able to provide both video and still images.

This constellation will be a major leap forward for the Earth Observation industry providing a number of innovative capabilities including:

  • The provision of high-frame rate images with resolutions better than one metre for any location on Earth.
  • The ability to film moving objects such as vehicles, vessels and aircraft in ultra-high-definition colour video.
  • Revisiting the same location multiple times per day with agile satellites that can be pointed to image specific areas of interest.
  • Rapid tasking of satellites to take images or video, and fast data download within minutes of acquisition.

Footage recorded by Earth-i’s fleet of satellites will be available for analysis within minutes of being taken and will improve decision-making and response times in a wide variety of scenarios from change detection to object identification, from disaster response to infrastructure monitoring.

The creation of Earth-i’s constellation starts with the imminent launch of its pre-production prototype satellite which was also designed and manufactured in partnership with SSTL. This prototype will demonstrate and prove technology and processes for the future constellation including tasking, data downlinks to ground stations, image quality and video from space. The five SSTL satellites ordered today are planned to be launched in 2019.

Welcoming the signing of the contract and the imminent launch of the prototype, Science Minister Jo Johnson said:

“Some of Britain’s most exciting commercial opportunities are in the thriving space sector and it’s great to see two home-grown companies joining forces to lead the world on Earth Observation technologies. The Government is investing record amounts in science and innovation and is committed to growing our share of the global space market. The upcoming Industrial Strategy will build on our strengths and capabilities as a nation, and projects like this show what we can achieve.”

Earth-i is at the forefront of an era known as New Space which is being driven by commercial organisations that are able to:

  • Improve investment and trading decisions.
  • Monitor and track their assets more cost-effectively.
  • Track changes or activities in critical locations.
  • Predict future events with more certainty.

Richard Blain, CEO of Earth-i, said: “SSTL is our long-term supply partner and today’s order is a key milestone for the deployment of our constellation. We’re on track and in countdown mode to the imminent launch of our prototype satellite. This new satellite, and today’s announcement, mark significant progress on the way to a step-change in how Governments and industry use new types of data from space to make better, more effective and timely decisions to improve our daily lives.”

The origin of Earth-i’s constellation lies in the Carbonite 1 technology demonstrator satellite launched by SSTL in July 2015 and still fully operational. The batch of production satellites ordered by Earth-i will be based on the second prototype satellite about to be launched into orbit, but will incorporate significant additional enhancements already in development by SSTL for Earth-i.

SSTL is a world-leading company in the design, build and launch of small satellites. It has pioneered the reduction in the size and cost of satellites making a new era of commercial satellite constellations possible.

SSTL’s Managing Director Sarah Parker said: “Together SSTL and Earth-i are creating something truly special: a major leap forward in capabilities for Earth Observation from space.

“Earth-i has the team and the technology to deliver on their goals and SSTL’s satellite technology will be a foundation stone for Earth-i’s future success in the emerging market for planetary big data.”

Now in its 10th edition, Satellite-Based Earth Observation, Market Prospects to 2026 is the only report providing industry forecasts, assessment of business opportunities and analysis of the entire civil & commercial value chain for this growing segment of the satellite industry. It includes a detailed breakdown of application sectors within each region along with consolidated forecasts per application sector and per region.

Highlights from the report:

The Earth Observation (EO) data and services market should reach $8.5 billion by 2026 based on current growth trajectories. An alternative value-added services (VAS) model also presented has a combined market potential of $15 billion. This upside model considers the implications of new supply solutions being able to open further markets. As well, advances in artificial intelligence and deep learning are expected to benefit the sector, acting as enablers for new solutions based on change-detection analytics.

The growth drivers for data and services are distinctly different. Defense still dominates the market for commercial data, with the sector alone responsible for over $1 billion in data sales with a focus on very high resolution and high accuracy data sets. Data prices to support defense applications are expected to remain high, a drawback for services development in the civil government and private sector. VAS’ largest markets remain infrastructure and natural resources monitoring, however in order to build these solutions often lower-cost or free data solutions are utilized. This creates a disparity in the value-chain in which high-cost, precision data sets make up most of the defense-driven commercial data market, whereas more services are being built from less expensive, more competitively-priced solutions.

Companies (both operators and new service providers, such as Orbital Insights, AllSource Analysis, etc.) are building algorithms to detect changes in multisourced data to detect patterns and build predictive analytics. Bringing higher-frequency collected data into these models, the so-called “Big Data” environment will further aid developments, with the potential to open new services areas based around location-based systems such as financial intelligence and site monitoring, among others.

Euroconsult has identified approximately 20 companies that have announced intentions to develop lower-cost constellations to collect data at a high rate of revisit based on smallsat and cubesat technologies. As of 2017, these new operators have attracted more than $600 million in venture capital to fund their initiatives. None of the newly announced initiatives have yet reached full capacity; for these constellations to come to fruition, additional investments will be required.

From 2007 to 2016, 181 EO/non-meteorology satellites were launched; the cost to develop these satellites generated $17.4 billion in manufacturing market revenues. Over the next decade more than 600 EO satellites (50kg+, non-meteorology) should be launched to support EO applications. Nearly fifty countries are expected to launch satellite capacity, and over half should be from the private sector; this is expected to generate over $33 billion in manufacturing market revenues. Cumulatively, developing programs could represent $4 billion in market value (12% of the total). This figure remains significant, as the majority of export opportunities are to be found with emerging programs, as opposed to more established government EO programs, which remain captive.

Source

Remote Sensing Application Center – ReSAC in a consortium with partners published a scientific study on the project “FEMA: Fresh water ecosystem services mapping and assessment in Bulgaria”

In relation to the FEMA project completion “Fresh water ecosystem services mapping and assessment in Bulgaria”, financed by the BG03 Program “Biodiversity and Ecosystems” of the Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area (FM / EEA 2009-2014), a new scientific study has been developed and published providing an information on the mapping and assessment of Freshwater and Marine ecosystems in Bulgaria, located outside the NATURA and the protected area system in Bulgaria (national and nature parks, strict and maintained reserves, protected localities, natural landmarks).

Content:
List of abbreviations… 5
Preface… 6
Methodology for mapping of ecosystem condition and their services… 7
Scope and coverage of mapped aquatic ecosystems (freshwater and marine)… 9
Data sources and information for ecosystem condition and their services of the aquatic (freshwater and marine) ecosystems…10
Used data for mapping of freshwater (river and lake) ecosystems…13
Mapping of the freshwater ecosystem subtypes…15
Used data for mapping of Black Sea ecosystems…19
Nomenclature of the river ecosystems and water bodies from category “rivers”… 20
Nomenclature of the lake ecosystems and water bodies from category “lakes”… 22
Nomenclature of the marine ecosystems, including coastal seawater bodies… 23
Selected indicators for assessment of condition and services, provided by freshwater and marine ecosystems… 27
Presentation of the Web GIS portal and freshwater and marine ecosystems maps…41
Presentation of the project website… 42

The project Partners are:

  • Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IBERBAS);
  • Remote Sensing Application Center – ReSAC;
  • Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe – branch Bulgaria;
  • Club “Economika 2000”.


A digital copy of the scientific study in Bulgarian (47 pages) can be downloaded here:
Freshwater and Marine ecosystems: state, services, perspectives
ISBN: 978-954-90138-5-6
First Edition, Sofia, 2017
Publisher: Club “Economika 2000”
© All rights reserved!

For more information:
Remote Sensing Application Center – ReSAC – www.resac-bg.org
61, Tzar Assen Str., fl. 2, 1463, Sofia, Bulgaria. Tel/Fax: +35929800731
E-mail: resac@techno-link.com