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MEOS Polar system installed at Scientific Research Center of Space Hydrometeorology “Planeta” in Moscow

Kongsberg Spacetec has successfully installed a MEOS POLAR system for Scientific Research Center of Space Hydrometeorology “Planeta” (SRC “Planeta”), Moscow.

The system will a part of the EUMETSAT EARS network and supports MODIS/ SEASTAR/ FY1/ NOAA/ NPOESS receipt and processing using a 3.2 M L/X antenna with radome.

Source

Automated workflow tools for easier image processing/ New technology to find objects in images concealed by vegetation/ Support for ENVI�s new Feature Extraction Module and ENVI NITF Module enhancements/ Enhancements and additions to ENVI�s optional Zoom interface

ITT Visual Information Solutions (ITT VIS), a wholly owned subsidiary of ITT Corporation, today announced a new release of ENVI, its high performance software for processing geospatial images. The ENVI 4.4 release includes new automated workflow tools, new technology to find objects concealed by vegetation, support for a new, add-on module for extracting features from images, and enhancements to the ENVI Zoom interface, including new visualization tools and enhanced vector support.

“With the growing use of satellite and airborne imagery across a broader range of industries, it is essential that we continue to not only provide leading edge image processing technologies but also improve productivity through the automation of workflows,” said Richard Cooke, president and COO of ITT Visual Information Solutions. “ENVI 4.4 introduces new functionality that supports our long term goal to deliver best in class image processing capabilities that are also easily accessed and performed by image analysts with a wide range of experience”.

Automated workflow tools – SPEAR Tools

ENVI 4.4 improves the image processing workflow with functionality that allows image analysts to perform basic and advanced image processing routines easily and quickly. This ENVI release introduces SPEAR Tools, a robust set of wizard-based workflows that greatly reduce the number of steps it takes to get the information needed from geospatial imagery. These tools include automated processes for spatial and temporal change detection, pan-sharpening images, terrain categorization, and more.

Advanced image processing capabilities � Vegetation Suppression

ENVI 4.4 delivers more of the advanced image processing capabilities that make ENVI the choice of research and image scientists worldwide. The new Vegetation Suppression feature allows image analysts to visually remove vegetation from an image in order to see what is concealed by the vegetation, such as geologic and urban features and vehicles or other objects of interest.

ENVI add-on module support and enhancements

ENVI 4.4 provides support for the new ENVI Feature Extraction Module, an add-on module to ENVI that allows analysts to quickly, easily, and accurately find and identify features of interest in high-resolution geospatial imagery. In addition, ENVI 4.4 also supports enhancements to the ENVI Certified NITF Module and the new ENVI Certified NITF Module with TFRD. These two NITF modules support file and data formats specific to government and military applications.

ENVI optional Zoom interface enhancements

Enhancements to ENVI�s optional Zoom interface now make common vector layer tasks, such as importing, editing, and exporting, faster and more convenient. ENVI 4.4 also delivers additional visualization tools in Zoom to increase workflow efficiency and make common image processing tasks easier and more intuitive.

For more information about ENVI 4.4 and corresponding images, visit www.ittvis.com/envi/pr.

About ITT Corporation
ITT Corporation (www.itt.com) supplies advanced technology products and services in several growth markets. ITT is a global leader in the transport, treatment and control of water, wastewater and other fluids. The company plays a vital role in international security through its defense communications and electronics products; space surveillance and intelligence systems; and advanced engineering and related services. It also serves the growing leisure marine and electrical connectors markets with a wide range of products. Headquartered in White Plains, N.Y., the company generated $7.8 billion in 2006 sales.

About ITT Visual Information Solutions
ITT Visual Information Solutions (formerly Research Systems, Inc.), a wholly owned subsidiary of ITT Corporation, provides integrated software solutions that help scientists, engineers, researchers, and medical professionals turn complex data into useful information. The company�s 150,000 customers from more than 80 countries use IDL, ENVI and IAS to analyze data and imagery and deploy imaging applications. ITT Visual Information Solutions� products are used in a variety of industries, including remote sensing, engineering, earth sciences, aerospace, defense and intelligence, medical imaging, oil and gas exploration and biotechnology. Combined with a host of support services including training, consulting and technical support, ITT Visual Information Solutions offers the most complete data visualization, image analysis and image delivery solutions available.
For more information visit: www.ittvis.com.

ITT Visual Information Solutions Media Contact:
Lori Thompson, ITT Visual Information Solutions
303-402-4664
lthompson@ittvis.com
Source ITT Visual Information Solutions

Landscape Features Extraction

During the annual Joint Research Centre conference “Geomatics in support of the CAP” held at the Palacio de Congresos in Madrid (12th-14th November 2007) Gisat has presented the results of the studies focused on semi-automated extraction of Landscape Features from VHR satellite data.

Preservation of Landscape Features represents one of the main priorities of the European and national agro-environmental policy. The importance of Landscape Features for ecological stability and the impacts of the intensive agriculture production lead to the urgent need to map the current situation and to the continuous monitoring.

The approach of object-oriented fuzzy logic classification (e.g. Definiens software solutions) represents an effective way how to extract certain types of Landscape Features with the subsequent analysis of their typology, spatial distribution, size, number and other parameters.
More info at Gisat

GAF AG, an internationally active geo&information company, has completed its consultancy services including technical assistance, know&how transfer, provision of skills and experience in the fields of coral reef ecology, coral reef management, GIS, web and institutional strengthening to the headquarters of CRITC in Gedung LIPI, Cikini, Jakarta and 8 districts in Sumatra.

Works started in January 2005 and has been performed under a contract for the Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Program (COREMAP), Phase II.

Indonesia has 17,600 islands with 80,000 km of shorelines and is known to have the richest coral reefs in the world. The coral reefs of Indonesia serve many purposes for their adjacent coastal communities: natural barriers that protect the beach; natural barriers that are there to be modified to make boat launching less difficult; habitats for locally consumed seafood and habitats for seafood harvest and cage rearing for net income generation to the village. The coral reefs, however, are facing immense threats from human activities such as overexploitation, destructive fishing, and pollution, which have become widespread throughout the country. Using coral reef resources properly will sustain and increase their value to coastal villagers in the long term as habitats for diverse fisheries, sources of building materials, and protectors of shorelines.

Community based resource management (CBRM) is the underlying concept for COREMAP in the management of coral reefs. CRITC has supported the CBRM processes in the following sectors :

- ‘characterize’ (compiling specific local information for preparing a coral reef management plan)

- ‘design’ (providing support in preparing coral reef management plans including zoning maps, regulations and alternative income generation schemes)

- ‘Implement’ (supporting role by collaborating in public awareness and education) and

- ‘monitor’ (CRITC`s major ongoing activity as Benefit Monitoring and Evaluation using the indicators of reef health and socio&economic well&being.

Major contributions were made for the development and refinement of the ‘Coral Reef Management Information System (CRMIS), reflecting the National CRITC’s important role as the central coral reef information repository for Indonesia.

David Peters, GAF representative in Indonesia observes: “The successful completion of CRITC project is an important milestone for GAF, now providing technical assistance services to this geographic area from its new representative office in Jakarta. The CRITC project underlines the emphasis GAF is now devoting to environmental consulting in the coastal and marine domains.”

CRITC is funded by a loan from the Asian Development Bank, Manila. Works have been performed under contract to LIPI, the Indonesian Institute of Sciences by GAF AG as the lead firm in association with Coffey International Development of Australia and PT. Geosys Intipiranti of Indonesia. In total 101 person months of on&site technical assistance and consulting were provided. For more details on CRITC please visit the project website at www.coremap.or.id/tentang_critc/intro.

About COREMAP:
COREMAP (Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Program) began in 1998. It is a long term program with the overall objective to establish a viable, operational, and institutionalized coral reef management system in priority sites in Indonesia. It consists of three phases: Phase I: Initiation (1998& 2004), Phase II: Decentralization and Acceleration (2004&2009), Phase III: Institutionalization (2010& 2015). COREMAP is now in Phase II, with goals of establishing viable reef management systems in at least six priority participating districts in order to empower and to support coastal communities to sustainably co manage the use of coral reefs and associated ecosystem resources. The second phase expands the number of program sites to build upon the pilots tested in Phase I and focuses on promoting collaborative management partnership between communities and local governments. The COREMAP website (www.coremap.or.id/tentang_coremap/mengenal_coremap) offers further details and access to the COREMAP reef GIS.

About GAF AG:
GAF AG is an international consulting company with leading competence and expertise in applied remote sensing and spatial information systems. GAF has been active during the last 20 years in more than 100 countries throughout Europe, Africa, South&America and Asia. The company offers a comprehensive portfolio of services including the supply of geo&data (e.g. satellite and aerial imagery, digital elevation models) and geo&services (e.g. image processing, thematic mapping, GIS/DBMS applications and software development), as well as consulting, capacity building and training. GAF AG has a proven track&record in performing technical assistance projects in the natural resources and environment sector. The company’s activities are overseen by the CEO, Dr. Peter Volk.

To obtain more information, please contact:

GAF AG
Tel. +49 (0) 89 12 15 28 0
www.gaf.de
email: info@gaf.de

Astrium is writing another chapter in its space radar success story: Following the radar instruments for the ERS1/2, Envisat and Metop satellites, the company is to develop and build the latest imaging radar for an ESA satellite.

The devel-opment and delivery contract is to be signed in Friedrichshafen today by Massimo Di Laz-zaro, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Thales Alenia Space BU Observation Systems & Radar, and Uwe Minne, Director of Earth observation and Science at Astrium Germany. The European Space Agency (ESA) awarded the main contact for the Sentinel-1 satellite in February to Thales Alenia Space.

Astrium is now to supply the C-band radar for the Sentinel-1 satellite. The contract value of the entire project is €229 million, with the SAR instrument worth approximately €85 million. Sentinel-1 is one element in the GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) programme, an initiative by the European Commission and ESA to set up a sustainable European network for recording and analysing envi-ronmental data. Sentinel-1 will help to monitor and analyse environmental events round the globe.

Weighing some 2.2 metric tons, the satellite will orbit the Earth at an altitude of 700 kilome-tres from 2011. Its orbital path will take it across the poles on each orbit, enabling the radar instrument to scan the Earth in “swaths” as it rotates beneath the satellite. Designed as a successor to the present satellites ERS and Envisat to assure continuity in radar-based Earth observation, Sentinel-1 will observe the Earth from orbit for at least seven years. In contrast to its predecessors ERS and Envisat, however, the radar instrument carried by Sentinel-1 will include improvements such as enhanced antenna performance, which in turn will ensure better data quality.

The Astrium-built C-band SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) instrument, which delivers radar images of the Earth’s surface, is the core element of the mission. By taking advantage of the satellite’s flight motion, SAR is able to simulate a considerably larger antenna than is in fact present, thus significantly increasing the image resolution. The radar on Sentinel-1 operates in the C band frequency range. The C-band radar beam, which has a wavelength of six cen-timetres, penetrates forests and scrub to reach the ground, and the C band radar registers any movements or changes on the Earth’s surface to within a centimetre.

Sentinel-1 will be equipped with an active antenna made of up 280 individual antennas, in-cluding electronic front ends (transmit/receive modules) provided by Thales Alenia Space Italy. The active antenna can be electronically directed towards a new observation terrain without having to be physically moved. Thanks to this technology, several adjacent swaths can be scanned on each overflight and later combined to form a larger overall picture.

The radar instrument can operated in four different observation modes which differ primarily in the width of the scanned corridor and the resolution of the radar images. This enables Sentinel-1 to respond to a wide range of varying requirements. In strip-map mode, strips of terrain 80 kilometres wide are scanned at a resolution of 5×5 metres. The interferometric wide-swath mode registers corridors 250 kilometres wide at a pixel size of 5×20 metres. The extra-wide swath mode provides a more extensive overview of larger expanses of terrain. In this mode, a corridor 400 kilometres wide is mapped at a resolution of 100×25 metres. The fourth mode, known as wave mode, scans 20×20 kilometre spots at a resolution of 20×5 me-tres.

Sentinel-1 has been specifically designed to cover a wide range of environmental and secu-rity tasks. Observing the melting ice masses in Greenland, for example, should provide im-portant data to help predict rises in sea levels. Sentinel-1 will also be used for the observa-tion of environmental events such as forest fires and for reconnaissance and support in criti-cal situations where up-to-the-minute data is needed at extremely short notice.

Accurate and up-to-date maps compiled from satellite data also better co-ordination of hu-manitarian relief projects and rebuilding activities after natural disasters. Sentinel-1’s sophis-ticated radar technology will be particularly useful during floods to help make reliable predic-tions of water levels and potential severity of the flooding in affected areas. To date, disaster relief organisations often rely on data from optical sensors. This can mean waiting a long time for the data, particularly when it is night or there is a lot of cloud. In situations like these, Sentinel-1’s radar technology makes it vastly superior to optical devices. Radar has numer-ous advantages over optical imagery: first, radar generates its own “illumination” which is precisely defined at all times. This is very different from optical satellite images, in which the position of the sun at any given time greatly affects the appearance of a landscape. Sec-ondly, radars operate day and night, and thirdly it is capable of delivering clearly focused images even in adverse weather conditions. This makes it possible to plan and co-ordinate protective measures much more efficiently and comprehensively.
A further application for the data from Sentinel-1 is in supporting agricultural projects. The satellite delivers information that is vital to monitoring crop growth with a view to harvesting.

Astrium has been the one of the leading provider of space radars for many years. As well as bearing the overall industrial responsibility for Envisat, ERS-1/ERS-2, TerraSAR-X and Tan-DEM-X, EADS Astrium also developed and built the SAR payloads AMI (ERS), ASAR (Envi-sat), and ASCAT (Metop).

About GMES
GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) is a joint initiative by the EU and ESA for comprehensive Earth observation using ground- and space-based sensors, to pro-vide political decision-makers and experts with up-to-the-minute factual information on which to base all manner of decisions concerning environmental, economic, transport and security policy.
The objective of the programme is to integrate the different Earth observation and geo-science activities in Europe, on the one hand by using the existing satellite systems and the data they supply as efficiently as possible, and on other by setting up sustainable operational systems that are specifically adapted to this range of tasks. The Sentinel series of satellites is a response to the Earth observation needs of the GMES programme in Europe.

About Astrium
Astrium, a wholly owned subsidiary of EADS, is dedicated to providing civil and defence space systems and services. In 2006, Astrium had a turnover of €3.2 billion and 12,000 employees in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain and the Netherlands. Its three main areas of activity are: Astrium Space Transportation for launchers and orbital infrastructure, Astrium Satellites for spacecraft and ground segment, and its wholly owned subsidiary Astrium Services for the development and delivery of satellite services. EADS is a global leader in aerospace, defence and related services. In 2006, EADS generated revenues of €39.4 billion and employed a workforce of more than 116, 000.
www.astrium.eads.net

Media Contacts:
Rémi Roland (Astrium FR) – Phone: +33 (0) 1 77 75 80 37
Jeremy Close (Astrium UK) – Phone: +44 (0)1 438 77 3872
Mathias Pikelj (Astrium GER) – Phone: +49 (0) 7545 8 91 23

About Thales Alenia Space
European leader in satellite systems and at the forefront of orbital infrastructures, Thales Alenia Space is a joint venture between Thales (67%) and Finmeccanica (33%). Together with Telespazio, Thales Alenia Space forms a Space Alliance between the two groups. The company is a worldwide reference in telecoms, radar and optical Earth observation, defense and security, navigation and science. With 7200 employees and 11 industrial sites, Thales Alenia Space is located in France, Italy, Spain and Belgium.
www.thalesaleniaspace.com

Thales Alenia Space Press Contact:
Florence Pontieux Tel: +33 (0)1 57 77 91 26 – florence.pontieux@thalesaleniaspace.com
Sandrine Bielecki Tel: +33 (0)4 92 92 70 94 – sandrine.bielecki@thalesaleniaspace.com
Tiziana Ebano Tel: +39 (0)6 4151 2574 – tiziana.ebano@thalesaleniaspace.com

SITEM and AURENSIS join efforts

SITEM and AURENSIS join efforts and synergies and become reinforced in Remote Sensing and GIS sectors thanks to a collaboration agreement. With the signature of this document this last October, they start a new close commercial partnership in the area of Aerial Thermography.
Source Aurensis

aeroGRID.nl – the new aerial imagery website with the most current NL aerial photos

Tuesday 18 december 2007 sees the launch of Aerodata’s completely new website for online aerial photography, www.aerogrid.nl (Dutch only at this moment).

Aerodata is also known as supplier of the aerial imagery on Google Earth and Maps in the Netherlands, Belgium and France.

Now with this own & unique website www.aerogrid.nl Aerodata offers access to the most complete and up-to-date aerial photos of the Netherlands. The basis is made up of a detailed, nation-wide aerial image dataset of 2007.

On top of that many cities have been added with more detail going up to 4 cm.

During development lots of attention was given to the user friendliness. The site is very easy to navigate, is very transparent and utilizes a very fast Flash viewer.

For the user it should be a special, fun and interesting experience to be able to browse through the aerial photo database that Aerodata had made available through a fast web server.
It only takes 5 steps from image selection to image download and attractive pricing is maintained.

Professional users who want to access the aerial imagery in a GIS/CAD system, for reproduction or for other purposes, will find their liking in the aeroGRID® Pro services.

These can be found at www.aerogrid.nl/pro.

The database will regularly be updated with brand new, high resolution imagery making it inevitable that aeroGRID® will become the reference for aerial photography of the Netherlands.
Early 2008 will mark the launch of comparable website for Belgium and France with aeroGRID® products.

Source

New ability to ensure power supplies unaffected by vegetation

Infoterra Ltd, a leader in the provision of geospatial products and services, has won a contract from EDF Energy Networks, one of the UK’s largest energy companies, to map its overhead high-voltage power line network and adjacent vegetation to ensure a continued safe and reliable electricity supply.

Infoterra, using the latest high resolution GeoPerspectives aerial imagery, will deliver an accurate mapping solution to the vegetation team at EDF Energy Networks. This will enable the team to rapidly identify priority areas without site visits, so helping EDF Energy Networks to achieve efficiencies for its vegetation management budget.

The survey will cover the Eastern and Southern areas of EDF Energy Networks’ operational area (a region incorporating more than 5.5 million customers and covering 30,000 sq km), and will support compliance for the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reforms Electricity Safety, Quality and Continuity (ESQC) regulations.

“Our contract with Infoterra will ensure that we have an accurate vegetation map of our entire overhead high-voltage network, allowing us to identify sites requiring immediate attention and tightly manage our vegetation cutting budget,” said Ray Crouch, Vegetation Contracts Manager for EDF Energy Networks. “We selected Infoterra because they were offering to provide a cost-effective innovative solution that fitted with our future plans.”

Dr Andy Wells, Director of Sales for Infoterra Ltd, said: “Recent reports have shown that the utility sector is spending some £50 million annually on vegetation management. Through using accurate mapping, utility companies could dramatically reduce this cost while at the same time increasing management efficiency. We look forward to working alongside EDF Energy Networks to help it put geospatial data to work in its business.”

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 communications, utilities, engineering, agriculture, defence and oil, gas & mineral exploration.

Infoterra Ltd. is part of the Infoterra group, which comprises companies in France, Germany and the United Kingdom, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Astrium Ltd, an EADS company.

GeoPerspectives is a joint venture between Infoterra Ltd and BlueSky International Ltd to provide airborne acquired geospatial data for England and Wales.

www.infoterra.co.uk

About EDF Energy
EDF Energy is one of the UK’s largest energy companies. We provide power to a quarter of the UK’s population via our electricity distribution networks in London, the South East and the East of England. We supply gas and electricity to over 5 million customers and generate about 5GW of energy from our coal and gas power stations, as well as combined heat and power plants and wind farms. The company is also a key player in national infrastructure projects including management of private electricity networks serving four London airports and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, the country’s first major new railway in 100 years. We employ nearly 13,000 people at locations across the UK. EDF Energy is a core part of EDF Group, one of Europe’s largest power companies.

www.edfenergy.com

For more information contact
Sarah Haslam, Infoterra Ltd, +44 (0)116 273 2300,
Cheryl Billson, PR for Infoterra, +44 (0)7791 720460,
cheryl.billson@commacomms.com

The FloodServer, a novel platform designed to provide extensive flood risk information for the whole of Europe quickly, reliably and easily accessible for everybody is now available online at www.floodrisk.eu.

  • Damage potentials and indication of dangers derived from satellite imagery and historical maps
  • Major cross-border river areas already completely captured
  • Key aim is a more efficient flood management across Europe

Friedrichshafen / Heidelberg, 12 Sep 2007. The geo-information service providers Infoterra GmbH and geomer GmbH present detailed maps and information about past and potential future flood events at the rivers Rhine, Elbe and lower Weser.

“Detailed information on the extend and impact of past flood events supports the responsible authorities and teams,” explains Marek Tinz, responsible project manager at Infoterra GmbH. “While it can of course not prevent an actual flood event, the FloodServer significantly supports the efforts to reduce the impact of future events.”

Not only satellite-based maps of recent flood events are used: For example, historical maps of the river Rhine flood in the winter 1881/82 are available. “The more information we can gather, the more precisely we can define potential flooded areas”, explains Tinz further.

A combination of this data with up-to-date land use maps allows the identification of areas particularly at risk, as well as the damage potentials involved. Based on these maps, authorities in charge can implement targeted and efficient preventive measures.

Historical and potential flood areas, information on potential damage as well as up-to-date land use maps – all this can be accessed easily through an info button on www.floodrisk.eu. Additionally, the information system allows the user to access particular locations through a comfortable search function and to print high-resolution maps.

Local squad leaders, water management agencies, civil protection forces and rescue services, as well as European authorities in charge of international flood management – a great variety of users will benefit from the FloodServer in the next years.

“We have developed this platform in close cooperation with the future users,” reports Dr. André Assmann, responsible member of the General Management at geomer GmbH, “thus we can be sure, that the FloodServer will really make a considerable contribution to an improved anticipation of flood events, the initiation of systematic protection measures, an efficient preparation, a targeted reaction in case of crisis and, last but not least, to an optimal implementation of subsequent restoration works.”

In addition to the two geo-information providers user organisations such as the International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine (ICPR) as well as the transnational INTERREG III B Project ELLA (ELbe and LAbe) dealing with risk prevention in the Elbe catchment, have supported the definition of the information layers implemented on the FloodServer today.
The novel approach of developing up-to-date geo-information services in close cooperation with the user organisations is a key aspect of the European GMES1 initatitive. Within this program, the European Commission (EC) and the European Space Agency (ESA) work together to establish a long-term operational European Earth observation program. GMES is intended to provide authorities and administrations in Europe with environment and security related information. The FloodServer was developed within the GMES projects RISK-EOS and PREVIEW, which address the development and validation of GMES applications in the field of risk management.

The use of the FloodServer, which is jointly operated by Infoterra GmbH and geomer GmbH, is free of charge. Organisations and authorities interested in making flood risk maps and existing additional information accessible for their own responsibilities, can also utilize the platform. Minor charges may apply for individual editing and integration of data.

About Infoterra GmbH

Infoterra GmbH, Friedrichshafen, has been a leader in development and validation of GMES services for several years now. The company has established a strong expertise in geo-information services for land monitoring, water quality assessment, flood risk management, and spatial planning applications. Within the European GMES Land Monitoring services, Infoterra GmbH is coordinating major development and implementation projects.

Infoterra GmbH was founded in 2001 to prepare and conduct the commercial exploitation of TerraSAR-X. The company is responsible not only for the commercial distribution of the data, but for the development and marketing of derived geo-information products and services as well.
Infoterra GmbH employs a workforce of 45 in Friedrichshafen, Germany, and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Astrium GmbH.

About geomer GmbH

geomer gmbH is one of the leading German companies for geographic information technology. Founded in 1999 from scientists of Heidelberg University it now assist its customers with a wide range of skills and tailored services. Being an independent company geomer in between has 14 employers from different fields of education.

As a full-service provider for GIS technology, geomer offers the complete range of necessary GIS services, software development, server and web services and experienced training. geomer is authorized reseller for ESRI desktop and server products. Open Source software is also supported. The portfolio is completed by different data products from partners like NAVTEQ.
In addition, geomer offers consulting services in the fields of risk management, flood protection, soil management, terrain analysis and geo- marketing.

Infoterra and geomer provide Flood Information Online

Application Example from the FloodServer
Flood extent at Rivers Aller and Weser (Germany), April 1994:
The system enables the user to select different information layers such as land use or road networks, and to search for specific place names.

Mapping of Flood Events
Flood extent at Rivers Aller and Weser (Germany), April 1994:
Information on flood extent along with land use information supports flood risk management in this particular flood event and for the future.

Contact

Mareike Döpke, Infoterra
T +49 7545 8 3924 M +49 171 793 7253
Email www.infoterra.de
Dr. Stefan Jäger, geomer
T +49 89458 40 M +49 163 3735177
Email www.geomer.de

1 Global Monitoring for Environment and Security

In June a station was installed in GMV for receiving diverse meteorological products and images broadcast through EUMETSAT’s EUMETCast service. The main purpose of this installation is to reinforce GMV’s research and development work in the earth observation area

EUMETCast is EUMETSAT’s environmental-data broadcasting system. EUMETSAT is the European organization for operating meteorological satellites, whose main remit is to deliver weather and climate-related satellite data, images and products, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

EUMETCast is used mainly for broadcasting derived products and images from EUMETSAT’s meteorological satellites, also providing access to data and services from other providers.
The installation of this reception station will enable GMV to receive directly a series of derived products and images for carrying out research and development projects and activities in the field of earth observation, where GMV has a long and distinguished track record.

GMV’s earth-observation activities center on the design and development of image distribution, filing and processing systems, onboard instrument processors and data-quality analysis and pre-processing systems, as well as developing mission control and planning systems for earth-observation space missions.

In terms of specific meteorological data, GMV has been furnishing the Spanish Meteorological Institute (Instituto Nacional de Meteorología: INM) with engineering and systems since the mid nineties. GMV has participated in the development of EUMETSA´s Nowcasting Application Facility for the INM and has provided backup for the development and maintenance of the operational system for the capture, processing, distribution and filing of INM’s meteorological data.