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(30th March 2017) Earth-i has taken the opportunity to support the UK Space industry’s main gathering to discuss policy, progress and challenges by becoming a Gold Sponsor of the UK Space Conference 2017 held every two years.

This year the conference takes place at Manchester’s Central Convention Complex over three days from 30th May. The conference will bring together over a thousand delegates, and more than one hundred exhibitors, for in-depth discussions around the key opportunities and challenges facing the UK and international space industries from political and economic, to scientific and technical.

The UK Space Agency, a key supporter of the UK Space Conference, is supporting UK industry with the task of attracting at least 10% of the predicted £400bn global market for space to the UK by 2030. To achieve this ambitious aim, the country will need companies like Earth-i to grow and develop their UK-based satellite data capabilities and a range of industry-leading propositions offered to an ever expanding number of global customers.

Earth-i is perfectly placed to meet the challenge set by the Agency for ambituous growth, addressing the global market opportunity through their abilty to provide customers with high resolution imagery of areas of interest, and on a daily basis if required. Earth-i is already making healthy contributions towards these targets, having recently won a major State-wide contract for the Government of Queensland, Australia.

Chief Executive and founder of Earth-i, Richard Blain, explains his reasons for supporting the UK Space Conference as a Gold Sponsor, and how the company will help meet the country’s ambitions: “Earth-i is on an ambitious journey to cement its place as a leading UK company operating in the global market for satellite services. We fully support the 10% global market-share goal set by the British government; we are looking forward to discussing and debating how this can be achieved with our industry colleagues and partners at the UK Space Conference 2017.

“In addition to the opportunity to exhibit our capabilities, the forums and panels privide an ideal opportunity for us to add our voice to those of other leading players in the sector, both SMEs and large multinationals. We all have our role to play and we are especially looking forward to supporting the panel for the ‘Pitch to the Primes’ session on 31st May. SMEs like ourselves, with ambitious plans, will be as much the engines of growth as our colleagues in more established businesses.“

His views appear to be in accord with those of Sir Martin Sweeting, Executive Chairman of Earth-i’s neighbours SSTL, who said that “the UK Space Conference provides a vital forum for the UK Space Sector, academia and policy makers to network, debate, form new collaborations and do business.”

(05 April 2017) The blight of illegal timber removal from fragile rainforest systems in Guatemala could be alleviated by a “CCTV in the sky” being developed by Scottish-based, internationally-operating space services and management company Astrosat .

Guatemala, the largest and most populated Central American country, is home to one of the most extensive and diverse forest systems on the continent, covering more than a third of the entire land. One half of this area is classified as primary forest, the most biodiverse and significant form of forestry. Unfortunately, Guatemala experiences a high inequality of wealth distribution, resulting from, amongst other things, 36 years of civil war. It was only the peace treaty signings in 1996 which has again opened the door to foreign investment and both governmental and private international projects.

Why does illegal logging exist in general? Simply put, the profits for the perpetrators are very high compared with the low risk of detection. The World Bank and Interpol list timber as a commodity, a commodity which is no different from weapons, narcotics, vehicles or any other internationally traded goods which can generate profits. The fact that timber is easy to launder and readily appears as a ‘clean’ business compared with human or drug trafficking, implies the notion that it is not a serious activity, and is a ‘victimless crime’. The reality is that illegal logging has extremely serious and detrimental consequences.

Aside from the widespread environmental damage and primary forest loss, there are a number of further destructive secondary effects such as damaged water regulation, poor soil formation and destabilisation which can lead to compounding threats such as mudslides. From a societal point of view, it has been shown that illegal logging increases poverty rates and uneven power relations regarding access to food and land, especially for local communities and indigenous groups who rely on the natural land for subsistence needs. According to Interpol and the UN, global logging is worth between $30 – $100 Billion and in terms of national revenue, illegal timber directly costs worldwide governments $5 Billion in taxation loss per year.

The fact is – Illegal logging represents the starting point of a complex process of interconnected criminal activities on an international scale.

Given the size and density of the forests, the ecological and economic importance of forestry to the country cannot be understated. The process of transporting legal timber from rainforest to mill
is complex, involving many intermediate stages which often makes it easy for criminals to slip in and
out of the process undetected. This has the impact of making record keeping between legal and illegal timber an uphill battle. Even if it were possible to detect all of these individuals, there is also a lack of available law enforcement manpower to cover the vast areas of land being considered.

It is clear that a technological leap is required. A technological leap that allows sufficient intelligence and situational awareness to be collected in one place so that counter logging efforts can be coordinated from above and focused for maximum effect – This technological leap is FMAP. (Forest Management and Protection System).

Astrosat , a multi-award winning commercial space services company, specializes in the development and managed delivery of highly innovative, end-to-end solutions where space based or space powered technology can solve economic, ecological, humanitarian, infrastructure and business problems. From detection of thermally wasteful housing stock and equity protection to illegal logging and disaster risk management, Astrosat passionately believes that any Earth based challenge can be supported or solved with space based solutions.

With a strong focus on delivering end-to-end Earth observation services, Astrosat is leading a consortium of European, American and UK space service outfits; ‘Earth Observation Inc’, ‘Telespazio Vega’ and ‘Deimos Space’ to monitor the Guatemalan forests and detect illegal activity. The project is sponsored by the UK Space Agency as part of their International Partnership Programme, a five- year, £152 million programme supporting British satellite technology expertise for developing international project monitoring and addressing significant social and environmental issues around the world. FMAP will allow for all possible elements of situational intelligence to be collected, analysed and presented in one place enabling law enforcement agencies to take immediate action against offenders.

Steve Lee, Astrosat CEO and founder, said: “What we are working on here could be described as a CCTV system that operates from space. With the data and information we can garner, we can help countries and communities which are at the mercy of unscrupulous operators.”

The ability to monitor types of trees and specific, important areas such as the rich and diverse Reserva de Biosfera Maya in the North of the country and a series of important national parks along the border ensures that only permitted timber felling is allowed, creating a legal market for sustainably-managed forestry products.

“This effectively brings space – and space companies and organisations – into the Fair Trade arena by helping local farmers and villagers to manage sustainable timber reserves. Illegal logging not only undercuts markets, but has a devastating effect on vital ecosystems.”

Astrosat’s ‘eye in the sky’ refers to the ‘space perspective’; a wholly unique and unprecedented vantage point from which to overcome ground based challenges and Astrosat is very proud to be delivering this perspective to a country of such rich diversity and culture. Guatemala means ‘land of the trees’ in the Mayan-Toltec language, and Astrosat aims to keep it that way.

Quotes from BluePrint Media Press Release:
Author: Michael Crawford
Date: 08/03/2016

The public sewerage network of Milan runs for approximately 1500 km. MM SpA, the managing company of Integrated Water and Wastewater Services of the City of Milan, has used the Rheticus® platform to identify possible surface movements caused by structural defects of its collector. Rheticus® services are available worldwide through a growing network of Authorized Distributors.

Land and infrastructure monitoring is a key activity to ensure people’s safety, environmental protection and the safeguarding of assets at all stages of the life cycle of infrastructure design, production and management.

Traditional campaigns for the regular monitoring of large and remote areas, however, employ considerable financial resources and time and are often complex to implement. The use of satellite technology allows overcoming these limitations and obtaining frequent, accurate and accessible information thanks to the wide availability of spatial information, even in open data mode.

The public sewerage network of Milan runs for approximately 1500 km. MM SpA (former Metropolitana Milanese SpA), the managing company of Integrated Water and Wastewater Services of the City of Milan, had been searching for a method to quickly detect ground surface movements caused by the structural defect of its collector that could affect the area above the primary network and adjacent areas.

Satellite radar interferometry was considered the most accurate and affordable survey method to prevent and identify possible failures of the sewage system, even in relation to the high traffic volume of metropolitan cities like Milan.

Thanks to the Rheticus® platform and its geoinformation service Rheticus® Displacement, which processes the interferometric data of Sentinel satellites, 50 points with sensitive sub-vertical movements on 24 roads with heavy traffic were identified and will be investigated in a detailed field survey. (Read and download the case history of MM SpA)

The Rheticus® cloud-based platform provides continuous monitoring services of the Earth’s surface, ranging from the stability of infrastructures (dams, roads, pipelines, etc.), slope stability and subsidence, quality of coastal waters, forest fires, and anthropic changes to the territory.

The Rheticus® Displacement geoinformation service offers monthly monitoring of millimetric displacements of the ground surface, landslide areas, the stability of infrastructures, and subsidence due to groundwater withdrawal/entry or from the excavation of mines and tunnels.

Rheticus® Displacement provides a yearly historical analysis with monthly updates.

This service was adopted by numerous customers in various application areas after only its first months of operation.

Two success stories:

  • ANAS S.p.A.: (National Autonomous Roads Corporation): analysis of slope stability to support the planning, design and monitoring of roads.
  • MM S.p.A. (former Metropolitana Milanese): analysis of the instability of roads overlying pipelines for the detection of leaks in the water and sewage supply network.

Do you want to know more? Contact Planetek or our Rheticus® Authorized Distributor Network:

  • GeoSolutions Consulting Inc. (Central America);
  • Gjeo-Vjosa sh.p.k. (Albania);
  • Kaliopa d.o.o. (Slovenia)
  • International Integrated Environmental Services Ltd. (Kuwait);
  • The Wroclaw Institute (Poland);

Rheticus® services are standardized and ready to assist a wide range of private and public organizations in solving problems anywhere in our world. This is why Planetek Italia is building a network of Authorized Distributors, who will operate close to the client’s geographic location.

Visit www.rheticus.eu for more information and for a monitoring service demo featuring Sentinel satellite data.

The Rheticus® services and the case history of the sewerage network displacement monitoring in Milan will be presented at the following events:

  • ENGAGE 2017, DigitalGlobe’s forum, London, UK, 25-26 April, 2017.
  • Servizi a Rete Tour 2017, Turin, Italy, 17-18 May, 2017.
  • HxGN Live Conference 2017, Las Vegas, Nevada, 13-16 June 2017.

Visit our website to know more about Rheticus® and all events.

(March 2017) 200 is the number of the activations reached from the Emergency Management Service.

The latest activation came after the Tropical cyclone Debbie made landfall, in northeast Australia’s Queensland state, which caused the evacuation of some communities because of extensive coastal inundation.

e-GEOS provides, in coordination with JRC (the Joint Research Centre) of the European Commission, within the Copernicus Programme, with geospatial information and satellite maps of areas affected by emergencies, providing the civil protection and the competent authorities of the countries of the Union and international humanitarian Organizations, with the data necessary for the management of catastrophic events.

e-GEOS can make available to the European Commission and any authorized user for each area of the world, within few hours of the onset of the emergency, also the pre-and post-event mapping, which facilitates the organisation and rescue operations. The service, available 24/7/365, has a production capacity dedicated to crisis situations like floods, earthquakes, fires, technological disasters and is managed by e-GEOS, leading a consortium formed by the German subsidiary GAF, the German Space Agency (DLR), the Italian company Ithaca and the French SIRS and SERTIT.

Citizens can find all the activations of the Copernicus Emergency Management service at this link .

( 11 April 2017) The European Space Agency announces opening of a new Earth Observation (EO) data hosted-processing facility ran by ESA and hosted by CloudEO , a Munich-based start-up company, which will be managing this service for ESA on the EOhopS portal . This free offer is limited to R&D users from academia and industries.

ESA is an intergovernmental organisation of 22 member states, dedicated to the exploration of space. It has long been supporting scientific users and developers of EO applications by providing access to its own mission data and so-called Third Party Mission data. Through this partnership, ESA, upon evaluating a project proposal, will make satellite acquisitions from ESA’s partner agencies and from commercial data providers available for free to the broad R&D community allowing scientists and R&D users from businesses to analyze commercial and Sentinel data in a powerful hosted-processing environment for their projects. “This is amazing! It opens so many opportunities for research and development both by scientists and businesses ultimately benefiting the society”, says Prof. Dr. Patrick Ole Noack, who is teaching Agricultural Technology at Hochschule Weihenstephan-Triesdorf.

The EOhopS portal is indeed a very creative way to use GeoData utilizing diverse IT infrastructure, including ready-to-use GeoAnalytics in a complete package and on one platform – CloudEO’s workbench.

The company is a pioneer of bringing the “shared economy” concept to GeoServices industry. With this project, it has opened processing tools hosted on CloudEO platform for R&D. This includes ENVI (geospatial software solution to process and analyze all types of imagery and data such as multispectral, hyperspectral, LiDAR), IDL (trusted scientific programming language used across disciplines to extract meaningful visualizations out of complex numerical data) and the ESA Sentinel Application Platform (SNAP) toolbox. On the EOhopS platform a user can upload own content, like in-situ measurement data or scientific algorithms to the virtual workbench. “This is where the space data and GeoServices industry are heading – democratizing GeoData making it broadly available, accessible and usable, and with this project ESA is leading the way opening GeoData for R&D”, says Dr. Manfred Krischke, CloudEO’s founder and CEO, who himself holds a PhD in aerospace engineering.

The payment on EOhopS Store will be processed by CloudEO through digital credits provided by ESA to users free of charge allowing them to flexibly spend them during the approved research project.

All EO data and software can be booked for the whole project as well as on a short-term basis. “Staying within the same budget, users can develop and test their new algorithms on a larger variety of data sets and tools. This is a big advantage for creating reliable and competitive GeoServices”, says Dr. Ursula Benz, CloudEO’s COO and EOhopS project manager. To simplify the selection of various data sets for the user, the EOhopS has a unified data search tool for accessing data from multiple vendors, and a smooth interface for ordering selected EO data sets and “Software as a Service”.

CloudEO hosts the EOhopS portal on CloudEO platform. Its most renowned providers include SI Imaging Services, DigitalGlobe, German Aerospace Center (DLR) and Harris Geospatial Solutions.

Access to the service is granted upon project submission to ESA. Free trials not requiring applications are also available!

“ESA is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. This project is a step towards making GeoData to serve broader needs of the society and it is an example of opening opportunities for researchers and developers”, says Dr. Lena Stern, Mission Management Officer at ESA. “We envision a great number of GeoServices and innovations being developed in the nearest future using GeoData to serve agriculture, construction, logistics, insurance, maritime and other important industries”.

Source

(22 March 2017) The system will be based on gs4EO, the ground segment product suite fully developed by Elecnor Deimos for the operations and exploitation of Deimos-2.

Deimos Space SLU, the technology branch of the Spanish industrial corporation Elecnor, has finalised an agreement with Spetstechnoexport from Ukraine to upgrade a Direct Receiving System belonging to the State Space Agency of Ukraine (SSAU) and implement dedicated processing systems of Deimos-2 high resolution images. As a consequence of the said agreement, Deimos Space will now award a contract to Deimos Imaging, the UrtheCast Company that owns and operates the Deimos-1 and Deimos-2 satellites, to supply Deimos-2 very high resolution images.

This agreement is the result of the industrial contacts initiated in the context of the EU Space Twinning Programme established between Ukrainian and Spanish institutions and managed, respectively, by SSAU and Spanish Institute for Aerospace Technique (INTA). In this connection, the agreement for Deimos-2 data processing systems and imagery was one of the action lines identified in the Memorandum of Understanding signed in December 2016 between SSAU and Elecnor Deimos intended to promote cooperation in space projects, focusing on Earth Observation space and ground systems, as well as the exploitation of remote sensing data and the development of space-based applications and other fields of cooperation such as launch systems, space situational awareness, satellite navigation and communications and applied research, in cooperation with other Ukrainian industrial actors.

The proposed system will be based on gs4EO ground segment, the product suite fully developed by Elecnor Deimos for the operations and exploitation of Deimos-2 satellite. gs4EO building blocks will manage the image requests to the mission control centre, the control of the receiving antenna for the image download, as well as the processing and archive of the generated imagery products.

The aim of the portal is to support analyses and assessment of the usability of different types of optical satellite imagery for the snow monitoring purposes.

The use of optical remote sensing for operational snow monitoring at European scale is strongly limited by the cloud cover presence. The compositing of more acquisitions from pre-defined time interval and the integration of optical imagery acquired by different satellites may help to overcome this problem but serious analysis is needed to assess the usability of these approaches.

The Snow portal aims to provide tools to support such analysis. It is developed within the user friendly environment where the user can choose desired type of analysis and define additional parameters: area of interest, satellite mission and time interval.

The list of possible analyses which could be run within the portal includes:

  • Composite – Create a composite for a selected AOI, made of scenes from selected sensors and time period. A single value will be assigned to each pixel based on rules/frequency of appearance. Pixels covered by cloud cover can thus be replaced by valid pixel value of Snow/NoSnow. This analysis can show what the optimal time period for a composite creation can be, i.e. long enough to have valid pixel values for most of the area but short enough to ensure timely real situation update.
  • Temporal coverage – For a selected AOI, sensor, time period and certain pixel value (i.e. Snow/NoSnow/Cloud/NoData) create a map which will show how many times each pixel was assigned that value.
  • Information per pixel – For a selected AOI, sensor and time period show the information about all the values each pixel was assigned. E.g. after clicking on a certain pixel a table appears which will show all the values from all the sensors that pixel was assigned during chosen time period.
  • Thresholding – The user can set a set of thresholds and based on that obtain a map of selected AOI which will assign each pixel into certain class depending on the threshold.

All the above and similar analyses may be used to demonstrate and verify the proposed options related to the snow monitoring service and help specifying its characteristics. The portal shall support the European Environment Agency (EEA) in its decisions related to the future European snow & ice cover monitoring service within the Copernicus programme.

EartH2Observe “Global Earth Observation for Integrated Water Resource Assessment” (www.earth2observe.eu) is a collaborative project funded under the DG Research FP7 programme. The project begun in January 2014 and will run for 4 years, until the end of 2017. The overall objective is to contribute to the assessment of global water resources through the use of new Earth Observation datasets and techniques. The project consortium consists of 27 partners (23 EU and 4 non-EU partners) including institutes, universities, SMEs and stakeholders. The project coordinator is Deltares – Dutch institute for applied research and development on issues related to living and working in delta areas.

Gisat provides wide range of geoinformation services based on Earth Observation technology. It focuses on operational application of satellite mapping to monitor various aspects of our environment and development of dedicated web based platforms for geoinformation analysis and assessment
Web // E-mail // Tel:+420 271741935 // Fax: +420 271741936

The AgriCLASS Sectoral Information System (SIS) is a proof of concept study lead by Telespazio VEGA UK for the Copernicus Climate Change service.

Introduction

Climate change will affect agriculture and forestry, changing the conditions for crop and plant growth, causing significant social and economic impacts. The AgriCLASS Sectoral Information System (SIS) is a proof of concept study lead by Telespazio VEGA UK for the Copernicus Climate Change service. It takes climate data and transforms them into products that can be used with agricultural data and crop models to assess the impact of climate change on agriculture. The principal products will be Europe-wide gridded bioclimatic indicators based on selected climate projections from Climate Model Inter-comparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5). These products will be freely accessible as a public service.

This work has been performed under a contract for the Copernicus Climate Change Service. ECMWF implements this Service and the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service on behalf of the European Commission.

Methodology

Bioclimatic indicators (e.g. mean summer temperature, Degree Days, etc.) are computed from simulated daily weather data derived from climate projections. These products may then be used as input to crop models to generate future projections of crop indicators. A schematic diagram is presented in Figure 1.


Figure 1. Use of AgriCLASS products (white box) in crop modelling

Here we present a proof-of-concept study, demonstrating climate change impact on two permanent crops: grapevines in southwest France and olives in Tuscany region, central Italy. To consider the range of plausible climate projections within the full CMIP5 ensemble, a representative subset of 8 models was selected. Two standard IPCC emission scenarios were considered: RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. For each case study, crop indicators were projected over the time period from 2011 to 2090.

Olives
Population dynamics of insect pests can be significantly altered by temperature change, through modification of developmental rate, reproduction, and mortality (Marchi et al. 2016). In the case of olives, we were interested in assessment of olive infestation by Bactrocera oleae fruit fly in early summer. Figure 2 shows an example of impact of B. oleae infestation on olive fruits.


Figure 2. Olive Infestation by Fruit-fly

A correlation model was developed, using a combination of bioclimatic indicators to predict the percentage of infested fruits. The results are shown in Figure 3, projecting increasing levels of infestation over the period 2011 to 2090 under both scenarios.


Figure 3. Projected olive infestation by fruit fly in early summer under two emission scenarios. Projected infestation rates from all models are represented by circles and the average of 8 models for each year are shown by filled circles. Fitted polynomial spline and ±1SD of the data are presented by solid line and shadowed area respectively.

The olives case study was developed in response to surveys and interviews with prospective users, including olive growers (38%), agronomists or agricultural experts (37%) and technical public administration bodies (19%).

Vines

Vine phenology, like many other cultivated plants, is highly determined by temperature variables (Santibáñez et al. 2014). A key bioclimatic indicator is the integration of temperature over time, commonly expressed in Degree Days. Changes in this indicator directly affect the vine phenology, hence the wine quality, taste and yield. We investigated the climate change impact on four key phenological stages of interest to viticulture: Budbreak, Flowering, Veraison and Maturity (Figure 4).


Figure 4. Four phenological stages of grape, from left to right: Budbreak, Flowering, Veraison and Maturity.

A correlation model was developed, using accumulated Degree Days to predict day of year (DOY) of each phenological stage. The results are shown in Figure 5, projecting advancing DOY for the later stages and harvest dates over the period 2011 to 2090 under both scenarios.


Figure 5. Projected phenological stages of vine. Symbology is the same as Figure 3.

Future Work

The AgriCLASS proof of concept contract is ongoing through 2017, with dataset releases planned through the year. The preliminary results presented here are without validation and the subject of ongoing research.

Project Partners: Telespazio VEGA UK Ltd (Prime), University of Reading, UK Met Office, Telespazio France, University of Molise, e-GEOS, CGI

References
Marchi, S., Guidotti, D., Ricciolini, M. and Petacchi, R., 2016. Towards understanding temporal and spatial dynamics of Bactrocera oleae (Rossi) infestations using decade-long agrometeorological time series. International journal of biometeorology, 60(11), pp.1681-1694.
Santibáñez, F., Sierra, H. and Santibanez, P., 2014. Degree Day Model of Table Grape (Vitis Vinifera L.) Phenology in Mediterranean Temperate Climates. International Journal of Science, Environment and Technology, 3(1), pp.10-22.

ReSAC together with partners from Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem research (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences), Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC) Bulgaria and Club “Economika 2000” are finalizing the project “Freshwater ecosystem services mapping and assessment in Bulgaria (FEMA), Contr. Д-33-87/27.08.2015”.

The project duration is 20 months (with extensions) and started in Sep. 2015. The projects is financed by Program BG03 “Biodiversity and Ecosystems” and co-financed by the Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area (EEA FM 2009-2014)

The project final international conference was held at 31st of March 2017 in Hotel Metropolitan, Sofia, Bulgaria. The aim of the conference was to present the progress and results of the project and to identify best practices in evaluation of ecosystem services.


Pic. 1 Vassil Vassilev, Project manager in ReSAC, is presenting the project results


Pic. 2 Overview of the conference room

The specific goal of the project is assessment of the freshwater ecosystems in Bulgaria, following the national methodology, which comply with the technical specifications of the National Information Network for Biodiversity.

As an additional activity the project is extended with Mapping and assessment of the marine ecosystems and their services in Bulgarian Black Sea aquatory. The main goal of the additional activity (sub project) is to identify and map the marine ecosystem types in the EEZ of the Republic of Bulgaria according to the requirements of Action 5 of the EU 2020 Biodiversity Strategy, using currently available public data, and applying the developed specialized methodology for the marine ecosystems.

The area covered by the project: 100% of all freshwater ecosystems outside Natura 2000, and Bulgarian Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the Black Sea.

Final results of the project:

  • 7 200 standing water bodies: lakes, dams, reservoirs etc. (scale 1:10 000), 3400 out of which larger than 1ha; with defined eco type;
  • 32 000 river segments, with total length of 50 000km, mapped (scale 1:10 000 and outside NATURA 2000), and ecotype defined for all rivers in Bulgaria (scale 1:100 000)
  • Mapping 14 ecosystem types;
  • Analyses of:
    • 43 indicators for ecosystem condition
    • 31 parameters for ecosystem services


Fig. 1 Example – Map of freshwater ecosystem types

  • 37’742 sq. km area coverage of marine ecosystem types (in EEZ)
  • Analyses of:
    • 15 indicators for marine ecosystem condition
    • 36 indicators for marine ecosystem services


Fig. 2 Example – Map of marine ecosystem types

  • Comprehensive, common database for freshwater and marine ecosystem types, ecosystem conditions and ecosystem services. Every river segment or standing water body is one object in the database.

More information for the two projects on:
Freshwater – freshwater-ecoservices-bg.eu
Marine – marine.freshwater-ecoservices-bg.eu
or resac-bg.org/en/news.html

(7 february 2017) The recent partnership between Norway’s KSAT (Kongsberg Satellite Services) and Silicon Valley’s Astro Digital will forever transform how Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites deliver big data from space. Fast-growing SmallSat companies will be the most immediate beneficiaries.

KSAT and Astro Digital collaborated to bring the new Ka-band capability into a KSAT Lite portfolio, a ground station network optimized for SmallSats. Both companies innovated for high-volume downlink and developed a business model that made the massive data load accessible at an optimized price point. As Chris Biddy, Astro Digital’s Co-Founder and CEO, recognizes, “We work closely with KSAT to bring new capabilities to the market. We leverage each other’s experience to form a cost efficient solution by utilizing the key technology and infrastructure.”

Kongsberg’s U.S. Sales Director for Satellite Ground Systems, Stig-Are Thrana draws a comparison between Ka-band features and wireless coverage: “Ka-band allows for higher bandwidth and more data downloaded each day. This is similar to getting higher and higher data rates on your mobile phone and on your wireless routers over the years by utilizing higher frequency bands.”

Ka-band is a great alternative for X-band, unlocking new capacity in a commonly- used spectrum. Astro Digital’s transmitters operate in the Ka-band spectrum with KSAT’s revolutionary ground stations, located pole-to-pole in the driest conditions on earth, spanning from 78° north in the Arctic to 72° south in Antarctica. High-frequency Ka-band makes very high data rates possible in small efficient packages, enabling the downlink of big data from satellite to earth.

Kongsberg newly established presence in the Silicon Valley unlocks incredible opportunities for satellites startups. The KSAT Lite solution offers cost-effective downlinks of high throughput and high frequency data from a global ground station network with more than 20 sites. Stig-Are Thrana shares KSAT’s excitement: “Continuous innovation and development of new capabilities – and new business models – this is of paramount importance to us.”

Source
For more information contact Kongsberg’s U.S. Sales Director Stig-Are Thrana:
Mobile: +1 650 417 8622 e-mail: stiga@ksat.no