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(12/01/2017) Deimos Engenharia has been selected by the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) for the provision of RPAS-based pollution monitoring services

Remotely-piloted aircraft system (RPAS) surveillance of the maritime environment is a service that the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) has been tasked to set-up on behalf of EU and EFTA Member States as from 2017. Accordingly, EMSA has signed four framework contracts with RPAS service providers. The first contract was signed with a consortium led by the Portuguese Air Force (FAP), together with Deimos Engenharia and UAVision. It is for an operational service to monitor ship emissions in support of the implementation of Annex VI of MARPOL. This establishes legally-binding international standards to regulate specific emissions and discharges generated by ships e.g. SOx.

Following a request from a Member State authority, the consortium will be responsible for monitoring the atmospheric pollution caused by maritime traffic up to 50km from the shore of an EU country. EMSA, in close liaison with the MS concerned, will define the operational framework. The areas of operation can be extended outside EU adjacent seas upon common agreement.

The consortium will be responsible for monitoring the atmospheric pollution caused by maritime traffic up to 50km from the shore of an EU country

The flight proven UAVision platforms, combined with extensive operational experience of FAP, will be used for measuring the SO2 and CO2 levels emitted by ships, using different sensors ranging from optical cameras (with visible and infrared payloads) to gas sensors for air quality monitoring. The platform will also include an AIS transponder for vessel detection and identification. Deimos Engenharia is responsible for coordinating and handling all the data generated by the sensors and for the interfaces with EMSA and other users, and also supports FAP in all operational activities and service management.

This is a framework contract awarded for two years, renewable, and is the result of an open Invitation to Tender launched by the Agency in April that included two batches: lot-1 (mainly for sea surface oil pollution monitoring up to 80km) and lot-2 for vessel’s air emissions monitoring. It is in the latter that a contract was won by FAP, Deimos Engenharia and UAVision.

The first flights are expected in the first quarter of 2017. This activity is expected to be EMSA’s first step to use RPAS for the provision of integrated maritime and pollution response services within the Agency’s operational tasks.

Source

The recently released Copernicus Market Report, prepared by the European Commission and PwC, shows how the Copernicus programme, launched barely three years ago, is already generating economic value and will keep on increasing benefits for the space industry, the downstream sector and for society.

Based on interviews with over 140 people, representing institutional stakeholders as well as the private sector (micro-companies, SMEs and large companies), the Copernicus Market Report presents how the European market benefits from the availability of free and open Copernicus data and services to generate economic growth and increase employment.

The analysis demonstrates that the Copernicus programme significantly boosted the European space sector, through investments in the Sentinels satellites and the Copernicus services with overall investments in the programme reaching EUR 7.4 billion over 2008-2020. During the same period, the cumulated economic value of the programme is estimated up to EUR 13.5 billion, thus far beyond investment.

Despite a short lapse of time since the launch of Sentinel-1A in April 2014, figures on the Copernicus programme are already impressive: Copernicus data accounted for 10% of EO data used by EO service suppliers in 2015 and are expected to increase their benefits by 31% per year up to 2020.

The Copernicus Market Report also investigates the European market through the lense of 8 promising sectors: agriculture, forestry, urban monitoring, insurance related to natural disasters, ocean monitoring, oil & gas, renewable energies and air quality management. For each sector, economic, social and environmental impacts enabled by Copernicus are presented and case studies of successful activities exploiting Copernicus are provided.

By enabling the development of many commercial applications benefiting both service suppliers and end users, the Copernicus programme is therefore strongly contributing to the development of the society.

To go further
The Copernicus Market Report is publicly available on the Copernicus.eu website. Download the report

It is building on the main results of two other publicly available studies:

  • A report on the Copernicus downstream sector and user benefits (360 pages) which characterises the benefits of and the barriers to the EO downstream and end user markets in Europe, with the objective to identify the levers that can support the development of economic activity exploiting Copernicus.
    Download the report
  • A report on the overall socio-economic impact of Copernicus up to 2021, which presents an assessment of the economic impact derived from public spending on the Copernicus programme in both conservative and optimistic scenarios.
    Download the report
PwC is a world leading firm in audit, advisory and legal services. With a team dedicated to advisory for the space sector, PwC built a strong expertise covering space-specific strategy studies, socio-economic impact assessments, programme management and operations implementation. PwC is a privileged partner of the European Commission on different assessments and studies on the Copernicus programme. To find more about our offer and expertise www.pwc.com and www.pwc.fr/space

More info at Copernicus website

APOLLO aims to bring the benefits of precision agriculture to farmers through affordable information services, making extensive use of free and open Earth Observation data.

APOLLO is an EU project aiming to develop agricultural advisory services targeting primarily, but not exclusively, smallholder farmers. The project aims at introducing the benefits of precision agriculture to farmers through affordable information services, making extensive use of free and open Earth Observation data, such as these provided by the EU’s Copernicus programme. APOLLO services will monitor the growth and health of crops and will offer to the farmers a set of farm advices with information on when to irrigate and till their fields, as well as estimation on the size of their harvest. APOLLO will help farmers with decision making and ultimately these interventions should lead to less waste, higher yields – and therefore increased profitability and competitiveness.

The APOLLO project brings together nine partners from five European countries (Greece, Spain, Austria, Belgium and Serbia), and combines expertise in agronomy, agricultural services, soil science, numerical weather prediction, remote sensing and Earth Observation. The consortium is proud to include two farmers’ associations – the Agricultural Cooperative of Pella in Greece, and the Association of Farmers of the Municipality of Ruma in Serbia, who will pilot and test the early versions of the services. A third pilot will be carried out in Spain.

APOLLO responds to a series of challenges facing the agricultural sector as a whole, and smallholder farmers in particular. Global population growth means that farmers will need to grow twice as much as they do today in order to feed the planet’s 9 billion inhabitants. At the same time, there is less land available for agricultural production, thanks to the expanding population, soil erosion and water scarcity. Finally, there are social and regulatory pressures on farmers to reduce their environmental impact: in other words, to use less pesticides, fertilizer, water and fuel.

Precision agriculture can help to address these challenges. Detailed information about the state and health of crops allows farmers to apply chemicals and water in the precise quantities required, where and when they are needed. This approach is extensively used by large-scale farm managers, but is still relatively new to small-scale farmers, who often cannot afford heavy investments in new technologies. APOLLO aims to open up the precision agriculture market by making affordable and easy-to-use agricultural advisory services available to farmers, farmer associations and agricultural consultants.

APOLLO is one of the two strategic earth observation projects that DRAXIS Environmental coordinates, and through these the company is aiming to make the big step from providing geospatial services for the environmental sector, to providing earth observation services for the precision agriculture sector.

ReSAC together with partners from Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem research (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences), Biosphere Consult and Bulgarian Society for Protection of Birds, are finalizing the project “Assessment and mapping of GRASSLAND ecosystems condition and their services in Bulgaria, Contr. Д-33-90/03.09.2015”. The project duration is 19 months and started in Aug. 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)

GRASSLAND: Assessment and mapping of GRASSLAND ecosystems condition and their services in Bulgaria. Duration: 27.08.2015 – 30.04.2017

The project will contribute to the overall objectives of the Programme for concise inventory of ecosystem services in the implementation of the Biodiversity Strategy of the EU. The main task of the project is to describe and evaluate the grasslands in Bulgaria or, more precisely all pastures, meadows and other grasslands, which falls outside NATURA 2000 territories.

The project has three main tasks: mapping of grassland areas with MMU 0.1ha in scale 1:10 000; mapping the grassland ecosystem condition; mapping the ecosystem services which the grassland ecosystems provide.

The existing national datasets for grassland areas are not sufficient and precise in order to be used for such precise mapping. During the mapping procedure datasets such Land Parcel Identification System and cadaster were used as source information. With the use of aerial orthophoho and ancillary data from Landsat and Sentinels more than 100 000 grassland polygons were mapped. Detailed interpretation keys were developed in order to differentiate the existing in Bulgaria five types of grassland (according EUNIS nomenclature): Dry grasslands, Mesic grasslands, Seasonally wet and wet grasslands, Alpine and subalpine grasslands and Inland salt steppes.


Fig.1 Grassland ecosystem types, ReSAC/ IBER (BAS), 2017

In order to assess the condition of the grassland ecosystem 23 indicators were chosen and each grassland polygon was examined according to indicators for biotic and abiotic heretogeneity, matter storage – according to the classification developed by MAES group.

Ecosystem services which grassland ecosystem provide are assessed for the first time in Bulgaria in national scale. More than 30 indicators for ecosystem services were selected in order to measure the real provision of services in the 3 main categories of CICES: Provisioning, Regulation & Maintenance and Cultural.

In order the analyses to be traceable and repeatable in the future, for each indicator a detailed mapping protocol was developed, with a description of data used, mapping approach and threshold of ranking categories.
The project ends in April 2017, and the work completed by the project partners will be assembled in a special database according to the national methodology for mapping of ecosystem condition and services.
The datasets will become a part of the national system for Ecosystem Services in Bulgaria, which will be hosted in the Executive Environment Agency.

More for the project on Project website
Source Remote Sensing Application Center – Bulgaria

12 January 2017 – Transmitting large volumes of data in near real time through space at a rate of 1.8 gigabytes per second based on laser technology since November 23rd, the “SpaceDataHighway” is one of the most ambitious and forward-looking communication systems in operation today.


*Aims to foster innovation for its brand-new laser-based space communication system

  • Winner will be awarded €75,000 investment and will get support of Airbus BizLab

To foster further innovation and enlarge the application portfolio, Airbus is issuing a call for ideas for the “Enter the SpaceDataHighway” challenge. This challenge is open to SMEs, start-ups, entrepreneurs and students who would like to embark on this adventure with their business ideas for the utilization of the “SpaceDataHighway”.

The winning project will receive a prize in the form of a € 75,000 investment, and will be able to draw on the expertise and support of Airbus Bizlab, the Group’s innovation powerhouse. Airbus Bizlab is a business incubator in which entrepreneurs or start-ups participate in a six-month programme. They will be accompanied by engineers, business development experts or even by coaches to support them in the realisation of prototypes, market studies or the launch of a product. The project that comes second will receive a prize of € 25,000 to launch a crowdfunding campaign on the brand-new SpaceStarters platform which enables space related businesses and start-ups to raise money in order to turn their innovative ideas into business reality.

The SpaceDataHighway is a unique space communication system combining ultra-broadband laser communications in geostationary orbit to deliver a unique, secure, near real time data transfer service – making data latency a thing of the past. It can help revolutionise a number of areas, including the handling of humanitarian crises, maritime security and environmental protection by receiving satellite imagery in near real time. The Sentinel satellites of the European Union’s Earth observation programme Copernicus will be the first to benefit from these next-generation services. However, the SpaceDataHighway will also be able to connect other platforms such as aircraft, UAVs or the International Space Station.

“In general, space communications are the only way to establish broadband communications between humans and machines, whether they are in urban or remote areas, at sea, in the air or even in space. The SpaceDataHighway is like the first optical fiber in space, but with the added advantage of mobility. Therefore, the scope of possible applications is vast”, said Hughes Boulnois, head of the SpaceDataHighway business at Airbus Defence and Space. “With the generalisation of space technologies and the emergence of new stakeholders in the sector, Airbus wants this initiative to engage with and listen to the end-users market needs and to develop ideas to support this extended space ecosystem.”

This initiative has been launched with the support of the European Commission and the European Space Agency, which, together with Airbus, developed the SpaceDataHighway programme as part of a public–private partnership. To take part in the “Enter the SpaceDataHighway” challenge, visit.

The Spanish satellites DEIMOS-1 and DEIMOS-2 are now available for scientific research and application development projects, as part of the European Space Agency’s Third Party Missions programme.

Since August 2016, both Deimos Imaging’s satellites DEIMOS-1 and DEIMOS-2 are part of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Third Party Missions (TPM) fleet. Hence, access to their full archive and new tasking data are offered free of charge for scientific research and application development.

The TPM programme has been in effect for over 35 years and it is funded under ESA’s Earthnet activity. Earthnet is a cornerstone in ESA’s Earth Observation (EO) actions. It ensures international cooperation and it supports the scientific user community for EO data in Europe by providing access to a large portfolio of non-ESA international missions via standardised interfaces. The data collections are distributed under specific agreements with the owners or operators of such missions, respecting the data policy of each of them. Now, all the data captured by DEIMOS-1 and DEIMOS-2 are also available upon submission of a project proposal.

DEIMOS-1 was successfully launched on 29 July 2009 from the Baikonur Launch Complex (Kazakhstan) in the Russian-Ukrainian Dnepr launcher. It provides 22m/pixel multispectral imagery with a very wide (650-km) swath, assuring very-high-frequency revisit on large areas, especially tailored for agriculture, forestry and monitoring applications in mind.

DEIMOS-2 is a very-high resolution (VHR) multispectral satellite which produces 75-cm pan-sharpened imagery and 3-m multi-spectral images with a 12-km swath that can be increased to 24 km in its wide-area mode. DEIMOS-2 is also capable of acquiring single-pass stereo pairs, which allows creating 3D models of the imaged area. Launched on 19 June 2014, it is the first Spanish Earth Observation VHR satellite and the highest-resolution fully private satellite in Europe.

Deimos Imaging
Deimos Imaging, a subsidiary of the Canadian UrtheCast Corp., is a private Spanish provider of Earth Observation products and solutions, headquartered in Tres Cantos (Madrid) and with satellite control and processing facilities in Boecillo (Valladolid) and Puertollano (Ciudad Real). http://www.deimos-imaging.com/

Figures:


Oil fires near Qayyarah, Iraq. DEIMOS-1 image acquired on January 5, 2017.


Agricultural structures in Kansas, USA. DEIMOS-2 image acquired on February 20, 2016 for precision agriculture applications.


Ju’aymah bulk plant, Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia. DEIMOS-2 image acquired on December 19, 2016.

News flash! On the 30/03/2017 ICube-SERTIT will celebrate its 30th birthday.

SERTIT became ICube-SERTIT, integrating ICube Laboratory end 2015.

ICube Laboratory is a very large University of Strasbourg Laboratory comprised of 600 members.. ICube was created in 2013 bringing together researchers of the University of Strasbourg, the CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research), and engineering schools (ENGEES and the INSA) in the fields of engineering science and computer science, with imaging as the unifying theme. In research ICube is a major driving force concentrating on biomedical engineering and sustainable development.
SERTIT delivers from EO data services in natural resources monitoring, land management, urban planning, environmental survey, plus natural disaster and risk management.
It was founded with the arrival of the SPOT programme working on applied research and service development. SERTIT is both an R&D centre and a service provider accompanying French and ESA satellite development (now Sentinel) programs, being PI for many space agencies. SERTIT’s new position allows it to benefit from an array of research within ICube.

Tuned in to user needs, SERTIT compares user requirements and expectations with EO data potential and processing methods to conceptualise and implement customised products and services. As an independent entity, it uses space for Earth’s benefit and helps spread Europe’s influence.

A pioneer in the rapid mapping of natural disasters, SERTIT’s service has covered close to 180 activations worldwide since 1996, pushing for operational services starting with the International Charter “Space and Major Disasters”, helped by ESA Market Development, CNES R&D, and GMES/Copernicus ESA and European Commission programs. Today, SERTIT is a key European Rapid Mapping (RM) actor and is involved in the EC Copernicus Emergency Management Services collaborating within the e-GEOS led consortium.

SERTIT encourages Rapid mapping collaboration and sharing of expertise at an international level and as such is a founding member of the International Working Group on Satellite-based Emergency Mapping (IWG-SEM), being supported by the CNES.

SERTIT was first to bring Rapid Mapping services to the insurance market through ESA EO Market Development programs working with the insurance sector, notably Swiss Re, on developing customised products and delivery mechanisms. Also, in this light it has signed a multi-annual contract with the CCR (Caisse Centrale de Réassurance).

SERTIT’s reliable and expert rapid mapping service always receives top marks. Taking client/user confidence seriously, this service was certified ISO 9001 in August 2011 and is currently integrating the 2015 version of ISO9001.

SERTIT has a very active forestry service being involved in R&D work and providing services to the forestry sector in windfall damage and forest infestation plus logging, clearing and tree-type mapping. Initiated in the 1990s, the collaboration with foresters and policy making institutions at a regional scale is continuously developing through major projects/contracts, for instance in the aftermath of Lothar storm. As a result, forestry managers and decision makers now consider Earth Observation remote sensing as an operational tool, complementary to field work and other sources of information. Combining expertise in forestry and rapid mapping, SERTIT is implementing a high resolution (HR) burnt area mapping service using Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 data.

In the bio-diversity field SERTIT has mapped for many years the cropland habitat of the endangered common hamster and ecological corridors in Alsace.

Systematic water body mapping: With the advent of the Copernicus Sentinel constellation, the systematic mapping of water bodies using radar and optical HR data is currently a major development axis with SERTIT. The work leverages nearly 20 years of water body monitoring within ESA Dragon projects with the R&D work currently being supported by the CNES, targeting the development of a service in the near future.

SERTIT is a consultant in remote sensing generally with some focus on 3D satellite and drone applications. The work involves also being a scientific coordinator in developing a generic photogrammetric processing chain dedicated to drone images and the investigation of satellite/drone synergies for decision support system in the field of security, infrastructure monitoring and environmental studies.

SERTIT delivers customised training programs worldwide. Benefiting from its position within the University, SERTIT delivers workshops and training courses on-site or at the clients’ premises. The training courses are tailored to fit clients’ needs and can cover some of the following subjects: GIS, remote-sensing and image processing, satellite and drone imagery, application of remote-sensing such as emergency mapping, hydrology, forestry management, disaster risk reduction. We have an extensive experience delivering training to private and institutional clients around the world using both open source and proprietary software. Don’t hesitate to contact us to discuss together your training needs!

SERTIT is a founding member of the EUGENIUS Association (a European Group of Enterprises for a Network of Information Using Space) which is set-up to provide, through regional hubs, regional institutional and commercial users with operational, sustainable and cost effective geo-information services by maximising benefit from Copernicus data and core services for territory monitoring and management. The deployment of this network of regional services is supported by the H2020-Space-EO1-2016 EUGENIUS project, which started on October 1st, 2016.

“Farmstar”, a service of Airbus Defence and Space and ARVALIS – Institut du végétal for precision farming based on satellite information, has been further improved: new images acquired by the SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 satellites will make it possible to issue intra-field recommendations for areas as small as 1 hectare.


Plot management now down to 1 hectare, using UAVs, SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 satellites
bq. New interactive advice for nitrogen input at the 1 cm ear stage, at the exit of the winter, for wheat, barley and triticale crops.

Automatic and manual modulation files are accessible to all farmers via the “Farmstar” web portal. An additional advice for calculating the nitrogen input at the 1 cm ear stage enables this input to be broken down and adjusted for wheat, barley and triticale crops. The nitrogen fertilisation recommendations now take into account the objectives of the Proteins Plan for wheat quality thanks to new nitrogen requirement specifications for soft wheat, to optimise how this two-fold ‘yield–protein content’ objective is addressed.

These new developments come at the right time: after an extremely difficult year, due to exceptionally poor meteorological conditions, French farmers are now more than ever looking to save on farm inputs while continuing to manage their crops sustainably and with a focus on environmental protection. The number of farmers signed up for the service has constantly risen over the past 15 years. Nearly 800,000 ha of plots were monitored by “Farmstar” last season, enabling more than 18,000 farmers to save time and money through precise management of the exact needs of their crops.

“Farmstar” is a service distributed by the cooperatives, chambers of agriculture and traders dedicated to precision agriculture and crop management developed by Airbus Defence and Space and ARVALIS – Institut du végétal, in partnership with Terres Inovia. Throughout the season, the service provides reliable information that can be directly used by farmers to help them quickly make relevant decisions. This advice, combining satellite, UAV and aircraft imagery with agronomic expertise, exposes the real need of plants within each plot at different key stages in the crop growth and allows the right amount of inputs to be added in the right places at the right time.

Farmstar

Source

Five years ago, the very high-resolution satellite Pléiades 1A was launched from the Guiana Space Center, joined by its twin Pléiades 1B a few months later. This was the start of what is known as the Pléiades constellation, which makes it possible to create imagery product of every point of the globe at a 50cm resolution within a few hours and to guarantee a daily revisit, with more than one million km² acquired each day.

The Pléiades constellation has demonstrated its reactivity during the earthquake that rocked Ecuador on April 16, 2016, providing an image on the town of Pedernales in just four hours after being acquired. Immediately delivered to the local authorities, it enabled organizers to provide the various relief operations, and to carry out a rapid assessment of the damage.

The precision of the Pléiades imagery, coupled with the speed of acquisition over large regions, also played a key role in demonstrating the demolition of the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria by the Islamic State in 2015 and thereby creating a consciousness for the need of preservation of this UNESCO world heritage site.

The two satellites, built and operated by Airbus Defence and Space on behalf of CNES (the French Space Agency), are the first European satellites to observe the Earth in very high resolution. Providing imagery products at 50cm resolution with a 20km swath, they are positioned 180 ° apart in a same near-polar, sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 694 km. They also have remarkable agility which allows them to aim a point up to 1500 km on either side of their track. This gives them a fast zone-pointing capability and multiple shooting modes (stereo, mosaics, corridor, targets).

(Munich, December 14, 2016) The European Environment Agency (EEA) has recently contracted GAF AG and its international partners to implement the update of the Copernicus High Resolution Layers (HRLs) Imperviousness, Forest, Grassland, Water/Wetness and Small Woody Features in the frame of the continental component of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS).

Three leading European geo-information service companies – GAF AG (Germany), GeoVille GmbH (Austria) and SIRS SAS (France) – have joined forces to serve Europe’s need for consistent mapping and updating of all five High Resolution Layers (HRL) 2015 on land cover characteristics for all of Europe. Complemented by e-GEOS S.p.A. for grassland mapping, the joint team has conducted a successful Kick-off Meeting together with EEA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Topic Centre on Urban Land and Soil Systems (ETC-ULS) in Copenhagen end of August 2016. Framework Service Contracts with a total volume of up to eight million Euro have been signed. The main production will run within a 12 to 18 months time period.

Based on high to very-high resolution satellite imagery, including ESA’s Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellites, the team will perform an update and change mapping of the High Resolution Layers “Imperviousness” and “Forest”, as well as a new mapping of “Grassland”, “Water and Wetness”, and “Small Woody Features” for the EEA-39 countries (approx. 6 million km²). All thematic Layers provide dedicated information on current environmental conditions and change trends of the major land cover / land use types at 20 m spatial resolution. In complement to the well-established CORINE Land Cover (CLC), the HRLs will serve a broad user community, including European administration as well as Member State institutions, supporting applications for environmental policies and political decision-making. All final products will be made freely available by EEA via the CLMS portal (http://land.copernicus.eu).

About GAF AG

GAF AG is an e-GEOS (Telespazio/ASI) company seated in Munich, Germany. It is a leading solutions provider with an international reputation as skilled and reliable supplier of data, products and services in the fields of geo-information, satellite remote sensing, spatial IT and consulting for private and public clients. GAF is one of the most experienced European service providers in the EU/ESA Copernicus programme and covers all thematic domains: Land, Marine, Atmosphere, Climate Change, Emergency Management and Security. GAF further provides solutions in the sectors of Agriculture & Food Production, Environmental and Water Management, Forestry and Climate Change, Infrastructure and Mobility, Land Management, Insurance and Asset Management, Mining, Oil & Gas, Telecommunications and Network Planning, for Space Agencies & Satellite Operators as well as Defence and Security. Since 1985, GAF AG has successfully completed more than 1,000 projects worldwide. Further information is available at http://www.gaf.de.

About GeoVille GmbH

GeoVille is a private sector enterprise founded in 1998 and is based in Innsbruck, Austria. It is an internationally operating company, providing consultancy, services and products related to Earth Observation, Geo-information and Geographic Information Systems. The company has a longstanding experience in information service provision in the field of land and environmental monitoring. Our customers stem from private industry sectors, public organizations and research institutes. Since its foundation, GeoVille has successfully carried out more than 400 projects in more than 120 countries worldwide. GeoVille’s focus is on the integration of satellite earth observation based information and in-situ data in order to provide assessment and monitoring services. GeoVille enables geographic accounting of human and natural dynamics through a satellite’s eye, adding the spatial dimension to information gathering, analysis and monitoring, for policy support and informed decision making. Further information is available at http://www.geoville.com.

About SIRS SAS

SIRS is an independent private company and a French Earth Observation (EO) Service Provider founded in 1989 specialising in geographical information production as input to Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Over the last 27 years, SIRS has acquired significant capacities in developing operational services and managing large-scale EO production projects. SIRS’s main activities are in the fields of land cover/use mapping for urban planning and environmental monitoring, Habitat cartography (Natura 2000), Agricultural monitoring and Crop inventory, Defense geographic data production, Forestry inventory and cartography, tree management. SIRS has been involved in a number of large international EO based projects related to Forestry, land-use and agricultural services involving the processing of large amounts of multi-source EO data. Further information is available at http://www.sirs-fr.com/en

About e-GEOS

e-GEOS, an ASI (20%)/Telespazio (80%) company, is a leading international player in the Earth Observation and Geo-Spatial Information business. e-GEOS offers a unique portfolio of application services, also thanks to the superior monitoring capabilities of the COSMO-SkyMed constellation, and has acquired a leading position within the European Copernicus Program. Application services include: monitoring for environmental protection, rush mapping in support to natural disaster management, specialized products for defense and intelligence, oil spill and ship detection for maritime surveillance, interferometric measurements for landslides and ground subsidence analysis, thematic mapping for agriculture and forestry. In support to its operational applications, e-GEOS operates the Matera Space Centre for acquisition, archiving and processing of multi-mission satellite data including COSMO-SkyMed and ESA Sentinels. Further information is available at www.e-geos.it.

About EEA

The European Environment Agency (EEA) is a European Union public body seated in Copenhagen, Denmark. It supports the European Union in the development and implementation of environmental policies by providing relevant, reliable, targeted and timely information on the state of the environment and future prospects, as well as independent scientific knowledge and technical support. The European Commission entrusted EEA with coordinating the implementation of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service’s continental (pan-European) and local components, as well as the service cross-cutting in situ coordination. Currently, the EEA has 33 member countries (i.e. the 28 Member States of the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey) and 6 cooperating countries. Further information is available at http://www.eea.europa.eu.

About Copernicus Land Monitoring

Copernicus, previously known as GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security), is the European Programme for establishing a European capacity for Earth Observation (more information at http://www.copernicus.eu). The objective of its Land Monitoring service is to provide users in the field of environment and other terrestrial applications with consistent and up-to-date information based on space data and other sources. It addresses a wide range of policies such as environment, regional development, agriculture, transport and energy at EU level, as well as European commitments to international conventions. It comprises three main elements: the global, the continental (pan-European), and the local service components. Information, data and products of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service is accessible at http://land.copernicus.eu.

To obtain more information, please contact:
GAF AG
Daniela Miller
Arnulfstr.199, 80634 Munich
Tel. +49 89 12 15 28-0
Fax. +49 89 12 15 28-79
info@gaf.de | www.gaf.de