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New combination of optical and radar satellite technology in operation with Ferrero and Nestlé as pilot customers

Airbus Defence and Space, The Forest Trust (TFT) and SarVision have jointly developed a service enabling companies to provide evidence of how they are implementing their No Deforestation commitments. The service is called Starling and uses a combination of high-resolution optical satellite and radar imagery to provide unbiased monitoring of forest cover change. After 14 months of development Starling is now in operation with Ferrero and Nestlé as pilot customers and will be available to the market early 2017.It will be the first time a technology of this kind is made available to companies, from producers to global brands, to help them make the right decisions and meet the promises set out in their forest conservation policies.

“We believe Starling is revolutionary,” said Bastien Sachet, Chief Executive of global environmental and social non-profit TFT. “Not only does this service provide a level of accuracy never before seen, thanks to a combination of 1.5m SPOT images and cloud-independent radar data, it also goes beyond the traditional concept of ‘auditing’”.

Until now, brands and producers could only rely on auditing houses to verify Zero Deforestation commitments. However, auditors can’t get the overall view of the situation: they can’t access all forest areas, and are only spending a limited number of days in the field. Imagery from space offers a powerful alternative, bringing extensive, impartial and cost-effective information in real time, including the ability to easily differentiate replanting from deforestation. It allows companies to manage their operations, make fully informed decisions and demonstrate to buyers and consumers that they are true to their commitment. Starling will be available to the market starting January 2017. In the meantime the service is being piloted with early adopters.

“Most companies strive to do the right thing, and the aim of Starling is to give them the true capacity to do so,” said Bernhard Brenner, Head of Intelligence Business Cluster at Airbus Defence and Space. “Our constellation of satellites offers them a reliable tool to track and verify their actions and better protect the world’s resources.”

The partnership between Airbus Defence and Space, TFT and radar remote sensing specialists SarVision began in 2015. Airbus Defence and Space is responsible for activating its satellites, pre-processing the imagery and distributing the service worldwide. TFT’s experience in land use planning and forestry and SarVision’s expertise in radar imagery analysis complement the design of the solution. Complex, expert satellite data is turned into information that can be directly used and understood by agro-industries.

Ferrero and Nestlé are piloting Starling to verify the responsible sourcing commitments they made for their palm oil supply chains.

Find out more about Starling at www.intelligence-airbusds.com/starling

(10/01/2016) On 21 and 22 September, in Brussels, GMV took part in the EU Research and Innovation in Support to the Earth observation Market workshop organized by the Directorate Climate Action and Resource Efficiency of the European Commission’s DG Research and Innovation (DG RTD).

The overall objective of this workshop was to explore Research and Innovation actions needed for the development of a dynamic Earth observation (EO) market in Europe and, in particular, a service market based on the possibilities offered by such initiatives as the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) and its European input, Copernicus.

The workshop’s main themes were, firstly, to characterize the current EO market in Europe and globally and its future trends; secondly, identify opportunities for the development of new EO services and products and appropriate measures to accelerate their uptake by industry and clients; and, thirdly, elaborate a mechanism for consulting/involving the European commercial sector in GEO within the Copernicus context, taking into account the dialogue already initiated between the two programs.

GMV was invited to present the paper “Generating added-value EO products and services for governmental agencies around the World”. In this paper GMV spoke of its own experience in the marketing of geospatial and earth-observation services in three particular sectors: environment, land use and maritime safety, focusing especially on GMV’s Middle East contracts.

GMV has participated in important Copernicus projects in the areas of the environment, emergencies and safety. It is currently coordinating the European-Commission-brokered contract for defining user requirements to guide the next generation of the Copernicus Space Component (next generation of Sentinel missions).

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i-cubed, an Airbus Defense and Space company based in Fort Collins, Colorado, is supplying the State of North Carolina with imagery streaming services to help prepare and respond to Hurricane Matthew. Additionally, a Geospatial Appliance Targeted for Operational Response device, also dubbed GATOR, has been sent to North Carolina state officials to help with emergency response efforts.

The streaming services will provide state officials and emergency responders improved situational awareness by having access to six-inch orthorectified imagery over 27 coastal counties, collected between January and March 2016 as part of the 911 Statewide Orthoimagery Program. The streaming services can be used in applications that are compatible with SOAP, REST, WMS or WMTS services such as: Esri Web or Desktop Applications, open source software, CAD, DataDoors or custom applications.

The GATOR device is an encapsulated and portable geospatial server for disconnected field use. It’s a ‘grab and go’ appliance that provides Humanitarian Relief Workers and Disaster Response Teams with flexible access to streaming raster data within their GIS software environment. While designed for disconnected use, when connectivity is available, GATOR services can be broadcasted over a local area network (LAN). The ability to access six-inch resolution data while being completely disconnected, en-route, or based at a remote location, assists Disaster Response Teams in making informed decisions if life-threating situations occur. Emergency response personnel would have the ability to see the original location of small electrical utilities or drainage features, which may not be apparent at a location with standing water or covered with debris, for example.

“Thanks to our reliable data management solutions, leveraging on Airbus Defense and Space’s optical and radar satellites, we are able to support emergency response efforts when devastating natural disasters happen” says Greg Buckman, Head of Airbus Defense and Space’s Intelligence Business Activities in North America. “We are utilizing all of our resources to help increase the response time and dissemination of information for teams involved with the response to Hurricane Matthew.”

Airbus Defense and Space offers unique data management solutions, including managed hosting and streaming services to a variety of markets.

To learn more about how North Carolina state officials will supply the information to emergency response officials, please read more here.

Contact
Fabienne Grazzini
+ 33 (0)5 62 19 41 19
fabienne.grazzini@airbus.com

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(Munich, 26/08/16) European Space Imaging and its long-term partner Planetek Italia sprang into action to support disaster relief efforts by supplying the first available very high-resolution satellite imagery to emergency services and the media just hours after the recent earthquake struck Italy. The imagery was captured by the WorldView-2 satellite over the affected region showing the extent of the damages caused. The high-resolution imagery was immediately made available to the Italian Emergency Services.

The earthquake hit at around 3:30 am of August 24th, 2016, some 100 km northeast of Rome. The earthquake of magnitude 6.2 severely damaged several towns and killed hundreds of people in central Italy. The towns of Amatrice, Accumoli, Pescara del Tronto and Arquata del Tronto have been completely devastated.

Early in the morning of August 24th, Planetek Italia asked European Space Imaging, Europe’s leading provider of very high-resolution satellite imagery to collect imagery of affected areas through its local ground station. A few hours after the earthquake, around 10:20 UTC, European Space Imaging acquired and provided the first image of Amatrice, Italy in 40 cm resolution.

Planetek Italia, based in Italy is a major supplier of satellite imagery and mapping services in Italy. In the case of the earthquake they supplied the first imagery to emergency services.

“The ability of satellites to collect images over large areas, the view from above of the areas affected by an emergency and the comparison with previous images helps to quickly recognize the changes, and understand where to address first aid”, says Giovanni Sylos Labini, CEO of Planetek Italia.

As the leading supplier of very high-resolution satellite imagery in their region European Space Imaging knows the importance of making imagery available quickly.

“When a catastrophe happens in Europe we can react quickly. Our dedicated staff give highest priority to support disaster relief efforts in a fast and pragmatic way. We are proud of our team and happy to help when we can”, says Michaela Neumann, Director of Sales and Marketing, European Space Imaging.

The image was provided to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) and has been made available to anyone who wants to contribute to the detection and mapping of buildings and infrastructures damaged and destroyed. This activity will provide updated information of great support to Institutions and emergency services during the emergency and after.

The European Union immediately alerted the Copernicus EMS team, which is providing the Italian Civil Protection damage assessment satellite maps for the affected area, based on European Copernicus Sentinel satellites.

If you wish to contribute:
• Go to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team website http://osmit-tm.wmflabs.org/project/13
Download Worldview-2 satellite high resolution dataset of Amatrice collected the 24th August (zip 134 Mb – licence CC-BY-NC)

About European Space Imaging
European Space Imaging (EUSI) is the ‘go to’ company in Europe if you are looking for very high-resolution satellite data. They always offer customers access to the highest resolution imagery available. Their current ’best’ offering is 30 cm data from the DigitalGlobe WorldView-3 satellite. EUSI also operate a multi-mission ground station to provide direct satellite tasking. This enables optimized image collection strategies, flexibility and real-time weather assessments for new collections. With a reputation for expert and personalized customer service EUSI has been providing tailored VHR imagery solutions from their Munich headquarters to meet the diverse project requirements of their customer base since 2002.
For more information, visit www.euspaceimaging.com

About Planetek
Planetek Italia is an Italian company specialised in geo-informatics, Space solutions and Earth observation. The company provides solutions to exploit the value of geospatial data through all phases of data life cycle from acquisition, storage, management up to analysis and sharing. Planetek Italia operates in many application areas ranging from environmental and land monitoring to open-government and smart cities, and including defence and security, as well as scientific missions and planetary exploration.
For more information, visit www.planetek.it

Bari, Italy, October 6th, 2016. Planetek Italia is pleased to announce that The Wroclaw Institute, GeoSolutions Consulting Inc. and Gjeo-Vjosa sh.p.k. have been appointed as Authorized Partners for the reselling of the Earth monitoring services offered by its cloud platform, Rheticus®.

Contracts grants to Authorized Partners the exclusive right to sell Rheticus® satellite processing services to the customers located in their respective countries and markets. Services available through the Rheticus® platform allow the users to monitor the Earth surface evolution. It includes monitoring of earth crust subsidence, urban dynamics, forest fires hazards, costal seawater quality as well as many more in the near future.

The Planetek Italia CEO, Mr Giovanni Sylos Labini added: “We are excited to cooperate with our international partners. Rheticus® will now support professionals and decision makers in a growing number of countries, relying on the sound professional support of our partners. Born and strengthened under the Hexagon Geospatial network, these cooperations open new opportunities to develop and deliver cutting-edge solutions to our markets. Through the integration of the Rheticus® monitoring services in Hexagon Geospatial Smart M.Apps, we can offer insightful analytics and dynamic maps to users worldwide.”

Rheticus® is a cloud-based geoinformation service platform, designed to automatically process satellite data and other data sources. It delivers fresh and accurate data and information for monitoring of the earth’s surface evolution. Rheticus® platform is a perfect solution for organizations dealing in their operations with natural environment concerns like mining, heavy industry, roads, rail utility construction and operations, environmental and forestry agencies and local government, etc.

To know more about Rheticus® Authorized Partners

The Wroclaw Institute www.wizipisi.pl
GeoSolutions Consulting Inc. http://geosolutionsconsulting.com/
Gjeo-Vjosa sh.p.k. http://www.gjeovjosa.com/

About Planetek Italia s.r.l.
Planetek Italia is an Italian company established in 1994, providing a broad range of geospatial services including delivery, analysis and processing of satellite data. Premium Partner of Hexagon Geospatial in Italy, Planetek is the creator and operator of the unique Rheticus® cloud platform (www.rheticus.eu), designed for the provision of sophisticated satellite data based monitoring services. See www.planetek.it

The aim of the TED monitoring project is to explore the potential of long time series of high resolution EO imagery (Landsat and Sentinel-2 missions) for terrestrial ecosystem monitoring through the development of a new processing system and demonstration of novel approaches for long-term continuous detection of land cover (use) changes.

The current operational method of land cover (use) change detection, as also reflected in current line of Copernicus land services, are based on bi-temporal analysis for two points in time. These can be performed at decision level (supervised approach) or at data level (unsupervised approach). The most common methods include image differencing/rationing, linear transforms, change vector analysis and image regression or visual interpretation. There is no consensus on the type of change detection algorithm that performs best. Different studies and comparisons report different results. Principally there is not one universal method that would be applicable within all land cover domains. Moreover, these methods rely on the assumption that pixels associated with land-cover changes present spectral values that are significantly different from pixels associated with unchanged areas. However, vegetated terrestrial ecosystems exhibit high temporal (seasonal) variation that is captured in the acquired bi-temporal images, which considerably weaken the general assumption of the methods.

The temporal trajectory approach assumes continuous seasonal development of vegetation. With this approach seasonal development curves for different seasons are compared to detect changes. The use of temporal trajectory analysis for the problem of change detection is a way of avoiding the problem of selecting optimal points in time for images to be compared. This is generally performed for medium-resolution imagery as these can provide the necessary temporal resolution. However, with availability of the high resolution image archives (as Landsat 5/7/8), it is possible to retrospectively monitor land ecosystem dynamics, while in future it can be continued by Sentinel-2 mission.

The TED-processor being developed consists of the three subsystems that include image pre-processing to artefact-free time series, local-adaptive dynamic land surface model and change detection decision support system. The performance of the processor is demonstrated on the case study focused on deforestation monitoring in the region of Sumava national park within the time period from 1984 to 2014.

The TED monitoring project is funded by ESA within the Czech Industry Incentive Scheme.

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

As a broad range of modern technological advances that benefit agriculture, satellite technology offers the possibility to reduce the dependence on labour and time-intensive work.


In this field, a new project led by DRAXIS ENVIRONMENTAL, aims to add value in the use of remote sensing in monitoring the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Since 2003, EU farmers shall respect the “cross-compliance” rules in order to receive payments. These CAP rules are legislative standards and obligations in the field of the environment and a non-compliance may lead to reduction or even cancelation of payments.

However, pursuing the integration of environmental concerns into the CAP and making it more compatible with the expectations of society, results many burdens both for the public authorities and the farmers. On the one hand, the public administrative costs are high due to the need of in-field visits and on the other hand, farmers face difficulties in familiarizing and dealing with the applicable regulations.

The RECAP project aims to develop an improved remote monitoring of CAP obligations and to supplement the in-field inspections by the Payment Agencies. The overall objective is to develop and pilot test a platform for the delivery of public services that will enable the improved implementation of the CAP.
RECAP will be a cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) platform which will collect information from open satellite data and commercial channels of satellite data providers. It will extract useful features from earth observation, correlate them with user-generated and geo-information data and model this information for enabling the identification of potential breaches of compliance.

The RECAP services will be tested and validated in an operational environment in the UK, Spain, Greece, Lithuania and Serbia, with the participation of farmers, agricultural consultants and public authorities. RECAP aims to offer farmers a tool supporting them to comply with regulations and enable agricultural consultants to develop their own services within the platform using tools and communication with the database under an open approach. Paying agencies will benefit through less administrative work providing at the same time enhanced transparency in the CAP monitoring procedure.

The RECAP project started in May 2016 and is supported by Horizon 2020 programme “ICT- enabled open government”. The project consortium consists of:

  • DRAXIS ENVIRONMENTAL S.A. (Coordinator), Greece
  • INSTITUTO NAVARRO DE TECNOLOGIAS E INFRAESTRUCTURAS AGROALIMENTRARIAS S.A., Spain
  • PAYMENT AND CONTROL AGENCY FOR GUIDANCE AND GUARANTEE COMMUNITY AID, Greece
  • NATIONAL PAYING AGENCY, Lithuania
  • VIESOJI ISTAIGA LIETUVOS ZEMES UKIO KOSNULTAVIMO TARNYBA, Lithuania
  • STRUTT & PARKER, UK
  • INOSENS DOO NOVI SAD, Serbia
  • THE UNIVERSITY OF READING, UK
  • NATIONAL OBSERVATORY OF ATHENS, Greece
  • INICIATIVAS INNOVADORAS SAL, Spain
  • ETAM ANONYMH ETAIRIA SYMBOULEYTIKON MELETHTIKON YPIRESION, Greece
    CREVIS SPRL, Belgium

DHI GRAS to lead ESA project on large-scale exploitation of satellite data in support of water resource management and sustainable development


Satellite Earth Observation (EO) technology has a tremendous potential to inform and facilitate international development work. Since 2008, the European Space Agency (ESA) has worked together with International Financing Institutions (IFIs) and their client states to harness the benefits of EO in their operations and resources management

EO4SD — Earth Observation for Sustainable Development — is an ESA initiative started in spring 2016 and focusing on three top-priority international development issues i.e. [i] urban development, [ii] agriculture and rural development as well as [iii] water resource management. The overall objective is to achieve a step increase in the uptake of satellite-based information in the IFIs regional and global programs within these three domains.

A consortium led by DHI GRAS has been selected to carry out the EO4SD project on water resource management, aiming at delivering EO services in response to stakeholder requirements for water resources monitoring and management at local to basin scales. The first phase (i.e. year one) of the project is dedicated to stakeholder’s engagement, requirements consolidation and product testing and with the second phase (i.e. years two and three) focusing on information production, delivery and capacity building.

Ultimately the project will provide Earth Observation demonstrations on a large-scale in Africa (Sahel, Africa Horn and Zambezi), Asia (Myanmar and Lower Mekong) and Latin America (Altiplano), and within water related operations of major IFI’s including World Bank, Asian Development Bank and Inter-American Development Bank.

Partners

For this project DHI GRAS have assembled a high profile team of experts in Earth Observation, water resource management and operational development assistance including Geoville (Austria), Satelligence (Netherlands), eLEAF (Netherlands), Starlab (Spain), DHI (Denmark) as well as ITC (Netherlands) and adelphi (Germany).
For further information please contact project lead Christian Tottrup (cto@dhi-gras.com). A dedicated project website and portal will be launched later.

by Peter Hausknecht, PhD, Chief Scientist, Earth-i.
Earth-i provides access to even more very high resolution satellite data sets from UK built satellites – complementing the successful European Sentinel2 mission data.

The EU’s Copernicus programme, with free data access to the constellation of Sentinel satellites, has pushed high resolution Earth Observation imagery data into the concept of ‘Big Data’ stimulating service providers and application developers to provide tools to harvest such free data volumes. Frequently updated, high resolution optical data is potentially available for any place on Earth every day. Data collection capabilities, on board storage and a global network of downlink stations, have radically reduced the barriers and restrictions of the past on the application of satellite imagery. What a great opportunity to utilise Earth Observation on a scale not seen before.

Since its inception over 15 years ago, the EO industry has also seen an increased provision of very high resolution satellite data (1m GSD or better) from a number of providers in the commercial satellite sector, but such data comes at a cost. Whilst the availability of high resolution satellite data (10m up to 1m GSD) is now better than ever, the question still needs to be asked: do we really need all that new very high resolution capability? Since users have to pay commercial rates, does very high resolution data represent value for money or is high resolution data like that available from the new 10m Sentinel-2 set the norm with enough information for most applications? The answer is, like for many things in life, not ‘yes’ or ‘no’, but a bit of both, application and requirement depending. In most cases a very high resolution dataset should be part of any baseline mapping exercise to fully understand an area in question. Also, when looking at a regional or country-wide scale, very high resolution will be expensive to acquire – especially when used at high temporal frequency. But for a monitoring program a lower spatial resolution data set may be sufficient. If a change or something unusual has been detected, another very high spatial resolution dataset may resolve the question and enable fully effective analysis and action.

Sentinel2, launched by the European Space Agency to meet the need for high spatial resolution optical data, is well suited to mapping large areas, detecting changes on land, and providing a dependable baseline map of wide areas of interest. However, illustrating the difference that can be made by acquiring supplementary very high spatial resolution data, is recent satellite imagery acquired over a farm area in central southern France. Showing the location, where Sentinel2 data was acquired only 2 days apart in August 2016, when looking with very high resolution (1m GSD) DMC3 satellite data, it is possible to identify the spatial detail in the local agricultural pattern and even differentiate a vineyard from neighbouring planting. Such a level of insight is simply not possible at 10m resolution, but it also may not be necessary for each data acquisition occasion in a monitoring program. Broad questions and outcomes are addressed on a regional scale. But once distinct change is detected in the regular pattern of a monitoring program with Sentinel2, an investigation of that change using very high resolution satellites will make a particular image far more detailed and insightful.

Sentinel2 provides a wide area baseline for monitoring and change detection, DMC3 delivers a powerful capability to ‘zoom in’ adding additional value to services and applications.

Figure 1: DMC3/TripleSat satellite image subset from August 2016, over an area in south-west of France near LaBastide d’Armagnac, an agricultural region producing a variety of produce incl. some vineyards. Copyright: 21AT/Earth-i

© by Peter Hausknecht, PhD, Chief Scientist, Earth-i.
Earth observation has contributed to the response activities in the recent Canadian wildfires. Aerial imagery and satellite data from sensors of all wavelengths and spatial dimensions were utilised to assess and combat the recent fires – most likely the biggest environmental catastrophe in Canada’s recent history. Due to its location near the Fort McMurray shale fields, the oil industry was quickly drawn into the disaster response, needing to demonstrate its readiness to shut down production, secure assets and evacuate people on a large scale.

Fort McMurray was a place few people in Europe had heard of before. That changed when the headlines hit the newsrooms: Alberta Wildfire Grows Tenfold in Size Canadian Wildfires Curtail Oil Sands Production Fort McMurray: Canada wildfires force evacuation of oil sands city.

When the wildfire happened the oil and gas industry had to react fast, asking: Where? When? What? Local authorities, emergency services and news providers had exactly the same questions. These questions are typical for events not easily anticipated or planned for, such as natural disasters, environmental catastrophes or other larger scale incidents where situational awareness becomes a crucial part in decision making and emergency response. Earth observation-derived information, plain imagery and value-added information products provide key inputs in the before, during and after phases of planning the response to such an event. Where are the access roads and what conditions are they in? How far has the fire progressed and in which direction is it moving? What areas have been affected most and how severe is the damage? These are three questions which can be addressed by earth observation technologies. Crucial in this regard is the on-time and up-to-date availability of earth observation data. Information products derived from that data, whether from satellite or airborne sensors, are a critical element in disaster response.

However, not only the direct response to an event and the impact assessment, need the high spatial resolution information. Ongoing rescue and recovery operations can also benefit greatly from the availability and analysis of EO data. In the direct aftermath any insurance company or aid agency will derive significant benefit from the immediate availability of such information, enabling swift and accurate decisions to be made in support of their clients.

In Canada, like in most European countries, regular updates of the baseline mapping products, such as background imagery, are carried out with high resolution satellites and aerial photography. With an ever-growing number of high spatial resolution satellites available to acquire data and provide the derived information in a timely manner, means such data can become part of preparedness planning. The 24/7 availability of the baseline data is essential for a well-informed response should preparedness have to turn into emergency action.

All the Satellite service providers reacted swiftly to the sudden demand for information on the Fort McMurray fires with the international charter on space and major disasters being activated on May 4th. Many Earth observation satellites contributed to this Canadian emergency call and agencies on the ground successfully utilised the information derived. The 2015-launched DMC3/TripleSat constellation of three satellites was part of the array of responding optical instruments and an example of the images produced, about 40 km south-east of Ft. McMurray, is shown below. 

The images show a small subset of the affected areas with some of the shale gas production locations clearly visible, especially the number of well pads and a production train highlighted in the high resolution subset. The area is heavily forested and the regular patterns cut into the native vegetation show quite clearly in the satellite images.

DMC3 images subset taken on 6th of May 2016 near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. © 21AT/Earth-i


True color composite RGB=321


False color composite RGB=432

image processing results performing principle component analysis


straight PC channel 3


directed MNF channel 3


Panchromatic subset – 1 meter pixel

There are two main fire ‘hotspots’ in the images – seen in the red of the false colour image. The one to southwest shows the wildfire potentially moving towards the production / pumping facility. The main issue with optical imagery in any fire scenario is the smoke camouflaging the areas underneath, and consequently any assessment or analysis of that area becomes difficult. However, with dedicated image processing techniques, such as Principle Component (PC) transformation or Minimum Noise Fraction (MNF) transformation, some of the residual ground information can be retrieved and utilised for analysis. For example, the fire scars (see middle left) on the top right hand side become quite obvious and can be mapped easily, despite being covered by smoke in the original image displays.

Having such immediate satellite images available is only the first step – the data needs to be processed, analysed, and derived products created. The results will need to be integrated with the existing GIS information, such as fire risk maps, evacuation routes, and safe places, and integrated in the Common Operating Picture (COP).

Once the fire has passed and the immediate risk is gone, the initial appraisals on the severity of the fires, damage assessments and affected localities can be carried out. This enables immediate assistance to be allocated to the local people and identification of essential infrastructure needing to be repaired with a high priority.

Even now, when the fires have long stopped, there is still an ongoing need to monitor the clean-up operations and the progress of vegetation rehabilitation and infrastructure repair. As part of the ‘lessons learnt review’ people will look at the satellite data to see if they could have made better, faster and more effective decisions.

Earth observation from satellites and airborne sensors will always play a crucial part in such an emergency response, but also a very important role in the preparedness planning for any risk event before an emergency develops, and in the subsequent clean-up and restoration projects after the emergency is over.

Additional information can be found on the following websites of service providers and agencies: