Category: Member News

Airbus fully believes in and is committed to the distribution of satellite imagery and services via digital platforms. Over the past two years, we have invested heavily in our digital infrastructures, designed for distributing our own high resolution optical and radar imagery, together with Copernicus Data and Core Services. In addition to OneAtlas and Sobloo, we have also developed UP42, as an independent and agnostic platform aggregating all kinds of data processing and algorithms to act as a catalyst to boost the geospatial market and support developers worldwide.

The Sobloo platform exposure amongst the user community will be increased by promoting some of the data and services on OneAtlas and Up42. This will allow to bring the Sobloo offer to our own existing and expanding customer base whilst at the same time exposing the Sobloo community to a wider range of data, services. Ultimately it will give new horizons to Sobloo users that will benefit from all the processing and data bricks provided by OneAtas and Up42.

The RUS Service is the “New Expert Service for Sentinel Users” funded by the European Commission, managed by the European Space Agency, and operated by CS and its partners Serco, Noveltis and Along-track

The Copernicus Research and User Support (RUS) Service celebrates this month its two years of operations, with results beyond expectancy.

To date more than 1,000 users benefit from the RUS cloud resources and dedicated support provided by the experts of the RUS HelpDesk, for free. In parallel, more than 20 live webinars have been held on a variety of applications and Sentinel datasets. Each webinar aimed to demonstrate how Copernicus data can be accessed and processed to derive meaningful information for various monitoring applications (e.g., land, ocean, risk assessment, climate). The video recordings of these webinars are available on the RUS Youtube channel.

The RUS Service organized also more than 20 face-to-face hands-on training sessions over Europe. These sessions allowed participants to handle open source image processing solutions like ESA SNAP software.

For more info and the social media channels visit the website:
https://rus-copernicus.eu

The RUS team will be present at the ESA Living planet Symposium in Milan, Italy (12-17 May). You are welcome to visit us to visit us at the CS and Serco booths.

Copernicus Sentinel 2 image processed by ImagineEarth thanks to RUS support                 

Planetek Italia is organizing the “Back To The FutureEO” Conference, which will happen on May 16th, 2019 from 16.00 h. to 19.00, in the context of the ESA's Living Planet Symposium 2019 next 13-17 May 2019 in Milan, Italy.

The Conference is promoted by Planetek Italia, as part of its 25 years anniversary celebration agenda, and is co-organized with ESA and EARSC.

“Back To The FutureEO” Conference

Starting from "the PAST" and moving towards "the FUTURE” of Earth Observation, the conference will host inspirational talks from ESA, EARSC, Planetek and industry leaders.

A journey inside Planetek’s 25 years of experience in EO and cooperation with ESA, and a glance at the most recent developments on geo-analytics, Artificial Intelligence, block chain, Sustainable Development Goals and satellite onboard data handling and services development.

A round table led by EARSC will host industry representatives to illustrate experiences and challenges concerning the future of Earth Observation. ESA D-EOP, Josef Aschbacher, will hold closing speech of the conference.

Planetek will be present at LPS 2019 with a booth and with some scientific presentations highlighting its recent innovations in Earth Observation.

Visitors of Planetek booth n. 36 will discover the SpaceStream and Info-as-a-Service concepts, Planetek's way to imagine, design and develop disruptive solutions changing the way geospatial information is provided to users. A champion in this field is the award winning Rheticus® cloud-based platform, which delivers EO based geoanalytics to several industries.

The Living Planet Symposium is held every three years and focuses on how Earth Observation contributes to science and society, and how disruptive technologies and actors are changing the traditional Earth Observation landscape, which is also creating new opportunities for public and private sector interactions.

Register now to participate at LPS19 and meet us at:

“Back To The Future EO” Conference, Thursday, 16 May 2019, h 16,00 – 19,00

Agorà Giardino - Living Planet Symposium 2019 - Milan Italy.

Celebrating 25 years in business

Throughout 2019, Planetek Italia will celebrate its 25-year long history in business by promoting a series of events at national and international levels. Stay tuned with Planetek’s activities and support us with your likes and comments, following #Planetek25 and #BackToTheFutureEO hashtags on our channels:

• https://www.planetek.it
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/planetek-italia
• https://www.twitter.com/Planetek
• https://www.facebook.com/Planetek

Planetek Hellas, acting as the prime in the submitting company grouping, together with Planetek Italia, CMCC, KSAT and Creotech Instruments, has been awarded the MARINE-EO PCP Phase 2 project for the design, development, testing and demonstration of the Lot 1, titled: SATOCEAN - Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring and Climate Change.

The consortium led by Planetek Hellas started the Phase 1 of the PCP (Design) on July 2018 and in October 2018 was evaluated with the highest ranking, among the three consortiums that continued in Phase 2 (Prototype).

MARINE–EO is “the first Earth observation pre-commercial procurement in Europe, cofounded by the H2020 program” aiming at procuring the development of demand-driven EO-based services, adopted on open standards, bringing incremental or radical innovations in the field of maritime awareness and leveraging on the existing Copernicus Services and other products from the Copernicus portfolio. (https://marine-eo.eu)

The Marine Environment Monitoring is a complex cross cutting area where Earth Observation (EO) satellites and more specifically, Copernicus Sentinel’s provide major contribution. This complexity and diverse topics that need to be monitored and explored can be summarized in the following three use cases:

1. Marine Environmental Status in Hot Spots;

2. Fish Farms: Detection of Fish Farm Threats;

3. Detection of Vessels and Icebergs in the Arctic zone.

The three use cases are the integral part of the SATOCEAN (Lot 1) activity developed by Planetek Hellas consortium and will be designed and realized by exploiting the competences and expertise of the consortium to provide the services, Planetek for the WQ and aquaculture services (Rheticus Marine) and KSAT for the vessels and iceberg identification and routes. All the services will be implemented through a complex and advanced system based on Creotech’s Data and Information Access Services (DIAS) platform.

The first two use cases refer to the monitoring hot spots in coastal marine environment. The third use case refers to the maritime safety with regards to ice shipping route, vessel detection and iceberg monitoring.

Coastal and Marine Environment contributes to water quality monitoring and to environmental risk assessment. Specifically, Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) provides long time-series of in-situ (physical and biochemical) and remote sensing (ocean colour and SST) products and data that feed coastal areas with important information. This information is vital for monitoring the status of coastal areas, adhering to the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), and other related products. Using CMEMS data, Copernicus Sentinel imagery, available in-situ measurements and specialized hydro-physical models, the consortium will:

• Provide a wide set of EO based products from Copernicus under free and open license and data obtained from other freely available satellite missions in order to obtain relevant parameters on the quality of sea areas of interest. In this context, the use of advanced modelling will improve spatial resolution reaching values less than 1km x 1km. (First and second case histories)
• Provide innovative monitoring information and routing services to support involved authorities as well as ships navigators on board the ship and private industries in their activities of monitoring, navigation in or near ice and ice defence in the Arctic zone. (Third case history)
• Develop innovative interfaces aiming in making easy and immediate the access to the relevant information to the different users communities interested by the information services provided. (all case histories)

For further information visit https://www.planetek.gr/

Around 6,000 very high-resolution images from the DMC3 Constellation were used for the 2018 update of the map with multiple re-visits to tropical areas with heavy cloud cover.

The images have a pixel size of 80cm (one pixel equates to 80cm on the ground) so that details such as individual trees can be easily seen.

All three maps are available on an online portal – ‘The Queensland Globe’ where images can be viewed and printed.

These images are used by a variety of Government departments, local agencies and natural resource management groups to manage and monitor Queensland’s resources and improve policy development, investment and planning decisions. The map also helps to monitor environmental changes, and helps with the planning of long-term land development strategies.

Earth-i faced strong competition to lead this prestigious project which has set the standard for Governments across the world who are looking to use images of Earth taken from space to improve their decision-making.

Steve Jacoby, Executive Director of Land and Spatial Information at the Queensland Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy, said “Earth-i is an innovative company that combines quality images and analysis with excellent service. The Queensland Globe is very well used and helping to improve the decision making of a wide variety of organisations.”

Paul Majmader, Commercial Director of Earth-i, said “Winning this contract for the third consecutive time is a tribute to our entire team. The DNRME in Queensland is showing Governments around the world how important regularly updated, high resolution data is in making informed policy decisions.”

As qualified suppliers to other states in Australia, Earth-i is helping Australia retain its position as a leader in the development of geospatial data infrastructure which is driving both economic development and good environmental management.

About Earth-i

Earth-i currently provides satellite imagery, data analysis and insights services from a range of Earth Observation (EO) satellites, including the DMC3, SuperView, KOMPSAT and Planet constellations of satellites. Earth-i launched its own satellite service demonstrator satellite, VividX2, in January 2018.

The company is pioneering the application of machine learning and AI solutions to Earth Observation data to provide deeper insights in support of critical business decisions and policy formulation. Earth-i has a wide range of clients globally including National and Local Governments and a multitude of specialist geospatial companies and other commercial organisations.

The upcoming launch of its own satellite constellation, Vivid-i, is a natural evolution of Earth-i’s existing and well-regarded image and EO analytics business. The Vivid-i Constellation will enable Earth-i to meet the rapidly growing demand for high-resolution EO data, analytics and insights, whilst delivering pioneering high-frame rates, ultra-high-definition colour video, and very high frequency revisits.

Earth-i is headquartered in Surrey, UK, on Europe’s largest academic space campus near to many other UK space-related companies including Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL).

Website: www.earthi.space
Twitter: @Earthi_
Linkedin: Earth-i Company page

View the first full-colour datasets from VividX2: https://youtu.be/OBxJSroyTcI

Almost every fourth company in the European Union uses the cloud

The latest Eurostat research shows that in the last 4 years the use of cloud computing among large companies in the European Union has increased by over 20%. Currently, 26% of enterprises use cloud computing. It is worth noting that statistically the larger the company, the more often it uses cloud computing.

This is confirmed by numbers – the largest percentage of cloud use (56%) is found among the largest companies that theoretically have their own resources, and yet more often decide to outsource. The public administration also increasingly places on the cloud.

‘A simple profit and loss account wins. Cloud will always be a cheaper solution than maintaining infrastructure on its own, in addition, the administration collides today with the problem of a shortage of specialists who prefer to work in enterprises. It is also worth paying attention to the trend of investing in the cloud of the foreign public sector’ – notes Urszula Mielcarz from CloudFerro, a company that, on behalf of the European Space Agency, stores data from the Copernicus satellites in the cloud.

Geographical differences

According to research, there are significant differences between individual countries in the use of cloud computing in the EU. While in Poland the percentage of companies using the cloud in 2018 reached only 11.5%, in Finland, Sweden and Denmark – 65.3%, 57.2% and 55.6% respectively.

In the ranking of countries most willing to use cloud solutions, Poland is on the third place from the end, before Bulgaria and Romania. No wonder – in the years 2014-2016, the percentage of Polish companies using the cloud grew by 1% per annum. For comparison, e.g in Finland, annual increases in the same period ranged from 51 to 57%.

‘The use of cloud computing strongly correlates with the digital advancement of individual European Union countries. In countries that have been investing in fiber-optic links and digital competence of citizens for years, the use of cloud computing is the most common’ – comments Eurostat data Urszula Mielcarz from CloudFerro.

It gets better and better for the cloud market

It turns out that the predictions about the cloud computing market from just a decade do not only meet, but were too timid. In 2010, the American research company Pew Research Center conducted a survey among current and potential cloud users, asking them about the forecasts related to its use in the future. As many as 71% of respondents indicated the answer “in 2020, the norm will be functioning in the cloud, and the work will be done mainly with the use of applications in cyberspace, available through network devices”. It is safe to say that they had a good feeling.

It is worth adding, however, that the forecasts for the value of the cloud computing market from the beginning of this decade were heavily underestimated. At the beginning of 2013, the analytical firm IDC (International Data Corporation) estimated that the cloud market at the end of 2013 will reach the value of 8.6 billion dollars, and for the next 5 years will increase by a cumulative rate of 24.8%. It is easy to calculate that according to this forecast, the value of the cloud market in 2018 was to amount to 32.5 billion dollars. Meanwhile, in reality it was … more than 5 times more.

Steady increase

Goldman Sachs research indicates that the company’s spending on the cloud, which currently accounts for 8% of IT budgets, will rise to 15% by 2021. So the increase will be very significant. The analyst Dave Bartoletti from Forrester also talks about the increased dynamics of the global cloud computing market – More and more commonly the implementation of cloud computing will drive digital transformation.

The global market for data processing in the cloud has a chance to exceed USD 200 billion in 2019. It would be a 20% increase compared to the previous year.

This is the same as the growth in EU companies, but within four years. In addition, Gartner predicts that in 2025 as many as 80% of enterprises will already be operating in the cloud.

According to Gartner’s analysts, in 2021 the Polish cloud computing market could approach $ 300 million. However, as the history of this type of analysis shows, after years it may turn out that they were too cautious, and the IT market driven by the development of technology can surpass even the best forecasts.

On a high level it is clear: ISO 19123, which is identical to OGC Abstract Topic 6, describes the foundations of coverages. Accordingly, coverages encompass regular and irregular spatio-temporal grids, point clouds, and general meshes. However, this standard – crafted around the year 2000 – is not up-to date and needs urgent revision according to ISO and other experts. Definitions like “a raster is like a grid of pixels on a cathode ray tube” are not exactly representing modern understanding.

Therefore, ISO since several years has set up a New Work Item Proposal (NWIP) based on which project leader Prof. Liping Di at the US George Mason University in the US is looking for a writer of the specification. Peter Baumann, rasdaman CEO, was approached, but could not do it earlier due to urgent work on other standards. In 2018, an agreement was finally reached with DIN, the German standardization body, to establish a national project led by Peter Baumann to establish a new abstract coverage specification.

ISO has decided to split the coverage standard into a pair of companion standards, 19123-1 (abstract foundations of coverages) and 19123-2 (concrete, interoperable coverage definition which allows mapping to a variety of data format encodings). The latter, 19123-2, has been adopted by ISO in 2018 from the corresponding OGC Coverage Implementation Schema (CIS) in an ISO project led by Peter Baumann. For the former, 19123-1, the so-called DIN-CONNECT project has submitted a complete specification by the end of the year, fully according to plan. This coverage specification will now become German national standard and simultaneously will be submitted to ISO TC211 as German input to the project.

“It is extremely important to have a coherent set of standards”, says Peter Baumann. “We have put utmost emphasis on establishing a specification that is state of the art, open for the future, and yet compatible with the existing coverage standards ecosystem”.

jobs.geo.university

Job seekers can search, find and apply to gis and earth observation job positions. They can also upload their resume to get noticed by employers. Employers can of course post their job openings and get qualified applicants. And everything is free!