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Written by Dr Samantha Lavender and Andrew Lavender, the Practical Handbook of Remote Sensing will be published in November 2015 by CRC Press of the Taylor & Francis Group.

It combines Samantha’s 15 years of remote sensing experience, with Andrew’s non-expert perspective as he navigates the subject for the first time.

The book is general how-to guide for anyone wanting to use remote sensing, and quickly guides inexperienced individuals through the principles and science, allowing them to undertake remote sensing at home with just a computer and free-to-access desktop software. The book is very practical with lots of example exercises that walk readers through the process of finding, downloading, analyzing, and viewing environmental data. In addition, there are further exercises and a complementary website to support readers.

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In the Earth Observation market, Elecnor Deimos is particularly active in ground segment systems and EO applications, as well as continuing with a wide range of activities across the Space sector including the ability to develop and market end-to end earth observation missions, as in Deimos-1 and Deimos-2 missions.

Ground Segment systems is one of the key activities of Deimos, currently involving more than 50% of the staff of the company, and representing more than 50% of the turnover of the company. The experience gained in developing the full ground segment for the Earth observation programmes of the European Space Agency, has led to the creation of the gs4EO® suite of products providing a compact Flight Operations Segment (FOS) including mission control systems, flight dynamics and mission planning, and a Payload Data Ground Segment (PDGS) including acquisition, processing, archiving, distribution, calibration and monitoring.

The gs4EO® suite has a modular design and aims to provide flexible solutions in many different contexts, for example some components have been integrated into the UK Collaborative Ground Segment being developed for the UK Space Agency by the Satellite Applications Catapult.

As a module of gs4EO® suite Elecnor Deimos develops and markets the system for satellite image reception, Direct receiving stations (DRS) to download, process, distribute and archive DEIMOS-1 & DEIMOS-2 satellite data. Deimos has recently been awarded two contracts for Direct Receiving Stations of Deimos-2 (customers cannot be disclosed).

In the downstream market Deimos is building its application capability under the banner service4EO with a range of products targeted at the growing markets in agriculture services and Smart Cities. R&D work in Deimos subsidiaries in Portugal (Deimos Engenharia) and UK (Deimos Space UK) includes services for irrigation planning, an integrated precision agriculture service using satellite and UAV data and an automated urban mapping service.

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[Via Satellite 07-09-2015] Thales Alenia Space has signed the first part of a contract with Airbus Defence and Space to supply Poseidon 4 space borne radar altimeters for the Jason CS/Sentinel 6A and Jason CS/Sentinel 6B satellites.

Airbus Defence and Space is building the satellites for the European Space Agency (ESA), in collaboration with the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and the European Commission, for the Copernicus program. United States partners are participating in the mission implementation and operations.

The Poseidon 4 altimeter introduces a new, “interleaved” Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) operating mode for higher performance than the previous generation. The altimeter will also feature a new architecture, improving the role of the digital functions to support higher stability of the performances and eventually reduce development costs. The sensor will simultaneously supply low spatial resolution data to ensure continuity with previous Jason missions, and high-resolution data.

Radar altimeters measure the height of the ocean surface, along with measurements of ocean dynamics and currents, wave height and wind strength at the surface. More recently they have also taken measurements of river and lake height. All of this data is used for meteorological and oceanographic research.

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After the co-seismic interferogram, TRE produces Rapid Motion Tracking (RMT) maps to continue the analysis on ground deformation during Nepal quake.

As in the name itself, RMT provides rates of ground motion when fast movements occur (in order of centimeters/meters). In contrast with SAR Interferometry, which uses the phase value, RMT extracts motion rates from the amplitude value of radar images.

Based on images acquired by the Sentinel-1A satellite over Nepal, before and after the quake of the 25th April 2015, RMT maps in both the line-of-sight (range) and azimuth (north-south) directions are shown below.

You can browse the results in our web platform TREmaps, simply clicking on image links

Click for large view

European Space Imaging looks forward to giving this year’s prize at the award ceremony in Berlin. It could be you walking away with the valuable package of commercial VHR satellite imagery worth up to 20,000 EUR to develop your solution.

The organiser of the Copernicus Masters has just advised us they are extending the deadline on all challenges. This means you have one more week to finish your proposal and a bigger chance of becoming this year’s Master.

The new deadline is Monday 20th July. Now you just need to find two hours to complete. That is all it will take to enter the Copernicus Masters this year.

Sign up now and complete by 20 July 2015
For more info and to sign up for the challenge visit

Proteus, a provider of mapping and geospatial services, has signed a distribution agreement for the Middle East region with Geoslam Ltd for the latest ZEB1 handheld laser scanning technology.

Proteus will also provide laser scanning services globally with focus on providing a complete package, including scanning and modelling.

“We are very excited about this new offering. The ZEB1 laser scanner is revolutionary in its mobility, providing accurate data of previously difficult to survey locations” states Paul Crisp, Director at Proteus.

Geoslam’s Neil Pollock adds “Proteus was an obvious distributor, they are currently a recognised industry leader within the geospatial community and have the perfect experience to champion this innovative technology and enable its’ successful resell.”

The ZEB1 is a handheld 3D laser scanner, suitable for indoor, outdoor and underground use. It is lightweight and compact, providing the flexibility to capture detail wherever and whenever an accurate laser survey is required.

For more information please visit
For ZEB1 Equipment Sales contact sales@proteusgeo.com
For Laser Scanning Services contact pc@proteusgeo.com

Cambridge, ON – June 8 , 2015– exactEarth Ltd., the leading provider of Satellite Automatic Identification System (AIS) data services and Harris Corporation (NYSE:HRS), a world leader in space, geospatial and remote sensing solutions, have formed an alliance to provide a new level of AIS data service that will deliver real-time global coverage for maritime vessel tracking.

The new service will leverage the persistent global coverage and real-time connectivity of the Iridium NEXT constellation through the implementation of 58 hosted payloads covering the Maritime VHF frequency band.

Compatibility testing of the hosted payload with the Iridium satellites has been completed and the first launch is scheduled for early 2016 with the completed constellation expected in 2017. The new service will provide customers with the fastest, most accurate vessel information available. With revisit times and latency under one minute, the service expansion represents a monumental leap forward in the ability for both Harris and exactEarth to offer truly unsurpassed global ship tracking and maritime information solutions.

The alliance leverages exactEarth’s proven and patented signal de-collision detection technology and Harris’ expertise in satellite hosted payloads, advanced radio frequency technology and antenna solutions. Harris becomes the exclusive provider to the US government of AIS products and services produced under the alliance, including exactEarth’s exactAIS product portfolio, while exactEarth continues to serve all other global markets.

“This alliance will expand our IntelliEarth™ family of innovative solutions, which leverage Harris’ world-class remote sensing capabilities to help customers around the globe make smarter operational and business decisions,” said Bill Gattle, Vice President and General Manager, National Programs, Harris Government Communications Systems. “Harris is committed to exploring new technologies and partnering with world-leading organizations to provide our customers with the greatest value.”

“As the recognized Satellite AIS industry leader, this announcement further strengthens our commitment to provide best-in-class maritime intelligence solutions to our customers worldwide,” said Peter Mabson, President of exactEarth. “We are thrilled to be able to offer the shortest revisit times and lowest latency for developing true maritime domain awareness. This partnership with Harris will allow us to significantly expand the range of advanced value-added services and information solutions that we can bring to the global maritime market.”

About exactEarth Ltd.

exactEarth, based in Cambridge, Ontario, is a data services company providing the most advanced information on global maritime traffic available today. Our premium service, exactAIS®, delivers an unrivalled view of the recognized maritime picture at a global scale. Offering fully secure data in a variety of industry standard formats and delivery methods, exactEarth provides advanced information services for a wide range of operational maritime applications delivering operational efficiencies, enhancing security, safeguarding the environment, and assisting in saving lives. For more information, visit our website at exactearth.com.

About Harris Corporation

Harris provides advanced, technology-based solutions that solve government and commercial customers’ mission critical challenges. The company has approximately $8 billion in annual revenue and about 23,000 employees – including 9,000 engineers and scientists – supporting customers in more than 125 countries. Learn more at harris.com

About Hisdesat

Hisdesat was founded in 2001 as operator of government services by satellite to act primarily in the areas of defense, security, intelligence and foreign affairs. Since 2005, the company provides secure satellite communications to government agencies of different countries and is currently developing new satellites in two areas: Earth Observation and Information of the worldwide maritime traffic by satellite (AIS).
More information: www.hisdesat.es

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e-GEOS provided oil reports, based on satellite RADAR data from COSMO-SkyMed constellation, which identified and measured the oil slicks at sea, less than ten hours after the oil pollution at sea was published on the news.

The production teams have been working day and night to perform geospatial analysis and monitor the oil spill evolution of the newly acquired satellite data over Santa Barbara coastal area in California. The nine-mile Santa Barbara beach hit by an oil spill on Tuesday 19th of May. Up to 2,500 barrels (105,000 gallons) of crude petroleum gushed onto San Refugio State Beach and into the Pacific Ocean about 20 miles (32 km) west of Santa Barbara on Tuesday when an underground pipeline that runs along the coastal highway burst.

The pipe was carrying about 2,000 barrels of oil an hour, according to Plains All American, the company who owns the pipeline.

e-GEOS provides Rapid Maps to better coordinate the response actions when an emergnecy occurs, wherever in the world.

e-GEOS info on demand service — triggered soon after the oil spill impacted the sea — brought important benefits by providing impact assessments from satellite images and geospatial analysis to facilitate disaster management. Less than ten hours from the activation , the e-GEOS Emergency Team provided the first analysis results, keeping monitoring the situation from space for several days.

This page shows the Oil reports based on COSMO-SkyMed acquisitions made over Santa Barbara in the days since the oil spill occurred.

The first analysis was perform by using two COSMO-SkyMed Stripmap HIMAGE data (5 m resolution) to detect the oil floating on the sea surface close to Refugio State Beach towards Santa Barbara.

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LONGMONT, Colo.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Jun. 22, 2015— The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and DigitalGlobe (NYSE: DGI) have partnered to release an open source software toolkit designed to harness the power of crowdsourced mapping for Geospatial Big Data Analytics. The open source project Hootenanny provides a scalable processing engine and interactive editing interface to enable rapid conflation of map features generated from satellite imagery, UAVs, and mobile devices.

In less than a decade crowdsourced mapping communities like OpenStreetMap™ have attracted over 2.5 million volunteers who have digitized more than 130 million buildings and 1.3 million miles of roads. Countless other organizations and individuals are using satellite imagery and other methods to capture the geometry and metadata of roads, buildings, and points of interest. To create high-quality maps and enable analytic functions like routing, suitability analysis, or predictive modeling it is important to unify multiple sources to create the best available database.

“The commercialization of GEOINT is leading to exponential growth of publicly available geospatial information,” said Chris Rasmussen, NGA’s public software development lead. “Hootenanny as an open source project will enable new levels of data sharing across the community that will increase our nation’s ability to quickly respond to emerging threats. This is a pro-active move that steers into the collaborative mapping environment to derive more value from unclassified sources.”

Hootenanny leverages the open architecture of OpenStreetMap™ to facilitate integration of diverse geospatial datasets into a common key value data structure. An open library of conflation algorithms applies various techniques to unify the geometry and metadata of topographic features. Conflicts can be visualized and resolved through an interactive application built on the iD Editor, an open source map editing tool developed by Mapbox. Conflated datasets can be exported in a variety of GIS formats including ESRI Shapefile, File Geodatabase, Web Feature Service, and native OpenStreetMap™ formats. Hootenanny also enables Geospatial Extract Transform Load (ETL) capabilities supporting various schemas such as Topographic Data Store (TDS), and Multi-National Geospatial Co-Production Program (MGCP).

“DigitalGlobe is rapidly evolving our business beyond satellite imagery into the world of Geospatial Big Data,” said Tony Frazier, SVP U.S. Government Solutions at DigitalGlobe. “Our human geography product contains over 1.6 million POIs aggregated across 1,500 unique sources. Hootenanny will help us more effectively fuse the data we extract from our imagery with other sources of publically available information.”

Hootenanny is available at: https://github.com/ngageoint/hootenanny. The software use, modification, and distribution rights are stipulated within the General Public License (GPL). DigitalGlobe and NGA will be hosting a Hootenanny MeetUp at the Washington D.C. Convention Center on Wednesday, June 24 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET in Room 143A.

About DigitalGlobe

DigitalGlobe is a leading provider of commercial high-resolution earth observation and advanced geospatial solutions that help decision makers better understand our changing planet in order to save lives, resources and time. Sourced from the world’s leading constellation, our imagery solutions deliver unmatched coverage and capacity to meet our customers’ most demanding mission requirements. Each day customers in defense and intelligence, public safety, civil agencies, map making and analysis, environmental monitoring, oil and gas exploration, infrastructure management, navigation technology, and providers of location-based services depend on DigitalGlobe data, information, technology and expertise to gain actionable insight.

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NEVASCO as framework (infrastructure, platform, organisation) focused on services and services on the market. It is not a data infrastructure.

By focusing on the market services are NEVASCO eminently able to specify aspects of the need for satellite data (type, time, format, quantity, standards, compatibility, etc.). With these specifications, the data infrastructure (which is focused on the supply of satellite data) be developed further.

An organised data infrastructure is essential for NEVASCO because the data intake depends on it. This involves satellite data from it to make it available from the Copernicus Sentinels, but other – institutional and commercial – (EO) satellites. Or that should be in the form of a national Copernicus Collaborative Ground Segment or in any other way, must be examined. This question can only be adequately answered on the basis of specific requests from the market and the strategic goal of the company and its customers.

Because many information ultimately based not only on satellite data but also use other forms of geo-information is a reconciliation of the satellite data infrastructure to broader geo-information infrastructures of great importance. Important for NEVASCO is also connected to the (geo-) information infrastructure of the customer.

Cooperating companies will develop an operational service platform and infrastructure. The cooperative organisation will be strong enough to act as contract partner for large private and public user organisations. This might turn out to be an interesting model for other European countries as well.

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