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Harwell, June 05 th 2015- Deimos Space UK Ltd and MBRSC (Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre) are pleased to announce that they plan to proceed with a project co-funded by MBRSC and the UK Space Agency’s International Partnership Space Programme (IPSP).

The project ‘SAFIY’ (Smart Application for Feature extraction & 3D modelling using high resolution satellite Imagery) will use Earth Observation (EO) data to monitor, and detect changes in vegetation, water, road networks and buildings in support of the Dubai “smart government” initiative.

This project will develop mapping applications that utilise DubaiSat-2 and DEIMOS-2 high resolution optical data to improve the efficiency and accuracy of many routine tasks carried out by Government agencies. Safiy represents the co-operation and friendship that this project can bring to the organisations working together in Dubai and the UK.

Miguel Bello, Group CEO of Elecnor Deimos, commented “this project is an excellent opportunity for the UK and Dubai to forge closer links in the exciting domain of satellite applications. Elecnor Deimos is committed to ensuring that the project will have a successful outcome for both the UK and Dubai, in line with the aims of the UK Space Agency’s IPSP programme. Elecnor Deimos sees many other opportunities to make use of the technology being developed in the SAFIY project for the benefit of other regions around the world”

Deimos Space UK Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of Elecnor Deimos created in 2013 to address the UK and export market for space systems, services and applications. Deimos provides complete solutions to customers all around the world with a portfolio of EO products including data from two satellites, DEIMOS-1 (22 m resolution) and DEIMOS-2 (75 cm resolution). Typical applications include: products and services for agriculture, forestry, disaster monitoring, land use, surveillance, intelligence, etc.

The MBRSC was created and established by the Dubai Government in 2006 to drive the vision for a knowledge economy in the UAE and support advancing sustainable development. The institution is integral to the strategic initiative put in place by the government to inspire scientific innovation, technological advancement, and to advance sustainable development in Dubai and the wider UAE.

Salem Al Marri, Assitant Director General for Scientific and Technical Affairs, MBRSC stated “The ‘SAFIY’ project is indeed an example of cooperation between two countries to further develop the space & satellite sector. It will also test our capabilities to ensure that we are at the peak of our industry, along our partners in the UK, building on the technology we have in place to date. MBRSC is the leader in Earth observation satellite technology in the Middle East and as such must be involved in such advanced partnerships with international entities to continue being positioned as leaders in satellite applications in the region“

MBRSC aims to develop the scientific skills and knowledge of Emiratis. It is mainly involved in outer space research and development; satellite manufacturing and systems development; space imaging; and ground station services and support for other satellites. MBRSC will oversee preparations and implementation of all phases of the UAE probe exploration mission to Mars. MBRSC is working on all projects related to science and applications of satellites, as well as other advanced technology projects.

IPSP was launched by the UK Space Agency in November 2014 as a two-year £32 million programme designed to enable UK satellite and other space sector companies to develop international partnerships for mutual benefit.

The agreement between the UK Space Agency and Deimos was signed by David Parker, CEO of the UK Space Agency and Philip Davies, Managing Director of Deimos Space UK Ltd. The signing took place at the Global Space & Satellite Forum (GSSF) in Abu Dhabi and was witnessed by Chris Lee, Head of International Space Policy at the UK Space Agency and Salem Humaid AlMarri, Assistant Director General, Scientific & Technology Affairs at the MBRSC.

Source: Deimos Space UK Ltd and Deimos Space SP
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Deimos-2 is taking part in a number of major international projects and services, such as becoming Copernicus contributing mission and starting a fully coverage of Europe. The satellite has also captured images of recent events such as the Ebro river flooding near Zaragoza in Spain, the eruption of the volcano Calbuco in Chile and the Oleg Naydenov ship oil spill in the Atlantic Ocean.

(Madrid, 19 June 2015) Deimos-2, the first Spanish Very High Resolution Earth Observation satellite and the first 100%-privately funded European satellite, celebrates the first anniversary of its 2014 launch on Friday, 19 June. The satellite, which is owned by Elecnor and operated by its technological division Elecnor Deimos, has travelled around the Earth approximately 5,300 times during this year. This represents a cumulative journey of over 230 million kilometres, which is more than 560 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon and almost 1,5 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

During that time, the satellite has recorded a total of 18,000 images, covering an area of 3,2 million sq. km almost 6 times Spain surface area. These very high-resolution images are particularly suitable for obtaining territorial information that is applied in a variety of different fields of activity: agriculture, the environment, climate change, safety, deforestation, management of water resources and supporting the management of crises arising from natural disasters.

Deimos-2 very high resolution services

The range of services currently offered by the Deimos-2 satellite is completed by those provided by Deimos-1 that can be grouped in three main areas: Agriculture, Forestry and Emergencies Services.

*Key Projects *

Deimos-2’s advanced capabilities have resulted in its participation in a number of major international projects and services. Currently, the satellite is part of the EU and ESA’s (European Space Agency) Copernicus Emergency Management Services, covering emergency responses. Deimos-2 is also a key player in the CORE datasets of the Copernicus Data Warehouse,managed by ESA, carrying out a complete submetric mapping of Europe.

The recent events that have been followed via the images provided by Deimos-2 include:


Ebro river flooding (from end of February to early March 2015, Fig.1)


Calbuco volcano eruption, Chile (April 2015, Fig.2)


Oleg Naydenov ship oil spill, Atlantic Ocean (April 2015, Fig.3)


Succesfully depicting the IXV Campaign (February 2015, Fig.5)

(Madrid, 22 de junio de 2015) Elecnor Deimos, the technological arm of Elecnor Group, has played a major role in the implementation of the Sentinel-2 ESA mission.

Developed for the operational needs of the Copernicus program (formerly GMES), Sentinel-2 will deliver high-resolution optical images for land services, providing, for example, imagery of vegetation, soil and water cover, inland waterways and coastal areas, as well as information for emergency services.

Elecnor Deimos involvement started at the early phases of the mission, undertaking the mission analysis in the GMES Architecture study, has continued during the implementation phase and will extend with the support to its operations.

As a key activity, Deimos is providing support to the Sentinel-2 team at ESRIN, will a collocated team of up to three engineers working in the design and supervision of the PDGS contract.

Elecnor Deimos is responsible for the development of one of the most critical elements of the Ground Segment, the Mission-Planning System (S2MP). The S2MP is in charge of the Sentinel-2 mission plan generation for imagery acquisition, payload calibration and the associated on-board data management activities and subsequent data downlink activities to ground-stations and/or EDRS.

S2MP is designed to work with multiple operational scenarios in parallel, that can be changed to adapt to new user requests and manual acquisitions or new ground stations scenarios. It incorporates a highly configurable and powerful tool, the Plan Edition Tool (PlanET) which provides an advanced graphical visualization of planned tasks, as well as an improved representation of the on-board resources and the detected conflicts.

The company has also been prime contractor for the Mission Performance Assessment system (S2MPA). This facility is composed of two software components, the Quality Control and Calibration (QCC) and the End-to-End System Performance Monitoring (E2ESPM).

The S2MPA-QCC is responsible for quality control and calibration/validation, generating the entire payload on-board and on-ground processing calibration parameters as well as raising alerts for Sentinel-2 products quality defects and mission anomalies. The S2MPA-E2ESPM monitors the Sentinel-2 system operations, analyzing the main business process contributing to the overall Sentinel 2 end-to-end system performance.

It is also relevant to mention the involvement in the Sentinel-2 Mission Performance Centre (MPC) in which Elecnor Deimos will provide one operator during mission commissioning and operational phases, providing expert support in the mission calibration, processing and system monitoring.

In the development of these systems Elecnor Deimos has incorporated elements from the gs4EO suite of products, already in used operationaly in their own mission DEIMOS-2. In total, more than 15 engineers have been working in the last years from Elecnor Deimos to help this mission becoming a reality.

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GISAT has been awarded by the ESA contract to explore the applicability of selected advanced image processing technologies for the use in continuous urban change monitoring.

Earth Observation based information about the land cover / land use change is currently mostly supported by monitoring programmes working with the period of several years. Such update cycle may be considered sufficient for the back-casting application, but has apparent limitations supporting now-casting or even forecasting ones. At the same time new satellite systems, e.g. Sentinel-2 or Landsat 8, start to provide EO datasets with high density temporal coverage. More, the industry access to the Sentinel and Landsat data is open and free, which creates new opportunities in the use of the full capacity of the satellites without financial constraints. This allows paradigm shift from EO based periodical mapping to continuous monitoring providing richer trend analysis, more detailed insight into the analysed processes and great potential for Near Real Time processing and forecasting. To efficiently use the upcoming databases of satellite images huge amount of data shall be processed and new generation of EO processing tools needs to be developed.

The specific goal of the project is to explore the applicability of selected advanced image processing technologies for the use within continuous urban expansion monitoring. Up to now, change detection approaches in EO are limited to typically bi-temporal analysis for two points in time. Another approach, the temporal trajectory concept is highly relevant for vegetated land covers as it assumes continuous seasonal development. Urban expansion monitoring needs different algorithms. Continuous image acquisition opens potential for reduction of the false change detection as well as potential of high automation in operational use. It is a challenge to separate variation between consequent images that represents changes of interest, which are typically fragments of the total area. The selected approaches keep high potential of solving the currently existing constraints that are objective reasons for low automation of the change detection procedure (besides the temporal limits). The proposed advanced technologies of image processing proved to be highly successful in other application domains (such as bioinformatics, medicine, real-time tracking, document classification, gaming, etc.).

The basic concept of the continuous urban expansion monitoring reflects the current status of operational application enhanced by the new satellite systems. The crucial aspect of the “Urban Monitor processor” is to provide robust change detection in continuous image acquisition environment. The robustness of the processor can be measured by the accuracy assessment, while the challenging aspect is full transferability without the need of modification. The project builds on three different approaches to modeling and detecting temporal changes of urban land cover.
The combination of these approaches will allow to (i) account for priors of possible changes between the types of land-covers, (ii) include spatial coherence of land-cover classes, and (iii) locally model the variation of appearance due to external conditions (atmospheric, sun illumination, seasonal changes and others).

GISAT has been selected by the World Bank as the consultant providing services for the development of web based geospatial software Platform for Urban Management and Analysis (PUMA). The first generation of the PUMA platform consists mainly of the analytical tools based on the pre-processed bi-temporal change layers. It is intended to enhance the capability of the platform by automated continuous change detection using the time series of Sentinel-2 / Landsat 8 images. The developed “Urban Monitor processor” will be ingested into PUMA platform, which enhances the capability of the whole concept by rapid operational urban expansion monitoring. Successful implementation of the processor would significantly contribute to the demonstration of effectiveness of EO data inclusion into regular World Bank urban related internal work-flow by providing flexible, on-demand and cost-effective city monitoring capacity with the potential of large number of cities to be mapped around the world.

Urban Dynamic Monitor project is funded by the ESA Innovation Triangle Initiative (ITI) Programme. The project is based on collaboration of GISAT s.r.o. (Developer) and Czech Technical University in Prague (Inventor).

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

GISAT is a member of the consortia contracted by ESA to prove and establish a mechanism to reduce technical risks in the development of the Earth Observation Ground Segment by means of rapid prototyping for new concept and technology assessment.

Earlier this year, ESA released an open invitation to tender for an activity encompassing software prototyping and mobile app development. The contract was awarded to an international consortium led by Solenix Deutschland GmbH (DE) with TERRASIGNA Srl (RO), GISAT s.r.o. (CZ), Progressive Systems Srl (IT) and Qualteh JR Srl (RO) as subcontractors. The framework contract will span over three years and host multiple individual projects.

The aim of the project is to enable fast development of small applications and to support the modernization of infrastructure elements. It establishes a practical innovation process using software prototyping as a way to evaluate new technologies and concepts, and assess possible solutions under real conditions. In complement to innovation, this contract also pursues a public relations and educational goal. The purpose of the contract is also to promote ESA’s activities, and products in the Earth Observation domain to users, scientists and the general public in order to increase awareness and facilitate exploitation of the Earth Observation data. The general public has a limited view and knowledge of the systems behind, their capabilities and the data they produce. Intuitive and attractive applications, especially mobile and connected to social platforms, can bridge the gap between non-scientists and advanced technologies such as satellites and ground segments.

In both areas presented above and following a well-established process, the consortium collects ideas from different stakeholders into a backlog. With the involvement of the Technical Officer, the items in this backlog are then prioritized and further refined for implementation. The selected applications and prototypes are implemented and proposed to their target audience.

A set of initial applications/prototypes has been defined and included in the first Work Order of the contract:

  • Sentinels App (for promotion purposes only)
  • Educational App for EO
  • Near-real-time Image Viewing App for third-party optical missions
  • ESA EO Datasets App (Demonstration of OpenSearch to access ESA catalogues)
  • PDGS Video App
  • SAR False Color prototype

More information about the project can be found on ESA website

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

Berlin, June 2, 2015 — BlackBridge announced today that it has entered into a sole distribution agreement with EarthSTAR Inc. to provide RapidEye imagery and solutions in the People’s Republic of China, including Hong Kong and Macau.

EarthSTAR Inc., a subsidiary of EarthView Image Inc. based in Beijing, is expanding the market in China for earth-observation satellite technologies. EarthSTAR dedicates itself to research and development of advanced technology in order to provide high-end professional information products and application services to users, with a particular focus on government agencies and organizations.

Philippe Campenon, BlackBridge vice president of sales, is delighted to enter into cooperation with such a young and dynamic company. “EarthSTAR Inc. and BlackBridge share the view that BlackBridge solutions must be customized to the specific needs of the Chinese market. EarthSTAR Inc. teams are perfectly skilled to play such a key role in this adaptation, thanks to their understanding of the market and their proximity to their customers. This association will bring great value to the end-users.”

EarthSTAR Inc. founder and president, Wu Qiuhua, emphasized the value of high-quality RapidEye satellite data as part of the company’s portfolio. “RapidEye imagery will be a foundational information source for the development of our application products and services. In particular, the RapidEye system is well known for vegetation analysis through its spectral sensitivity and daily revisit capabilities. Based on these advantages, EarthStar will expand RapidEye imagery use throughout China in the fields of agriculture, mapping, and environmental monitoring.”

About BlackBridge
BlackBridge provides end-to-end solutions for the geospatial value chain. This includes satellite operations, groundstation services, data center and geocloud solutions, worldwide distribution through over one hundred BlackBridge partners, and the creation of value added products and services. For more information, please visit blackbridge.com or follow the company on Twitter @BlackBridgeCorp.

About EarthSTAR Inc.
EarthSTAR, a subsidiary of EarthView Image Inc., was founded to focus on the business of professional remote sensing application technologies in China. EarthSTAR provides professional information products and technology services to users in fields like agriculture, forestry, environment, disaster and emergency, mapping, and surveying.
EarthSTAR emphasizes the value of RapidEye and RADARSAT satellite data based on their distinctive advantages and capabilities. RapidEye and RADARSAT imagery are the foundational information sources for the development of EarthSTAR’s application products and services.

Contact
BlackBridge AG
Kurfürstendamm 22
10719 Berlin
Germany
press@blackbridge.com
www.blackbridge.com

Arlington, VA, May 5, 2015 — BlackBridge announced today that it has entered into an agreement with The Climate Corporation to provide RapidEye imagery of the major agricultural areas across the U.S. for use in The Climate Corporation’s products and services for farmers.

This imagery is part of the BlackBridge Monitoring Program for Agriculture that has been running in North America since 2013. BlackBridge uses the RapidEye constellation of five identical satellites to regularly collect high-resolution imagery over the major North American agricultural areas throughout the growing season. The Climate Corporation uses this imagery, along with imagery from previous seasons, to extract in-season and historical field information for farmers to evaluate crop health and identify issues before they impact yield.

Clint Graumann, director of North America, the U.K., and Ireland at BlackBridge, is glad to see the company’s high-resolution imagery being used to help farmers through The Climate Corporation’s products and services. “It’s exciting to see the work that The Climate Corporation is doing with our imagery,” said Graumann. “The company’s decision-making tools put an incredible amount of information extracted from our imagery into the hands of the farmer.”

The Climate Corporation’s director of product management, Evin Levey, reinforced the value of high-quality satellite imagery in the company’s services. “We use satellite imagery as an essential foundation for our predictive models and are pleased to be working now with BlackBridge as a provider of that imagery,” said Levey. “By combining agronomic data with RapidEye satellite imagery, we can produce field information to help farmers better understand how their crop is performing through the season. With that better understanding, farmers can make decisions to address issues early and maximize their crop production.”

About BlackBridge
BlackBridge provides end-to-end solutions for the geospatial value chain. This includes satellite operations, groundstation services, data center and geocloud solutions, worldwide distribution through over one hundred BlackBridge partners, and the creation of value added products and services. For more information, please visit blackbridge.com or follow the company on Twitter @BlackBridgeCorp.

About The Climate Corporation
The Climage Corporation, a division of Monsanto Company, aims to help farmers around the world protect and improve their farming operations with uniquely powerful software, hardware, and insurance products. The company’s proprietary Climate Technology Platform combines hyper-local weather monitoring, agronomic modeling, and high-resolution weather simulations to deliver Climate Basic™ and Climate Pro™, online and mobile SaaS solutions that help farmers improve profitability by making better informed operating and financing decisions. Through its exclusive relationship with OneBeacon the company is also an authorized provider of the U.S. Federal crop insurance program, enabling authorized independent crop insurance agents to provide farmers with the industry’s most powerful full-stack risk management solution. The company’s unique technologies help the global agriculture industry to stabilize and improve profits and, ultimately, help feed the world. For more information, please visit www.climate.com or follow the company on Twitter @climatecorp. Climate Crop Insurance Agency LLC is an equal opportunity provider. Learn more at www.climagepro2015.com

Contact
BlackBridge AG
Kurfürstendamm 22
10719 Berlin
Germany
press@blackbridge.com
www.blackbridge.com

(May 2015) Airbus Defense and Space and Hexagon Geospatial have partnered in a new content-sharing program that will enable end-users to have access to Earth Observation data and software through smart applications offered by Hexagon Geospatial.

The content provided by Airbus Defense and Space will combine very-high and high resolution optical imagery from Pléiades and SPOT satellites with the Hexagon Geospatial offering. This partnership will fuel the creation of new smart applications, which will provide end-users with easy access to fresh data and powerful technology to transform this data into useful information across all market segments – government, commercial, utilities, natural resources, and more.

Hexagon Geospatial has changed the game by offering a platform to build and deliver smart applications to our customers. Now, with this new offering from Hexagon Geospatial, our data can be a part of localized, vertical market applications that improve customer accessibility to the technology they need.”
Greg Buckman. Head of Airbus Defense and Space’s Geo-Intelligence Programme Line in North America

The Hexagon Geospatial Power Portfolio provides geospatial and industrial enterprise solutions to organizations across the globe. These solutions harness the power of information with tools and techniques for managing, manipulating and visualizing big data and integrate them with sensors, software, knowledge and customer workflows.

Today’s sophisticated end-users want customized analytics that meet their dynamic and unique workflows – providing them with a quick snapshot to support faster and more effective decision-making. Our new partnership with Airbus Defense and Space satisfies this need by empowering the creation of smart applications that leverage both enhanced imagery and our software solutions.”
Mladen Stojic. President of Hexagon Geospatial

Initially, the partnership will provide users with access to content from Airbus Defense and Space’s Pléiades and SPOT satellites. In the future, the plan is to make available the powerful radar data from the TerraSAR-X satellite and a range of digital elevation models for Hexagon Geospatial smart applications as well.

Source

(May 2015) Airbus Defence and Space and seismic multi-client acquisition and imaging specialist Spectrum Geo have launched a 2D seismic and seep study programme for the Porcupine Basin, just ahead of the Irish Licensing Round.

This joint analysis correlates natural oil seeps identified from radar satellites with 2D seismic data to assist hydrocarbon exploration in this region and is set to provide additional insight into the prospectivity of Irish waters. The analysis draws on the expertise of the individual partners, combining Spectrum Geo’s sub-surface seismic information with Airbus Defence and Space’s surface seeps data.

Spectrum has reprocessed 14,000km of regional 2D seismic data, complementing preceding surveys and integrating gravity, magnetics and well data. An updated extract from the Airbus Defence and Space Global Seeps Database provides sea surface slick locations together with confidence levels based on the analysis of multi-temporal satellite radar data. Results are encouraging with a strong correlation between higher confidence slicks and seismic features.

These results will offer a new perspective on the hydrocarbon potential in the region, supporting both the ongoing licensing round and future exploration.

Source

(Munich / New York, 02 July 2015) What ́s really new and hot in cloud computing? Here is the answer from the expert jury of the 2nd Cloud Innovation World Cup. After an intense and exciting evaluation phase, more than 300 nominations were filtered to 24 finalist chosen by jury members.

The Cloud Heroes 2015 are now competing against each other to become the next “Cloud Innovators of the Year 2015.” The categories include “ICT Business Services”, “Industry 4.0”, “Mobility”, “Smart Living”, and the special prize “GEO Award.”

CloudEO is seeking solutions that integrate geospatial information, and provide additional benefit to the cloud based service offered. Here are the selected finalists that are nominated for the GEO Award:

 The Avacar API by CarKnow LLC, USA
 Matrix Booking by Keytree Ltd., UK
 ParknCloud by Mylaensys LLC, USA
 MECH5 by Nebula Systems Ltd., UK
 Parkpocket by Parkplatz-gesucht UG, Germany
 TotEat by TotEat S.A., Chile

The winner of the GEO Award and the Cloud Innovators of the Year 2015 will be revealed at the official Cloud Innovation World Cup Award Ceremony. This will take place at Google ́s Headquarter in New York on July 8th will present their solutions live on stage. Dr. Ursula Benz, COO of CloudEO states “I am already excited to welcome our finalists in New York City for the elevator pitch. I am sure that some of them will become our cooperation partners very soon”.

If you want to take part at this exciting event please register for free at www.innovationworldcup.com/event

About Cloud Innovation World Cup

Initiated by Navispace, the Innovation World Cup Series was first launched in 2009. The Cloud Innovation World Cup aims to foster cutting-edge solutions and applications for cloud computing.

Since the first Cloud Innovation World Cup edition, hundreds of contestants from over 60 countries have submitted their innovative cloud-based solutions, making the Cloud Innovation World Cup one of the leading competitions in the field. Submissions have been made in the categories “ICT Business Services”, “Industry 4.0”, “Mobility”, “Smart Living” and in the special category “GEO Award” – powered by CloudEO.

Partners of the Cloud Innovation World Cup are Google Cloud Platform, CloudEO, EuroCloud, SIIA, Cloud World Forum, Continua Health Alliance, Wearable Technologies, and MEDICA. Regional partners include, Taitra, Team Cote d’Azur, Comm4Innov, Innovative City Convention 2015, Paris Region Entreprises, CSEM, Alp ICT, IT2Industry, Business Oulu, Takomo, Invest in Skane, Plug and Play Tech Center, Engerati, Medical Valley, Blogs Release and Clúster Digital Barcelona. For further information visit: www.innovationworldcup.com/cloud/.

About CloudEO

CloudEO – the unique portal for all those who create, interpret and use geodata. CloudEO offers to its customers a secure and highly scalable geo infrastructure to develop, produce and market geo services. It brings data, software and processing power together within a private cloud service and a certified hosting environment. Within CloudEO’s geo collaboration platform content providers, software developers, service providers and geodata users become partners within one ecosystem providing affordable geo services for commercial applications.

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Press Contact:

Dr. Sonja Sulzmaier
press@cloudeo-ag.com