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ABU DHABI, UAE, and BRISTOL, UK, 19 March 2015 – Proteus FZC, a provider of satellite-derived mapping and classification services, has delivered marine habitat maps for four Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA).


Proteus completed the mapping components of the EIAs on behalf of oil & gas companies and engineering consulting firms. “The clients turned to us to provide maps of fragile habitats because multispectral-imaging satellites can derive this information faster, more accurately and at finer resolution than other mapping methods,” said Proteus CEO David Critchley.

Proteus will be discussing these projects in Stand W37 at the 2015 Ocean Business Conference being held April 14-16 at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK.

For the four projects, Proteus delivered classification maps of offshore marine habitats along with bathymetric data, all derived from high-resolution commercial satellite imagery. Two of the EIAs also required production of satellite-derived land use/land cover maps for terrestrial ecosystems. To create the classification maps, Proteus processed WorldView-2 imagery from DigitalGlobe and Pléiades data from Airbus Defence & Space.

“We classified protected habitats such as sea grasses and coral reefs to a grid resolution of two to five meters in size,” said Critchley. “The best classification resolution these clients had ever achieved before with offshore divers was 100 meters.”

The satellite captures habitat details continuously and consistently across the area of interest, whereas divers can only collect ground truth data at locations often separated by large distances, leaving interpolation to fill in the blanks, explained Critchley. Compared with the common method of dispatching scuba divers on boats, satellite image classification is far less expensive and safer. In addition, imaging satellites require no special permits to access sensitive areas the way dive boats do.

“Clients are amazed at the resolution and accuracy of the information that can be quickly and cost-effectively extracted from multispectral satellite imagery,” said Critchley. “The habitat maps we created for these environmental projects scored an average classification accuracy of 90 percent.”

Proteus is rapidly carving a niche as a worldwide provider of satellite-derived marine habitat classification maps and bathymetric data. Few value-added geospatial firms have developed the specialized expertise needed for generation of subsurface marine information.

About Proteus

Based in Abu Dhabi, UAE, and Bristol, UK, Proteus FZC offers full turnkey global mapping solutions produced from satellite imagery. It provides customers with cutting edge products for environment, oil & gas, engineering, agriculture, forestry and marine use. Proteus has completed projects in Europe, the Middle East, Caribbean and United States. The Proteus management team is comprised of seasoned professionals and provides customers with expert independent advice on derived geospatial products whether for land or sea. For more information on Proteus products, see www.proteusgeo.com or email info@proteusgeo.com for further details or to discuss individual requirements.

The recipe for successful InSAR projects also includes satellite data availability and frequency. In a global scenario of an increasing number of Earth-observing satellites, the availability of robust, long-term datasets opens new possibilities for monitoring services.


In just a few years, the number of radar satellites have been dramatically increased and improved. New satellites, launched during 2014 and later in 2015, are in the range of different microwaves (C, X and L band). An example of this is Sentinel-1 A, the latest mission launched in 2014.

An overview of new Earth-observing radar satellites could be found at TRE newsletter

TRE is a commercial company dedicated to the development of InSAR technology, used to monitor surface deformation from space, and the delivery of commercial InSAR products and services.

Since its foundation in March 2000, TRE has always been at the forefront of satellite InSAR.

TRE milestones

  • 1999: PSInSAR™ was patented by the Politecnico di Milano University. It was the first of a family of algorithms now referred to as Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) techniques.
  • 2000: TRE was established in Milan as a POLIMI spin-off company to market PSInSAR™.
  • 2008: TRE founded its subsidiary in North America, TRE Canada.
  • 2010: Continuous investment in research and development led to a new pioneering InSAR algorithm, SqueeSAR™.
  • 2012: CEO, Alessandro Ferretti, and President, prof. Fabio Rocca, were awarded the ENI prize for their outstanding contribution to the oil and gas sector and the potential impact of PSInSAR™.
  • 2014: Prof. Fabio Rocca received the Chinese Government international sci-tech. cooperation awards 2014.
  • 2014: Alessandro Ferretti’s book “Satellite InSAR Data: Reservoir Monitoring from Space” was published by EAGE (the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineering).

InSAR: market applicability

Today, InSAR is internationally penetrating a number of market sectors:

  • It provides oil and gas companies with precise displacement data over producing reservoirs and underground gas storage areas.
  • In open-pit mining and during tunneling works, it offers a synoptic view complementary to in situ observations.
  • In civil protection applications, InSAR is a unique tool to characterize and address areas prone to risk, enabling the monitoring of large areas at a fraction of the cost and time previously required.

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(19 March 215) The DigitalGlobe Foundation has selected the University of California, San Diego to be one of two institutions of higher learning given open access to DigitalGlobe Basemap, an online map and database of current, high-resolution satellite imagery – of the entire planet.

For a one-year pilot study, commercial satellite imagery will be made available free of charge to selected UC San Diego faculty, students and staff who, until now, would not have been able to afford access to the planetary-scale data included in the DigitalGlobe Basemap.

“We were amazed at the amount of research going on at UC San Diego leveraging commercial satellite imagery, geospatial big data and predictive analytics,” said DigitalGlobe Foundation executive director Mark E. Brender. “The university’s Dr. Albert Lin is an early adopter of commercial satellite imagery and has hands-on experience with the use of imagery in exploration, so it was only natural that the DigitalGlobe Foundation would select his institution for the pilot program. Now the UC San Diego team will have the world at their fingertips.”

Satellite imagery has become an invaluable tool for applications such as mapping, environmental research, agriculture, national defense, energy exploration, disaster response, and human rights monitoring and enforcement. But unlike other tools, the DigitalGlobe Basemap allows researchers to process and compute on the Basemap data.

DigitalGlobe Basemap features millions of square kilometers of current and archived imagery captured by DigitalGlobe’s industry-leading constellation of earth-imaging satellites over the past 15 years, including imagery from WorldView-3, DigitalGlobe’s newest satellite that collects imagery with 30-cm ground resolution.

UC San Diego’s Qualcomm Institute and the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) have developed the Big Pixel Initiative to ensure that the campus makes maximum use of access to DigitalGlobe Basemap. The initiative was founded by IR/PS professor Gordon Hanson and the Qualcomm Institute’s Albert Lin and Jessica Block to take advantage of the opportunity presented by the DigitalGlobe Foundation.

With a hackathon and other activities in the works, this month the initiative will also begin awarding grants worth between $5,000 and $15,000 to faculty or students proposing the best proof-of-concept projects to demonstrate a novel use of the Basemap.

“Having access to the DigitalGlobe Basemap will allow researchers to ask questions and derive answers at a scale that is truly global,” said IR/PS and economics professor Gordon Hanson, who leads UC San Diego’s Center on Emerging and Pacific Economies, which is funding the mini-grant competition. “By combining geospatial data with state-of-the-art research in fields such as public health, economics and ecology, we should be able to glean insights that were not previously possible.”

Starting this month, proposals will be reviewed for funding on a continual basis during the 12-month course of the pilot program.

“We hope to demonstrate to DigitalGlobe Foundation the value of this campus as a partner in identifying and conducting research that utilizes imagery at scale to address questions of global importance,” added Lin, who jointly manages the Big Pixel Initiative with IR/PS’s Hanson. “This is an extremely powerful tool. For example, we can look at 100 cities of the same size and population density to figure out the factors that lead to a healthier urban engine. This would not have been within our reach without access to a comprehensive resource such as DigitalGlobe Basemap.”

DigitalGlobe Basemap is being provided by the DigitalGlobe Foundation, an academic-focused philanthropic organization supported by Colorado-based DigitalGlobe, Inc. (NYSE: DGI). The DigitalGlobe Foundation, through imagery donations from DigitalGlobe, awards grants of earth observation data and products at no cost to students and academic faculty to support qualified research and education projects.

The Big Pixel Initiative will also break new ground in geospatial data visualization, user experience interfaces, and design techniques for scientific discovery and decision-making. “The goal is to ensure that we innovate new ways of using satellite data – for example, by designing new methods for scalable satellite image ingestion, processing, and visualization,” said the Qualcomm Institute’s Lin. “New tools will improve computer vision, machine learning, geographic information systems, remote sensing, and crowd-sourcing.”

A team of geospatial scientists from the Big Pixel Initiative will also provide advisory support to faculty and students who see the value of using satellite imagery in their research, but may not yet be trained to take maximum advantage of the data coming from the DigitalGlobe Basemap. In addition to founders Albert Lin, Gordon Hanson and Jessica Block, the team includes staff researchers Deborah Forster, Marta Jankowska, and postdoctoral scholar Ran Goldblatt. The Big Pixel Initiative will also collaborate with experts in data visualization and data art, including Qualcomm Institute research scientist Lev Manovich, who also teaches at the City University of New York.

(source: UC San Diego)

Romania – The Romanian government’s Topographic Military Directorate (DTM) recently implemented the portal for geospatial data based on Esri ArcGIS technology

The DTM Geoportal is compliant with the established standards of Romania’s spatial data infrastructure (SDI) and joins the country’s other geospatial data portals including the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) Geoportal and the INIS Geoportal and Real Estate Geoportal

The INIS Geoportal now contains the updated Orthophotos for Romania from 2005 till 2012 along with Topographic maps from 2005. The new geoportal provides quicker access to critical geospatial data and greater collaboration among the agencies the DTM serves, such as the Romanian Ministry of Defense (MoD).

“The DTM Geoportal represents a big step forward for DTM and for the geospatial community in Romania,” says Colonel Marin Alnitei, chief of the Topographic Military Directorate. “Though it required many years of effort by our staff, the geoportal will provide greater access to our work both inside our Ministry of Defense and to other interested government organizations, universities, and companies.”

The geoportal will have two levels of access: Restricted access will only be available to the MoD, while public access will allow civilian organisations, universities, and private companies access to declassified spatial databases developed by the DTM. Components of the DTM Geoportal include ArcGIS for Server with ArcGIS Image Extension for Server, Portal for ArcGIS, Esri GeoPortal Server, and ArcGIS for INSPIRE.

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(Dec 2014) ISO 9001 certification for its Quality Management System

SERTIT is happy to inform you that it has successfully renewed its ISO 9001 certification for its Quality Management System covering the activities of production and publication within 6 hours after reception of the first satellite data of crisis geo-information for civil protection agencies and its extension to cover the production of crisis geo-information for defense, security and insurance sectors.

More information here

(Dec 2014) Airbus Defence & Space company announced on December 2, 2014 the beginning of commercial operation of the SPOT 7 satellite. Together with Pleiades 1A and 1B, TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X satellites, SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 spacecrafts replenished the unique Airbus Defence & Space constellation, making it the sole Operator in the world, offering optical images of different spatial resolution along with radar data. SPOT 7 satellite is a “twin” to SPOT 6.

From now on, the Airbus Defence & Space company’s group of optical satellites is entirely configured and is ready to provide a unique in its resolution and performance service. This highly-detailed group’s performance is 6 million sq. km. of images a day. The Operator announced that the revisit period is once per day, so you can get daily images of any part of the planet.

At the same time the Airbus Defence & Space company reports that it delegates the SPOT 7 satellite control (which will later be renamed to “Azersky”) to the JSC “Azerkosmos” company (Azerbaijan), noting that this will not affect the quality of commercial services and will not limit access to SPOT satellites’ resources. The changes also will not affect the exclusive rights of ScanEx company to distribute data on the territory of Russia and Belarus and will not affect the availability of data to users.

On the territory of Russia and Belarus these SPOT 6 & SPOT 7 data are provided by “SCANEX“company within the framework of an exclusive distribution agreement with Airbus Defence & Space that allows providing a flexible price policy to the users. Today the SPOT 7 satellite is already fully integrated into the imaging technology of the network of Uniscan ™ ground stations of ScanEx and has been actively working on the execution of the previously placed orders.

SPOT 6 and 7 satellites’ images can be searched by anyone via the «Kosmosnimki-Search images» search engine. You may also place a request for images and order new images at sales@scanex.ru.

Source

(Dec 2014) “ScanEx“company has become an authorized partner of Google in Russia and the CIS countries in Google Maps for organizations and one of Google’s partners around the world.

Companies will be cooperating in developing integrated mapping solutions based on ScanEx software solutions and Google services. It is expected that services developed will allow carrying out a wide variety of business tasks: from increasing site conversion to improving the environmental performance; they will be easy-to-use and available to each organization without requiring huge investments in infrastructure, software and personnel training.

Google Maps is the most world popular geoservice that uses a user-friendly and familiar to everybody interface to display a wide variety of geographic information. Google map service solutions possibilities, however, are not limited to finding the nearest coffee shop or watching traffic jams: the same intuitive technology became available to resolve complex geospatial issues at the enterprise level.

“Maps with up-to-date data, including those generated using satellite imagery is an vivid and powerful tool for spatial information management in a variety of businesses, from retailers to emergency response services, including banking services, insurance, real estate, transportation, communal services, tourism and many more. There is a myth saying that the advantages of satellite imagery are purely for big business; we want to demonstrate that this is not true”, — said Valery Barinberg, Director General of ScanEx RDC.

Analysis of business in its geographical context is the ability to make well-weighed decisions, to optimize resource management and to efficiently use spatial information throughout an organization and beyond, since all the Google Map services are available to computers, smart phones and tablet computers users from anywhere in the world.

«There are already such clients of Google Maps solutions for organizations abroad as, for example, the American Red Cross, DHL, Allianz, Airberlin, Intercontinental Hotel Group, etc. (list of notable clients is represented on the official website of the Google map service solutions). Potential buyers of such services can be, in fact, virtually any organization: from government agencies to retailers and taxi companies. The reason for this is not so much in the popularity of Google Maps as in the fact that every business sooner or later faces geographic problems, when they have to answer questions like “where should I open a new trading point?”, “where are my customers?”, “where is the courier who was supposed to deliver an extra-urgent order an hour ago?” and answer these questions quickly, on a daily basis and at the organization level,” — says Andrew Shumakov, ScanEx’s Global Markets Director.

For now the main potential customers in Russia are the companies engaged in transportation, including telematic systems, long and short-distance passenger-and freight traffic activities, delivery of different goods, including companies that develop their own commercial products and systems for monitoring of mobile objects.

“The main advantage of the Google solutions for such companies is the global coverage with detailed mapping and satellite data, a split-second calculation and optimization of routes, the current traffic situation overview, guarantee of a fail-free operation of services regardless of the use volumes, solutions flexibility, allowing you to incorporate them into any existing system, as well as the accessibility of solutions on any device with Internet access. But, of course, other companies, including those related to tourism, real estate, financial, advertising services are part of our target audience, “ — says Eugenia Yakovenko, Head of Google Liaison Department of ScanEx RDC.

SCANEX companies group is a recognized leader in the field of satellite-based monitoring and solutions for business, regions and industries administration and management based on the satellite imagery data. The company’s multi-year experience in remote sensing, GIS and web-technologies will facilitate the adaptation of the Google solutions to the Russian reality. SCANEX specialists will provide consulting services at all stages of solutions implementation: from the very first idea to the last test, providing technical support and developing joint resolutions in Russia.

Please, do not hesitate to forward your questions about how Google can help your business to the following e-mail address google@scanex.ru or call +7 (495) 739-73-85 (ext. 536).

Explore, Examine, Engage. What Satellite Data is available through the Data Discovery Hub?

This Satellite data hub contains primarily EO data which could be as either optical or radar images and information on a vast number of areas including oceans salinity, ice thickness; crop health and air quality among a range of other products.

The other types of information from satellites include: – Communication satellites which power data on the go, from images and videos to broadband internet access. They link ships crossing the oceans, provide communications for aircraft, connect people in remote areas and enable disaster response teams to keep in touch. – Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) provide us with two essential pieces of information; position and time. Anything enabled with a GNSS receiver can also be used for navigation. Once a device is GNSS enabled it can provide a range of resilient and accurate global services and solutions.

For more information on the basics of what satellites can do and how they can help please refer to the Satellites for Everyone toolkit or email the team info@satellites4everyone.co.uk.
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The commitment to innovation, extroversion and applied research that attempts to provide solutions to specific problems of the anthropic activity, brought another positive result for Planetek group, as it was announced that Planetek Hellas is among the winners of the Horizon 2020 SME-Instrument program, of the European Commission.

The participation of Planetek Hellas in the specific call of phase1 of the program, was made through the proposal OP3C (On board Processing for Compression and Clouds Classification in hyperspectral satellite data), which aims at the creation and launch of a product (HW & SW) to be placed onboard of satellites that carry hyperspectral sensors. The component proposed will automatically recognize the cloud coverage and compress the images that these sensors will receive. This solution comes to meet specific problems faced by manufacturers of hyperspectral sensors for satellites, which lie on one hand, on the atmospheric conditions during the image capture (cloud-cover) and on the other hand, on the size of the image itself (many TB) , which make its transfer to Earth extremely difficult.

The statistics

The results, published by the European Commission, on Friday, January 9, found Planetek Hellas to be one of the only 14 winners of the “SPACE” topic of the SME-Instrument, out of 185 applications submitted from across Europe, until September 24, 2014, confirming once more the ability of the company to compete successfully at a European level (paneuropean success rate 7.57%). Especially, if one considers that for all the 13 topics of the program, there were 122 participants from Greece and only 2 that managed to get funded, the importance of the success extends even further (success rate nation wide 1.64% ).

Statements

«Our sector is highly specialized and is really great to be able to work in your own country, in an environment that allows you to claim the possibility to see your own personal effort in the years find real implementation», said 27year old Dimitrios Sykas, who along with his work engagement in Planetek Hellas, is finishing in parallel his PhD on hyperspectral satellite data processing, at the Polytechnic of Athens.

Stelios Bollanos, co-founder and director of Planetek Hellas commented: «A significant success that brings us closer to the phase2 of the SME-Instrument and the achievement of our objectives in this specific segment of the space market. We are happy to see that our strategic decision to adopt the principles of Design Thinking in every aspect of our activity is appreciated also by the European Commission. We continue with the same determination, to be able to offer to our customers’ real problem solving technology».

Few words

For the program HORIZON2020 SME-Instrument of the European Commission

The main objective of HORIZON 2020 SME-Instrument is the creation of the «European Innovation Champions League». An elite group of companies moving Europe forward in the global market of research, growth and innovation. The program is divided into 3 phases and is addressed to highly innovative small and medium sized European companies, which already have a prototype of the product that they want to introduce to the market.

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Links
The map of the winners of H2020 SME Instrument
The official press release of the European Commission