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Situational Awareness System (SAS) for SOS Children’s Villages is a project funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) to establish a satellite-based system allowing timely access to geospatial information.

Within the project the system provides information products to support SOS Children’s Villages International in their site development, monitoring, controlling and management as well as to assist fundraising activities and to increase resource efficiency.

SOS Children’s Villages is an international non-governmental social development organisation that makes child care, education, and health care available to children and their families directly, and helps to improve policies and practices of the state. The European Space Agency is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.

SAS is developed and operated by GeoVille Group. GeoVille Group is a private sector enterprise specialised in satellite Earth Observation and derived geo-information products and services. Offices are located in Austria and Luxembourg.

The latest generation of very high resolution satellite data will be applied to serve situational awareness requirements of SOS Children’s Villages International. A geographic information system approach will allow further analysis, derivation and provision of sector specific information products.

The situational awareness system will focus on the following key target areas:
1. Timely identification of suitable sites for construction
2. Operational monitoring of construction progress
3. Community development monitoring around SOS children’s villages4. Delivery of situational awareness information in the aftermath of crises

The products will be provided by GeoVille Group in the form of digital maps and reports and easily accessible over the Internet and mobile devices for SOS Children’s Villages staff in headquarters and in the field. “GeoVille Group will merge satellite data with cutting edge technology for out of Europe timely children’s security monitoring”, said Christian Schleicher, SAS Project Leader.

“SOS Children’s Villages is active in 133 countries. It works with disadvantaged families and their communities in order to prevent crises that can lead to family separation. Around 80.0000 children who have lost parental care are provided with a caring, loving, and secure family environment. Each year several new locations for SOS Children’s Village programmes are under development. With the help of SAS and satellites we will be able to make more informed decisions in site selection and management. Most importantly satellite derived information will assist to react more quickly in the aftermath of natural hazards”, explained Michael Spuller, Construction Commission Director.

“We are pleased to be working with SOS Children’s Villages and have the opportunity to demonstrate that the European Space Agency and European earth observation satellites can bring useful and needed information to support their important work in helping children and developing communities around the world”, said Volker Liebig, Director of ESA Earth Observation Programmes.

Source

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(2013-01-07) Metria continues to strengthen the co-operation with national agencies in need of updated land cover and land use information. Our heritage of using Earth Observation data to map nature types and landscapes will ensure high-quality mapping as well as developing of efficient tools.

Metria co-operate with the main national agencies to gather user requirements for an updated national mapping of land cover and land use. The existing land cover database is outdated and there are several needs for using updated land cover information, for example in environmental monitoring and statistics of land use.

The project is funded by European Space Agency (ESA) and started with a two-day joint workshop where all users discussed their requirements for the mapping, but also for updating of the information.

It is inspiring with the broad user interactions, says Camilla Jönsson , Metria project manager

The two-year contract will map about 100 000 km2 of Sweden, but also develop tools for efficient land cover and land cover change alert mapping.

Source

In November 2012, INSA has been selected by the European Space Agency to continue with the work carried out for SMOS for two more years.

Since the launch of the ESA’s SMOS mission in November 2009, a French team and a Spanish team are responsible for its operations. The Spanish team is at the European Space Astronomy Center in Villafranca del Castillo, where the Mission’s Operations and Data Processing Center is located, consisting of the Agency’s operations personnel and professionals from INSA.

During these years, the mission of the European Space Agency which aims to improve our understanding of our planet’s water cycle making global observations of soil moisture and salinity levels in the oceans, has provided valuable information to the scientific community.

The extension of the contract with the Agency has been possible thanks to the quality of the work of INSA, thereby strengthening the confidence of the ESA in the Spanish industry.

Source

Operational satellite-based Earth Observation services support the forestry sector.

The challenge

The forestry sector is having to quickly adapt on a regional basis to economic, social and environmental changes. Certain areas are under increasing pressure from human activities while others are becoming settlement deserts. Renewable energy targets are also part of the picture. One big question is how forests can maintain the multi-faceted range of services they offer. Furthermore, in a changing natural environment climatic events are also taking a toll through storm related windfall damage, droughts and conversely waterlogging, and fire events. Parasite attacks can also affect already weakened forests. All of this is occurring during a period of budget cutbacks that make the management of Europe’s vast forests even more complicated. Forest fire monitoring, la Réunion using RapiEye imagery, SERTIT 2011

Through long-term R&D collaboration (Interreg and public conventions) and now contracts with SERTIT, the forest sector in NE France (Alsace-Lorraine) accepts that satellite remote sensing can offer solutions, tools to help them manage their forests. The challenge is to continually foster and expand this collaboration and to provide operational results. Moreover, the forest bodies realise that remote sensing does not replace them, but is a useful, timesaving and complementary tool to their work and can be integrated into their workflows. The results often make their work possible and open-up new horizons. As one can expect, part of the challenge as always is to fund this work; with SERTIT and its private and public partners exploring ways to source finance for both R&D and production activities.

Benefits to citizens

Forests and trees provide numerous services from building material and fuel, contributing to many industrial products. Together with grasslands and other permanent natural land surfaces, forests provide precious habitats and corridors for the movement of fauna and otherwise contribute significantly to biodiversity. Forests and trees also provide healthy leisure amenities, enrich the landscape and reduce urban heat islands. They break-up urban landscapes providing diversity and reducing stresses including noise, visual and chemical pollution. Indeed, terms such as green infrastructure are being used to describe our environmental assets of which forestry is a very important part.

Remote sensing derived geographical information can help in the sustainable management of these forests, highlighting trends in forests, an integral part of many European citizens’ landscapes, locating where they are developing or are under pressure, being conserved or exploited. It is recognised by the forest sector that this information would often be too expensive to obtain in the field. Importantly, the regional forestry sector’s viewpoint towards remote sensing is improving as useful inputs and solutions to forester issues are coming on-line.

The space-based solution

Earth observation provides a near instantaneous view of forests on a given date. When used for mapping, very precise and exhaustive reference geo-information can be obtained. When combined with archives, trends over fifty years can be mapped to analyse landscape changes from the 1960s to the present day. Forest clearings and plantations and resources monitored can also be aided by remote sensing. Trends like the higher pressure on small forests, and hence the threat to green infrastructure can be illustrated. Storm windfall or fire damage can be mapped to indicate damage extents. Valuable information can be provided on parasite attack die-offs. This work is validated in situ by foresters.

Specifically, in mountainous terrain satellite imagery helps monitor tree-felling amongst the private small-holder plots of the Vosges Mountain Range. This prized resource is diminishing with little replacement being observed by the foresters inciting the sector to establish replanting funds with calls for this and the remaining resource to be regularly monitored through remote sensing. Here SERTIT works with private forester bodies (CRPF Lorraine-Alsace and Cosylval). In another development the Fédération Interprofessionnelle Forêt-Bois Alsace (FIBOIS Alsace), has funded a multi-disciplinary storm preparedness dossier, including tree-type and 3-D information on forest plantations in-part derived from remote sensing data, to improve post-storm responsiveness. The overall aim is to facilitate the planning and preservation of forestry landscapes and resources with satellite imagery being used to objectively monitor forestry dynamics.

In areas of high human pressures on forests, SERTIT has proven the capacity of satellite imagery to efficiently pinpoint tree-felling and whether they lead to changes, with trees often being replaced by other land-uses (urban, primary resource extraction and vineyards)

This long-term 20-year service has been supported, validated and the results used by the Regional Delegation of the Agricultural and Forestry Department (DRAAF) within the application of Regional Forestry Policies (ORF). Recently, SERTIT has worked on mapping tree die-offs contributing to the Ministry of Agriculture, Agri-food and Forestry’s (MAAF) work in the aftermath of post-storm bark beetle infestations. This along with windfall mapping and fire mapping constitute part of our broadening extreme event and emergency portfolio. Forest clearing in Alsace over 20 years using SPOT imagery, SERTIT 2011

Outlook for the future

The continuity and expansion to other geographical sectors of the above-mentioned regional services is envisaged. More regular imaging at a lower cost by ESA’s Sentinel satellites should enhance the possibility of remote sensing services providing pertinent, more detailed information on the richness of our forests. The forest sector is requesting information on volume estimates and hence 3D applications will probably come on-line facilitated by, amongst others, the French Pléaides constellation and German Tandem-X resources. In other areas, emergency-mapping services will improve provision to civil security authorities and foresters alike.

It must be stated that Interreg and to a lesser extent GMES projects have helped co-fund R&D developments which have fed into better services for the forestry sector. One such Interreg project, backed by the Alsace Regional Council, concerning the Sweet Chestnut tree in the Upper Rhine Valley, has led to a rethink by foresters on the resource’s viability (Cosylval) after SERTIT highlighting chestnut tree concentrations. This could promote chestnut tree conservation as they become valued. Generally, at the request of foresters, SERTIT will look further into tree species and structure mapping.

Furthermore, SERTIT is exploring the use of sub-metric optical imagery (Pléiades) in suburban and urban tree mapping as regards land-planning, green-infrastructure and endangered biotope mapping. A considerable effort is made to automate much of the required procedures, with the Strasbourg Urban Community working with SERTIT in this domain.

Finally, and further to the monitoring of forests, SERTIT will investigate 3-D forest resource mapping, post-fire potential effects on soil plus die-offs and regrowth, and perhaps the effects of extreme events in terms of lost tree volumes. It must be said that the CNES, the French Space Agency, and the European Space Agency have given SERTIT a helping hand wherever possible and over many years notably concerning access to data and technological developments.

Cost justification and Return on Investment

As is often the case in this domain it is difficult to come up with hard and fast figures in a quantitative cost justification. The main justification comes in the form of user groups being satisfied and continuing their collaboration while suggesting more avenues to explore. In certain terms satellite remote sensing facilitates work that would otherwise be too expensive to carry out by traditional means giving extensive yet precise information on forests and their dynamics.

From SERTIT’s point of view, the long-term return on investment is evidenced by the increasing number and range of forestry related activities in which foresters include satellite remote sensing derived information.

Another positive point is that the forestry sector is becoming increasingly exigent and coming-up with requests in new domains and with new, more precise demands using more precise satellite data. They increasingly understand the limits but moreover the benefits that remote sensing derived work can bring to their working environments. They also understand that the most expensive part of geographical information related work is the initial costs of establishing and validating an application or service. The costs reduce over time leading to a certain return on investment and an increased usefulness of the accruing information. In the past this work was nearly always financed through R&D and there definitely was air of techno-push surrounding it, whereas increasingly remote sensing derived geo-information layers are seen as part and parcel of the everyday working environment.

SERTIT
300 Bd Sébastien Brant, 67412 Illkirch, France
sertit@sertit.u-strasbg.fr
+33(0)368854640

(Nov 2012) Once again, the lookouts for the Vendée Globe, single-handed, round-the-world yacht race will be standing watch some 800 km above the skippers. These hi-tech satellites, shining like small stars in the night sky, act as telescopes for the teams at CLS (Collection and Location by Satellite), a CNES subsidiary based at Brest and Toulouse.

CLS, the original operator of the Argos system, is also expert in space-based oceanography, radar surveillance and satellite-based positioning. Since last May, it has been inspecting the route that the participants in the Vendée Globe will be following. With the help of satellite radar imagery, CLS oceanographers and image-analysis experts have spotted the largest icebergs, which will be a significant risk to the skippers as they navigate the southern oceans next December and January. This valuable information has helped the Race Management, working closely with CLS, to set the route and select the most suitable iceberg-free routes around the Antarctic.

From the moment the first skipper arrives in waters where icebergs are a threat, more than a hundred radar images, 500 kilometres square, will be acquired by Canadian MDA satellites along the route followed by the fleet, for processing and interpretation by CLS analysts. This will enable the Race Management to warn the skippers if the level of risk becomes too high and, if necessary, move the “Ice Gates” further north to make the route safer.

CLS

450 employees around the world, 16 offices and subsidiaries, projected turnover of €80 million for 2012, 80 instruments carried on 40 satellites, 2 centres for the acquisition, processing, interpretation and distribution of satellite data, 60 oceanographers and 25 radar experts.

Source CLS

The first version was released on the 6th of December 2002.

Since that time, our user community has grown steadily and we have got a lot of valuable contributions and useful feedback that helped us making BEAM what it is today. The BEAM project team is looking forward to continue updating, improving and maintaining the software. Big thanks to ESA and all contributors for supporting BEAM!

BEAM

BEAM is an open-source toolbox and development platform for viewing, analysing and processing of remote sensing raster data. Originally developed to facilitate the utilisation of image data from Envisat’s optical instruments, BEAM now supports a growing number of other raster data formats such as GeoTIFF and NetCDF as well as data formats of other EO sensors such as MODIS, AVHRR, AVNIR, PRISM and CHRIS/Proba. Various data and algorithms are supported by dedicated extension plug-ins.

More info
Source Brockmann

BMT ARGOSS, a subsidiary of BMT Group Ltd, is helping the Kazakhstan oil and gas industry to extend its summer working window by identifying unseasonably good weather in time for customers to take benefit.

The BMT ARGOSS weather forecasting department in Atyrau is currently forecasting record high temperatures for the Atyrau area of Kazakhstan in early December. These highs are exceptional and are interfering with normal operations taking place offshore in the northern parts of the Caspian Sea.

The current highest recorded December temperature is 11.8℃ (1947) while the current lowest recorded December temperature is -33.9℃ (1933). Early December’s forecast temperatures of around 12℃ are far higher than the expected December mean temperature of 7.4℃.

Usually in this time of year a dominating high pressure area is found over Russia, causing the winds over the Atyrau region to blow from northerly to easterly directions. These winds practically always bring cold air from central Russia to the north-western part of Kazakhstan bringing an end to the summer working window.

Jean-Paul Lindeboom, BMT ARGOSS Forecast Manager, currently in Atyrau states:
“We help our customers utilise the full potential of available weather windows, allowing them to reduce their operational risk and save time. This high temperature means that the offshore operation can continue, whereas they would normally have already switched to winter operations.”

Source

Berlin, Germany, January 17, 2013 – RapidEye, a leader in high-resolution, wide area repetitive coverage of earth through its constellation of five satellites announced a positive update on the health and lifespan of its satellites. In addition, Michael Oxfort has been appointed to lead the development of the company’s data continuity strategy.


“The RapidEye System has proven to be extremely robust,” commented Brian D’Souza, PhD, RapidEye’s Head of Engineering. “In August of 2008, we experienced a nearly flawless launch. After four years in orbit, the constellation continues to operate effectively, with all five satellites fully operational. Based on the current performance of the satellites and the abundance of consumables such as propellant and power, RapidEye now expects our constellation to perform into 2019 or later.”

While the RapidEye engineering team continues to push the current system performance to even greater heights, RapidEye senior management is developing a plan to ensure data continuity. Michael Oxfort, Chief Technology Officer, is now leading the development of the company’s technical strategy for data continuity.

About RapidEye

RapidEye is a leading provider of quality high-resolution satellite imagery. With a constellation of five Earth Observation satellites, RapidEye is able to image up to five million square kilometers of earth every day, and adds over one billion square kilometers of imagery to its archive every year. Online searching and viewing of its massive collection of imagery is quick and easy with EyeFind (eyefind.rapideye.com), RapidEye’s archive discovery tool.

With an unprecedented combination of wide area repetitive coverage and five meter pixel size multi-spectral imagery, RapidEye is a natural choice for many industries and government agencies.

Contact
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press@rapideye.com
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