Skip to content

Geospatial World Forum 2012 scheduled to be held from 23-27 April at RAI Convention Centre, Amsterdam is one of the biggest and most comprehensive conferences in the geospatial domain for the year. With participation of over 2000 delegates from 100+ nationalities representing the different stakeholder communities of geospatial domain, Geospatial World Forum will aim at raising the profile for the industry and bridging the gap between geospatial with other sectors vital to the world economy.

Hence, the theme of the conference chosen for the year is “Geospatial Industry and World Economy” through which the conference will address the utility of geospatial technologies in various industries that contribute to the world economy.

The conference will offer an unmatched opportunity for knowledge sharing. 400+ speakers of eminence from across industry domains shall converge on a single platform to address global concerns and provide valuable insights into the geospatial industry. To know more about the speakers visit http://geospatialworldforum.org/2012/speakers.htm

Important dates to remember:

January 31st, 2012 – Deadline for Early Bird registration discount for Geospatial World Forum. Save Euro 200 by registering before the deadline at http://www.geospatialworldforum.org/2012/registration/regfee.htm

For more details about the event please visit www.geospatialworldforum.org

PARIS, 3 Jan2012 — Earth imagery provider GeoEye on Jan. 4 said it signed a new multimillion-dollar agreement with Russia’s ScanEx company to complete a national map of Russian land properties.

Under the contract, Herndon, Va.-based GeoEye will provide Moscow-based ScanEx with imagery from GeoEye’s archive of data taken by the GeoEye-1 high-resolution optical Earth observation satellite. In the second phase in what GeoEye said is a multiyear agreement, GeoEye starting in 2012 will provide ScanEx with new imagery of Russian territory to support the creation of a nationwide map of land properties.

This is the latest in a series of contracts ScanEx has signed with GeoEye and with Europe’s Astrium Services, which operates the Spot 5 medium-resolution satellite and is building two similar follow-on spacecraft, Spot 6 and Spot 7.

ScanEx’s earlier contract with GeoEye, which GeoEye similarly characterized as valued at several million dollars, called for imagery to be provided by GeoEye’s older Ikonos satellite.

ScanEx is under contract to the Russian Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre and Cartography to provide maps of all Russian property. Olga Gershenzon, ScanEx’s founder and vice president, said in a Jan. 4 statement that the company has already mapped 49 million land parcels and placed them in a Web-based system for use by Russian government agencies and the public, with the Web portal attracting 12,000 visits per day.

“It is important that ScanEx complete this project on deadline,” Gershenzon said. “[T]o execute this contract, we are acquiring significant amounts of GeoEye-1 imagery.”

Source Spacenews

DigitalGlobe, the firm that provides much of the imagery for Google Earth, is launching a next-generation satellite in 2014.

However, the super-sharp images of the WorldView-3 aren’t for Google and Bing Maps: They’re going straight to the military and intelligence agencies.

DigitalGlobe, the Colorado-based imaging firm responsible for much of Google Earth’s, Bing Maps’, and Google Maps’ content, has a new satellite on the way. The WorldView-3 is a super-high-resolution remote-sensing satellite slated for a 2014 launch. Ball Aerospace & Technologies is building the satellite and ITT will be responsible for the WorldView-3’s optical imager. However, the primary audience for Worldview-3 pictures won’t be Google. Images from the new satellite are mainly intended to be sold and licensed to the U.S. government.

Firms such as DigitalGlobe and their main competitor, Virginia’s GeoEye, earn most of their money from their satellite constellations (or, for the rest of us, their satellites in space) custom-snapping pictures for customers or from resale of the regular imagery the satellites make. These clients range from Google to mining companies to, most importantly, the U.S. government.

Unfortunately, the best imagery that comes out of high-end satellites such as the WorldView-3 won’t make it onto Google Earth anytime soon. U.S. regulations prohibit commercial customers from purchasing imagery with anything better than a .5 meter ground resolution. This means that, unless you work for the federal government or for a close foreign ally, you won’t be able to see satellite footage of yourself lounging in a hammock just yet.

The best images to make it out of the WorldView-3 will have a considerably better resolution than .5 meters. Once complete, the satellite will have an image resolution that ranges between .3 and .46 meters. Government regulations require images from the WorldView-2 and WorldView-3 to be resampled to a lower resolution before being offered to private customers.

Intelligence services and the Defense Department will be able to use WorldView-3 for satellite imagery that is crisper and clearer than anything currently on the market. Instead of Google Earth’s blurry (though admittedly cool) close-up imagery, government customers will have access to images that look like they jumped out of a science fiction movie.

According to DigitalGlobe CTO Walter Scott, the company’s three current satellites photograph the earth’s surface approximately six times a year, collecting between 2 and 3 pentabytes of imagery annually. Not all of this data is provided to Google, which receives DigitalGlobe imagery through a special service agreement. Microsoft has a similar agreement that provides content for Bing Maps.

While Google is a valuable customer, DigitalGlobe’s gravy train is the provision of satellite imagery to government agencies. In an interview with Fast Company, Scott noted that nearly 60% of the firm’s business comes from the U.S. government. That is where the Worldview-3’s super-high resolution kicks in: It’s also where the whole idea of private satellite companies gets really interesting.

The United States government operates the world’s finest collection of surveillance satellites. Agencies such as the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) are responsible for running a sprawling intelligence system with staggering technical assets. Another agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), is responsible for interpreting and understanding the massive amount of satellite imagery the government encounters from both proprietary and commercial sources.

DigitalGlobe is among the largest of these commercial sources. This past October, the firm inked an extremely lucrative one-year, $37.9 million contract with the NGA. The contract mainly requires DigitalGlobe to make plenty of cloud-free images, supply the NGA with time-sensitive imagery of “high-priority geographic locations,” and with non-stop delivery of daily imagery within 24 hours of collection. In Scott’s words, NGA’s collaboration with DigitalGlobe is an “affordable way of getting intelligence” for the federal government.

One major advantage for the federal government is that working with companies such as DigitalGlobe and GeoEye liberates them from many of the bureaucratic and legal constraints that the military and intelligence agencies face. The military can share privately obtained satellite images with foreign allies without dealing with Cold War-era restrictions; government agencies can also obtain imagery without having to deal with omnipresent department infighting and bureaucratic inertia. More worryingly, the easy availability of commercial satellite imagery to government intelligence agencies raises a host of civil liberties concerns related to domestic spying.

Despite landing a large contract, DigitalGlobe is worrying that changing defense priorities could alter their government partnerships. Scott expressed concern to Fast Company that budget cuts in fiscal year 2013 to the Defense Department and various intelligence agencies could limit purchases of commercial imagery. In a recent op-ed for trade paper Defense News, Scott claimed that relying on services such as DigitalGlobe saves the Defense Department money.

However, the private satellite industry has one important thing going for it: Continuing geopolitical unrest. Barring a miracle, the situation in Syria will continue to decline and the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will divert U.S. resources for years to come. In addition, there is always the worry that some new nightmare—Iran? East Asia? The Euro collapse?—will cause an upsurge in government purchases of private satellite imagery. And, if not… well, Google might just be able to negotiate a better deal.

Source

[SatNews] NSR’s most recent research on the Earth Observation (EO) market confirmed the importance of government funding for both the supply and the demand side of the business.

Global Satellite-Based Earth Observation, 3rd Edition report, NSR found that 69 percent of commercial EO satellite operators’ revenues came from government and military users with close to half of these from North America and Europe. As those two regions are now crippled by debt restructuring, lower financial ratings and spending reduction plans, commercial EO operators are generally expected to be affected by budget cuts to help reduce public debt burden. NGA’s Enhanced View (the single largest contract for commercial EO data) accounted for 35 percent of all EO satellite operator revenues last year, a statistic that a group of lawmakers from both sides of the House defended in a recent letter to the U.S. Government.

The NGA also has smaller contracts with MDA Corporation, Telespazio and Astrium GIS for radar imagery for its internal U.S. Government clients. All of these contracts take up so much capacity that they can constrain the availability of commercial satellite for other users outside the U.S. Government. These contracts certainly represent large exposure for major EO satellite operators such as GeoEye and DigitalGlobe that can highlight the downside of having top-heavy government and military businesses these days.

Enhanced View, in addition to benefitting the intelligence community, is also about supporting the U.S. EO industry. If a government order decreases it, spending levels could be enough to maintain the industrial base, at approximately the former NGA Next View contract (around $12.5 million per month per company), or about half of Enhanced View’s spending level. The much smaller radar contracts that NGA has with MDA, Telespazio, Astrium GIS and even the recent award to RapidEye are more likely to be cut simply based on their size and the fact that it is easier politically to cut outsourcing from non-U.S. operators. Does this mean all these operators will suffer more? For DigitalGlobe and GeoEye, Enhanced View generated almost two-thirds of their 2010 revenues, with government and military contracts overall shooting up to between 75 and 80 percent, while international sales came in at about 20 to 25 percent. Cutting it at the level of Next View could mean layoffs and reduced investment, in particular on their satellites.

For Astrium GEO-Information Services, NSR believes that it has much less reliance on U.S. Government revenues proportionally even if half of its revenues are generated by government and military orders. Canada’s MDA EO data revenue estimates hover around 65 percent overall in this same segment, while Telespazio/e-Geos has approximately 70 percent of total revenues coming from government and military customers. However, thanks to orders from European, Latin American, Asian, and other non-U.S. governments, their exposure to U.S. cuts is much more limited in relative size.

In essence, NGA’s Enhanced View cuts could affect GeoEye and DigitalGlobe more than other non-U.S. operators and as a result, favor operators that are best positioned today to sell to government and military customers outside the U.S. This only reinforces the trend of EO operators pushing into non-Western markets as of late.

Source

(December 2011) Furthering Europe’s capacity to monitor atmospheric pollution, ESA has awarded a contract worth 45.5 million euro to Astrium UK to act as prime contractor for the Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite system.

Scheduled to be launched in 2015, Sentinel-5 Precursor (Sentinel-5P) will be the first satellite dedicated to monitoring atmospheric chemistry for the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme.

Astrium UK is now responsible for the delivery and integration of the satellite platform and system that make up the mission as a whole.

The contract was signed by ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Volker Liebig, and Astrium’s UK National Director for Earth Observation, Navigation and Science, Miranda Mills.

Prof. Liebig said, “This contract marks another significant milestone in the development of our series of Sentinel satellites to serve GMES.

“Sentinel-5P will ensure we have continuous data to monitor the ozone hole and tropospheric pollution.”

As Sciamachy on ESA’s Envisat and the Ozone Monitoring Instrument on NASA’s Aura mission come to the end of their lives, Sentinel-5P will fill the gap between current atmospheric capabilities from low polar orbit and the launch of Sentinel-5, envisaged for around 2020.

Sentinel-5P will therefore ensure that atmospheric data are available for climate modelling and weather forecasting between 2015 and 2022.

The satellite will carry the Tropospheric Ozone Monitoring Instrument, or Tropomi. This advanced imaging absorption spectrometer will provide data on atmospheric trace gases and aerosols that affect air quality and climate.

It measures ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and other atmospheric pollutants at a higher resolution than currently available.

Tropomi is being developed in the Netherlands as a joint venture between ESA, the Netherlands Space Office NSO, the Dutch Royal Meteorological Institute KNMI, the Dutch Institute for Space Research SRON, TNO and Dutch Space.

With atmospheric pollution a major concern, three Sentinel missions dedicated to atmospheric monitoring are being developed for GMES.

Sentinel-4 will be carried on the Meteosat Third Generation satellites in geostationary orbit and Sentinel-5 will be carried on the MetOp Second Generation satellites in polar orbit from the end of the decade.

Through GMES, data from all the Sentinel missions will be made available as services for decision-makers to help manage the environment, understand and mitigate the effects of climate change and ensure civil security.

Source

On Dec. 7, 2001, NASA and the French Space Agency Centre Nationale d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) launched the Jason-1 satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., embarking on a planned three-to-five-year mission to study Earth’s ocean from space. Jason-1 celebrates 10 years of precisely measuring ocean surface topography.

The mission continues to reveal new insights into the ocean’s complicated circulation patterns, while providing a critical measure of climate change by contributing to a nearly 20-year record of global sea level monitoring from space.

Jason-1 is the successful follow-on mission to the NASA/French Space Agency’s pioneering Topex/Poseidon mission, which revolutionized our understanding of the dynamics of ocean circulation and global climate from 1992 to 2006.

In 2008, the meteorological agencies of the United States and Europe collaborated with NASA and CNES to launch the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2 satellite to build upon this unprecedented long-term record of consistent, continuous global observations of Earth’s ocean.

Early calibration phases of the missions allowed Topex/Poseidon and Jason-1, and now Jason-1 and Jason-2, to fly over identical ground tracks.

The resulting data streams from these “tandem missions” have provided seamless coverage between the three missions, allowing scientists to observe and study both short-lived events such as hurricanes, and interannual climate phenomena such as El Nino, La Nina and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

Other significant science results from the mission include studies of ocean circulation; the ties between the ocean and the atmosphere; and improved global climate forecasts and predictions.

“Jason-1 extended Topex/Poseidon’s record of global sea level rise, one of our most important indicators of climate change, into a second decade,” said Lee-Lueng Fu, Jason-1 project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., which manages the U.S. portion of the Jason-1 mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

“The altimeter-observed geographic pattern of long-term sea level change is a landmark discovery of oceanography.”

The Jason missions don’t collect their observations in isolation, however. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-supported ocean-profiling float project, called Argo, was created to collect observations measured directly from the ocean surface and to complement the Jason data.

More recently, data from the NASA/German Aerospace Center’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) mission have been combined with the altimetry data from Jason and Argo to give scientists a more complete picture of Earth’s changing ocean, providing an important global observing system for sea level and ocean circulation studies.

NASA is currently working with its partners NOAA, CNES and EUMETSAT on the next mission in the series, Jason-3, projected for launch in 2014. Concepts for future missions, including Jason Continuity of Service (Jason-CS) and the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT), are currently in development.

“Jason-1 measures the ongoing rise in global sea level, which is a result of human-caused global warming,” said Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and Jason-3 project scientist.

“Driven by melting ice and expanding seawater, global sea level rise has become a powerful reminder of how fast humans are changing the climate. Along with its predecessor, Topex/Poseidon, and its successor, Jason-2, Jason-1 has kept a finger on the pulse of global climate change.”

Source

Over 150 entrepreneurs and policy-makers gathered at this successful conference to learn more about the concrete benefits of using satellite information and services to inform decisions and manage businesses, and the positive impact they have on SMEs’ growth and competitiveness.

Pioneering SMEs in the use of satellite-derived information and satellite applications in their business activities shared their feedback on the economic challenges they faced in agriculture, construction, renewable energy production, manufacturing and tourism and how innovative solutions enabled them to make their business processes more efficient, to take better informed management decisions or to tap into new markets.

The conference provided SMEs with leads on where to find appropriate support mechanisms to accompany them in the implementation of innovative technologies, through access to public funds, the benchmarking of innovation management strategies or closer cooperation between entrepreneurs, universities and research centres.

SMEs and their representatives were very interested in learning about the successful business cases behind the good practices presented by entrepreneurs, while policy makers and representatives of the space community learned about SMEs’ needs as end-users and potential avenues for better targeted support. All participants agreed that more awareness raising about the benefits of satellite information and services for SMEs is needed.

Source

Notice of call for expressions of interest concerning technical assistance in evaluating, monitoring and validating GMES projects and services.

GMES gradually moves towards operations. This materialises through the launch an increasing number of projects by DG Enterprise and Industry on this theme. The concerned projects will provide, using earth observation data processed at different stages, value-added services and products in the all GMES areas. The purpose of this call is to establish a reserve list of experts whose role is to assist the Commission Services in the evaluation and monitoring of projects in the frame of the GMES initiative, and/or the assessment/validation of products/services offered by those projects. The list of experts will be valid for 3 years from the date of publication of this notice. Any interested candidate may submit an application at any time up to 3 months before the end of its period of validity.

Source

Health, Safety and Environment – Industries across the globe are needing to place a larger focus on the health, safety and environmental impacts of their operations because of increasing accountability. Greater sensors and system integration provide the means to understand operations in a whole new light, and these same sensored systems are also responsible for closer scrutiny of the detrimental impacts of operations as usual. We can expect to see the proliferation of localized sensored systems for individual vertical market applications in the years to come. The need for ongoing calibration and tuning of these systems will make the delivery of systems as services a promising business opportunity with ongoing revenue streams for enterprising integrators.

Personalized Navigation Continues – the number of applications that combine location with social media and web preferences to deliver personalized navigation will continue. We saw this trend most clearly with Google’s purchase of Clever Sense, but interest in this area is increasing with such developments as Facebook’s purchase of site check-in site Gowalla. Discovering places you love, and that are the world’s most loved, is the aim of these applications. The increasing socialization of place portends a future of concentrated development and more highly considered place making.

Emphasis on Efficiency – Given the global economic struggles in much of the world, there will be an ongoing emphasis on technologies that improve efficiency and reduce costs. Geospatial technology is well poised to aid in efficiency efforts, and will continued to be relied upon. With that said, individual geospatial workers will be called upon to do increasingly more with less as hiring freezes mean that fewer workers will be supported to do this work. With this trend in place, a greater reliance on contractors and service companies can be expected.

Open Source Increase – With one of the largest geospatial technology investors in the world, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, indicating an interest in moving toward open source geospatial tools, we can expect a great deal of activity in open source software development for geospatial applications. The increased investment in this area may be at the detriment of traditional geospatial vendors and contractors, but will reward those that can adapt skills and toolsets toward a more open and interoperable platform. This concentrated R&D effort in this area will push along innovation that may be capitalized for platform enhancements as well as targeted industry solutions.

Landscape-Level Modeling – The ongoing convergence of BIM, GIS and CAD takes on many forms, from city-scale planning packages to all new large-scale and interactive visualization environments. While these trends have been ongoing for some time, new pressures on planning and development for more livable and efficient urban areas mean that greater emphasis will be placed on integrating technologies in the year to come. This trend is best illustrated with the awarding of the TED 2012 prize to the concept of Cities 2.0. The role of cities to drive down impacts, and the increasing understanding that technology plays a big role in our understanding of a complex cities interactions, provides an excellent opportunity for greater technology integration.

Keep An Eye On Trimble – This company has acquired many other companies in recent years. It is the most integrated company in the entire spatial industry – offering high quality surveying instruments, remote sensing software (Definiens), building construction (Tekla), fleet and mobility technology etc. This company has the ability and agility to tackle global spatial data solutions from all angles. Ready for investment and ready for the future.

European INSPIRE Debates – Mounting budget deficits in Member countries and discord between Members will push INSPIRE from the sunlight into the shade. How can a trans-boundary project operate effectively if the foundation of the union is not certain? This will similarly impact the GALILEO satellite system, which will require more funding as time passes, and resulting in more debates in 2012.

3D – A continued shift to 3D is underway. Several companies are involved in 3D ranging from data creation to 3D visualization and simulation – including our new Vector1 Media publication (www.3dvisworld.com). We can expect 3D viewing technologies to drop in price and new options and business models for purchasing lidar, radar and other 3D data products for them. The world’s first city requiring 3D data for utilities will emerge – followed by others. 3D GIS will be discussed and applied more widely in 2012.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) Everywhere – The last INTERGEO conference saw no less than 10 models of these flying machines. Now the software for them is being enhanced and improved, thereby paving the way for specialized services based on these platforms. At the same time, discussions about safety and privacy for these devices will rise.

Geospatial Health CareGIS and location intelligence tools can already be found in the health care sector. A growing older population globally aligned with tight budgets will put pressure on health care – the largest cost item in most places. Increasingly, geospatial tools will be applied to reduce costs, increase effectiveness and to streamline health care processes. Many of these will be simple, but focused on interoperability and adding location to processes. The market here is potentially the largest of all geospatial sectors.

Source

China will launch its first-ever high-resolution geological mapping satellite for civil purposes next January, according to official sources.

The Ziyuan III satellite will be launched aboard a Long March 4B carrier rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in northern China’s Shanxi province, according to a conference held on Monday for the directors of surveying, mapping and geoinformation administrations across the nation.

The Ziyuan III’s surveying covers the entire area between 84 degrees north latitude and 84 degrees south latitude.

The satellite will be used to conduct geological mapping, carry out surveys on land resources, help with natural disaster-reduction and prevention, and lend assistance to farming, water conservation, urban planning and other sectors.

The Ziyuan III satellite project was inaugurated on March 2008, and also includes gravity satellites, radar satellites and follow-up satellites for the Ziyuan III, so as to obtain geoinformation under all kinds of meteorological conditions.

Source: Xinhua News Agency