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Like most sub-Saharan African countries, Niger faces problems meeting its water needs. As part of ESA’s TIGER initiative, satellite data are being used to identify underground water resources in the drought-prone country.

Due to the rainfall variability in time and in space, during recent years the rain-fed agriculture struggles to meet the requirements of food security in the Sahel area.

ESA’s WADE (Water resources Assessment using SAR in Desert and arid lands in West African Ecosystems) project, funded by the Data User Element (DUE), uses ERS and Envisat Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery to map and monitor the location and extent of surface water bodies and to identify potential areas for water infiltration.

Having access to these maps will help local water authorities to better manage their water resources, lead livestock to water and improve their water storage capacity.

The Advanced Computer Systems (ACS spa) in Rome, Italy, developed the WADE processing system in conjunction with local users, represented by AGRHYMET (the Regional Centre of the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel).

To demonstrate the technology, ERS and Envisat SAR data from 1993 to 2007 were integrated with in-situ data over an area of about 100 000 km² in the west part of Niger. Based on these data, a water body classification map was generated for each year. Results have been validated against 90 sampling points collected in the field by AGRHYMET during summer 2007 and showed an overall accuracy of 100% for permanent water bodies and above 75% for semi-permanent water bodies.

“Permanent and semi-permanent water body monitoring is an essential resource for rangeland activities and irrigated agriculture areas in the semi-arid zone,” said Issifou Alfari, AGRHYMET’s Head of Water Resources Management and Desertification Division. “We are very happy with the project’s scope and outcome, as we believe this source of information will be fundamental for water management activities.”

In November 2008, WADE software and data were installed in AGRHYMET’s facilities in Niamey, Niger’s capital city. Following extensive training sessions, AGRHYMET employees are now using the system to carry out their monitoring.

“The WADE system fits well into AGRHYMET general activities, particularly providing accurate water resource management information at regional and national levels,” Alfari said.

ESA launched the TIGER initiative in 2002 to exploit Earth Observation (EO) technologies in order to respond to the urgent need for reliable water information in Africa.

WADE is one of five TIGER Innovator projects, which use the latest EO technology to develop innovative, low-cost solutions to support African water authorities in the conservation and monitoring of scarce water resources.

SOURCE ESA

Even when the food crisis does not make the headlines, the world’s poorer countries suffer from scarcity the most. However, advanced technology in the sky can help on the ground.


By collecting data on the climate, vegetation and humidity, the European Space Agency’s earth observation satellites give a better understanding of the conditions that effect crops and grazing lands.

These are both vital components in agricultural production.

Sitting at an altitude of more than two thousand metres is the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa – the operational centre of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation for the whole of Eastern Africa.

Mafa Chipeta is the Sub-regional coordinator for the FAO for Southern Africa. He says that satellite data has helped increase cereal production in Ethiopia. But production is fragile and with a failure of the short rains, which account for 15 % of grain in the country, the total for the whole sub region is suffering. Since 1986 the price of basic food commodities has gone up by 56% hitting one of the most fragile countries head-on.

Pack animals and cattle are among the main resources for the population.

Potentially satellite imagery could assist in identifying potential pastureland, even at the end of the dry season.

Knowledge of the weather is also vital. Previously the nomads had to rely on experience to survive in this sometimes-hostile environment, but now meteorological data from satellites can help predict conditions.

Whether it’s drought, thundering floods, swarms of locusts or parasitic plants, all make for a fragile ecosystem.

But there’s an unseen eye keeping constant watch over Africa – and indeed other continents – from way above their heads: satellites.

And Europe is contributing with ENVISAT, the huge earth observation satellite from the European Space Agency.

At the Food and Agriculture Organisation headquarters in Rome, they use satellite data to follow coverage of vegetation and weather conditions virtually in real time.

That gives scientists a valuable forecasting tool and to some degree, an early-warning system.

Jeff Tschirley is the Chief of the Environment and Climate Change Unit at the FAO. He concedes that satellite data could go a lot further and that sometime is would be useful to have even more of the information that they provide.

Just outside Rome, in Frascati, data from different ESA satellites converge at the Centre for Earth Observation, ESRIN.

ESRIN’s have receivers for the European satellite Artemis, which relays data from an instrument called MERIS on board the earth observation satellite ENVISAT.

The satellite takes pictures of global vegetation every two or three days.

By analysing these images we can create a map showing how the ground is covered on a scale never before achieved.

By comparing the maps chronologically, scientists can study the development of ground coverage, humidity and the climate.

This data can then be used to create models for more accurate forecasting.

Africa needs to feed an ever-expanding population.

In Ethiopia, the population was 27 million in 1970, it’s 80 million today, and it’s reckoned to become 120 million in 15 years.

In a country with a high dependency on agriculture and pastoral grazing, satellite data that helps in the prediction of conditions becomes an invaluable tool in the fight against food scarcity.

AP

Source 3News

(Dec 2008) ESA’s global land cover map, which is ten times sharper than any previous global satellite map, is now available to the public online from the GlobCover website. It is the highest resolution land cover map that has been completely validated ever released.

Sixteen experts validated the map using more than 3 000 reference land cover points and showed it had an overall accuracy of 73% weighted by area for its 22 land cover classes. The map’s legend was developed using the United Nation Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) Land Cover Classification System (LCCS).

The map was generated using 19 months worth of data from Envisat’s Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument working in Full Resolution Mode to provide a spatial resolution of 300 m. Data were collected between December 2004 and June 2006.

A consortium of specialists worked to process the map, including Medias France, Germany’s Brockmann Consult and Belgium’s Université catholique de Louvain.

These data are useful for many applications, including modelling climate change extent and impacts, conserving biodiversity and managing natural resources. The map has been downloaded by more than 4 000 people since October 2008.

The GlobCover project is part of ESA’s Earth Observation Data User Element (DUE). An international network of partners has worked with ESA on the project, including the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), FAO, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Environmental Agency (EEA), the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and the Global Observations of Forest Cover and Global Observations of Land Dynamics (GOFC-GOLD) Implementation Team Project Office.

Source ESA

Intermap Technologies announced that its NEXTMap® Europe program reached another significant milestone in December by making elevation data for the entire country of France commercially available.

For the first time, uniformly accurate 3D digital elevation models and high-resolution orthorectified radar images are available for the largest country (551,695 square kilometers) in the European Union. France joins Germany, Great Britain, and Luxembourg as complete European countries benefitting from Intermap’s elevation models and images. Intermap now offers clients more than 1.2 million square kilometers of European data – representing 50% of the NEXTMap Europe initiative that already includes the above mentioned full country datasets and portions of Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and The Netherlands. NEXTMap datasets include digital surface models (1 meter or better vertical accuracy) that depict the earth’s surface (including cultural features such as vegetation, buildings, and roads), digital terrain models displaying the bare earth (with all cultural features digitally removed), and orthorectified radar images corrected to remove normal geometric distortions (grayscale and color images that accentuate topographic features).

“Intermap is on track to deliver on its commitment to provide users across Europe with a consistent, accurate, and up-to-date geospatial dataset that can help meet the insurance risk assessment, energy development, resource management, and other environmental challenges facing many EU nations,” said Brian Bullock, Intermap Technologies’ president and chief executive officer. “Moreover, the completion of each new countrywide dataset enables additional cross-border applications and collaboration across the region – a collaboration that was nearly impossible prior to our NEXTMap Europe initiative.”

Over the coming months, the Company will continue adding entire country datasets to the NEXTMap Europe library until the completion of its NEXTMap Europe program. Data is currently available through the Company’s direct sales team, online via www.TerrainOnDemand, or through Intermap’s worldwide partner network.

Source V1

Written by Matt Ball V1 Magazine

There are an increasing number of demands from various market sectors in response to plans for economic stimulus. Figures have been floated by the incoming Obama administration for $800 billion to be spent on infrastructure, health care, energy efficiency, and other priorities. Companies everywhere are eager to get a piece of the action, and the markets are responding to this potential windfall by rewarding the companies that stand to benefit most with increased share prices.

The United States isn’t the only country planning to invest internally in order to improve unemployment figures and economic growth. The influx of funds is global, and much of the spending will take place in sectors that currently use, or could benefit from, geospatial technology.

While there will likely be many opportunities for geospatial work, the question is whether that work will lead to innovation in new tools and approaches that benefit the geospatial market as a whole. My feeling is that the level of spending has some definite possibility to spark innovation, but the impetus for innovation will need to come in the form of regulation, enhanced competition or both.

Infrastructure

The level of infrastructure spending that is planned could provide some much-needed incentive for more streamlined planning and building processes. The federal government has been a leader in adopting Building Information Modeling, a form of intelligent and collaborative model-based design, because the bottom line benefits are so easily documented with increased collaboration and tighter construction timelines.

Geospatial technology provides a necessary decision support tool for infrastructure initiatives of larger geographies, such as roads, bridges and railways. The toolset can also provide a means of assessing infrastructure priorities, and making certain that spending is funneled to the highest impact projects.

With infrastructure spending, comes a need for coordinated teams of construction and engineering professionals as well as inspection and government oversight. Any tools that help streamline and improve upon this process stand to benefit, and there are a great many necessary innovations to improve the old and inefficient methods. While there’s some move afoot to streamline these processes, a huge spend by government could create the necessary impetus for a broad cultural shift if compliance to model-based design is mandated in order to win contracts.

Oversight and Transparency

Transparency of government decisions is going to be an overriding theme under the Obama administration. This new administration embraced Internet technology in the presidential campaign and pushed its limits with social networking and real-time systems. This strong understanding of the power and utility of the Internet will translate into more place-based tools and maps as interfaces to government data.

The commitment to accountability, and a new standard of ethics, point to greater use of Web tools throughout government. Geospatial technology can act as an integrative force between disparate systems in order to offer much needed insight. The move toward more equitable funding efforts that eliminate earmarks will require other means of evaluating and overseeing an equitable division of taxpayer dollars.

The strong move in the geospatial community to more open and flexible web-based mapping platforms will fuel a number of new portals and systems. The ongoing investment in web-based mapping platforms will pay off in this environment of new government communications. There’s strong opportunity for innovations to make these tools easier to implement and deploy, and to scale these tools to address the needs of all citizens.

Repeat of Recent History?

When the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq got underway, there was a strong interest in the use of geospatial tools for war fighting and intelligence gathering. The military investment dollars transformed the geospatial industry with the new term geospatial intelligence to rally around. A number of companies completely transformed their focus, following the dollars to a good deal of success.

The influx of military dollars were funneled into a number of geospatial technologies. Innovations were made in the way geospatial data is fused to form intelligence, in how imagery is delivered, in visualization tools that closely replicate reality, and in new mobile technologies to assist soldiers, and many others. This influx of military spending influx is a good model for what may soon occur.

I anticipate a similar transformation as the infrastructure and government transparency initiatives get underway. The geospatial community is well poised to contribute a great deal toward more efficient government operations. We need to continue to trump the cost-savings of applying geospatial tools to complex problems that require great oversight. Dollars and subsequent innovation will follow.

Editor’s Note: The Perspectives column takes a new format this year. Rather than a column from each editor every week, we’ll be taking turns each week in order to expand our focus on emerging opportunities in the energy sector. From time to time we’ll both weigh in on the same subject when there are distinct North American vs. European perspectives, and we’d like to open up opportunities for others to write in this space as well.

V1 magazine

(Jan 2009) Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries said on Monday it had received an order from South Korea’s aerospace agency to launch one if its satellites, marking the first time a Japanese rocket will carry a foreign satellite.


The launch of South Korea’s KOMPSAT-3 satellite, designed to take images of the Earth, will be in Japan in 2011 or 2012, Mitsubishi Heavy (7011.T), the country’s biggest machinery maker, said in a statement.

The deal was announced during a visit by Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso to South Korea.

South Korea, which is trying to develop its own rockets, has previously used a private firm in Russia for a satellite launch.

Mitsubishi Heavy, which took over the production and management of the H2-A rocket from Japan’s space agency in 2007, has only launched government satellites. Out of the 14 launches, 13 have succeeded, Mitsubishi said.

Japan’s space programme has struggled after launch failures. In 2003, it had to destroy an H2-A rocket carrying two spy satellites.

A spokesman for Mitsubishi Heavy in Tokyo declined to comment on how much the firm charged for the launch. Japan’s Jiji news agency had reported last year that the launch may cost around 9 billion yen ($99.91 million). [ID:nT253509] ($1=90.08 Yen) (Reporting by Yoko Kubota and Jon Herskovitz)

“© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved”

Source Reuters

More info

More info at

H2-A at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
The latest information about the Commercial Satellite Industry

(Jan 2009) Written by Vector1Media


Energy
The continuing interest in environmental issues is spurring increased growth in investment, political change, and the development of new technologies related to the exploration, research, monitoring and education of energy related technologies. This will become increasingly important to the geospatial community. From geographic information systems (GIS) to building efficiency and energy exploration, geospatial technologies will provide primary benefits in the renewable and traditional energy fields.

Cartography for Online Differentiation
The continuing competition among online mapping portals such as Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, MapQuest, Microsoft Live Search Maps, etc. will lead to innovations around graphic presentation and cartography. To date, some of the most visually appealing online map content belongs to the free and editable map product OpenStreetMap. Growing competition will lead to innovation in style and presentation of online mapping content that may spark a resurging interest in the art of cartography.

Coordinate Systems and Data Quality
The focus on coordinate systems and data quality will increase as data integration in GIS/CAD rises. The emergence of geo-referenced infrastructure systems will further the integration of GIS / CAD while linking indoor and outdoor features into one seamless scalable geo-referenced coordinate system. The foundation for this integration will couple directly to GPS enabled permanent reference networks and will also take advantage of high resolution satellite imagery capable of being used at the 1-5m level. Data quality will be an important ingredient of this integration, particularly as investments will be more closely scrutinized.

Crowd Sourced Data
The explosion of handheld mapping devices will lead to many innovative campaigns to channel the data gathering capacity of citizens and customers in order to improve decision making. Crowd-sourced information could be extremely helpful to gain a better understanding of dynamic situations or rapidly changing situations such as emergencies. A number of innovative companies will crop up in the coming year with solutions to take advantage of human sensors.

INSPIRE
There is little doubt that the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe Directive (INSPIRE) will be a focus of attention across Europe during the next year as it is required to be implemented in early 2009. Each member country is required to implement the Directive, thereby enabling a seamless spatial infrastructure across the European Union. Many view this initial step as the beginning steps toward a more widespread and deeply engaged spatial data infrastructure (SDI).

3D Visualisation (software and hardware enabled)
Recent developments in visualisation technologies at both the computing hardware and software levels are furthering the development of street-level visualisation and photo-realistic visualisation. We are now beginning to see a connection of mobility technologies combining 3G telecommunication technologies that link directly to mapping and spatia databases. 3D will finally emerge as a workable techology with suitable support and acceptible speeds in 2009.

Geographic Design
GIS visionary Jack Dangermond has spoken about the need to add design capability into the geospatial toolset, and both Autodesk and Bentley are moving toward large-scale detailed visualization tools and environments for geographies at the city scale. This new interest in visualisation and design at a broad scale will lead to a healthy competition that will spur innovations in tools that will make geographic design a reality, but will also further muddy the line between the capabilties of GIS and CAD tool sets.

Transportation
Several city leaders and politicians have jumped on infrastructure as an investment route in late 2008 with the hope these projects lift economies from a recession. Transportation technologies are uniquely placed because they cross both spatial technologies and energy efficiency initiatives at the same time. Rail, freight and passenger efficiency are poised to become major areas of focus in 2009 as the continuing shift toward efficiency grows and cost-minded consumers seek alternate modes of travel against growing energy costs.

Augmented Reality
The ubiquity of handheld devices with mapping and multimedia capabilities is leading to a growing interest in turning these devices into more intelligent agents. There are a number of research projects that are exploring new ways to use mobile devices to assist and augment navigation with discoverable information that could greatly enhance travel and fieldwork. A few such projects have proven the ability to recognize an image taken by a device’s camera that can then be matched and filled with hyperlinks that allow you to further explore any item within view.

Wide-Scale Infrastructure Spending
Plans across the globe for wide-scale investment in infrastructure to spur the economy will lead to a number of opportunities for geospatial and design firms. The interest in quick action with efficient allocation of resources and transparency in the process begs for greater CAD and GIS integration throughout the process. The speed and efficiency of this enormous investment requires the dawning of a new era of collaboration that will be spurred by government mandated requirements.

(Nov 2008) The International Charter “Space and Major Disasters”, launched by CNES (the French Space Agency) and ESA, and signed on 20 October 2000, is a global disaster response system dedicated to delivering satellite data through an established and organised user base, the so-called authorized users.

The latter are mainly disaster management centres in Europe such as national Civil Protection agencies and the Monitoring Information Centre (MIC) of DG Environment.

In November 2008 the ESA, in association with CNES and BNSC (the British National Space Centre), organised a workshop to promote and optimise the access and use of satellite imagery for disaster response. The main aim of the workshop was to collect feedback from the authorised users, while the main topics discussed concerned the submission of requests for data to the Charter and the utilisation of Charter-based results by the broad range of end users.

Finally, representatives from ESA and CNES summarized that the functions of the Charter are simple and include Earth Observation (EO) missions in response to requests from a pre-defined user list, making EO data available rapidly and free of charge, and organizing the base of pre-defined users. Seen from the user’ side, improving access to the Charter is a priority which requires efforts to raise awareness around Europe and worldwide.

Today other capacities to provide functions similar to those of the Charter are already available or under preparation. Amongst such examples, the GMES Emergency-Response (ERCS) will provide geo-information services to support preparedness, rehabilitation or reconstruction efforts, as well as enhanced crisis observation methods using systematic and anticipative approaches, end-to-end-service validation, etc.

This evolution will significantly help to better address overall disaster management issues. The cooperation between the Charter and the GMES Emergency-Response is building up.

Source GMES.Info

“More information at”: www.disasterscharter.org/new/workshop_e.html

(January 2009) At the end of the old year, Oman signed a licence agreement with Eumetsat for access to data from Eumetsat’s Indian Ocean Data Coverage (IODC) service.

Oman thus agreed to pay 300,000 euros a year for IODC data for official duty use for three years starting on 1 January 2009.

Under the agreement, Oman will receive IODC data from Meteosat-7, which is in geostationary orbit over the Indian Ocean. These data provide important information on monitoring cyclonic systems, dust storms and other meteorological phenomena in the Indian Ocean region.

As part of the IODC service, the Meteosat-6 satellite relays tsunami warnings covering the Indian Ocean region. There are some 40 data collection platforms in the region contributing to the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System and data from these platforms are relayed to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii, from where tsunami alerts are issued. Oman, which was hit by a destructive tsunami in 1945, is one of the nations benefiting from this service.

The Eumetsat Council will be asked in 2009 to extend the IODC service beyond 2010.

(Source: Spacenewsfeed and Eumetsat)

The European Space Agency is throwing its full support behind an initiative spearheaded by the Portuguese National Health Institute for the development of a Health Early Warning System (HEWS). This system will enable the timely detection and tracking of emerging threats to public health and safety via satellite.

Originally the brainchild of the Portuguese National Health Institute (INSA), the HEWS promises to be a boon not only for Europe but also for the world. HEWS is being developed as an integrated management platform devised to support epidemiologic surveillance, public health monitoring, crisis management and civil protection programmes.

Giorgio Parentela, ESA Telemedicine Task Force Manager, spoke at length about the importance of HEWS. ‘At the ministry level, interest was shown in the use of (the) HEWS system, not only for endemic pathologies that periodically plague the country, for example cholera, but also for health programmes that are part of the basic health interventions in African countries,’ he said. These are ‘usually sponsored by the World Health Organisation (WHO), such as the vaccination programme, to which HEWS could be easily adapted’.

HEWS involves a consortium of Portuguese and Italian companies, notably, Tekever (Portugal) and Ridgeback (Italy) along with ESA and INSA. Currently INSA is responsible for its scientific and management aspects.

Recently, HEWS was put to the test in the south-eastern African country of Angola, a former colony of Portugal. This involved the collaboration of local health institutions and the involvement of higher-level Angolan institutions such as the Ministry of Health. The scenario for this test was a simulated surge of the Marburg virus. This scenario followed on from an earlier one conducted early last year in Lisbon, Portugal.

In both these scenarios, the HEWS system demonstrated the added value of satellite communications in situations in which there are threats to public health. Both scenarios offered a demonstration of the developed modular HEWS system that can add institutions, customise data input, implement early warning alert systems and response to health situations with automated distribution of the respective alert information, and guarantee all required security levels of information.

What is important to note in the test case in Angola is that it was conducted in the small town of Caxito; located in north-western Angola it is the capital of Bengo Province and has a population of approximately 719 people. More importantly for the test, is that the town has no reliable means of communication. Communication via satellite is currently the only fully viable solution, not only for emergency situations but also for regular health, epidemiological and administrative reporting.

Currently, team members are exploring the possibilities of making the HEWS service suitable for the needs of the population with the Angolan authorities. The scenario conducted in Lisbon involved the staging of a bio-terrorist attack at an international conference. During the staged attack, Bacillus anthracis spores or anthrax were released, causing panic among the population, traffic jams and the saturation of the mobile telephone network.

Through the course of events it was determined that HEWS played a crucial role in two areas; the release of a powder in a public square and the isolation and storming of a building. HEWS would be able to maximise the coordination of the information flows between the several institutions involved, overcome communication difficulties and increase the efficiency of the response effort.

‘The major points of relevance were considered to be the fact that the HEWS system is a reliable and versatile communication system and (that it) has the potential to act as a manager and distributor of information between the institutions,’ says Mr Parentela.

Source