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NextGEOSS Beta Release
NextGEOSS is the European datahub and platform, providing access to EO data to the European users’ communities, together with Cloud resources, seamlessly connected to provide an integrated ecosystem for supporting applications contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). NextGEOSS is a contribution from Europe to GEO System of Systems (GEOSS).

The Crop Monitoring Supporting Food Security pilot was successfully integrated in the NextGEOSS platform earlier this year. With this achievement (which had been defined a pre-requisite), the NextGEOSS Beta version of the datahub and platform was released in April 2018.

The Beta Release is now available to selected pilot services, and it is aiming at consolidating the NextGEOSS system with the integration of further technical components such as the Service Desk, Operation Analytics Dashboards, and the Single Sign-On User Management. Moreover, this version will enable us to refine the User Experience and to develop expertise to easily adapt to the different pilots’ needs.
During this release, 4 additional services from different EO-related areas will be integrated and experience NextGEOSS’ datahub and platform. One of those services is a new marine-related pilot, Oceanic Drift Models, developed by CLS, which was not originally part of NextGEOSS. The first Public Release will be launched later this year.

Building Earth Observation Applications with NextGEOSS

For the Public Release, NextGEOSS is welcoming expressions of interest from new pilot services supporting the Sustainable Development Goals. The selected new services will be integrated into our cloud platform and have privileged access to the European datahub fully customized to their data needs! The NextGEOSS team has a solid experience in integrating services from several EO-related areas, such as agriculture, biodiversity, energy, disaster risk reduction, marine, among others! Get the unique opportunity to be part of the NextGEOSS’ and benefit from a tailored integration process and dedicated support service for your operations! Send your application to join.us@nextgeoss.eu. You can also find more information on https://nextgeoss.eu/engage-with-nextgeoss.

To show EO users what NextGEOSS offers as a platform and give the opportunity to have a hands-on experience with NextGEOSS tools and services, a one-day Training event “Building EO Applications with NextGEOSS” will take place in Geneva (Switzerland), on the 11th September 2018. The Training will enable first-hand discussions with the NextGEOSS technical team developing and maintaining the platform, and for networking of the existing and new user community.

If you would like to know more about using NextGEOSS to discover, access and process EO data, this Training is ideal for you. Register through https://nextgeoss.eu/second-nextgeoss-training and let us know what are the topics that you would like to see prioritized at the Training!

For more information about NextGEOSS, check out our website. Follow us on Twitter (@NextGEOSS) to get more frequent updates on NextGEOSS activities.

For many years, a dearth of reliable information regarding global oil inventories meant that oil traders and market analysts lacked the full picture when making trading decisions. In response, Geospatial Insight developed TankWatch to provide the market with precise, near real-time insight into above ground oil storage for any location worldwide, enabling better price risk management options and enhanced decision-making capabilities.

© 2017 DigitalGlobe, Inc

The service is built upon on a satellite-based approach to deliver frequent and regular information reports across global oil storage tanks sites, providing a unique insight into global oil inventories and reserves, tailored to meet the needs of oil traders and analysts by combining very high-resolution satellite imagery with GSI’s proprietary analytics software.
Rationale

Crude oil is the world’s most traded commodity by volume and value with up to 2.5 billion barrels traded daily. Knowledge of terrestrial crude storage is relatively well constrained in the USA where the Energy Information Authority reports weekly on current storage levels. However, in locations where terminal and refinery operators are not obliged to report their oil stocks, the situation is more opaque. This is particularly true for key oil producing and consuming regions such as China and the Middle East where “official” storage and capacity statistics are met with distrust by the market due to perceived inaccuracies in their reporting. Accordingly, to enable improved decision-making for traders and analysts, greater transparency is required regarding the crude fundamentals that play a significant role in determining the market price.

Issues & Needs

The lack of reliable information coming out of many oil storage regions means that global oil stocks at any one time remain largely unknown. However, if this information were available, traders could gain competitive advantage by being better informed whilst businesses and end users could implement better risk management strategies regarding price fluctuations. As a result, there is strong demand for timely, quantitative objective intelligence for crude oil inventories for the many regions where official reporting is either unreliable or simply not performed.

Solution

Geospatial Insight have developed TankWatch; an information product that uses proprietary software to measure and calculate the volumetric capacity and fill level of oil tanks with floating lids from satellite imagery.
To generate tank capacity measurements, the software measures planar distances between tank features that automatically detected using spectral profiles from the processed ortho-image. These planimetric measurements are ingested into an algorithm that converts the distances into three-dimensional information by considering image meta-information such pixel resolution, image off-nadir capture angle and satellite azimuth at the time of acquisition.

This approach can subsequently be used to measure the fill volumes by measuring the floating lid displacement for each tank. The semi-autonomous procedure allows for real-time QA of results and in measurement refinement by an experienced image analyst.
Once the volumetric capacity has been determined for a tank, it is then suitable for fill volume estimation using Shadow Positioning Analysis. With this approach the algorithm automatically locates tank wall shadows that are cast across the floating lid and calculates the relative displacement of the shadow from its origin to determine the floating lid depression and corresponding fill estimate.

Results and Perspective

Geospatial Insight are actively delivering clients with monthly, weekly and historical oil storage intelligence derived from submeter resolution satellite imagery for 69 key oil storage locations located across the world.
Geospatial Insight’s TankWatch service has assisted key players in the oil and gas market by enabling them to de-risk their trading strategies through improved knowledge of crude inventories at many of the worlds key storage locations.
TankWatch has continued to grow in capability with the addition of SAR analytics, enabling terminal measurement irrespective of cloud cover, which is the main challenge for optical remote sensing.

Related Info

Geospatial Insight is a leading provider of independent research derived from the analysis of satellite, aerial and drone imagery. We apply additional, sophisticated data sources and advanced technologies, including machine learning, to produce evidence-based alternative data that enables our clients to make better business decisions.
www.geospatial-insight.com

Agronow is spearheading a new revolution it calls Agriculture 5.0, through which it aims to monitor crops by using Artificial Intelligence (AI), making it possible for all sectors involved in agribusiness — banks, tradings, lenders and insurers — to receive alerts, information, analyses and projections that are fundamental for remotely strategic decision making.

Using satellite imagery to monitor rural properties around the world, Agronow places all of the information on a farm’s productivity onto a unique platform, with climate and marketing information, harvest alerts, drops in production, product quality and other variables of interest, and it also projects future harvests with a high degree of certainty.

“Agronow is developing a technology that uses neural networks to determine what a crop is without having a manual input. This will allow the company to make correct estimates not only about yields, but also about the total agricultural production of a region or country. So, we will be able to deliver completely new market intelligence with a detailed vision of how to expand the agricultural frontier and of changes in weekly production,” said Agronow CEO Rafael Coelho

Coelho explained that Agronow’s analysis allow the most productive areas with the greatest business potential to be identified. “Companies will be able to decrease risks and to have more knowledge about areas that are unknown or that do not have good information. Not having reliable information causes them to adjust prices in order to mitigate their product risk. With the use of our platform, over the long term it is expected that there will be a reduction in the products and services prices — such as lending and insurance — allowing a better cost structure for rural producers and, consequently, improved food production.”

The tool has its own algorithm, with radiometric and thermodynamic parameters to determine a crop’s yield potential. Headquartered in Brazil, Agronow has already processed more than two billion acres.

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HyperScout, the first miniaturized hyperspectral camera in space, has captured its first images. Developed by an international consortium led by cosine, HyperScout was launched into space on 2 February 2018. The images are the first Earth observation images of their kind captured by an instrument onboard a nanosatellite.

The first images were taken at pre-scheduled times, resulting in two random locations: Scotland and Cuba. HyperScout is able to take hyperspectral images, with a filter which separates the light into 45 wavelengths, each corresponding to a different color of the rainbow. This means a great deal of information can be obtained from these images. In comparison: a regular camera separates the light into only 3 colors: red, green and blue.

These first images are a single-spectrum single image where each horizontal line shows the scene in a different spectral band, proving the overall functioning chain of the HyperScout processing works as planned, from acquisition to compression and downlink to the ground. The acquisition of the images was performed by binning as well as compressing, in order to fit within the 1.5 MB requirement dictated by the satellite resources available during commissioning.

These images are rendered based on raw data, therefore the expected effects due to the spectral filtering, the presence of the atmosphere and the solar spectrum are visible as variation of the response along track. These effects are later calibrated as part of the processing chain. The amount of light captured by HyperScout exceeds our expectations, therefore the achievable signal-to-noise ratio is very promising, enabling many hyperspectral applications.

HyperScout is a ‘linear variable filter’ instrument, meaning each across track line of pixels it observes is seen at a different wavelength from 400 to 1000 nanometres, with the onward movement of the satellite allowing a complete hyperspectral image to be built up rapidly.

These first images have demonstrated that HyperScout is in working order. This is welcome news for clients of cosine, interested in launching their own HyperScout into space. More images will follow in a few weeks time, hopefully including the Netherlands, enabling further analysis.

HyperScout was developed by cosine with consortium partners S&T, TU Delft, VDL and VITO. The development and launch of the first HyperScout was funded through the ESA GSTP program with contributions from the Dutch, Belgian and Norwegian national space organizations: Netherlands Space Office, BELSPO and Norsk Romsenter.

More information about HyperScout can be found on hyperscout.nl

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is pleased to announce that the European Space Agency (ESA) has raised its membership level from Technical to Strategic – OGC’s highest level of membership.

As a Strategic Member, ESA will participate in OGC’s Planning Committee to provide leadership through the exploration of market and technology trends to ensure that OGC’s activities remain effective and agile in a changing technology environment. ESA will also participate in final approval decisions for all OGC standards and nominations to the Board of Directors. Further, ESA will work with other Strategic Members as part of an OGC Strategic Member Advisory Committee to help identify and advance high priority areas of interoperability concern.

OGC President and CEO, Mark Reichardt, commented that “ESA has a long and active history with the consortium, and I am delighted to acknowledge their decision to upgrade to the Strategic level. Earth Observation information is vital to decision making to address a range of social, environmental and economic challenges. This action extends ESA’s leadership across all OGC programs and committees to advance open, interoperable Earth Observation capabilities necessary to meet expanding user needs, and to adapt rapidly to an ever-changing information technology and policy environment.”

The Director of Earth Observation Programmes at ESA, Josef Aschbacher, commented that “ESA is committed to the definition and promotion of open standards that facilitate end-user’s access to our Earth Observation data. OGC is a valuable partner in achieving these objectives. ESA also sees the OGC Innovation Program as a valuable resource to stay on top of technology trends in the geospatial world. The upgrade of Membership shows ESA’s commitment to the OGC’s goals of openness and interoperability, which are an important enabler of Earth Observation data exploitation.”

Over the years, ESA has helped OGC in its mission to advance the development and use of international standards by being a sponsor of Testbeds 13 and 14, as well as a sponsor or contributor to several other initiatives; participating in multiple Standards Working Groups, including activities related to OGC Catalogue and Metadata standards; implementing OGC standards across their Earth Observation Missions; and being an active voting member of the OGC Technical Committee.

From space measurement, to data management & delivery, or deployment of algorithms in the cloud, ESA contributes actively to standards development in support of all the needs of spatial data information systems.

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Spaceflight Industries announced March 13 that it has raised $150 million to fund development of the next phase of its BlackSky Earth imaging constellation, with Thales Alenia Space and Telespazio taking minority stakes.

BlackSky ultimately plans a constellation of 60 satellites providing high-resolution imagery with rapid revisit times. Credit: BlackSky

At a press conference during Satellite 2018 here, Seattle-based Spaceflight said the Series C round, which includes investment from Mitsui and Co. Ltd. and existing investors, will fund development of the next set of 20 BlackSky satellites, part of an ultimate constellation of 60 satellites intended to provide high-resolution images with rapid revisit times.

The announcement finalizes a partnership announced in September that, besides the investment into Spaceflight, includes a joint venture between Thales Alenia and Spaceflight to build the BlackSky satellites as well as a marketing agreement between Spaceflight and Telespazio regarding sales and marketing for BlackSky products and services. The companies did not disclose the size of the stake in Spaceflight taken by Thales Alenia and Telespazio.

“Today represents a major milestone in that what we’re doing with this partnership with this investment, which allows us to put the next 20 satellites on orbit,” said Jason Andrews, chairman and chief executive of Spaceflight, at the press conference.

Spaceflight is building the first four operational BlackSky satellites, known as Global-1 through 4, based on a demonstration Pathfinder satellite launched in September 2016. Those satellites will be launched in the next 12 months. The joint venture, known as LeoStella LLC, will handle construction of future satellites at a facility it will operate in the Seattle area. “It will be a new facility optimized for satellite production, 30 per year,” Andrews said.

Jean Loïc Galle, president and chief executive of Thales Alenia Space, said the new facility will take advantage of advanced technology to allow for efficient production of the satellites at reduced costs. The same facility will be used for building the next 40 BlackSky satellites, to be funded based on revenues from the initial BlackSky constellation. Galle said the goal was to start work on that next tranche of satellites as soon as the first set of 20 were complete, which will likely be in 2020.

Galle said the LeoStella will seek to build satellites weighing up to 300 kilograms for other customers. “We will also use, additionally, this joint venture to produce satellites for different applications,” he said, other than those that would compete with BlackSky.

He described the joint venture as one step of Thales Alenia’s efforts to keep up with the growing interest in small satellites. “This partnership reflects the NewSpace transformation strategy being implemented by Thales Alenia Space, with the aim of becoming a major manufacturer of small satellites for constellations featuring short revisit times, both in Europe and the United States,” he said.

The foreign investment in Spaceflight shouldn’t pose export control or other regulatory issues, Andrews said, noting that the deal had been reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. In addition, the class of satellite that will be produced by the joint venture is not included on the U.S. Munitions List and thus isn’t subject to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).

With the full BlackSky constellation in place some time in the early 2020s, Andrews said the system can provide dozens of revisits a day while producing imagery at a resolution of one meter. Those images, he said, can be combined on BlackSky’s data platform with other imagery, including those from much higher resolution optical satellites and synthetic aperture radar satellites.

“The high revisit is essential to constantly monitor phenomena,” said Luigi Pasquali, chief executive of Telespazio. “It can be complementary with the deeper analysis coming form the very-high-end satellites.”

“This is about looking at the world in real time, fusing multiple sensors together,” Andrews said. “We see this capability as complementary to all the sensors that are out there. We don’t see them as competitors. We see them as partners as we create this real-time picture of the planet.”

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The millions of tonnes of plastic ending up in the oceans every year are a global challenge. ESA is responding by looking at the detection of marine plastic litter from space, potentially charting its highest concentrations and understanding the gigantic scale of the problem.

Plastic litter in global oceans

We dump around 10 million tonnes of plastic in the oceans annually. Though most conspicuous along coastlines, plastic litter is also found out in the open ocean and from the equator to the pole – even frozen in polar ice.

Gradually broken down into micro-fragments by weathering and waves, it is not only endangering marine animals but it is also entering the global food chain, with unknown long-term consequences for animal life and our own health.

“Indirect measurements from space are already used to get to grips with the marine plastic litter problem,” explains ESA’s Paolo Corradi, overseeing the project.

“For instance, satellite maps of ocean currents let us simulate accumulation of litter in vast ‘gyres’ within the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans. “What we are now looking at in this new project is to assess the feasibility of direct optical measurement of seaborne plastic waste from satellites. This might sound like mission impossible, but there are reasons to believe it might be indeed doable, at least for certain concentrations.
“We’re not talking about actually spotting floating litter items but instead to identify a distinct spectral signature of plastic picked up from orbit, in the same way that processing software can today pick out concentrations of phytoplankton, suspended sediments and water-borne pollution.
“In particular, plastic has specific infrared fingerprints that are sometimes used in the recycling industry to sort plastic items from other refuse on a conveyor belt.”_

Supported by ESA’s Basic Activities, two teams are working in parallel, led by Argans Limited and Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK. Their work began last September with an initial assessment of requirements and technologies, along with a workshop bringing together marine litter experts with remote sensing specialists.

Satellite images from missions such the Copernicus Sentinels are being checked against aerial coverage plus ground surveys where drifting plastic is collected from the sea to be assessed in close-up. Initial results were presented last week at the International Marine Debris Conference in San Diego, USA.

Paolo adds, “We hope to get an idea of what kind of concentration of marine litter is viewable from the top of the atmosphere using current technology, or if we’d have to operate from the middle of the atmosphere using aircraft or drones. Or would we have to improve the technology?”

The project will deliver a preliminary set of requirements for a satellite to detect marine plastic litter in the shortwave infrared.

The ultimate goal might be an actual global map showing litter concentrations, concludes Paolo: “Simulations are all well and good, but an image based on actual measurements would provide important insights to scientists and would hold greater power for the public and policymakers alike.“Monitoring is not a goal in itself, but a means to show the scale of the problem, and start to try and solve it.”_

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Scepter Inc., a Silicon Valley startup, unveiled plans March 22 to launch a constellation of satellites to provide global atmospheric monitoring services for government and commercial customers.

Philip Father, Scepter chief executive, and former DigitalGlobe executive Rafay Khan, discuss plans for a global constellation of atmsopheric-monitoring satellites at Space Systems Loral, a Maxar Technologies company. Credit: SSL

Scepter, which has been in stealth mode for approximately two years, is beginning to reveal plans and solicit investment after receiving a U.S. government patent in mid-March to use space-based sensors to obtain detailed information on various gases in vertical columns of air, combine the information with other data sources, analyze it and present it to customers in visual formats.

“The patent spans a large vision,” said Peter Rosti, Scepter technology chief and primary author of the patent, said March 22 during a forum on atmospheric monitoring at Space Systems Loral, a Maxar Technologies company.

“With our patent behind us we are looking to go to market to raise our next round of capital,” said Philip Father, Scepter chief executive.

Scepter plans to raise $15 million in Series A funding and build its business incrementally, beginning by fusing existing data sources to provide services to customers and eventually establishing a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit capable of offering hourly updates on air pollution in vertical air columns globally.

“Scepter data can add value in 20 different markets,” said Daniel Hall, Scepter’s business, marketing and product development leader. The markets include government air quality agencies and companies focused on agriculture, energy, insurance, health care and cosmetics, Hall said.

Scepter’s anchor customer is a government agency, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which monitors pollution in nine counties around San Francisco Bay.

“We are in the process of signing a memorandum of understanding,” said Eric Stevenson, Bay Area Air Quality Management District director of meteorology, measurement and rules. “If Scepter brings this to market, we will pay for it.”

Scepter has not hired SSL to build its spacecraft, which are likely to be roughly the size of the satellites SSL built for Planet’s SkySat Earth observation constellation, but the companies are talking, said Matteo Genna, SSL’s chief technology officer.

In addition, Scepter is meetings with people at two other Maxar companies, MDA about building ground systems and Radiant Solutions concerning data processing and data fusion, said Father, former chief executive of ProtoStar Ltd., a geostationary satellite operator.

Scepter plans to monitor air pollution with a suite of space-qualified sensors like ones produced by Headwall Photonics of Bolton, Massachusetts, Father said. With the sensors, Scepter will provide air pollution monitoring precise enough to reveal conditions for individual city blocks, Hall said.

The intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO) would like to include that type of detailed information in its public catalog of remote sensing data or at least let people know the data is available, said William Sonntag, global environmental informatics specialist for the GEO Secretariat. “GEO is working to improve its engagement with the commercial sector,” Sonntag added.

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Earth Observing System (EOS), a Menlo Park based startup, has released a unique cloud-based platform called EOS Crop Monitoring, which provides solutions for farmers and all sectors of the agriculture supply-chain.

EOS Crop Monitoring allows its partners to extract valuable insights from remote sensing data, including crop types classification maps, crop yield forecasts, field boundaries, vegetation indices, crop conditions, soil moisture and weather data on a field, regional or country scale. It includes both historical and current observations allowing for quick identification of a field’s performance throughout the growing season as well as high-risk areas affected by weather conditions.

EOS Crop Monitoring features include reliable algorithms for more accurate agriculture statistics estimation, crop yield prediction, a seasonal overview of current and historic crop conditions to manage risks and evaluate crop performance. With an extensive global satellite imagery database, EOS’ data analytics provides its partners with new, expanded capabilities, such as the ability to monitor crop production rates in any crop zone at any given time in both numerical and imagery formats.

EOS’ solutions are available in North America, Europe, and the Commonwealth of Independent States, and are currently being developed in Asia, Middle East and North Africa, and South America by applying its own cutting-edge methods and algorithms.

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Radiant.Earth’s mission is to make Earth observation (EO) imagery and data easier to discover, analyze and apply for unique insights to the issues the global development community encounters daily. The science of remote sensing and the Earth observation marketplace is evolving rapidly given the innovations of cloud computing, machine learning, drone technology and the NewSpace movement. Even for the most knowledgeable and informed experts, it is difficult to keep up with this wave of innovation. This is especially true for professionals dedicated to delivering solutions in the field.

This article is the first in an on-going series on the value of EO data, the basics of remote sensing science, the differences between commercial and “open” data, and many more topics. Our hope is that it will assist you in keeping abreast of what is happening in the EO field globally and why it is relevant to you as a global development professional. We hope you find these articles of value and let us hear from you on topics you would like us to cover or questions you have.

The remote sensing market and global development

People have been viewing pictures of Earth since the 1840s, when cameras were strapped to balloons and kites. Technology has advanced significantly since then and today we are taking more images than ever before, using highly sophisticated instruments. In 2017, the world record for the number of satellite launches was broken. In 2018, there is a reasonable chance that it will be broken again. The “cost to space” — that is, the cost per unit of mass to bring a satellite into orbit — is decreasing with companies like Space X building reusable rockets combined with the ability to build much smaller though shorter-lived satellites, known as cubesats. The barriers to acquiring and using Earth observation (EO) data have never been lower. In 2014, an article in Nature predicted that “small, light and cheap satellites [taking] real-time imagery of swathes of the planet” could transform the EO market. Planet (formerly Planet Labs) announced late in 2017 that it had completed its Mission 1, “to image the entire Earth’s landmass every day.”

Has the Swarm Arrived?

The free and open policy adopted by the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has driven exponential growth in users downloading Earth observation data. For example, USGS reportsmore than 68 million downloads of Landsat 8 data between December 2008 and September 2017. The European Union has embarked upon the Copernicus program, which has at the time of writing (March 2018) launched six of its Sentinel satellites — 1 (a&b), 2 (a&b), 3(a), and 5p — with more planned in 2018 and the following years. The Copernicus mission has at its core continuity of service, meaning that we can expect coverage until at least 2030.

Traditional commercial players including Digital Globe (acquired by MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates in late 2017) and Airbus have been launching significantly larger, and much higher resolution multispectral satellites for the past two decades. These state-of-the-art satellites deliver images with a spatial resolution of up to 31 cm. In 2014, the U.S. government relaxed its restrictions on image resolution, by allowing companies to sell data at higher spatial resolution.

A flood of data

Earth observation satellite instruments fall broadly into two categories: passive sensors and active sensors. Passive sensors are by far the most common imagers; they measure the amount of electromagnetic energy reflected by the Earth’s surface or atmosphere; they are affected by cloud coverage. Active sensors — such as Sentinel 1, which is a C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite — send a pulse of energy to the surface and then record returns to the sensor.

With so many EO satellites in orbit today, we have far more data than users can look at with their eyes. Spaceborne imagery is a prime example of “big data” and has traditionally been processed locally on machines operated by specialists. However, the cost of cloud storage and computing has fallen dramatically in recent years. This has initiated an explosion in the use of EO data by companies and a growth in startups innovating to deliver new insights about the world around us. Whether it is counting the number of cars in the parking lots of a big box store and relating it to that company’s share price, or monitoring corn to predict yields and, therefore, commodity prices, the volume of EO data and the ability to process it quickly is changing our world.

Earth observation for disaster relief

One of the main advantages of EO data is that it gives us an unbiased eye on our planet. It allows the regular monitoring of our ecosystem like never before. From detailed mapping of global forest cover in order to quantify anthropogenic changes to shaping and informing international policy, these can all be guided and informed by EO data.

There are many programs currently in place for disaster response; we will highlight three below. During a crisis, access to data needs to be fast, of high quality and decidedly accessible to allow for information to flow to relief efforts in as close to real-time as possible. At present, it is not possible to have real-time satellite imagery, but near-real time is becoming increasingly achievable.

First up, the International Charter Space and Major Disasters. Data is supplied by the Charter’s 15 member space organizations. Each member has committed resources to support the provisions of the Charter and thus is helping to mitigate the effects of disasters on human life and property. You can investigate their work and imagery through their web portal.

Secondly, the Copernicus Emergency Management Service. In 2016, this service was activated 41 times; by the end of 2017, it had been activated 82 times. It provides a reliable worldwide mapping resource as well as European flood and fire risk services.

Finally, almost a year ago DigitalGlobe launched the Open Data Program. This program opens up the DigitalGlobe First Look product enabling responders to look at pre-and post-event imagery from its range of high-resolution sensors. Partners are invited to make requests through their protocol. Other commercial companies also have similar programs, such as Planet’s disaster data service. All these programs allow for accurate information to flow into locations that most need them; the speed of delivering this data is the most significant challenge.

Earth observation for sustainable development — pixels for people

Ending poverty is the number one UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). However, reliable data about wealth can be incredibly hard to find if it exists at all. Earth observation data is a consistent but relatively low-cost solution to this problem. In 2016, Stanford University reported on poverty mapping using very high resolution (VHR) satellite imagery and machine learning. Researchers used nighttime lighting as a proxy for economic growth, combined with VHR satellite data and surveying on the ground (you can read the abstract of their paper here). As we have previously noted with more sensors being launched, we are on the cusp of a data revolution that will provide significant spatial and temporal coverage, offering a fuller breadth of knowledge about our planet than has ever been available.

Earth observation data will provide critical input to addressing all these goals, from infrastructure mapping with VHR data to understanding our climate through sensors like Sentinel 5P, which has been delivering unrivaled high-quality atmospheric composition, air pollution, and ozone layer monitoring data since the end of 2017. Earth observation is such a key component to addressing the 17 UN SDGs that ESA has outlined how satellite data can be used to address each one of them.

The following are some of the more significant ongoing initiatives to address the SDGs:

1.EO4SD — Earth Observation for Sustainable Development, an ESA program with a focus on urban development, agriculture & rural development, and water resources management. These are the three domains on which the World Bank and ESA are focused in 2015–2018.

2.GEO — Group on Earth Observations, and the Sustainable Development Goals. — ‘Earth Observations in Service of the 2030 Agenda’

3.UNGGIM — The United Nations initiative on Global Geospatial Information Management, which sets the agenda for the development of global geospatial information and to promote its use to address key global challenges.

4.GPSDD — Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, a global network bringing together governments, the private sector, and civil society organizations dedicated to using the data revolution to achieve the SDGs.

Increasingly, the focus is on extracting value from satellite data by tying it into existing datasets or utilizing the Internet of Things through in-situ sensors or crowdsourced data. It is the imagery combined with other types of data and new technologies that allows us to drive solutions at scale.

2018 is shaping up to be another growth year for Earth observation

In 2018, Radiant.Earth will report regularly on the Earth observation industry, sharing with our readers news about satellite launches, new developments, new entrants to the market as well as established ones and carefully follow this multi-billion-dollar industry. Radiant.Earth is focused on using Earth imagery for positive global impact.

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