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Tor Viking is a Swedish icebreaker, which needed to get home to Scandinavia from the Pacific during December 2015.

The crew choose to take the Northern Sea Route (travelling north of Russia) thereby potentially saving twelve days compared to using the Panama Canal. This time difference can represent a big saving in costs, and the vessel will be ready sooner for new work in the North Sea.

The downside to taking the Northern Sea Route is the extremely challenging ice conditions. However this journey home was aided by satellite imagery and ice information products derived from satellite data that was provided onboard the Tor Viking. This included data acquired from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellite which was launched in 2014.

“This is the first independent transit done this late in a year by a non-Russian vessel”, says Andreas Kjøl at Viking Ice Consultancy. To enable safe and efficient navigation through the ice without any Russian ice breaker support, continuously updated information about the ice conditions has been crucial.

Finding leads within the ice, and avoiding areas of heavy ice is important to save time and ensure a safe journey. This has been enabled by using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery delivered in Near-Real-Time (NRT). “The new opportunity of finding leads within the ice has in some cases increasing speed from 5 to 12 knots”, says Kjøl.

KSAT is one of several partners in a FP7-project, POLAR ICE. During the transit crew onboard Tor Viking and at the Viking Shore Operation Center, has been successfully demonstrating the developed distribution solutions of ice information products aimed for ship users in Arctic waters.

SAR-imagery from several missions was ordered to ensure continuous coverage along the route. “Planning satellite image acquisitions for a “moving target” like this is something new and more challenging for us”, says KSAT project manager, Hans Eilif Larsen. We have been providing Sentinel-1, RISAT-1 and RADARSAT-2 imageries to the vessel. “Also having the opportunity ingesting the radar imagery into Transas ECDIS onboard made navigation easier”, says Master Mariner/Lead Ice Advisor Erik Almkvist at Viking Supply Ships.

In addition to the SAR imagery, information from a variety of other sources has been provided including: ice charts from National Ice Centres, weather and ice forecasts from providers like AARI, StormGeo and other POLAR ICE partners. All of which helped to ensure a safe and efficient transit through Northern Sea Route.

Nick Walker from eOsphere Limited, who is coordinating the POLAR ICE project said, “There are several companies and agencies making really useful ice information products, but what additionally is needed is the ability to deliver those products efficiently from a single source to where they are needed onboard vessels so they can be visualised in an integrated way. That is what the POLAR ICE project is all about.”

The Tor Viking successfully reached Norwegian waters after 10 days within the ice. During the transit both crew, people at Viking Shore Operation Center, KSAT and the wider POLAR ICE project gained a lot of experience to be used for future Arctic operations.

Satellite data such as ESA’s Sentinel-1 can provide an important Navigation tool to avoid areas with ridges and hummocked ice. This Sentinel-1 SAR scene was cropped, compressed and downloaded from POLAR ICE and ingested into Transas ECDIS system. (Sentinel-1 01/12/2015 19:51 UTC, HH 40 m Res SAR)

Source: eOsphere
Source EOportal

The following press release was issued by the European Commission on January 13, 2016 10:20 am.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am glad to be back at this conference which brings together all the “Who’s Who” of the European Space community – under the patronage of President Jean-Claude Juncker.

Since we met last year, we have seen some very encouraging developments.

The satellite launches for our EU flagship programmes Galileo and Copernicus have all been successful.

The service offer of Copernicus has been extended, and we have come closer to the early services of Galileo.

But beyond these EU programmes, I also want to note the accomplishments of the European Space Agency under its new Director-General, Mr. Woerner. Judging from my first meeting with Mr Woerner, I have no doubt that we will enjoy a very fruitful and pragmatic cooperation.

We have all followed with great excitement and pride the ESA’s Rosetta mission to the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko at the end of 2014. And we have all followed with suspense the wake up of its lander, Philae, from hibernation in June last year.

Space policy is therefore about geopolitics, science, innovation, growth and jobs, and of course about inspiration and imagination for the future.

At last year’s Conference, I promised that space policy was to be a high priority for this Commission. I am standing here today with a proof: the Commission has tasked itself to elaborate a Space Strategy this year.

This was not obvious. This Commission has promised to be ‘big on big things’ and only on big things. We had to demonstrate that space falls under this discussion of being big, not only figuratively speaking but because of its huge impact on our economy, on our citizens, on our quality of life.

Space is linked to many issues like big data and the data economy; Transport; critical infrastructure for energy, telecommunications or transport; modern farming; disaster response; border and maritime surveillance; monitoring of the ground, sea levels or the atmosphere.

These links seem obvious to most of you here in the room. But they are not obvious to many citizens, and often not even to experts in these areas. We have to make them aware of the possibilities of space applications for different policy areas and economic sectors.

This is one of the reasons why the President has asked me to ensure as Vice-President that the space activities are well coordinated and reflected in all different policy areas of the Commission. I will do so in close cooperation with Commissioner Bienkowska and all the commissioners concerned, notably Vice-President Katainen to ensure that the potential for jobs and growth is fully exploited.

The space sector needs investment: public and private. If we want to get this money, we need an alliance of the space sector with the users and the market. Only then will we be able to convince private investors and the budgetary authorities.

I am ready to do this job, to reach out to other stakeholders and to help building this alliance.

I would like to see the climate experts loudly requesting a programme on measuring CO2 emissions. And the same is true for the transport sector, the military and the entire downstream sector.

Already this is an argument in itself for a space Strategy.

But let me add two arguments more:

The EU is the biggest individual contributor to European space programmes and the biggest institutional user of the European launcher industry.
6% of EU GDP depend on the availability of Satellite Navigation Technology, e.g. high-speed trading on financial markets, management of critical energy infrastructure or transport navigation systems. The expected growth of global satellite navigation markets is 7% a year.
Copernicus will be the world’s 4th biggest producer of raw data.

Keeping this in mind, the question is how could we afford not to have a Strategy?

In addition, our space programmes Galileo and Copernicus are at cross-roads.

We must complete both programmes; we must ensure their continuity and we must ensure their benefits for the European economy, public authorities and for society as whole.

The Strategy will therefore address among other things the market uptake of Galileo.

For Copernicus, the Strategy will focus on robust data dissemination architecture; on new business models and on promoting the use of space data by end users.

But beyond Galileo and Copernicus, we will look at the framework conditions and industrial policy tools that we have in order to foster new market opportunities, particularly in the downstream sectors.

There is a tremendous economic potential that we must ensure Europe’s industry taps into. This concerns big companies just like SMEs and start-ups.

We also have to examine and discuss potential new initiatives to address the global challenges in areas such as space, defence and security, or space and climate change as I mentioned before.

And finally, we want to look into the conditions for autonomous European access to space. As a global political player, access to space is a priority for the EU and will become even more so in the future.

Commissioner Bienkowska and Pierre Delsaux assured you already yesterday that the Commission will put in place a broad and inclusive consultation process with all stakeholders. I can only confirm this.

Let me conclude by referring to the title of this year’s conference: “Europe as a global space player”.

It is clear to me that if we want to be a global player, we must also be a global space player. The two go hand in hand.

As more and more states are active in space, we must not be complacent with the current state of play, but think ahead of our positioning in the future. Europe is among the leaders today, but global competition is increasing.

This means that we must challenge ourselves.

Europe has taken very important and good decisions on the new launcher Ariane 6. We must work hard to implement them as soon as possible.

But, nevertheless, I would ask all of you to think beyond this. What will the American, Russian, Indian or Chinese space sector look like in 20 or 30 years and what will they be able to do?

What kind of technologies should we as Europeans start to think of and work on to be still a global player in 30 years?

Some in the U.S. seriously deal with issues like space mining, and the American Congress even voted a law on this which President Obama signed a few weeks ago.

There is no progress without ambition and vision.

We must think what could be possible in the not too distant future. The speed of new technologies must never be underestimated.

Let me conclude by making the case for a European approach. All these issues and questions are too big and too costly for individual Member States. If Europe wants to be a global space player, we must work together. European cooperation is not only the best, but in my view the only way for Europe to remain a global space player. I hope that I can count on your support in this endeavour.

Thank you very much.

Source

(by Giovanni Sylos Labini. President of AIPAS & Director of EARSC, published on ESA ‘s website on January 11, 2016). With the Lisbon Treaty “Europe has decided to develop its own operational Earth observation capacity in order to reflect the EU’s growing responsibility in European and world affairs” COM 223 final.

With the Lisbon Treaty “Europe has decided to develop its own operational Earth observation capacity in order to reflect the EU’s growing responsibility in European and world affairs” COM 223 final.

Foreword

As normally happens in treaties each word have been carefully weighted, making some strong point:

1. Europe would like be develop an independent EO system
2. This system should be operational
3. This capacity should reflect the global role of Europe

Other parts of the referred document clarify that design drivers of this system should be the monitoring of the Environment at European and Global Scale, the Emergency management and response, the Security of EU citizens. Copernicus was born.

In recent time, a more focused approach emerged on the so-called Space Economy, of which EO is a relevant part. This issue is also strongly highlighted by competing forces: the need of liberate innovation in Europe, the long-term sustainability of Copernicus, the flattering budget of Space in Europe.

On the top of this the fear that the forward fetched Free Open Data Policy, could backfire a dispersed and unprepared European Industry, leaving the ground to the big Internet operators from abroad.

Our thesis is that all the conditions exist to boost specific capabilities of Europe in Space, assure long term sustainability of Copernicus, and use the best practices developed in this area to be successful in other space domains.

Follow the money

Several pre-impact studies of Copernicus have been carried out in the past, for sake of simplicity we will refer in this paper to the GIO-LOT 3 made for the Commission by SpaceTec.

As shown in Fig. 1, Copernicus will generate 1.8 B€ in downstream services by 2030. The major impact on occupation will be so in this area, with an estimated 12000 new jobs created in this sector respect only 4.500 new jobs created in the Up-stream and Mid-stream.

If we trace these jobs in the expected application area, we will easily see that a large majority of this demand will be generated by different Public Administrations, a possible share at 2030 is shown in Fig. 2.

All this looks an attractive picture for the future of EO in Europe, but the devil is in the details.

Two questions to be answered

In the slang of marketing studies the 1.8 B€ referred to the downstream market is a potential addressable market. In few words is a demand that could materialize, and that should be satisfied by some industrial capacity. So the two questions are:

1. Is European DS industry ready to intercept this demand?
2. Considered that 80% of this demand is public, are EU PA aware?

Unfortunately the reply to these two questions is NO.

As demonstrated by the EARSC 2015 study on EU downstream industry, this industry is fragmented and dominated by micro, small and medium operators (Fig.3)

Fig. 3 Over 95% of companies have less than 50 employees and over 60% less than 10

And most important this industrial structure is rather stable in the last 10 years.

For what concern the demand of services from the PA, it’s clear that the use of EO to these needs fulfilment is there, but a big effort should be done in order that Public Demand could be expressed. Even in this case the risk is high that other than EU downstream industry, namely Google or Amazon, could rapidly put in place solutions, putting Europe in the discomforting position of having planted the vineyard, letting others producing the wine.

How competitors succeeded?

In the early 90’ the USA Department understood that the evolution of the global scenario would generate a dramatic increase in the demand of Image Intelligence Imaging products. So the Next View approach that now feeds the High Resolution commercial venture in USA start to take momentum. USA went through some logical step in order to enable this capacity.

As a first move they established a favorable regulatory framework, adopting by law the acquisition of commercial imaging for the fulfillment of a reasonable part of DOD needs. Then defined, progressively longer period, establishing a long term “Anchor Tenant” to help attract outside investors. On the top of this gave a wide mandate to selected operators in order to establish suitable channels for commercialization of excess capacity. In this way the USA government established mutual trust and long term outlook with the service operator. It must be noted that this approach strongly polarized North American space industry in mastering Image Intelligence mission, leaving other areas now covered by Copernicus open for competition.

Which way for Europe?

We in Europe can retain something from the USA approach, but cannot ignore the difference that exist. At the opposite EU must capitalize on differences and remove patiently the obstacles to fulfill the Lisbon treaty objectives.

First of all Europe can’t afford a defense anchor tenancy, for political and cultural reasons we are not in the position of establishing a common EU policy on image intelligence. Furthermore, the DoD approach targeted a single application, single business. At least with Copernicus, EU, ESA and MS have in scope multiple demand and applications. Finally the US huge military space budget developed a strong family of actors in the business, while the European DS industry, as noted is composed by small and medium enterprises.

In order to succeed we must follow a different approach, leveraging on the specific characteristic of our continent, transforming weakness in competitive advantage.

So Europe must leverage on diversity. Europe is the most complex multistate union in the world counting 28 members states (with specific ambition, culture, lifestyle…), with 24 different languages. These means naturally multilingual, multi-culture services, build around thousands of potential user. Moreover Copernicus have been designed to respond to serious problem, largely shared at global scale , not only IMINT, but environment, climate, risk, security, agriculture etc. These issues are in very high position in the members’ states agenda, and largely justify the use of space for mitigation, but they are concern also for the rest of the world, with some emphasis on developing economies offering a blue ocean of opportunity for EU downstream industry to flourish, if enabled.

An issue on which we must follow the US is the regulatory framework. Regulation can a very strong ingredient in the recipe for innovation. EU have already delivered some piece of laws relevant for DS economy, two example in this direction are the Inspire Regulation and the Copernicus Regulation. Nevertheless, efforts that are more explicit must be put in place in order to push all the public authorities of EU member states to actively use downstream services in their policies for environment, security and risk mitigation. This approach, together with the long-term commitment on Copernicus data, will make more attractive downstream services for investors.

Then we must assure that a solid EU based downstream industry emerge. Many success stories and business literature, suggest the vertical integration as one of the most effective response to a growing demand. This is normally the case of manufacturing industries, where a lot of economy, and margins, emerge by integrating vertically capabilities and making economies on general spending, management, R&D etc…Unfortunately this is not the case for Downstream Services.

All the big player in space, in Europe and outside, come from the “HARD” part of the business, and understand that making money from EO is possible only if they find a way to transform Data in useful information for their customer. In doing this they have normally few or not at all experience, keen as they are to a frantic technology push, a notable organization rigidity, a strong inclination in looking the world through the deformation lenses of technology.

Downstream services claims for flexibility, user interaction design, open innovation approach that simply are not in the DNA of major space LSI. The solution of acquisition of downstream SME’s has proven not to be viable, normally the incumbent kill the few competitive advantages of the target destroying value.

The IT players will face other kinds of difficulties. EO services are not trivial to implement, even for simplest services a steep learning curve exist not easy to overcome from new entrants without the know how of some decades of R&D in the area.

However some best in class downstream SME’s have been notably resilient in their market, developing notable skills in service development, implementing best practices for user up-take, capitalizing on their user proximity, agile and flexible in following innovation.

A set of these companies could work as an accretion nucleus for a NewCo in the downstream industry adding dimension to the above-mentioned competitive advantage. Some creative strategic thinking should be put in place in order to trigger the merge success delivering a new subject stronger than their building blocks. The idea is start from a set of “best in class” companies, with complementary skills and business model, based in different member states of EU

In order to make this possible the EU and Members States should act in an entrepreneurial way. Mariana Mazzucato correctly states: “If we actually look at the few countries that have achieved smart, innovation led growth, you’ve had this massive government involvement”(From Lunch with the FT: Mariana Mazzucato FT.com). If we wait for private funds to invest in this venture, we are dreamers.

The EU and member states should made a better use of existing resources, aligning different funding option: National, H2020 & Copernicus, ESA, ESIF- Regional and Multiregional. At the same time Long-term, “Anchor Tenant” initiatives should be put in place to attract “patient” investors. Invited to this party must be the European Investment Bank, national investing funds and specific investments facilities like the Junker Fund.

Conclusions

As we have seen a big opportunity of growth exist in the Copernicus Downstream Services. This growth, if implemented by European industry, could assure in the long term the sustainability of the Upstream and his evolution. Unfortunately, the EU EO industry is not in the shape of intercept as it is this opportunity. To overcome this drawback a long-term government led investment in downstream is vital for upstream survival. Acting this way EU could establish a competitive advantage on global scale, leveraging on diversity and on the delay of competitors in this market.

Source

(16 Dec 2015) Space-based technologies are involved in climate monitoring

At COP21 in Paris, an unprecedented agreement was reached: More than 150 heads of state agreed on quantified targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.The signal is clear. All economic sectors, including the space sector, will be involved.

Space-based technologies are already deeply involved in climate monitoring. Thanks to satellite programs launched by space agencies, including the French Space Agency, CNES, we have over thirty years of continuous Earth observations to serve climate studies.

CLS responds to the climate change challenge with innovative and new satellite applications for enhancing operational observation and practical response to climate change.

Source

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its commercial space policy, which sets a broad framework for agency use of commercial space-based approaches.

The policy establishes critical components for engaging with the commercial sector: designating the Office of Space Commerce as a single point of entry for commercial providers to streamline the process for easier engagement; establishing an open and transparent marketplace; defining guiding principles, implementation considerations and strategic planning for potential commercial data buys; establishing demonstration projects to test and evaluate new potential data sources; and providing an avenue to operational commercial data buys.

View the full policy document here

Urban Growth Monitoring

The European Commission Joint Research Centre and its Global Human Settlement team have been conducting extensive research related to the ubranisation and socio-economic and physical processes associated with it.

The newly published report based on analysis of the satellite data “Global spatial and temporal analysis of human settlements from Optical Earth Observation: Concepts, procedures, and preliminary results”, is one of the result of this work.

Human settlements are the part of the landscape covered with man-made structures that include buildings, roads and transport networks.

The report addresses the physical part of human settlements, the information that is used to help answering numer of questions related with urbanisation and its challenges. For example, how much of the today’s urban and rural land areas will be used to host the settlements of tomorrow? What is the rate of growth associated to urbanization and its trends? How does urbanisation increase the risk due to environmental hazards?

Knowledge about this issues help the crisis management in case disasters.

Read more…

(Source European Commission Joint Research Centre) and Copernicus

Earth observation satellites are capturing every day images of our globe and its regions. The Guardian gathered beautiful examples of satellite imagery coming, among others, from Sentinel missions.

From monitoring vegetation of Khartoum in Sudan, to eruption of Sicily’s massive Etna volcano, images prove how dynamic, fascinating and diverse our world is, giving also opportunity to teach us about natural and man-made processes that are undergoing on its surface and around.

“Read more”: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/06/satellite-eye-on-earth-december-2015-in-pictures

(Source The Guardian)

By Jonathan Amos BBC. Users are now able to download its images of the planet, although they will need to register first.

The Sentinel, which has been undergoing in-orbit testing since its launch back in June, views the land surface in optical and infrared light.

Its pictures will be used by scientists to track everything from the growth of megacities to the variable yields of the world’s most important food crops.

And researchers will, of course, use 2a’s acquisitions prominently in climate studies (examples are being shown at the COP21 talks in Paris).

But the EU’s free and open data policy means anyone can now download and play with the images.

And unlike the products from some specialist satellites, which are hard to interpret – the colour views from Sentinel-2a should appeal to a very broad audience.

The European Space Agency (ESA), which manages the satellite for the EU, expects demand to be huge.

Already, many thousands of users have registered to make Sentinel downloads – and these were people who were predominantly after the more complex radar pictures being produced by another spacecraft in the series, Sentinel-1a.

“We expect the demand for all Sentinel data to be unprecedented. It is already unprecedented for us; we’ve never had so many downloads,” said Prof Volker Liebig, the director of Earth observation at Esa.

“It’s hard to put a number on what it will be for Sentinel-2a, but it will be in petabytes, for sure.”

One petabyte is roughly equivalent to 200,000 commonly used DVDs.

Optical imagery (essentially, what we see with our eyes) is the cornerstone of Earth observation, and increasingly it features in everyday applications on the web and on people’s smartphones.

One of the major sources to date of free pictures has been the American Landsat series of spacecraft, which have assembled a continuous record of the world’s fluctuating features stretching back more than 40 years.

Sentinel-2a will be complementary, but also more capable – which further suggests demand will be big.

2a’s imaging instrument is sensitive across more bands of light (13 multispectral versus eight), allowing it to discern more information about the Earth’s surface; and it will “carpet map” a much wider strip of ground (290km versus 185km).

In addition, its colour images have a best resolution of 10m, versus Landsat’s 30m.

Sentinel 2a will not be working at full pace straightaway: it is ramping up its coverage of landmasses, however experts have already confirmed that the early products are meeting the required quality.

Further quality improvements are under way. This could take a few months, said Esa mission manager Dr Bianca Hoersch.

“[As] for the user demand, as we see with Sentinel-1, there are more than 14,000 users. I would expect that with Sentinel-2 we will get more users, since the mission data – besides being valuable for operational services and science – is just simply stunning to look at and will attract the broader public.

“Our systems are scalable to absorb increasing demand [and] we are closely monitoring the access performance, e.g. today, the download of a product of about 5GB takes less than 10 minutes.”

Anyone thinking of downloading pictures is warned to have plenty of storage. The files are large. Mirror servers are being set up in several countries.

The next Sentinel to be launched in the EU’s multi-billion-euro Copernicus Earth observation programme is numbered 3a.

It will focus its gaze more on the oceans. The launch of this platform should take next month.

Even more spacecraft will follow in the coming years.

©“http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34593908”:http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34593908

(Friday, 04 December) The FINANCIAL — The World Bank and the European Space Agency (ESA) announced on December 3 that they will collaborate in using space-based Earth Observation – data and images provided by satellites – to reduce poverty, monitor environmental changes, and stimulate economic growth in developing countries. The two organizations signed a Memorandum of Intent (MOI) during the climate talks, COP21, taking place in Paris.


“Earth Observation is key to meeting our goals of ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity in a sustainable manner,” emphasized Laura Tuck, World Bank Vice President for Sustainable Development. “New innovations of Earth Observation Technology will provide an invaluable source of data to monitoring the newly-approved Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in areas such as disaster risk resilience, urbanization, food security, greenhouse gases emissions, and forest inventories, among many others.”

The World Bank and ESA have been successfully collaborating since 2008, jointly implementing over 35 technical assistance projects that have been provided specialized mapping and monitoring tools in over 20 different countries. The projects have focused on areas such as forestry management, combating illegal fishing, monitoring coastlines for changing climate, and managing urban development.

The MOI signed on December 3 takes these initial experiences and expands the partnership to explore on a larger scale how satellite information can be integrated and mainstreamed into the projects and research of the World Bank. This expanded collaboration will focus on ten areas: water, agriculture, urban growth, oceans, disaster risk management, energy and extractives, forests, fragile states, and climate, according to the World Bank.

Recognizing this expanded scope, Tuck stressed that “The World Bank supports client countries in creating open databases and monitoring systems that include geospatial dimensions for better, more transparent evidence and data-driven decision-making. This partnership will enable the Bank and ESA to use data collected from the newer generation of satellites to find innovative solutions to country-specific and global challenges.”

“This collaboration with the World Bank opens a new user community for the geo-spatial information our satellites are delivering from space,” says ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Volker Liebig. “It will also support the development of investment projects to boost prosperity and inclusive growth. This is an excellent initiative for ESA and the World Bank, but especially for ensuring sustainable growth in the future.”

WB page

For more information, please see the “ESA – World Bank “Earth Observation for Sustainable Development” Partnership Report2:http://esamultimedia.esa.int/multimedia/publications/ESA_WB_Partnership_Report_2013_complete/

Earth observation data and information are vital to allow decision-makers and society in general to take informed decisions about climate, energy, food security, natural hazards, health and other societal challenges. These challenges are complex, interrelated, cross-border in nature and interdependent at the global scale and therefore coordination is essential to avoid duplication of efforts and reduce observational gaps.

he European Commission together with 27 EU Member States are active members of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), which provides a global voluntary framework where governments and participating organisations can coordinate their strategies and investments in the field of Earth observation while promoting full and open access to data and information through the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS).

This booklet provides a snapshot of EU-funded projects which illustrate how European research and innovation contribute to this global initiative, showcasing the potential of international collaboration in science for diplomacy.

A Decade of Success in Earth Observation Research and Innovation

Source