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US: The global precision agriculture market is projected to cross $ 5.5 billion in total market value by 2020 after registering a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 12.64% over the period 2014 to 2020.

The report, published by research firm Mordor Intelligence LLP, predicts that the high growth in this sector due to growth in the agricultural industry, government incentives and subsidies. The need for increased productivity due to population growth and cost effectiveness are some of reasons for the recent integration of IT and Big Data Analytics into agriculture.

The precision market involves technologies like GNSS/GPS Systems, GIS, remote sensing, automation and system control: communication and monitoring devices, software and services for farm management systems among others. The APAC has been identified as a region which is yet to reach its maximum potential in the precise farming domain. Precision Agriculture not only ensures efficient use of resources, maximizes output and profitability, but also provides a sustainable solution to farm management practices.

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(30 September 2015) ESA’s SMOS and two other satellites are together providing insight into how surface winds evolve under tropical storm clouds in the Pacific Ocean.

This year, a particularly strong El Niño is resulting in much higher surface ocean temperatures than normal. The surplus heat that is being drawn into the atmosphere is helping to breed tropical cyclones – Pacific Ocean monsters. With eight major hurricanes already, this year’s hurricane season is the fifth most active in the Eastern Tropical Pacific since 1971.

At the end of August, three category-4 hurricanes developed in parallel near Hawaii.

A collage from NASA’s Terra satellite captured the Kilo, Ignacio and Jimena hurricanes beautifully.

However, a special set of eyes is needed to see through the clouds that are so characteristic of these mighty storms so that the speed of the wind at the ocean surface can be measured.

This information is essential to forecast marine weather and waves, and to predict the path that the storm may take so that mariners receive adequate warning of danger.

The microwave detector on SMOS yields information on soil moisture and ocean salinity. Going beyond its original scientific objectives, ESA pioneered the application of SMOS measurements to study wind speeds over the ocean.

Taking this even further, measurements from two other satellites, NASA’s SMAP and Japan’s GCOM-W, which carry differing low-frequency microwave instruments, are being used with readings from SMOS to glean new information about surface winds under hurricanes.

Combining data from multiple satellites in this way provides a unique view of how the surface wind speed evolves under tropical storms in unprecedented detail. This will greatly improve the information on the initial conditions of tropical cyclones fed into weather forecasting, and hence their prediction.

Scientists from Ifremer in France and the Met Office in the UK are assessing these new data and how they could be integrated into hurricane forecasting.

Interactions between the sea and atmosphere on this scale have implications for hurricane forecasting centres and for ocean forecasting systems such as Europe’s Copernicus Marine Environmental Monitoring Service.

Nicolas Reul from Ifremer said, “In addition to improving marine forecasting, the combination of data from sensors on different satellites will definitively enhance our understanding of ocean–atmosphere interactions in intense storms.

“Yet the future of this type of satellite measurement remains uncertain, as follow-on missions are not guaranteed.”

Measurements of sea-surface temperatures reveal cold-water wakes trailing the three recent hurricanes, highlighting the power these winds have in stirring the upper ocean and bringing cooler deep waters to the surface.

Interactions between the sea and atmosphere on this scale have implications for hurricane forecasting centres and for ocean forecasting systems such as Europe’s Copernicus Marine Environmental Monitoring Service.

Nicolas Reul from Ifremer said, “In addition to improving marine forecasting, the combination of data from sensors on different satellites will definitively enhance our understanding of ocean–atmosphere interactions in intense storms.

“Yet the future of this type of satellite measurement remains uncertain, as follow-on missions are not guaranteed.”

Source ESA

(30 September 2015) The French company PlanetObserver, specialized in imagery base map production for more than 25 years, announced today the coverage of more than 50 Mill. sq km with PlanetSAT 15 L8 base map.

Processed from Landsat 8 imagery, PlanetSAT 15 L8 base map offer detailed and seamless geographic information at 15m resolution.

Key benefits of PlanetSAT 15 L8 base map are:

  • Base map produced with fresh data from 2013-2015
  • Cloudless data
  • Natural colour imagery processing

PlanetSAT 15 L8 imagery base map already covers more than 50 Mill. sq km. Areas available stretch from North Africa to all Middle-East countries, Central Asia countries and a large part of India. By the end of 2015, all India, China and Australia will also be covered. The list of countries and areas available is regularly updated on PlanetObserver website.

In order to meet our customers and partners needs, PlanetObserver offers on demand production service for all areas of interest not currently available.

“PlanetSAT 15 L8 base map is a unique product already used by many partners and clients”, says Laurent Masselot, CEO of PlanetObserver. “With our current production flow, we can release new territories on a very regular basis. By the end of this year, PlanetSAT 15 L8 imagery base map will cover around 70 Mill. sq km. Our target for the end of 2016 is to cover America and large parts of Africa.”

Available off-the-shelf in different standard formats, PlanetSAT 15 L8 base map is perfect for many projects: GIS software, visualization and simulation solutions for commercial or military applications, graphic tools for the broadcasting industry, etc.

About PlanetObserver

PlanetObserver offers a full range of value-added geospatial products: PlanetSAT imagery base maps in natural colors with a unique visual quality, PlanetDEM global and accurate Digital Elevation Models, and PlanetAIR aerial photography of France and any places in the world. All products are developed internally, backed up by PlanetObserver’s know-how in geospatial data processing and over 25 years of technological expertise.

PlanetObserver geospatial data are perfect for numerous commercial, military and consumer applications, ranging from web-mapping to 3D visualization and simulation solutions, moving map apps, cartographic mapping to audio-visual production.

(source: PlanetObserver)

(07 Oct 2015) Custom multispectral sensors scheduled for manufacture by 2017; benefits for agriculture.

Image sensor technology developer Teledyne Dalsa is to partner with Denel Spaceteq, Stellenbosch, South Africa, a high-performance satellite systems and solutions provider to African and international aerospace market, with the aim of developing a new multi-spectral image sensor for advanced earth observations.

With Teledyne Dalsa’s experience in multispectral imaging, and Spaceteq’s background in earth observation satellites, this multimillion dollar development project is expected to return high resolution images by 2019 when the next satellite launch is scheduled.

The earth observation application will contribute to the ARMC (African Resource Management are expected to enable acquisition of data for applications such as agriculture, crop and forestry management, urban planning, environment and disaster monitoring.

Sensor priority

Patrick Ndhlovu, General Manager of Spaceteq, commented, “We’re excited to see this project move forward with Teledyne Dalsa. Earth observation satellites are developed by firstly choosing the ideal sensor, then the optics, and then building the rest around that. With their deep understanding of multispectral and hyperspectral imaging, and the challenges associated with these harsh environments, Teledyne Dalsa is an obvious choice for this critical aspect of our product.”

Jean Pierre Luevano, International Sales Manager at Teledyne Dalsa, said, “Our experience with system designs optimized for radiation hardness and extreme environments will give Spaceteq and its customer a competitive advantage in today’s earth observation market by providing unprecedented high resolution images at very small ground resolutions.”

Teledyne Dalsa’s multispectral imaging solutions leverage its long experience in design, fabrication and packaging technologies to achieve multispectral sensitivity in a single fully miniaturized package. A single device can contain multiple imaging areas tailored to different multispectral bandwidths. Positioning advanced dichroic filters directly in the imaging area achieves highly efficient multispectral sensors at various resolutions.

About Denel Spaceteq

Denel Spaceteq is a provider of high-performance small- and medium-sized satellites and related systems and solutions to the local and international aerospace market. Spaceteq through the absorption of SunSpace has its origins in the SUNSAT satellite programme of Stellenbosch University.

SUNSAT, South Africa’s first satellite, was developed completely by a local team of engineers, and launched in 1999 by the American space agency NASA. Most of the team who designed and developed SUNSAT forms the core of Spacteq today.

About the Author
Matthew Peach is a contributing editor to optics.org.

Nowadays, people are asking eagerly for Open Data and Open Government in order to gain access to unmediated facts and knowledge. Open data is, in fact, not a new idea. It is a way to share raw data with the public and put no limitations on its application. Open Government is a similar concept, encouraging the wide dissemination of government information. Integrating different kinds of Open Data often generates greater value.

For example, integrating the space-time distribution of a newly emerging disease and international airline routes may help us to find out how the disease diffuses and even to make predictions about its future diffusion.

With SuperGIS Server, users are able to integrate geo-located Open Data and build an Open Data map platform. By doing this, for example, a government can open its data to the public and become an Open Government. And the citizens can utilize the map platform to gain an overview of the city, like traffic information, house prices, disease distributions, and so on. SuperGIS Server JavaScript API gives users the ability to integrate different kinds of GIS Open data, including CSV, shapefiles, OGC services, KML, and GeoJSON. Get a SuperGIS Server and get ready for the world of Open Data.

A webinar will be held by Supergeo by the end of this month, showing how you can benefit from SuperGIS Server and Open Data. Contact us today to get a 1 month free trial of SuperGIS Server 3.2 and embrace the infinite possibilities of Open Data. Contact us at: staff@supergeo.com.tw.

About Supergeo

Supergeo Technologies Inc. is a leading global provider of GIS software and solutions. Since the establishment, Supergeo has been dedicated to providing state-of-the-art geospatial technologies and comprehensive services for customers around the world. It is our vision to help users utilize geospatial technologies to create a better world.

Supergeo software and applications have been spread over the world to be the backbone of the world’s mapping and spatial analysis. Supergeo is the professional GIS vendor, providing GIS-related users with complete GIS solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms

The UKMap team within The GeoInformation Group has been commissioned by St Helena Government to create a cartographic database for the island’s new 1:25,000 and 1:10,000 scale mapping.

The South Atlantic island, one of the most isolated, inhabited islands in the world, currently relies on Ordnance Survey maps dating back to 1990. Dramatic development changes to accommodate the island’s first and only international airport due to open early 2016 and other new key changes including a major road, infilled valley and new wharf, render the existing maps out of date.

“Having assessed the current OS maps at the equivalent scale, the Government felt that adapting these to St Helena might not be the best option for visually representing the island”, comments Samantha Cherrett, Environmental Data & GIS Manager for St Helena Government. “We are looking for mapping that accurately represents the island whilst being familiar to visitors. The GeoInformation Group will create a cartographic design afresh giving us the flexibility to adapt the map visually to emphasise the island’s important environmental and historical features”.

A key consideration for The GeoInformation Group is to ensure that the various map elements are effectively communicated. For example, roads on the existing maps are all shown with the same symbol, which is very misleading since many of the roads are single track, steep in places and of varying quality. In addition to this, there is limited detailed mapping for the island that shows the information needed so this process has prompted the update of many GIS layers.

The new maps are to be primarily used by tourists and local businesses, however, it is envisaged that the digital product may be used by the GIS department as a base map. Finding places on the island can be deemed quite difficult; directions regularly include “It’s next to Mrs Henry’s House”.

“We consider The GeoInformation Group professional, competitively priced and possessing excellent experience with more detailed mapping”, concludes Cherrett. “We felt that they are best placed to provide us with a high quality product”.

The maps aim to be printed in time for the first flights in late February 2016.

The Indonesian amateur radio society ORARI report that on Monday, 28 September 2015 04:30 hours UT, the LAPAN-A2/ORARI satellite was launched from the Sriharikota Range (SHAR) of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in India. Deployment took place 23 minutes later.

LAPAN-A2 is in a 650 km orbit with an inclination of 6 degrees. It takes about 110 minutes to orbit the Earth and should pass over Indonesia and other near equatorial locations 14 times a day.

The low inclination equatorial orbit means it will be receivable from about 30 degrees North to 30 degrees South. About a third of the world’s population, over 2.4 billion people, live within the coverage area of the satellite.

The primary aims of the mission are Earth observation using an RGB camera and maritime traffic monitoring using AIS, both using frequencies outside the Amateur Satellite Service.

Scientists have created a flowering map for a semi-arid savannah site in Africa using a new remote sensing technology.

Researchers from Finland, Kenya, South Africa and Sudan, who created the map, say that despite significant rural populations of Africa getting income from bee keeping, data on the abundance and distribution of flowering melliferous plants — those that produce nectar and pollen collected by honey bees — are scarce.

_ “As more than 90 per cent of vegetable and fruits we eat are reliant on pollination, the availability of flowering plants and bees becomes a food security issue,”_ says Tobias Landmann, a co-author of the study and head of Geo-Information Unit of the Kenya-headquartered International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology.

The space-borne technology combines two mapping techniques — digital imaging and spectroscopy — that increase the ability to detect individually separate and distinct materials of interest for gathering key information towards identifying and classifying them, Landmann adds.

According to the study published in the Remote Sensing of Environmentjournal this month (1 September), researchers deployed a space-borne sensor on an aircraft, thus covering larger areas more effectively and systematically than ground surveys. They used the aircraft to help collect data on flowering plants in Mwingi County, eastern Kenya, during flowering seasons in February 2013 and January 2014. The researchers grouped flowering plants into brown leaves, crops, white forbs, white green and yellow green.

“All flowering plant groups together could be mapped with an overall accuracy of 83 per cent,” the researchers write in the journal.

Landmann tells SciDev.Net: “Previously farmers were drawing up floral calendars using field notes. This is tedious and highly subjective to errors. Farmers need floral calendars to know what to expect from the landscape in terms of bee hive productivity.”

According to its creators, the map is the first for a semi-arid savannah site in Africa.
Landmann adds that the new strategy for producing the map could be replicated in other parts of Africa because there are new and good spatial and spectral resolution space-borne remote sensing sensors available.
But he adds satellite signals would have to be validated using field observations within a particular area.

According to Landmann, the map could benefit agricultural extension officers, decision makers and beekeepers.

“Many beekeepers in rural Africa are dependent on products from bee keeping such as propolis, honey and wax [for] livelihoods strategy,” says Landmann. “For instance, in Kenya up to 25 per cent of farmers generate extra income from selling bee keeping products.”

He explains that practices such as deforestation remove flowering trees from the landscape, impeding bee productivity and ultimately livelihoods.

The project took one and a half years to complete as part of a 13 million euro (about US$14.7 million) project on bee health funded by the European Union.

Lusike Wasilwa, head of crop systems at the Kenya Agriculture Livestock Research Organisation, who was not involved in the study, says: “This will provide information on foraging of pollinators required by farmers to project impact on yields. It will also show the importance of pollinators.”

A Kenya-based consultant in research and agronomy, Peter Okoth, says the study is novel in the field of flower mapping, but adds that many interested actors might find it costly to use aircrafts for collecting data.

“More financial resources are therefore needed in order to extend the benefits of the mapping methodology beyond [the site] in Kenya,” he explains.

But Landmann says they intend to adapt and then apply a similar approach to satellite data to map larger areas without always having to rely on aircrafts, which is more expensive and tedious.

It was rain that wouldn’t quit. A weather system fueled by warm moisture streaming in from the Atlantic Ocean on Oct. 3 and 4 relentlessly dumped between 1 and 2 feet (0.3 and 0.6 meters) of rain across most of South Carolina. The result was rivers topping their banks and dams bursting. Catastrophic flooding followed across most of the state, which has left residents in some areas without power or clean drinking water.

Tracking and predicting the deluge, both as rain and then as floodwater, are the first steps to help protect people in harm’s way. State and federal emergency managers have been on the front lines of this natural disaster since it began, armed with weather and flood forecasts from the National Weather Service. NASA has supported these efforts with information based on data from Earth-observing satellites in space.

The Global Precipitation Measurement, or GPM, mission, a joint project of NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), provided regular data on the amount of rain falling across the region. The GPM Core Observatory, launched in 2014, combines data with a network of international partner satellites that together provide updated rainfall estimates every three hours.

These data, managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, confirmed the record-breaking rainfall totals and fed into other systems that helped forecast the extent of the flooding in the region.

As essential as following the rain is knowing what happens when it reaches the ground. The NASA Short-term Prediction Research and Transition Center, or SPoRT, at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, runs a computer simulation model called the NASA Land Information System for most of the central and eastern United States, including the Carolinas.

The SPoRT Project used rainfall data from the GPM mission and measurements from NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite in this near real-time simulation, and provided the National Weather Service (NWS) forecast offices with experimental soil moisture data that can aid short-term flood forecasting. Soil moisture describes the ability of the ground to absorb water, like a sponge.

During the record-setting rainfall event, soil moisture across South Carolina reached 75 to 100 percent saturation. At these high levels of saturation, the soil no longer has the sponge capacity to hold the water, so it flows over the land – leading to flash floods.

GPM rainfall data are used in another NASA-funded flood prediction tool that follows water on the ground, the Global Flood Monitoring System, developed and run by researchers at the University of Maryland, College Park. The Global Flood Monitoring System takes current satellite rain data and combines them with a model of the land surface – showing slopes, streams and rivers – and soil moisture to project the likelihood of flooding based on when rivers broke their banks in the past.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Homeland Security use these maps to help tell where the flooding is now, after the rainfall, and where flooding may continue in the days ahead as floodwaters move downstream.

Even before the storm clouds cleared, efforts to assess the damage from space had begun. NASA’s Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, developed plans to analyze before-and-after data from synthetic aperture radars (SAR) flown by the Italian Space Agency and JAXA. These data can see through clouds to detect changes in the urban environment, such as storm damage to buildings and roads.

NASA uses the vantage point of space to increase our understanding of our home planet, improve lives and safeguard our future. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth’s interconnected natural systems with long-term data records. The agency freely shares this unique knowledge and works with institutions around the world to gain new insights into how our planet is changing.

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