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© copernicus.eu. To coincide with the release of the second phase of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (EMS), an update to the EMS User Guide has been published to reflect changes to service and product specifications, as well as the transition from GMES to Copernicus.

This activity involved a study of user requirements and incorporated recommendations from the European Commission services DG GROW, DG ECHO, DG JRC and Member States.

Based on the findings of the study, the updated Copernicus EMS User Guide contains the following documents:

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The 83rd meeting of the EUMETSAT Council in Darmstadt, Germany, on 23 and 24 June successfully concluded the approval process for the EUMETSAT Polar System Second Generation (EPS-SG) programme and achieved progress in the approval process for the optional Jason-CS programme.

Regarding Meteosat Third Generation (MTG), the Council approved the
contract with Arianespace for the first three launch services (MTG-I1, MTG-S1 and MTG–I2).

The Council also confirmed Alain Ratier as the Director-General of EUMETSAT for a further period of four years, until 31 July 2020. Ratier has served the organisation since 2011.

Please click below to read the full text:http://bit.ly/1Jj0U3l

(Brussels, 23 June 2015) Europe’s Earth observation programme “Copernicus” is making further headway in tackling environmental disasters, improving land use for agriculture and forestry and responding to emergency situations.

One year after the successful launch of the first Copernicus satellite (“Sentinel 1”), a second satellite (“Sentinel 2”) was successfully sent into orbit at 03:52 CET on Tuesday 23 June from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

Elżbieta Bieńkowska, Commissioner for Internal market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs said: “Today’s success is not only an achievement for European space policy. Above all, it will benefit citizens down here on Earth. Copernicus provides more precise and reliable information about our environment and European citizens’ security. And the availability of full, free and open satellite observation data is already today allowing innovative entrepreneurs to create new applications and services in Europe.”

The launch of the Sentinel 2 satellite is the fruit of European technological and industrial excellence and brings us further in our path to a new world standard for Earth observation data. The flow of open and free data is already today creating a market for satellite-enabled products and services, providing highly qualified jobs, with spill-over effects across the economy.

The addition of a second satellite will allow Copernicus to deliver images of Earth’s changing land with a high level of detail and accuracy. Citizens and businesses have free, full and open access to the Copernicus data that can be used to manage and protect the environment and natural resources, tackle climate change, and ensure civil security. Sentinel 2 data can help farmers in monitoring the changes in vegetation and cultures during the growing season. The Copernicus data can help in responding to emergency situations, whether man-made accidents or natural disasters such as flooding and landslides. In the recent earthquake in Nepal, the combination of the pictures acquired before and after the quake by the Copernicus satellite helped local relief efforts to target their resources.

Background

The Copernicus programme is made possible by European technological and industrial excellence and the joint efforts of the European Commission, the European Parliament, EU Member States and the European Space Agency.

Copernicus will help create new jobs and business opportunities. Already today, space activities foster the development of a market for satellite-enabled products and services. A range of new business models are beginning to flourish around the services and data provided by Copernicus, paving the way for innovative entrepreneurs to create new applications and services.

In addition to the space industry, a number of economic segments will see the advantages of accurate and reliable earth observation data, such as transport, oil and gas, insurance and agriculture.

Studies show that Copernicus, which by 2021 will include six satellites, could generate a financial benefit of some €30 billion and create around 50,000 jobs in Europe by 2030.

Moreover, the open dissemination regime for Copernicus data and service information will help citizens, businesses, researchers and policy makers to integrate an environmental dimension into all their activities and decision-making procedures.

More information available at
Copernicus web site
Sentinel 2A Launch Kit

Copernicus Services:

Land Monitoring
Emergency Management
Security
Climate Change

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The European Space Agency (ESA) has launched the second phase of a 4.3-billion-euro ($4.91-billion) programme to deploy new-generation satellites to monitor environmental damage and aid disaster relief operations, officials said early Monday 22 June.

Sentinel-2A was hoisted by a lightweight Vega rocket from ESA’s base in Kourou, French Guiana, overnight Monday-Tuesday (22/23 June), launch operator Arianespace said.

The 1.1-tonne polar-orbiting satellite is designed to loop the world every 100 minutes, providing high-definition optical imaging of vegetation, soil and freshwater to a resolution of 10 metres (32.5 feet), helping monitoring of forest cover, water stress and crop health. It will also provide information for emergency services,

It and a partner are the second of six scheduled pairs of Earth-monitoring satellites under the Copernicus programme, an initiative headed by the European Union’s executive Commission in conjunction with ESA.

Sentinel-1A, designed to scan the Earth’s surface with cloud-penetrating radar, was launched in April 2014. Sentinels 1B and 2B are due for deployment in 2016, according to the ESA website.

Copernicus succeeds Envisat, one of the most successful environmental satellites in space history, whose mission ended in 2012.

The programme was initially called Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES), but was renamed in 2013 to honour the 16th-century Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who determined the Earth orbited the Sun, and not the other way around, as convention had it at the time.

Spacedaily

Developing policies and programming operations related to the green economy require data and scientific evidence.

The 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio+20, which acknowledged that green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication as one of the important tools available for achieving sustainable development, also recognized the importance of space-technology-based data, in situ monitoring and reliable geospatial information for sustainable development. In this context, the contribution of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) was acknowledged.

Earth Observations (EO) are collected by a wide diversity of sensors on-board various monitoring platforms such as ships, buoys, aircrafts, balloons, drones, or satellites. They can also be ground-based or acquired by citizens using for instance their smart phones or other mobile devices. Such monitoring sensors and the related Earth observation information systems are managed by a high diversity of public and private entities around the world.

GEOSS is a global infrastructure using land, sea, air and space-based Earth observation systems to provide comprehensive environmental data, information and analyses. GEOSS connects and strengthen co-operation efforts among existing observing and processing systems within their mandate. These include, for example, the World Meteorological Organisation’s Information System (WIS) or the South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON), among many others. The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) is coordinating efforts to build and implement the GEOSS. The European Commission is currently one of the four co-chairs of this initiative, together with the United States, South Africa and China.

A video shows through the examples of the Global Mercury Observation System and the Global Forest Observing Initiative how GEOSS can support Convention and Policies as well as pioneering activity in the environmental monitoring using highly advanced e-infrastructures.

Under the Environment theme of the European 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development more than 50 GEO-related projects were funded with a total EU contribution of over €200 million euros in support of four main areas:

  • Integration of European activities within the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), supporting European activities at global level
  • Cross-cutting research activities relevant to GEO understanding, modelling and predicting environmental phenomena
  • Emerging Earth observation activities, supporting the development of European earth observation systems and activities in areas of environmental research needed for GEOSS
  • Developing capacity-building activities in the domain of Earth observation, providing support to international research initiatives in which Europe would contribute to the development of observing systems.

Capacity building activities targeted both European and non-European countries. For instance, the project entitled “A framework for enhancing Earth Observation capacity for Agriculture and Forest Management in Africa as a contribution to GEOSS” (AGRICAB) strengthened African capacities in the use of Earth Observation satellite data for sustainably managing crops, livestock and forest resources. AGRICAB project brought together satellite data providers, researchers, capacity builders, operational practitioners and decision makers, to build a sustainable and comprehensive framework for strengthening the existing African capacities in using EO for better monitoring, understanding and managing natural resources.

The Horizon 2020 Societal Challenge 5 on Climate action, resource efficiency and raw material foresees an activity in direct support to the EU research and innovation contribution to GEOSS. It is about developing comprehensive and sustained global environmental observation and information systems and has the goal of ensuring the delivery of the long-term data and information required to address this societal challenge. An important emphasis is put on the need to support large, long-term initiatives able to provide the necessary knowledge base for the implementation EU policies, such as those in the field of development and environment.

If you want to share your story of how Earth observations are being used to address global societal and environmental challenges, you can participate now in the GEO 2015 Short Video Competition for the GEO-XII Plenary and Ministerial Summit that will take place in Mexico City on 13 November 2015. Winning videos will be shown during the GEO Ministerial Summit. The deadline for submissions is 30 September 2015. More details are available here

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NASA has released data showing how temperature and rainfall patterns worldwide may change through the year 2100 because of growing concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere. The dataset, which is available to the public, shows projected changes worldwide on a regional level in response to different scenarios of increasing carbon dioxide simulated by 21 climate models.

The high-resolution data, which can be viewed on a daily timescale at the scale of individual cities and towns, will help scientists and planners conduct climate risk assessments to better understand local and global effects of hazards, such as severe drought, floods, heat waves and losses in agriculture productivity.

NASA is in the business of taking what we’ve learned about our planet from space and creating new products that help us all safeguard our future,” said Ellen Stofan, NASA chief scientist. “With this new global dataset, people around the world have a valuable new tool to use in planning how to cope with a warming planet.”

The new dataset is the latest product from the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX), a big-data research platform within the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Center at the agency’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. In 2013, NEX released similar climate projection data for the continental United States that is being used to quantify climate risks to the nation’s agriculture, forests, rivers and cities.

“This is a fundamental dataset for climate research and assessment with a wide range of applications,” said Ramakrishna Nemani, NEX project scientist at Ames. “NASA continues to produce valuable community-based data products on the NEX platform to promote scientific collaboration, knowledge sharing, and research and development.”

This NASA dataset integrates actual measurements from around the world with data from climate simulations created by the international Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project.

These climate simulations used the best physical models of the climate system available to provide forecasts of what the global climate might look like under two different greenhouse gas emissions scenarios: a “business as usual” scenario based on current trends and an “extreme case” with a significant increase in emissions.

The NASA climate projections provide a detailed view of future temperature and precipitation patterns around the world at a 15.5 mile (25 kilometer) resolution, covering the time period from 1950 to 2100. The 11-terabyte dataset provides daily estimates of maximum and minimum temperatures and precipitation over the entire globe.

NEX is a collaboration and analytical platform that combines state-of-the-art supercomputing, Earth system modeling, workflow management and NASA remote-sensing data. Through NEX, users can explore and analyze large Earth science data sets, run and share modeling algorithms and workflows, collaborate on new or existing projects and exchange workflows and results within and among other science communities.

NEX data and analysis tools are available to the public through the OpenNEX project on Amazon Web Services. OpenNEX is a partnership between NASA and Amazon, Inc., to enhance public access to climate data, and support planning to increase climate resilience in the U.S. and internationally. OpenNEX is an extension of the NASA Earth Exchange in a public cloud-computing environment.

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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The Centre for Earth Observation Instrumentation and Space Technology is pleased to announce a Call for Mission and Technology Preparation activities for the ESA Call for Proposals for Earth Explorer 9. The timescales of the ESA Call are not yet confirmed, but it may be released towards the end of 2015, with submissions due around mid-2016.

The total budget available for the CEOI-ST Call will be up to £2M, which is expected to fund around 6-8 projects. In addition, PV funds may be required from industrial bidders, depending on the GBER category of the activities. Projects are expected to complete in 6-12 months.

The CEOI-ST Call will be released towards the middle of June 2015, when full details will be available, with a closing date 6 weeks later (i.e. end July 2015). It is anticipated that proposal selection will be conducted during August/September 2015 with projects typically starting from September/October 2015.

Proposals are invited for projects to undertake either Mission Preparation and/or Technology Development activities. Successful proposals will need to present a strong science relevance case linked to the societal challenges identified in ESA EO science strategy.

The activities should be aimed at consolidating the mission teaming with close involvement of potential mission PI’s/Co-PI’s and also, where appropriate, aim to strengthen the technology readiness of relevant UK technologies.

For further information contact:
Mr Chris Brownsword, CEOI-ST Technical Director
QinetiQ, Farnborough
Tel: 01252 393918 (land line)
07825 762527 (mobile)
Email: cbrownsword@QinetiQ.com

The Call will be issued on behalf of the UK Space Agency by the CEOI-ST Partners (Airbus DS Ltd, QinetiQ Ltd, STFC/RAL Space and University of Leicester)

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MINSK, 1 June (BelTA) – Belarus and India intend to develop a joint program in the field of remote sensing of the Earth, BelTA learned from the press service of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus (NASB).


“The National Academy of Sciences of Belarus is actively developing cooperation with partners from the Republic of India. Negotiations are underway with the Ministry of Science and Technology of India on the mechanism of initiating joint programs in the field of remote sensing of the Earth,” the NASB explained.

The press service reported that in 2015, the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus are Indian partners are carrying out projects in the field of new materials and laser technologies to the tune of $510,000. Last year the partners implemented projects in new materials and agriculture totaling $290,000. Two contracts in these areas are expected to be signed soon.

“This year the Powder Metallurgy Institute of the State Scientific and Production Association of Powder Metallurgy and the DMRL Laboratory (based in Hyderabad) signed the contract “Making foamed metal from nickel superalloy and titanium alloy, the organization of a trial manufacturing site at DMRL.” Moreover, the Stepanov Institute of Physics is implementing a joint project funded by the Belarusian National Foundation for Fundamental Research. The project is called “Laser synthesis of composite nanostructure for targeted use in sensor elements,” the NASB informed.

There are now two framework agreements on cooperation in science and technology between Belarus and India: the agreement on scientific cooperation with the Department of Biotechnology of the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Government of India (DBT) (2000) and the agreement of scientific cooperation with the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) (2003). In addition, there is the intergovernmental Belarusian-Indian commission on cooperation in the field of science and technology on the basis of the agreement on cooperation in science and technology between the governments of the two countries, whose main objective is to coordinate the Belarusian-Indian scientific and technical cooperation in priority areas.

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LONDON—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Apr. 28, 2015— DigitalGlobe, Inc. (NYSE: DGI), a leading global provider of high-resolution earth imagery and geospatial solutions, today announced the general availability of its Basemap +Vivid product for the entire African continent. Keeping pace with the rapid evolution of mapping technology, this is the first time that a complete, consistent satellite imagery base layer with 50 cm ground resolution has been available for Africa.

Many parts of Africa have never been mapped at this resolution from space, and never before has there been a complete imagery base map of Africa with this level of detail. While 50 cm satellite imagery for Africa has been available since 2008, it previously only covered smaller areas of interest. To meet the rapidly growing needs of our customers, DigitalGlobe purposed our satellite constellation to cover every country in Africa so we could build and produce this unique offering for some of the most rapidly growing economies in the world.

This Africa base map strives to maximize consistency and completeness of the imagery, aligning to DigitalGlobe’s A3C quality program. Whether zoomed out to view an entire country, or zoomed in all the way down to view local vegetation, dwellings, and infrastructure, the imagery looks the way a user expects the earth’s surface to look. This uniformity helps local governments or global development agencies to build out maps and value-added information layers such as road vectors or population polygons for the people they serve. For web-enabled mapping platforms and location-based applications, users will stay immersed in their experience and not be distracted by inconsistencies in the imagery.

While businesses and governments have been leveraging satellite imagery for years, many applications have been hampered by lower resolution imagery or incomplete coverage over certain areas. Now with Basemap +Vivid, DigitalGlobe can deliver a beautiful, consistent, complete, geospatial-ready view of Africa.

“This is an important accomplishment in response to requests from our customers to create a verifiable, authoritative base map covering the entire continent,” said Hyune Hand, DigitalGlobe’s Senior Vice President for Product Marketing and Management. “Demand continues to grow, fueled by both regional projects and programs that require consistent quality coverage of an entire country.”

DigitalGlobe was in a unique position to develop this product with the world’s most advanced constellation of commercial imaging satellites and six years’ worth of sub-50 cm archive imagery. Not only does DigitalGlobe have the largest and most comprehensive archive of commercial satellite imagery for source data, but the research and development teams have invented and patented algorithms to process imagery at an unmatched speed and scale. Now prospective imagery users do not have to tackle the challenges of building a large imagery mosaic – such as inconsistencies between images, misalignment, visible seam lines, color imbalances, seasonality, haze, and cloud cover – to have a country-wide imagery layer on which to build the next generation of maps and applications.

Many organizations across the spectrum – public, private, and not-for-profit – are now able to use this unique imagery base map to help achieve their goals. Visit explore.digitalglobe.com/Basemap-Vivid.html today to learn more.

About DigitalGlobe

DigitalGlobe is a leading provider of commercial high-resolution earth observation and advanced geospatial solutions that help decision makers better understand our changing planet in order to save lives, resources and time. Sourced from the world’s leading constellation, our imagery solutions deliver unmatched coverage and capacity to meet our customers’ most demanding mission requirements. Each day customers in defense and intelligence, public safety, civil agencies, map making and analysis, environmental monitoring, oil and gas exploration, infrastructure management, navigation technology, and providers of location-based services depend on DigitalGlobe data, information, technology and expertise to gain actionable insight.

DigitalGlobe is a registered trademark of DigitalGlobe.
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DigitalGlobe
Nancy Coleman, 303-684-1674
Senior Director of Communications
nancy.coleman@digitalglobe.com
or
Investor Relations Contact:
David Banks, 303-684-4210
Vice President of Investor Relations
ir@digitalglobe.com
or
Edelman for DigitalGlobe
digitalglobe@edelman.com

South Africa’s National Space Agency (Sansa) has launched the latest update to its high definition satellite imaging capability, by licensing the capabilities of the latest orbiting cameras through the SPOT 6 (Satellite Pour l’Observation de la Terre) program.

Through SPOT 6, Sansa will be able to order new imagery on demand and make it available to government departments to help with national planning objectives and keeping track of agricultural and environmental issues.

During the launch of Sansa’s 2015 SPOT 6 mosaic in Pretoria Dr Sandile Malinga, CEO of Sansa, explained that the use of the SPOT satellite imagery has far-reaching benefits for South Africa.

This is the 10th year that Sansa has released the SPOT mosaic – the complete view of South Africa from space – at an annual gathering to discuss the use of the SPOT satellite imagery among government organisations.

“SPOT is important to Sansa and the nation as a whole. What do we do with it? Well, the number of applications are actually unlimited, but we use it for monitoring food security, energy security through weather forecasting, national mineral management, and urban planning,” Malinga said.

He added that SPOT is crucial in the decision-making process and a valuable support tools, as it provides crucial geospatial information. The cost of making use of SPOT runs into the millions of Rands each year, but Malinga (while not divulging the cost) said that it is worth the investment.

In previous years, Sansa has made use of the SPOT 5 satellite, but for 2015 and going forward, the organisation is making use of SPOT 6 and SPOT 7.

SPOT 6 was launched in September 2012 and SPOT 7 was launched in 2014, and the Sansa team activated the licence for use in March this year. Going from SPOT 5 to 6/7, Sansa can update its imagery of South Africa with better quality images.
This should give you a good idea of what imagery from SPOT 6 looks like.

This should give you a good idea of what imagery from SPOT 6 looks like.

And by using both satellites in tandem, the organisation has seasonal coverage of South Africa is its sight as it has already covered 88% of the nation.

Sansa’s Earth Observation Managing Director Dr Jane Olwoch, said that by moving from SPOT 5 to SPOT 6/7 has huge benefits for the country.

“We have shown that Sansa can host large datasets, and I would like to commend the progress that has already been made. Moving from 5 to 6/7, it is an innovation that promises the country better and timely information.”

Globally, the SPOT satellites have taken 11.3 billion images of earth, and 24% of those are clear shots with literally not a cloud in the sky. South Africa’s national coverage from SPOT started in 2006, and to date that data has been distributed to over 50 organs of the state.

SPOT 6 and 7 are two satellites which follow the same orbital path, but are 180 degrees apart from each other. By working together their highly responsive sensors can capture data in multiple wavelengths to reveal more than just photographic detail.
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“We will have the ability to accommodate urgent tasking requests, which are great for disaster management applications and we will also get four weather forecasts per day, which is integrated automatically into the tasking process to optimise efficiency.”

This is significant, as 60% of the imagery taken from any location in the country will have less than 10% cloud cover.
For another good example of its uses, here you can clearly see the migration of wildebeest in Kenya [Image – GeoEye-1]

For another good example of its uses, here you can clearly see the migration of wildebeest in Kenya [Image – GeoEye-1]

Previously, government organisations had to notify Sansa well in advance if it wanted satellite imagery, but with 6/7 that window has been reduced to a couple of days.

Making use of satellites to look at objects and places on earth can conjure up thoughts of secret agents tracking an elusive criminal by identifying the brand of soft drink he consumed.

Well, that would be theoretically be possible with possibly different technology, but since SPOT 6/7 have the capacity to produce images with a 1.5 meter resolution in natural colour, it is better suited to food at large areas of land rather than small details. It would be possible to see the migration of vegetation, but its definitely not capable of checking motor vehicle licence numbers.

But taking daily images of South Africa generates a huge amount of data, and that has to be stored somewhere.

From June this year, Sansa will slowly start to move the data to a better format, as DVDs, hard drives and compact disc aren’t as effective any more.

The organisation will be making the move to a .ftp site that will make use of Sansa credentials so that anybody can log in and view images.

“We need to develop an online platform as a long term solution, like making use of a web mapping service for disseminating all the Sansa products and service,” Kekana explained.

As mentioned, with Sansa having a licence to pull imagery of South Africa from the SPOT satellites are a huge benefit to the nation. It helps with urban planning, checking agricultural movements and can even keep track of illegal miners.

All in all, it is very important for South Africa to be able to keep track of a variety of aspects that are of national importance, and SPOT 6/7 allows it do just that for the various government organisation and department.

But how is this different to using Google Earth? Well, Google gets most of its imagery from DigitalGlobe and it isn’t always up to date. You might have noticed chunks of different coloured patches in Google Earth, and that is caused when images from different time periods are stitched (or meshed) together to form a cohesive image. And for legal and security reasons, all images on Google Earth have to be older than six month. So in short, it isn’t very accurate when you want to track something sensitive, important or immediately.

And in case you were wondering: no, SPOT6/7 or Sansa doesn’t have any high resolution images of Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla homestead. We did ask.

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