Category: Programmes

ESA and the Romanian Space Agency (ROSA) have entered into a close cooperation, which includes joint activities and collaboration in the area of Earth observation. These activities started even before Romania became an official ESA Member State. Romania plays a crucial role in maintaining a European-wide balanced approach to the activities of ESA.

As per the agreement, ROSA will coordinate ground segment activities in Romania – such as hosting, distributing, ensuring access and archiving Sentinel data – and act as an interface between ESA and national initiatives. ROSA also plans to cooperate with different European partners and institutes.

The data provided by the Sentinel missions are used mainly for Copernicus Services, but these free and open data are also used by scientists across the globe.

The Sentinel Collaborative Ground Segment would provide complimentary access to Sentinel data and to specific data products or distribution channels. The collaborative elements bring specialized solutions for further boosting the Sentinel missions’ exploitation in various domains, such as data acquisition and (quasi-) real-time production, complementary products and algorithms definitions, data dissemination and access, development of innovative tools and applications as well as complementary support to calibration and validation activities.

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Contributors which submit short and inspiring articles will benefit from enhanced outreach actions in 2018 and 2019. For example, the selected user stories will be gathered in a publication which will be made freely and openly available both online and as a high-quality printed edition. In addition to a wide promotion among policy-makers in local and regional administrations, elected representatives in European and Member State Parliaments and industry chief executives, the publication will be presented in the frame of a dedicated event at the European Parliament in Autumn 2018. Last but not least, exemplary cases from the publication will be turned into videos or serve as basis for thematic working sessions.

DEADLINE: Friday, 16th February 2018
More information

The 10th EU Space Policy Conference in Brussels has provided a suitable framework for this ceremony.

The arrangement, signed by ESA Director of Earth Observation Programmes Josef Aschbacher, on behalf of ESA Director General JD Woerner, and SatCen Director Pascal Legai will provide a stable foundation for further collaboration between the two organisations, in order to improve synergies between space and security activities and to further develop operational capabilities.

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During this year 8 regional workshops were organised in the region of interest (Balkans, Middle East and North Africa) towards the implementation of GEO, GEOSS and Copernicus, identifying the local challenges and needs that can be addressed with the Earth Observation (EO), enabling more informed decision making, while seeking solutions to enhance growth and innovation in the geo-information sector. Furthermore, the GEO-CRADLE partners participated in several conferences and workshops all over the world, disseminating the added value of the project, the GEO priorities, and the Copernicus services.

In addition, during 2017, GEO-CRADLE launched both its Networking Platform and its Regional Data Hub, which are publicly available online from the project’s portal. The Networking Platform provides a wealth of information on key EO stakeholders active in North Africa, Middle East, and the Balkans. The users can navigate through the profiles of stakeholders and be informed on the existing networks, capacities, skills, etc. in the entire region. Whilst the platform is primarily targeting stakeholders from the region, organisations from other countries are invited to become part of the network too. The Regional Data Hub provides access to both region-related datasets, portals, and services developed by a regional network of raw data providers, intermediate users/service providers, end-users from the industry, the academic and public sector from the region of interest, and, also, datasets and services directly fed from the GEOSS-portal. Discover the Networking Platform and the Regional Data Hub, register your profile and your data & services, and make the most of these opportunities!

Last but not least, GEO-CRADLE actively participated in the GEO Week 2017, 23-27 October 2017 in Washington D.C., USA, with a message “Fostering regional cooperation and roadmap for GEOSS and Copernicus”. GEO Week 2017, consisting of GEO-XIV Plenary, side events and exhibition, highlighted and promoted the role, applications and opportunities to use EO in delivering ‘Insight into a changing world. With a focus on delivery and impact, GEO Week 2017 explored the use and applications of EO in both the public and private sectors for the benefit of humankind.

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After a three-years period of intensive work towards meeting the ambitious scientific objectives, URBANFLUXES is now concluded. It introduced novel ideas on how the different components of the Urban Energy Budget (UEB) can be observed from space, thereby generating new Earth Observation (EO) opportunities of benefit to climate change mitigation/ adaptation and civil protection.

Read more about the project’s achievements

URBANFLUXES developed methodologies for estimating urban energy fluxes using satellite data notably Copernicus Sentinels data.

Read the Copernicus Sentinels for Urban Energy Fluxes

Where does the data come from?

The CCI programme produces the most complete and consistent possible time series of multi-sensor global satellite data products for climate research and modelling. It does this by making full use of the long-term global Earth Observation archives that ESA, together with its member states, have established over the last 40 years, as a contribution to the climate databases required by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The CCI brings together European expertise in Earth Observation with that from the climate research community to address Essential Climate Variables (ECV) that can be generated using satellite observations. The CCI programme has developed data records on 13 ECVs and will start the production of an additional 9 in 2018.

The resulting data products are stored in and made available from the CCI Open Data Portal (cci.esa.int/data) and the CCI Toolbox makes these directly accessible through its interfaces for visualisation, analysis and processing.

“CCI Toolbox – My first choice for a quick start with the CCI data sets” Rainer Hollmann, Champion Users Lead

Is it free?

Entirely free – both data and CCI Toolbox. The toolbox is also Open Source under the MIT License.

Are the toolbox features relevant to the Climate Community?

The CCI Toolbox has been developed and advanced by a specialised team who use an interactive method of working together to adjust Cate’s capabilities to user needs. The Cate team is composed of both professional software scientists and climate users, or “Champion Users” as we call them. This means that the climate users are driving the software development. An Agile development process has been adopted by users and developers, with 3-monthly releases, which allow users to define features to be implemented and to try out, and test, the successful implementation. This incremental approach with short iteration cycles ensures the toolbox is fit-for-purpose, and that we can react to new emerging needs.

“I am used to working with many different users; scientists, managers and students. My ambition is to make Cate the tool of choice when a scientifically sound, and technical reliable analysis software is needed by these users. We have chosen the most popular scientific programming language Python. We have also allowed all the operations to be critically reviewed by champion users as peers. As a result Cate offers a modern, intuitive graphical user interface to achieve this goal.” Carsten Brockmann, Science Lead

How do we decide what goes in releases?

We use climate change ‘use cases’ that are defined by our Champion Users: 22 use cases have been compiled. They cover a wide range of applications from high level scenarios, through to scientific questions, for instance “Renewable Energy Resource Assessment Regarding Topography”, to education in “School Seminar Climate and Weather”. All the use cases can be found at http://cate.readthedocs.io/en/latest/use_cases.html. We’re always happy to hear new use cases for the CCI Toolbox, so do feel free to get in touch.

“ I hope all our users will have as much fun as the team has in developing it” Norman Fomferra, Technical Lead

How does the CCI Toolbox actually work?

The CCI Toolbox, Cate, is a Python package which provides a command-line interface (CLI), an application programming interface (API), and an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI). Cate implements climate data visualisation and processing, and provides a suite of analysis functions. It defines a common climate data model spanning all climate variables and provides a common framework to register, lookup and invoke operations and workflows on data represented in the common data model.

Who is it built by?

The CCI Toolbox project partners comprise Brockmann Consult GmbH (Lead Partner), Telespazio VEGA UK, Science [&] Technology Corporation (S[&]T), Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD), University of Reading, University of Zurich, and is supported by ESA.

More information

Download and find out more about the CCI Toolbox at www.climatetoolbox.io or contact Ed Pechorro (ed.pechorro@esa.int).

From left to right: Grzegorz Brona (Creotech), Philippe Brunet (European Commission), Roberto Mulatti (SERCO), Josef Aschbacher (ESA), Mathilde Royer Germain (Airbus) and Stéphane Janichewski (ATOS)

Following a tender and evaluation process, ESA, acting on behalf of the European Commission, has now signed DIAS contracts with four industrial consortia. DIAS will give unlimited, free and complete access to Copernicus data and information.

DIAS provides a scalable computing and storage environment for third parties. Third parties will be empowered to offer advanced value-adding services integrating Copernicus with their own data and tools to the benefit of their own users.

The contracts, signed by Josef Aschbacher, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, mean that by the second quarter of 2018, five DIAS, including the one to be developed by Eumetsat in cooperation with European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and Mercator Ocean, will be available to users.

DIAS will not only provide a cloud-based one-stop shop for all Copernicus satellite data and imagery as well as information from the six Copernicus services, but will also give access to sophisticated processing tools and resources.

Philippe Brunet, Director for Space Policy, Copernicus and Defence at EC DG GROW, said, “This is a key milestone in the Copernicus programme. We are kick-starting the development of European data access and cloud processing services. “The vision of the European Commission is that the DIAS platforms will make it even easier for users from various industries and backgrounds to create Copernicus-based applications and services that will benefit people in Europe and around the world.”

The four winning consortia are:

• Led by Serco Europe, consortium includes OVH, Gael Systems and Sinergise Ltd.
• Led by Creotech Instruments, consortium includes Cloud Ferro, Sinergise Ltd, Geomatis SAS, Outsourcing Partner Sp. z o.o., Wroclaw Institute of Spatial Information and Artificial Intelligence Sp. z o.o.
• Led by ATOS Integration, consortium includes T-SYSTEM International, DLR, eGEOS, EOX, GAF, Sinergise Ltd, Spacemetric, and Thales Alenia Space.
• Led by Airbus Defence and Space, consortium includes Orange SA, Airbus Defence and Space, Geo SA, Capgemini Technology Services SAS, CLS and VITO.

More information

Read EARSC’s members press releases:

• Airbus Defence and Space
• CloudFerro
• Serco
• Spacemetric

The award ceremony holds on the margins of the 5th AU-EU Summit in Abidjan, Cote d`Ivoire.

Following a Call for Proposals in May 2017, a number of African institutions operating in the areas of water, natural resources, marine and coastal areas, applied for the GMES and Africa Support Programme Grants. To evaluate the applications and select the most suitable consortia of institutions that submitted proposals, the African Union Commission instituted a committee supported by a team of assessors comprising African earth observation experts.

Thirteen consortia of institutions were finally selected and the award marks the official announcement of their selection:

1. Central Africa: Agence Gabonaise d’Etudes et d’Observations Spatiale (AGEOS) and Commission Internationale du Bassin Congo-Oubangui-Sangha (CICOS) for Water and natural resources service.

2. East Africa: IGAD Climate Prediction and Application Centre (ICPAC) and Regional Centre for Mapping off Resources for Development (RCMRD) for Water and natural resources service; Mauritius Oceanography Institute (MOI) for Marine and coastal areas service

3.North Africa: National Authority for Remote Sensing & Space Sciences (NARSS) for marine and coastal area service; Observatoire du Sahara et du Sahel (OSS) for water and natural ressources service

4. Southern Africa: Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) for marine and coastal areas service; Southern African Development Community Climate Services Centre (SADC-CSC) and Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL) for water and natural resources service

5. West Africa: Centre de Suivi Ecologique (CSE) and Obafemi Awolowo University; Ile-Ife, Nigeria (CSSTE-Obafemi) for water and natural resources service; University of Ghana (UG) for Marine and coastal areas service

At the award ceremony, the Commissioner for Human Resources, Science and Technology at the African Union Commission, Professor Sarah Anyang Agbor, felicitated the successful institutions on their selection, which she said was based on their experience and proven capacities. She implored them to deliver the goods, and promised the African Union Commission’s unflinching support.

More information

EuroGEOSS infographics

Learn more on EuroGEOSS website

With the success of the Copernicus Accelerator, and the second edition recently launched at the European Space Week in Tallinn, Europe is coaching its own generation of space start-ups that are merging the latest tech with the results of decades of Earth Observation research.

When thinking about the word start-up, the image that usually comes to one’s mind is a few people hunched over their laptops coding away the next billion-dollar company. And Silicon Valley, the tech cradle of the world for half a century, is probably where this scene is set. Europe, on the other hand, doesn’t have its iconic location for upstart companies. But it doesn’t need one. It has found another way to gather entrepreneurs around one pivotal technology – Earth Observation (EO) from space.

Most of those involved in the start-up world know its origin story, how famous tech leaders of today started off as nerds sitting in a garage back in the 80s. They were obsessed with computer technologies, something that only government and large research institutions were using at that time. Similarly, EO for a long time had mostly been the domain of governments and scientists, only those who could afford to launch EO satellites or to buy the expensive data. But the Copernicus Programme with its full, free and open data policy is a game-changer. It is tapping into the core of the open data movement that is powering the current tech breakthroughs, just like open source has been key to most of the innovations in the last decades.

However, both technical and business skills have to come together to transform a “cool idea” into a profitable business, or, as they say in the Valley, every Wozniak needs their Jobs and vice versa. To boost this part of the start-up ecosystem equation, the European Commission launched the Copernicus Accelerator.