Gisat has been selected as one of the European EO services providers within the frame of the joint ESA and the European Investment Bank (EIB) initiative to support the EIB specialists in their independent monitoring capacity building using Earth observation data. In particular, Gisat provides monitoring services for the large-scale cement plant construction and operation in Ethiopia.
The required services consist of land cover / land use change assessment and feature extraction in surroundings of the large-scale cement plant, an adjacent limestone quarry and other related infrastructure constructions. In this value added services, funded under the ESA VAE programme, Gisat capitalizes its long-standing worldwide expertise in EO based land cover / land use applications and also its successful involvement in previous and similar EOWORLD initiative focused on the World Bank support.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) is the long-term financing institution of the European Union, promoting EU objectives. Outside the EU, the EIB supports the EU’s cooperation and development policies. Regular assessments of the environmental and social impacts of the activities undertaken in connection with the EIB loans are a necessary condition for receiving and maintaining the financing. In this framework, the EIB is keen to have independent monitoring capacity focused both on construction progress as well as on progress on the declared mitigation measures to reduce the environmental impact related to the construction projects.
ESA supported EO-based services are potentially useful tools in providing a wide range of environmental information (retrospective & up-to-date) to support the management of EIB’s projects, across the whole project lifecycle. The focus is on appraisal, monitoring and evaluation phases, providing information that is a) non-intrusive, objective and consistent around the globe, b) retrospective and comparable to the current status (via the mission archives), and c) based on technology ensuring a long-term continuity, especially with the prospect of the European GMES initiative services.
More information at GISAT