The project “Digital Services in the Single Application Renewed Land Parcel Identification System” project was announced by the Greek Payment and Control Agency for Guidance and Guarantee Community Aid (OPEKEPE) and required the provision of 39,600km2 of Greece. LPIS was designed as the main instrument for the implementation of the Common Agriculture Policy first pillar – direct payments to the farmer, i.e. to identify and quantify the land eligible for payments. Surprisingly, since its inception LPIS has also been used by members states as a data resource for use in relation to all sorts of land identification projects where up to date maps and information are required.
The project was awarded to Eratosthenes, Greece, one the of the largest consultancies in Greece in the fields of engineering, planning and GIS applications with the support of TotalView, Greece. TotalView provided Eratoshenes the required pre-sales support and documentation in order to successfully participate and eventually win in the tender procedure.
The project had unique characteristics and several restrictions that needed to be covered. The requested user license (by the terms of references of the aforementioned tender), was for the first time provided in Greece and allowed the internal use of WorldView-2 and GeoEye-1 imagery/ortho-photos and any type of their derivatives to all the public domain authorities and the full resolution viewing to the wide public. The images selection had to be inside a specific time-frame and the land use of the available areas to choose from had to be mostly agriculture. Finally, technical specifications like Off Nadir Angle and Cloud/Snow Coverage had to be under certain limits.
TotalView worked closely together with EUSI, DG, Eratoshenes and Opekepe to find the complying products, organize the digital delivery to help fast-track the schedule and finally deliver the physical media to end customer. The next steps is to deliver the rest of the country area as a continuation of the completed project.