Exploring UrbanAtlas
Gisat signed a contract with the ESA for the UrbanAtlas+ project
Gisat has been awarded a contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) for UrbanAtlas+ project proposing to explore and demonstrate the full potential of ongoing GMES UrbanAtlas service production for spatial planning applications.
In particular, the subject of the UrbanAtlas+ project is to focus this demonstration on:
• urban growth dynamics monitoring and assessment providing insight into the land consumption & formation processes involved,
• socio-economic data integration supporting integration of Urban Atlas data with conventional statistics in general, testing the standard Urban Audit set of indicators in particular.
The Urban Atlas is part of the implementation of the Global Monitoring of Environment and Security (GMES) land monitoring service, financed by the European Commission with the support from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and produced in collaboration with the Member States the European space industry. The Urban Atlas cover all EU capitals and a large sample of large and medium-sized cities participating in the European Urban Audit, a data collection covering over 300 cities in the EU, with full operability foreseen for 2011. Future editions of the Urban Atlas are planned in 3-5 year intervals to complement the Urban Audit exercise. More on GMES Urban Atlas activity can be found here
The Urban Audit, initiative of the Directorate-General for Regional Policy, regularly provides urban statistics for cities across EU. It is co-financed by the European Commission and managed in close consultation with EUROSTAT and National Statistical Institutes in EU Member States. More on the Urban Audit activities can be found here
Gisat has long experience with Urban Atlas and Urban Audit data utilization from ESA GSE GSELAND project, where Urban Atlas service has been already demonstrated for comparison of urban territories structure nationally or across Europe. Also, Gisat is familiar with land accounting approaches from the land and ecosystem accounting (LEAC) activities done for European Environmental Agency (EEA). Some parts of the UrbanAtlas+ methodology have been already pre-tested by GISAT during Prague M11 demonstrator work (prepared for the City Development Authority of the Municipality of Prague during the GSELAND project) with very promising results. Nevertheless, the above mentioned capabilities for Urban Atlas datasets have not been fully explored yet, so methodology for their implementation has to be still developed.
UrbanAtlas+ project represents follow-up of these activities and aims full design, implementation and demonstration of such framework. While during the UrbanAtlas+ project duration (26 months) focus is primarily on the application areas serving urban/regional planning user community in the Czech Republic, the results is foreseen to be applicable to support Europe-wide acceptance and application of GMES Urban Atlas service.
JRC chose Fragria
Gisat in winning consortia responding to the JRC tender on agri-environmental studies
Gisat is a member of winning consortia responding to the JRC tender on agri-environmental studies. The consortium led by Alterra (Centre Geo-information), the Netherlands has been awarded the FRamework Contract for the Provision of Thematic Studies in the field of AGRI-Environmental Assessment (FRAGRIA).
FRAGRIA will contribute to the improvement of the timely monitoring of agricultural land use state and changes, and their impact on the environment at the European, national and regional levels.
The objective is to fulfill the needs of:
• European users who are involved in the definition of European directives, strategies and of the CAP: DG Agri, DG Env and EEA,
• Users responsible for the implementation of European directives, strategies and of the CAP: agriculture and environment ministries, national and regional environmental agencies, national payment agencies, regional water agencies.
Based on users’ requirements, the FRAGRIA aims at developing and improving agri-environmental indicators assessing:
• Conceptual development for agri-environmental indicators,
• Assessment of the environmental performance of different farming systems,
• Assessment of climate change impacts and mitigation strategies on agriculture.
GISAT has moved to a new office
Since 2010 Gisat can be found in the brand-new office close to the Prague City Center
We believe this opens us new possibilities for further expansion and improvement of our services and products. We are looking forward to meet you in our new office.
Please note our new address as of 1st January 2010:
Gisat s.r.o.
Milady Horakove 57
170 00 Praha 7
Czech Republic
You may find detailed info how to get to our new office here
All news can be found also on GISAT web site