The start of something new
In 2010, former students at Tromsø University and Chalmers University of Technology and researchers at Norut in Tromsø saw a general industry problem; Decision makers across industries were lacking accurate geospatial data, both in space and time, to be able to do good decisions as regards to safety, maintenance, investments and production.
Existing equipment or methods used were either, inaccurate or too expensive, to continuously track the dynamics of our environment. Decisions are being made, however with a good degree of uncertainty or with vast amounts of resources spent on various measurements and equipment.
Eager to take on the challenge, and to provide better geospatial data, the company Globesar was formed, backed by the research institution Norut with decades of research and development in remote sensing technologies.
A couple of years down the road, the company has grown in size, and developed into a global service provider with customers on several continents. The cross-disciplinary team has more than 15 years of experience in analysing satellite data, primarily data from radar and optical sensors, and is providing high quality mapping and monitoring solutions to its clients.
As of today the company offers two satellite services to its clients;
Assisting decisions makers with new surface deformation data
As surface deformations occurs from natural or man-made reasons it is very important to identify and track the deformations in order to better understand which impact the deformations can have on for instance safety and maintenance.
Existing and more traditional geodetic measurement systems, such as levelling and GNSS, are limited as regards to spatial coverage and can in addition, have limitations as regards to accuracy, making it challenging to understand and analyse the deformation measurements.
With the application of a series of radar satellite measurements and the InSAR methodology Globesar can provide mm-accurate deformation data without any ground equipment installed. As radar satellite measurements cover large areas it is possible to produce a large network of measurements points to a fraction of the cost, compared to existing geodetic methods. Companies and organizations can benefit from continuously updated deformation data to better understand the stability dynamics in their areas of interest. In addition, as radar satellites have been acquiring data since the early 1990’s, it is possible to reproduce historical deformation trends. The company has clients within application areas such as; natural hazards, infrastructure, Oil and Gas, hydropower.
Image below illustrate an example of Globesar’s surface deformation product covering a city in Europe. Both images show the same area. The colour scale in the image to the right illustrate the stability of the area monitored, covering a period of approximately 12 months. Blue/green colour means no or little deformation, while yellow/red areas show deformation of up to 40mm.
Figure 1. The two images show same area. Image to the right illustrate deformation data provided using the InSAR technique together with radar measurements from the TerraSAR/TanDEM-X satellite provided by Airbus. Red/yellow areas illustrate subsidence whilst green/blue areas are stable.
Improving water resource management
Water resource management is important to efficiently plan, develop, distribute and manage our water resources. In cold regions, where water is being accumulated in form of snow, it is important to track the snow cover and its characteristics to potentially prevent and warn for any flooding situations that may arise or to better plan the production of electricity.
Globesar offers mapping and monitoring services on snow cover using optical and radar satellite sensors. Clients across the globe can benefit from daily delivered snow maps together with historical statistics dating back from early 2000.
Figure 2. Image show an example of Globesar’s daily snow cover product.
Contact information
Globesar AS
Oslo Innovation Park
Gaustadalleen 21
0349 Oslo, Norway
+47 406 01 994
info@globesar.com
www.globesar.com