Earth Observation from Space A ddressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment

Philippe Delclaux, consultant

Earth Observation from SpaceAddressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment

May 16th, 2013 EOS for Economic Development

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Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16th 2013

40 years of EOS: from Remote Sensing to Geoinformation

• Since ERTS (then Landsat) launched in 1972, the EO Satellites have benefitted from:– the progress of the technology increased performances, lower costs,– the lowering of the barriers set up by the governmental authorities

regarding the details which may be observed on the ground.• The resolution of the instruments has dramatically improved

– optical camera: from 60 x 80m (ERTS then Landsat, 1972) to 41 x 41cm (GeoEye1),

– radar: from 25 x 25m (Seasat, 1978) to 1 x1m (TerraSAR-X, Cosmo-Skymed).

• The development of the Information Technology opened the door for setting up services simplifying the access to the data.

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40 years of EOS: from Remote Sensing to Geoinformation• The distribution of data on a

commercial basis by a few actors (like for SPOT in 1986) entailed a business approach:– led to market "Geo-Information",

– "Remote Sensing" stayed confined in the academic world.

• 30 years later, GoogleEarth, GPS and mobility applications:– moved the use of Geo-Information from

the restricted professional community to the general public (emerging "neo-geographers"),

– by capillarity, made a much broader professional community, including decision makers, familiar with professional use of Geo-Information,

– led to add a geographic component to every information stored in any data base.

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1989

1989



• The commercial approach led to focus on the service to the client:– response to requests for acquisition of images by the

spacecrafts,– access to the archive: metadata, catalogue on line,– access to the data: from the magnetic tape to the on line

delivery.• The progress of the Information Technology has been

the main enabler:– Internet,– standards (OGC, ISO),– capacity to turn image data into useful information.

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5

1995

1995



6

19861986

METADATA



7

1991

1991

METADATA



8

1995

1995

METADATA



9

1999

1999

METADATA



10

2012

2012

METADATA



11

METADATA

2012

2012



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1992

1992

DATA DELIVERY



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20012001

DATA DELIVERY

On line delivery



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DATA DELIVERY

Through Web Services

20082008



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INFORMATION & SERVICES

List of monitored sites

Acquisition Schedule Observations

Quick look of the image

Buy image

Level of activity

2006

2006

Sitesmonitoring



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INFORMATION & SERVICES

Precision Farming

2010

2010


EOS: the landscape in 2013• A wide range of offers:

– resolution from 40 cm to few meters, optical and radar,– constellations which offer a striking capacity to collect images, in reasonable

time frame,– services more and more close to the client's needs,– increasing involvement of the cloud approach.

• Various economic models:– the governmental systems: investment and operations bore by tax payers

data available at reduced price– mixed approach: most investments paid by government, operations covered

by market sales (SPOT 1 to 5, Pleiades, TerraSAR-X); a variant to this is the Anchor Tenant model, mostly practiced in North America.

– fully private funding (the investements and the operations). This is the approach for SPOT 6 & 7.

• A market much more mature, and aware of geo-information,• Other sources of geo-information (e.g. the crowd sourcing).

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The challenges• The race to the resolution has several consequences:

– for the spacecrafts, reduced swath (could have an impact on the capacity to cover large areas),

– increasing volume of data to be managed, archived, processed and distributed,

– tickling national homeland security policies and starting to tackle privacy issues.

• For the fully private EO systems:– the Return on Investment must be achieved in a somehow

"unfair"competitive environment from government funded EOS.

• The competition coming from crowd sourcing– e.g. OpenStreetMap

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The opportunities • Improved resolution:

– reduced swath compensated by the agility of the spacecrafts and their number, entailing a capability to be responsive to the client's requests,

– innovative solutions on the ground to cope with growing data volume, – many applications benefitting from the details caught on the ground.

• Return on Investment:– driver for innovation: new services, new business models,– necessity to expand the market base (private professional clients,

beyond the traditional governmental market segment).

• The crowd sourcing:– certified geometrical quality offered by EOS can be used as a referee

to assess what has been collected by the internet communities,– satellite capability to capture information globally with an even

guaranteed quality is welcomed by many professional applications.

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The future (1/3) • Earth Observation Satellites have unique capabilities:– ability to fly everywhere in the world and to capture every piece of

earth on request, without administrative barrier,

– revisit capability to follow changes and to monitor human activity,

– integrity and quality of the data, to be used as a reference in many domains ,

– capacity to cover large areas and to satisfy customer requests in time thanks to agility of spacecrafts flying in constellations.

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The future (2/3)

• Spatial, spectral or temporal resolution?– Even if the sensor technology enables better spatial

resolution, some barriers, at least in the civil domain, limits the ambitions (homeland security or privacy issues).

– Making spectral bands more specific to given objects?

– Video camera on board could offer new dimension, by following high frequency phenomena, either from the current low orbits or from the geostationary ones: revisit offers change monitoring whilst video adds movement.

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The future (3/3) • Services delivering information rather than data

and images:– a solution to the dramatic growth of the number of pixels:

information is much lighter than the giga-pixels in an image (the pipes to deliver images have still narrow bandwidth on many customer sides), and easier to consume,

– possibility to host applications on the cloud, near the data archive,– web service approach with relevant standards enabling

interoperability and facilitating fusion of data,– ecosystems integrating data delivery and applications (from data

users or from vendors) with innovative business models to hide the complexity.

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Conclusions

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• EOS data market matures, and private market segment must expand beyond traditional government one.

• Information Technology evolution has been the driver during 40 years for innovating solutions to simplify access to data/information from EOS: this will keep going, for a high quality level of service to the clients.

• From data to information and services: a new eco-system.

Main selling argument 15 years ago

Earth Observation from Space A ddressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment

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