[Via Satellite 12-05-13] The recently released 3-D map of the Great Barrier Reef created by the German company EOMAP<\/b> in conjunction with James Cook University in Australia is one of the more unique projects in the Earth Observation arena. The map covers approximately 350,000 square kilometers at 30-meter horizontal resolution. With this project, EOMAP hopes to send a signal to the market about its ambitions that is as clear as its imaging.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot all people and organizations are fully aware of the capabilities [of Earth Observation],\u201d said Thomas Heege, CEO of EOMAP. \u201cWhen I founded the company there seemed to be a niche in this market and indeed you will not find many EO companies working in this field. The Great Barrier Reef was a good area \u2013 well known worldwide \u2013 to start with just to get more attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
EOMAP is a spinoff of the German Aerospace Center<\/b> and was supported by the European Space Agency\u2019s <\/b>(ESA) Business Incubation Center in Bavaria. Mapping the Great Barrier Reef was a strategic demonstration project; it\u2019s waters have been difficult to chart due to the size and complexity of the reef, making it a hazard to ships and difficult for conservation efforts. Using LandSat 7, EOMAP was able to map the surface underneath the water, a process known as bathymetry, at a previously unreached level of detail.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe process to derive bathymetry is called a physics-based process. That means we use satellite imagery not as imagery and then do some empirical relations to derive certain parameters, but we take up the calibrated satellite images,\u201d explained Heege.<\/p>\n
EOMAP\u2019s Modular Inversion and Processing System (MIP), used for satellite-based observations, includes corrections for sun glitter, water depth and albedo from the sea floor and nearby coastlines. The company has traditionally taken projects on an individual basis, but now it hopes to shift from working on a case-by-case schedule to an off-the-shelf method.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Great Barrier Reef was one of our first larger areas where we did not work just on behalf of a certain project demanded by a client, but as a demonstrative project,\u201d said Heege. \u201cWe expect that for the Great Barrier Reef and other regions worldwide, that if you create the product already, it is much easier for interested users and clients to take it up in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most of EOMAP customers come from energy and government markets, which find the company\u2019s bathymetry products particularly useful. \u201cWe have industries, for example Shell<\/b>, or BP<\/b> or Woodside energy <\/b>[as customers]. We\u2019ve done contracts for them so they\u2019ve already [experienced] significant savings from bathymetry,\u201d said Heege. \u201cWe also have governmental [customers] and for the Great Barrier Reef we expect both sides [to be interested], but initially I think we expect more government take-up because it is a national park.\u201d<\/p>\n
Geographies, naturally, play a big part in determining the type of customer. \u201cIt depends on the region,\u201d said Heege. \u201cOn some regions we have more industrial users; in others, more governmental. In Mexico, we mapped the whole Yucat\u00e1n coastline down to Belize, for an environmental industry. In the Caspian [Sea] it\u2019s industrial and in the Arabian [Sea] it\u2019s a mix.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mapping the Great Barrier Reef marks a turning point from which EOMAP hopes to support future demands with an existing suite of products. \u201cWe will have many areas of the work in our off-the-shelf database so clients can directly go and get the bathymetry products they need,\u201d said Heege. The company works with a variety of EO satellite operators including ESA, RapidEye<\/b> and DigitalGlobe<\/b> to collect bathymetric observations. EOMAP has used DigitalGlobe\u2019s WorldView 2 satellite and NASA<\/b>\/USGS<\/b>\u2019s Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 satellites for high quality 2-meter resolution mapping in the past. Now the company is readying itself for the Sentinel 2 satellites, in development by ESA, to provide more complete coverage. EOMAP is working together with the German Aerospace Center and ESA to build the infrastructure necessary to use Sentinel 2.<\/p>\n
\u201cQuickbird (a DigitalGlobe satellite) is getting a little older now and the calibration is not as stable. As we see more well calibrated satellites available we can implement them to make more area available,\u201d said Heege. \u201c[Today our] satellite coverage is not yet good enough so we simply don\u2019t have worldwide coverage of the capable areas. This will significantly increase awareness, and we will have a much better worldwide coverage, which we cannot have yet.\u201d From there the company will be able to create a large enough off-the-shelf index, and will use it as the primary method of selling EO data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Via Satellite 12-05-13] The recently released 3-D map of the Great Barrier Reef created by the German company EOMAP in conjunction with James Cook University in Australia is one of the more unique projects in the Earth Observation arena. The map covers approximately 350,000 square kilometers at 30-meter horizontal resolution. With this project, EOMAP hopes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":79186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79185"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}