Goal of the LUCAS (Land Use/Cover Area Based Statistical Survey) project contracted by EUROSTAT, the statistical agency of the European Union, is to collect an up-to-date and statistically uniform data basis with respect to land use and the change of land cover in Europe. This data in turn is an important basis for environmental, agricultural and regional development policy decisions in the EC. The focus of the 2015 LUCAS campaign was the assessment of land use and other environmentally relevant data at about 250,000 locations distributed over 23 EU member states. Data were acquired between May and August 2015, at 10 % of the sample locations additionally soil samples were taken that will be used to develop a European map on the soil status.
As part of a consortium led by EFTAS Fernerkundung Technologietransfer GmbH, eoVision was contracted with the Austrian part of the LUCAS project. Within three months eoVision’s staff accessed 6680 sample locations distributed all over the country and, after quality checks, forwarded the acquired data to EFTAS and EUROSTAT.
Auftraggeber: EFTAS Fernerkundung Technologietransfer GmbH, EUROSTAT
During the past decades, the Great Ruaha River flowing through the Ruaha National Park in Tanzania has seen an increase in the frequency of droughts. In order to reduce the variability of water supply to the animals in the national park and to provide a continuous water supply to a hydropower station, a dam is planned to be built. The impact of the dam on the natural environment as well as on the people living in the area was analyzed in an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment study.
Our part of the project comprised:
Client: Ministry of Water, Rufiji Basin Water Office, Tanzania (Fundign: World Bank), 2013-2016
The beauty of a landscape, or, in wider terms, its quality, is an important factor for its living quality and attractivity both for its inhabitants and for tourists. Therefore the assessment of the landscape and its change is part of the environmental impact assessment accompanying larger construction projects. In this context one of the problems is that no objective standards are available for the assessment of the quality of a landscape.
This was the starting point for the project wall-ie (Workflow for the Assessment of Landscapes and Landforms – Infrastructure Effects). In cooperation with three environmental planning offices (Revital-ib, freiland Umweltconsulting ZT GmbH und eb&p Umweltbüro GmbH) and the University of Applied Sciences Carinthia, eoVision has developed and tested an innovative quantitative procedure for assessing the landscape quality during environmental impact assessments (e.g. for projects involving hydropower stations, road construction, wind power stations etc.).
eoVision was responsible for the satellite data part of the project. The method developed to derive parameters characterizing the variability of a landscape is based on the object based classification of VHR satellite data and on the analysis of highly accurate digital terrain models. The results are further processed in a SDSS (spatial decision support system).
Results of the project wall-ie can be accessed in the project wiki.
Programme: FFG / COIN
The work in the project MS.MONINA (Multi-scale service for monitoring NATURA 2000 habitats of European Community interest) was done within the 7th Framework Programme by a European consortium consisting of 17 partners. Within the project duration of three years, service chains were developed that allow to monitor the status of Natura 2000 areas from a regional to the EU level, based on satellite and other geodata.
Within this project, eoVision was responsible for the evaluation of data for the test site National Park Kalkhochalpen as well as for the data interface with the European Space Agency ESA, and was involved in the development of a metadata profile used for all project data. Additionally, eoVision has developed one of components of the spatial data infrastructure of the project.
Programme: European Commission / FP7-SPACE-2010-1
The European network project digital-earth.eu searched for ways to bring together European efforts concerning the integration of new technologies such as GIS, remote sensing and satellite navigation in geography education. In this way the optimal use of these technologies should be supported.
Within this project, eoVision was responsible for the implementation of a spatial data portal, which display information about geodata, case studies and news in a geographical way. On the content side, eoVision provided knowhow with respect to satellite data and information derived thereof.
Client: European Commission (2010-2013), Programme: Comenius
The project G2Real (Galileo based GMES real time emergency support testbed, real-time exercise and development of services) was an ERA STAR Regions project funded by the Austrian Ministry of Traffic, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT) in the framework of ASAP (Austrian Space Applications Programme). The project was launched in November 2009 with the participation of partners from Austria, Bavaria, Andalusia, and Chech Republic.
The aim of the project was to develop and test new pre-operational services in the framework of the European initiative GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security, now Copernicus) for the fields safety, disaster management and emergency relief action. 11 partners from Austria, Germany, Spain and Chech Republic integrated hard- and software components into a system, which allowed to directly use and test the possibilities of the satellite navigation system Galileo, which is still under construction.
In this project, eoVision was responsible for the geodata component (mainly satellite and aerial data and information derived thereof, distributed by a dedicated geodata server).
Programme: Austrian Space Applications Programme, ERA STAR
Regions (Funding: BMVIT)
The European Space Agency ESA holds a huge archive of satellite data, which permanently expands due to newly acquired data. The number of satellites and the data volume to cope with increases enormously with the current Sentinel and Earth Explorer missions. In addition to the usual internet channels ESA uses the satellite based DDS (Data Distribution System), which is independent of earthbound networks. In order to adapt DDS to the increasing data volumes, a DDS-SG („Second Generation“) is developed.
In a feasibility study for this service, eoVision in cooperation with gcs Global Communication & Services and Projektkompetenz.eu has assessed the requirements of users of the Earth observation data. eoVision’s part of the work comprised the preparation of a questionnaire and the evaluation of the responses, and an assessment of the technical background information (analysis of the planned satellites and the data volumes to be expected).
Client: European Space Agency ESA, 2010-11
The cooperative research project “Remotely Piloted Aircraft Multi Sensor System (RPAmSS)“ develops, tests an validates a civil, low-cost, flying multisensor system for the rapid assessment of multi-dimensional environmental data at high resolution, thus extending and supplementing existing Earth observation systems.
The new RPAmSS consists of a Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS), into which a new, light-weight hyperspectral camera based on an Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) and a new modular sensor system (sMSCS) for the assessment of meteorological and air quality data are integrated. Based on this RPAmSS an extensive case study is planned with the aim to develop new innovative services using high quality, validated multi-dimensional data for the assessment of change processes and for longterm environmental monitoring of dynamic riverine environments, weather and air quality parameters. This system extends the existing portfolio of services in the field the applicatio of satellite based technologies.
Programme: FFG / COIN