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Philippe Delclaux, consultant Earth Observation from Space Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment May 16th, 2013EOS for Economic Development 1 Slide 2 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 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. 2 Slide 3 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 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. 3 1989 Slide 4 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 40 years of EOS: from Remote Sensing to Geoinformation 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. 4 Slide 5 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 40 years of EOS: from Remote Sensing to Geoinformation 5 1995 Slide 6 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 40 years of EOS: from Remote Sensing to Geoinformation 6 1986 METADATA Slide 7 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 40 years of EOS: from Remote Sensing to Geoinformation 7 1991 METADATA Slide 8 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 40 years of EOS: from Remote Sensing to Geoinformation 8 1995 METADATA Slide 9 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 40 years of EOS: from Remote Sensing to Geoinformation 9 1999 METADATA Slide 10 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 40 years of EOS: from Remote Sensing to Geoinformation 10 2012 METADATA Slide 11 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 40 years of EOS: from Remote Sensing to Geoinformation 11 METADATA 2012 Slide 12 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 40 years of EOS: from Remote Sensing to Geoinformation 12 1992 DATA DELIVERY Slide 13 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 40 years of EOS: from Remote Sensing to Geoinformation 13 2001 DATA DELIVERY On line delivery Slide 14 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 40 years of EOS: from Remote Sensing to Geoinformation 14 DATA DELIVERY Through Web Services 2008 Slide 15 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 40 years of EOS: from Remote Sensing to Geoinformation 15 INFORMATION & SERVICES List of monitored sites Acquisition Schedule Observations Quick look of the image Buy image Level of activity 2006 Sites monitoring Slide 16 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 40 years of EOS: from Remote Sensing to Geoinformation 16 INFORMATION & SERVICES Precision Farming 2010 Slide 17 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 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). 17 Slide 18 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 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 18 Slide 19 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 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. 19 Slide 20 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 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. 20 Slide 21 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 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. 21 Slide 22 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 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. 22 Slide 23 Earth Observation from Space: Addressing increasing needs in a disruptive environment Ph Delclaux, May 16 th 2013 Conclusions 23 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.