Chinese Satellite Diplomacy: China\u27s Strategic Weapon for Soft and Hard Power Gains

China signed its first turn-key communication satellite contract with Nigeria in 2004. The contract stipulated that China would design, build, integrate, launch, and complete in-orbit checkout for the Nigcomsat-1 communication satellite and then transfer control over to Nigeria. By 2018, China had contracted and launched another six communication satellites for various foreign customers. The customers, who are foreign governments, are geographically dispersed throughout South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The satellite sales have occurred during China\u27s unprecedented economic growth, a time in which China has been granted additional foreign policy options as its power increases relative to others. This thesis utilizes lateral pressure theory to suggest that China has strategically signed contracts with foreign governments for the sale of communication satellites to further its foreign policy objectives. Examination of China\u27s space history, its foreign policy goals, and key variables shed light on China\u27s intentions and possible future actions

Review on Active and Passive Remote Sensing Techniques for Road Extraction

Digital maps of road networks are a vital part of digital cities and intelligent transportation. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review on road extraction based on various remote sensing data sources, including high-resolution images, hyperspectral images, synthetic aperture radar images, and light detection and ranging. This review is divided into three parts. Part 1 provides an overview of the existing data acquisition techniques for road extraction, including data acquisition methods, typical sensors, application status, and prospects. Part 2 underlines the main road extraction methods based on four data sources. In this section, road extraction methods based on different data sources are described and analysed in detail. Part 3 presents the combined application of multisource data for road extraction. Evidently, different data acquisition techniques have unique advantages, and the combination of multiple sources can improve the accuracy of road extraction. The main aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive reference for research on existing road extraction technologies.Peer reviewe

Sea Ice Extraction via Remote Sensed Imagery: Algorithms, Datasets, Applications and Challenges

The deep learning, which is a dominating technique in artificial intelligence, has completely changed the image understanding over the past decade. As a consequence, the sea ice extraction (SIE) problem has reached a new era. We present a comprehensive review of four important aspects of SIE, including algorithms, datasets, applications, and the future trends. Our review focuses on researches published from 2016 to the present, with a specific focus on deep learning-based approaches in the last five years. We divided all relegated algorithms into 3 categories, including classical image segmentation approach, machine learning-based approach and deep learning-based methods. We reviewed the accessible ice datasets including SAR-based datasets, the optical-based datasets and others. The applications are presented in 4 aspects including climate research, navigation, geographic information systems (GIS) production and others. It also provides insightful observations and inspiring future research directions.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figure

RESEARCH AND PRACTICE ON SPATIO-TEMPORAL BIG DATA CLOUD PLATFORM OF THE BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE

Spatio-temporal big data cloud platform is an important spatial information infrastructure that can provide different period spatial information data services, various spatial analysis services and flexible API services. Activities of policy coordination, facilities connectivity and unimpeded trade on the Belt and Road Initiative (B&R) will create huge demands to the spatial information infrastructure. This paper focuses on researching a distributed spatio-temporal big data engine and an extendable cloud platform framework suits for the B&R and some key technologies to implement them. A distributed spatio-temporal big data engine based on Cassandra™ and an extendable 4-tier architecture cloud platform framework is put forward according to the spirit of parallel computing and cloud service. Four key technologies are discussed: 1) a storage and indexing method for distributed spatio-temporal big data, 2) an automatically collecting, processing, mapping and updating method of authoritative spatio-temporal data for web mapping service, 3) a schema of services aggregation based on nodes registering and services invoking based on view extension, 4) a distributed deployment and extension method of the cloud platform. We developed a distributed spatio-temporal big data centersoftware and founded the main node platform portal with MapWorld™ map services and some thematic information services inChina and built some local platform portals for those countries in the B&R area. The management and analysis services for spatio-temporal big data were built in flexible styles on this platform. Practices show that we provide a flexible and efficient solution tobuild the distributed spatio-temporal big data center and cloud platform, more node portals can be aggregated to the main portal bypublishing their own web services and registering them in the aggregation schema. The data center and platform can support thestorage and management of massive data well and has higher fault tolerance and better scalability

Geo-Information Technology and Its Applications

Geo-information technology has been playing an ever more important role in environmental monitoring, land resource quantification and mapping, geo-disaster damage and risk assessment, urban planning and smart city development. This book focuses on the fundamental and applied research in these domains, aiming to promote exchanges and communications, share the research outcomes of scientists worldwide and to put these achievements better social use. This Special Issue collects fourteen high-quality research papers and is expected to provide a useful reference and technical support for graduate students, scientists, civil engineers and experts of governments to valorize scientific research

Study on Development Strategies of a Small and Medium-sized Enterprise in Dynamic Environment

Master's thesis in Technology and Operation ManagementThe role of SMEs in promoting economic prosperity and solving employment has become increasingly evident. In the large-scale trade of industrial products, SMEs can also play their unique role and form a new impetus for economic development. SMEs are highly permeable, flexible and innovative, and can meet social demands from a more nuanced perspective. SME development is also a very valuable research topic. This paper is based on a small and medium-sized industrial enterprise, through the study of its development, sort out strategies suitable for SMEs. It provides theoretical guidance and practical reference of the development strategies for innovative SMEs, and promotes the sound development of SMEs. However, the survival and development of SMEs must first solve the marketing problem. Without purchase order, everything cannot be discussed. SMEs must avoid weaknesses and create innovative business models. Through market-based strategies, they can do market segmentation, market selection, and market positioning. Combine with product strategies, price strategies, channel strategies, and promotion strategies, they can survive in the gap between large companies; and to meet the special demands of customers and achieve sustainable development. In this paper, Company A is selected as a research case. As a small and medium-sized industrial trading company, company A is different from an industrial product manufacturing company. It faces greater pressure for survival in the fierce market competition but also has a wide range of opportunities for development. My work further clarifies Company A‟s market positioning and strategy selection, hoping by analyzing Company A's target-oriented markets and target market strategies to demonstrate Company A‟s 4P combination strategies including quality, service, brand and new product of Product strategy; going-rate, perceived value, market penetration, price mantissa, special customer, quantity discount and cash discount of Pricing strategy; conventional channels, website, social platform, local cooperation, channel member and international marketing of Place strategy; personnel promotion, network promotion, public relations and advertising of Promotion strategy. In order to guarantee the implementation of the development strategies of Company A, supporting measures are proposed by my work in terms of resource advantages, organizational structure, information management, financing channels, team building, and corporate culture. It also points out that SMEs face great opportunities for development. SME‟s development strategies should focus on customer value, continue to innovate, and make a good integration between products and markets

Commercial Satellite Imagery as an Evolving Open-Source Verification Technology: Emerging Trends and Their Impact for Nuclear Nonproliferation Analysis

One evolving and increasingly important means of verification of a State’s compliance with its international security obligations involves the application of publicly available commercial satellite imagery. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) views commercial satellite imagery as “a particularly valuable open source of information.” In 2001, the IAEA established an in-house Satellite Imagery Analysis Unit (SIAU) to provide an independent capability for "the exploitation of satellite imagery which involves imagery analysis, including correlation/fusion with other sources (open source, geospatial, and third party). Commercial satellite imagery not only supports onsite inspection planning and verification of declared activities,” but perhaps its most important role is that it also “increases the possibility of detecting proscribed nuclear activities.” Analysis of imagery derived from low-earth-orbiting observation satellites has a long history dating to the early 1906s in the midst of the Cold War era. That experience provides a sound basis for effectively exploiting the flood of now publicly available commercial satellite imagery data that is now within reach of anyone with Internet access. This paper provides insights on the process of imagery analysis, together with the use of modern geospatial tools like Google Earth, and highlights a few of the potential pitfalls that can lead to erroneous analytical conclusions. A number of illustrative exemplar cases are reviewed to illustrate how academic researchers (including those within the European Union’s Joint Research Centre) and others in Non-Governmental Organizations are now applying commercial satellite imagery in combination with other open source information in innovative and effective ways for various verification purposes. The international constellation of civil imaging satellites is rapidly growing larger, thereby improving the temporal resolution (reducing the time between image acquisitions), but the satellites are also significantly improving in capabilities with regard to both spatial and spectral resolutions. The significant increase, in both the volume and type of raw imagery data that these satellites can provide, and the ease of access to it, will likely lead to a concomitant increase in new non-proliferation relevant knowledge as well. Many of these new developments were previously unanticipated, and they have already had profound effects beyond what anyone would have thought possible just a few years ago. Among those include multi-satellite, multi-sensor synergies deriving from the diversity of sensors and satellites now available, which are exemplified in a few case studies. This paper also updates earlier work on the subject by this author and explains how the many recent significant developments in the commercial satellite imaging domain will play an ever increasingly valuable role for open source nuclear nonproliferation monitoring and verification in the future.JRC.E.8-Nuclear securit

Integrated Applications of Geo-Information in Environmental Monitoring

This book focuses on fundamental and applied research on geo-information technology, notably optical and radar remote sensing and algorithm improvements, and their applications in environmental monitoring. This Special Issue presents ten high-quality research papers covering up-to-date research in land cover change and desertification analyses, geo-disaster risk and damage evaluation, mining area restoration assessments, the improvement and development of algorithms, and coastal environmental monitoring and object targeting. The purpose of this Special Issue is to promote exchanges, communications and share the research outcomes of scientists worldwide and to bridge the gap between scientific research and its applications for advancing and improving society

Decision-level and feature-level integration of remote sensing and geospatial big data for urban land use mapping

Information about urban land use is important for urban planning and sustainable development. The emergence of geospatial big data (GBD), increased the availability of remotely sensed (RS) data and the development of new methods for data integration to provide new opportunities for mapping types of urban land use. However, the modes of RS and GBD integration are diverse due to the differences in data, study areas, classifiers, etc. In this context, this study aims to summarize the main methods of data integration and evaluate them via a case study of urban land use mapping in Hangzhou, China. We first categorized the RS and GBD integration methods into decision-level integration (DI) and feature-level integration (FI) and analyzed their main differences by reviewing the existing literature. The two methods were then applied for mapping urban land use types in Hangzhou city, based on urban parcels derived from the OpenStreetMap (OSM) road network, 10 m Sentinel-2A images, and points of interest (POI). The corresponding classification results were validated quantitatively and qualitatively using the same testing dataset. Finally, we illustrated the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches via bibliographic evidence and quantitative analysis. The results showed that: (1) The visual comparison indicates a generally better performance of DI-based classification than FI-based classification; (2) DI-based urban land use mapping is easy to implement, while FI-based land use mapping enables the mixture of features; (3) DI-based and FI-based methods can be used together to improve urban land use mapping, as they have different performances when classifying different types of land use. This study provides an improved understanding of urban land use mapping in terms of the RS and GBD integration strategy