Fundamentals of Earth Observation Policy: Examples for German and European Missions

Several European countries have developed their national high resolution earth observation systems. Some of them are operated in close cooperation with industrial partners, others are dual-use missions earmarked to fulfil the needs of national security. In addition, the European Space Agency and the European Commission have initiated the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) project. Therein, a fleet of satellites (SENTINELs) will deliver data for European wide information services, augmented by data from national and non-European earth observation systems. This new scenario needs clear guidance and regulations. Besides the principles for operations of earth observation missions – as set out in UN principles on earth observation – the operators of very high resolution missions require clear governmental acts which international users can be served and which data might be restricted in distribution. For national science and the SENTINEL-missions, a policy for free and open access is being developed to guarantee a maximum use of the data. Exemplified on the German national missions and the European GMES scenario, data policies and regulations for existing and new earth observation missions will be explained

Selection of the key earth observation sensors and platforms focusing on applications for Polar Regions in the scope of Copernicus system 2020-2030

An optimal payload selection conducted in the frame of the H2020 ONION project (id 687490) is presented based on the ability to cover the observation needs of the Copernicus system in the time period 2020–2030. Payload selection is constrained by the variables that can be measured, the power consumption, and weight of the instrument, and the required accuracy and spatial resolution (horizontal or vertical). It involved 20 measurements with observation gaps according to the user requirements that were detected in the top 10 use cases in the scope of Copernicus space infrastructure, 9 potential applied technologies, and 39 available commercial platforms. Additional Earth Observation (EO) infrastructures are proposed to reduce measurements gaps, based on a weighting system that assigned high relevance for measurements associated to Marine for Weather Forecast over Polar Regions. This study concludes with a rank and mapping of the potential technologies and the suitable commercial platforms to cover most of the requirements of the top ten use cases, analyzing the Marine for Weather Forecast, Sea Ice Monitoring, Fishing Pressure, and Agriculture and Forestry: Hydric stress as the priority use cases.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

The future of Earth observation in hydrology

In just the past 5 years, the field of Earth observation has progressed beyond the offerings of conventional space-agency-based platforms to include a plethora of sensing opportunities afforded by CubeSats, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and smartphone technologies that are being embraced by both for-profit companies and individual researchers. Over the previous decades, space agency efforts have brought forth well-known and immensely useful satellites such as the Landsat series and the Gravity Research and Climate Experiment (GRACE) system, with costs typically of the order of 1 billion dollars per satellite and with concept-to-launch timelines of the order of 2 decades (for new missions). More recently, the proliferation of smart-phones has helped to miniaturize sensors and energy requirements, facilitating advances in the use of CubeSats that can be launched by the dozens, while providing ultra-high (3-5 m) resolution sensing of the Earth on a daily basis. Start-up companies that did not exist a decade ago now operate more satellites in orbit than any space agency, and at costs that are a mere fraction of traditional satellite missions. With these advances come new space-borne measurements, such as real-time high-definition video for tracking air pollution, storm-cell development, flood propagation, precipitation monitoring, or even for constructing digital surfaces using structure-from-motion techniques. Closer to the surface, measurements from small unmanned drones and tethered balloons have mapped snow depths, floods, and estimated evaporation at sub-metre resolutions, pushing back on spatio-temporal constraints and delivering new process insights. At ground level, precipitation has been measured using signal attenuation between antennae mounted on cell phone towers, while the proliferation of mobile devices has enabled citizen scientists to catalogue photos of environmental conditions, estimate daily average temperatures from battery state, and sense other hydrologically important variables such as channel depths using commercially available wireless devices. Global internet access is being pursued via high-altitude balloons, solar planes, and hundreds of planned satellite launches, providing a means to exploit the "internet of things" as an entirely new measurement domain. Such global access will enable real-time collection of data from billions of smartphones or from remote research platforms. This future will produce petabytes of data that can only be accessed via cloud storage and will require new analytical approaches to interpret. The extent to which today's hydrologic models can usefully ingest such massive data volumes is unclear. Nor is it clear whether this deluge of data will be usefully exploited, either because the measurements are superfluous, inconsistent, not accurate enough, or simply because we lack the capacity to process and analyse them. What is apparent is that the tools and techniques afforded by this array of novel and game-changing sensing platforms present our community with a unique opportunity to develop new insights that advance fundamental aspects of the hydrological sciences. To accomplish this will require more than just an application of the technology: in some cases, it will demand a radical rethink on how we utilize and exploit these new observing systems

Developing a Community of Practice for Applied Uses of Future PACE Data to Address Marine Food Security Challenges

External interaction:The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission will include a hyperspectral imaging radiometer to advance ecosystem monitoring beyond heritage retrievals of the concentration of surface chlorophyll and other traditional ocean color variables, offering potential for novel science and applications. PACE is the first NASA ocean color mission to occur under the agency's new and evolving effort to directly engage practical end users prior to satellite launch to increase adoption of this freely available data toward societal challenges. Here we describe early efforts to engage a community of practice around marine food-related resource management, business decisions, and policy analysis. Obviously one satellite cannot meet diverse end user needs at all scales and locations, but understanding downstream needs helps in the assessment of information gaps and planning how to optimize the unique strengths of PACE data in combination with the strengths of other satellite retrievals, in situ measurements, and models. Higher spectral resolution data from PACE can be fused with information from satellites with higher spatial or temporal resolution, plus other information, to enable identification and tracking of new marine biological indicators to guide sustainable management. Accounting for the needs of applied researchers as well as non-traditional users of satellite data early in the PACE mission process will ultimately serve to broaden the base of informed users and facilitate faster adoption of the most advanced science and technology toward the challenge of mitigating food insecurity

Applying autonomy to distributed satellite systems: Trends, challenges, and future prospects

While monolithic satellite missions still pose significant advantages in terms of accuracy and operations, novel distributed architectures are promising improved flexibility, responsiveness, and adaptability to structural and functional changes. Large satellite swarms, opportunistic satellite networks or heterogeneous constellations hybridizing small-spacecraft nodes with highperformance satellites are becoming feasible and advantageous alternatives requiring the adoption of new operation paradigms that enhance their autonomy. While autonomy is a notion that is gaining acceptance in monolithic satellite missions, it can also be deemed an integral characteristic in Distributed Satellite Systems (DSS). In this context, this paper focuses on the motivations for system-level autonomy in DSS and justifies its need as an enabler of system qualities. Autonomy is also presented as a necessary feature to bring new distributed Earth observation functions (which require coordination and collaboration mechanisms) and to allow for novel structural functions (e.g., opportunistic coalitions, exchange of resources, or in-orbit data services). Mission Planning and Scheduling (MPS) frameworks are then presented as a key component to implement autonomous operations in satellite missions. An exhaustive knowledge classification explores the design aspects of MPS for DSS, and conceptually groups them into: components and organizational paradigms; problem modeling and representation; optimization techniques and metaheuristics; execution and runtime characteristics and the notions of tasks, resources, and constraints. This paper concludes by proposing future strands of work devoted to study the trade-offs of autonomy in large-scale, highly dynamic and heterogeneous networks through frameworks that consider some of the limitations of small spacecraft technologies.Postprint (author's final draft

Kenya at war : Al-Shabaab and its enemies in Eastern Africa

Kenya's invasion of southern Somalia, which began in October 2011, has turned into an occupation of attrition – while “blowback” from the invasion has consolidated in a series of deadly Al-Shabaab attacks within Kenya. This article reviews the background to the invasion, Operation Linda Nchi, and the prosecution of the war by Kenya's Defence Forces up to the capture of the city of Kismayo and the contest to control its lucrative port. The second section discusses Al-Shabaab's response, showing how the movement has reinvented itself to take the struggle into Kenya. We conclude that while the military defeat of Al-Shabaab in southern Somalia seems inevitable, such a victory may become irrelevant to Kenya's ability to make a political settlement with its Somali and wider Muslim communities at home

A macroscopic performance analysis of NASA’s northrop grumman RQ-4A

This work was partially funded by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad of Spain under Contract TRA2016-77012-R and by EUROCONTROL acting on behalf of the SESAR Joint Undertaking (the SJU) and the European Union as part of Work Package E in the SESAR ProgrammeThis paper presents the process of identification, from a macroscopic point of view, of the Northrop Grumman RQ-4A Global Hawk Remote-Piloted Aircraft System from real, but limited flight information. Performance parameters and operational schemes will be extracted by analyzing available data from two specific science flights flown by the Global Hawk back in 2010. Each phase of the flight, take-off, climb, cruise climb, descent and landing, is analyzed from various points of view: speed profile, altitude, climb/descent ratios and rate of turn. The key performance parameters derived from individual flights will be confirmed by performing a wider statistical validation with additional flight trajectories. Derived data are exploited to validate a simulated RQ-4A vehicle employed in extensive real-time air traffic management simulated integration exercises and to complement the development of a future RQ-4A trajectory predictor.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

A Force of Reason: Canada, Central America, and the \u3cem\u3eGrupo de Observadores de la Naciones Unidas para Centro America\u3c/em\u3e

Though the Cold War never led to open hostilities between the United States of America and the Soviet Union, the two superpowers did engage in a seemingly endless series of wars by proxy in their struggle for dominance over international affairs. One of the major arenas was Central America, where regional politics influenced by ideologies led to decades of internal and external strife. Yet a glimmer of hope for peace emerged in the early 1980s even though acrimonious relations persisted between the US and USSR. Central and South American governments, with the encouragement of more distant nations, began a process of negotiation that eventually led to a reversal of the cycle violence. Canada played a leading role in providing substantial diplomatic and military assistance. It was not the first time that the country had assumed the role of impartial arbiter in international affairs. However, Canada’s political involvement and its subsequent participation in the Grupo de Observadores de la Naciones Unidas para Centro America presented unique political and military challenges that foreshadowed the tremendous difficulties Canadian peacekeepers would face a few years later in the Balkans