MDA, Geosemble Integrate Tools for Satellite Imagery

Geosemble Technologies and MDA Information Systems, Inc. (MDA) have announced an initiative to integrate two of their respective products in order to provide enhanced situational awareness for a range of government and commercial users of satellite imagery and maps.

The MDA product, known as Persistent Change Monitoring (PCM), provides a process for detecting changes over time for features in satellite imagery. The change indicators can be used as a cuing tool for intelligence analysis by identifying new permanent features such as roads, tunnels, and other structures of interest. These features can then be confirmed with high resolution data.

Geosemble Technologies’ product, known as GeoXray, is a geospatial monitoring system in which locations on the earth are monitored for mentions across vast feeds of data coming from news, blogs and social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The system employs a sophisticated text-matching algorithm that accurately links content to places down to the building level, without the need for addresses, latitude/longitude or in some cases even the name of a city. Users of GeoXray can adjust the area of interest in real time - either by enlarging or shrinking the area of interest, or by moving to another area - and get a correspondingly different read-out of content for that area. Further, users can superimpose filters on the content returned for a given area to restrict information to only their topic of interest. Users can then set alerts for desktop and mobile devices.

Working together, PCM and GeoXray complement each other in that many of the users of satellite imagery and maps experience inefficiencies in both areas that PCM and GeoXray address – namely, time consuming research and analysis to achieve current understanding of physical features for an area as well as the “human geography” of an area as revealed by associated information from social media and other sources.

Noted Greg Koeln, President of MDA Information Systems, Inc., “By integrating these technologies we are able to move more time-consuming search work to specialized software so we can save our human assets for the complex reasoning and analysis at which they excel,” he said.

Commented Geosemble CEO Andre Doumitt, “It’s a bit like building a house,” he said. “We don’t need analysts sawing through trees as part of that process; we can give them powerful tools for that. Where they shine is in building up a complex and sturdy product, and we want to help them spend more time doing that,” he said.

Persistent Change Monitoring uses medium resolution multispectral satellite imagery such as Landsat, Spot, or RapidEye to cost-effectively locate indications of land change over large areas. Analysts then use high resolution imagery from aerial photos or commercial satellites such as GeoEye and DigitalGlobe to characterize the changed areas and update various geospatial data bases. A key to a most efficient change detection product is minimizing false change indicators. Most change detection algorithms detect so much seasonal vegetation and crop change, that the real feature change is obscured. In contrast, PCM removes a great deal of false change by using multiple imagery dates to filter out seasonal false indicators. PCM relies on the fact that transient vegetation such as agriculture and forests keep changing, but features such as a new road or housing development persist.

GeoXray™ is a software product that spatially enables unstructured text from the internet and other sources so that viewers can geographically “see” what’s related to a particular area of interest, either in a map view or as a list of textual content. Integrating news, blogs, tweets, Youtube and an organizations proprietary data, the system gives users a “triple filter” of sorting by location, by topic and by time so that users can start with a place they care about and learn about things they’re interested in. The output of GeoXray can be viewed in its own native GeoXray viewer or tapped via an API and displayed on a variety of systems.

Founded in 2004, Geosemble Technologies helps organizations visualize relevant data geographically. The company’s flagship product, GeoXray™, links unstructured content to locations. Its MapStrata product extracts raster map data and automatically overlays and aligns it on aerial imagery. Uses for the technology include Government and Military programs, municipal redevelopment, Business Intelligence, Enterprise Search, and geographic content delivery for mobile phone users. The company is an In-Q-Tel portfolio company, a strategic Google® Earth Enterprise Partner, and a developer in the Oracle® PartnerNetwork, and a DARPA SBIR Phase II contractor. Geosemble Technologies, Inc. is privately held. Learn more at http://www.geosemble.com.

MDA Information Systems, Inc. is a U.S. company that provides efficient and advanced information solutions to government and commercial customers in three specialty areas. The Geospatial Solutions Division uses remote sensing, GIS, multi-source data, and large volume image processing technology to provide cutting edge intelligence and information products and analysis services. The ISR Division leverages MDA’s world-leading multi-mission ground system experience to provide fixed and transportable remote sensing satellite ground systems. The Weather Services Division has been providing unique weather information products and services for energy and agriculture applications for over thirty years. Learn more at http://www.mdaus.com.

Nigeria’s New Satellite Demonstrates Stunning High Resolution Capability

The first high resolution satellite imagery is today released from NigeriaSat-2, as engineers from the Nigerian space agency (NASRDA) and the satellite’s manufacturer Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) continue in the successful commissioning of the new satellite from NASRDA’s headquarters in Abuja. Testing of all the systems on-board the satellite has been successfully completed, and calibration of the imaging payloads is ongoing with outstanding results already being produced.  

This 2.5m resolution pan-sharpened example shows the airport at Salt Lake City, USA with the terminal buildings, runway layout and surrounding roads all clearly visible.  

In the full resolution terminal buildings extract, aircraft can be seen at the stands as well as cars in the parking lot. In the runways extract painted numbers can clearly be read on the tarmac and there is sufficient detail to count the engines on larger aircraft. In another extract of a highway interchange, vehicles are readily discernable on the road.   

NigeriaSat-2 is the first SSTL 300kg class satellite, and represents a significant step forward for NASRDA from  its 100kg predecessor, NigeriaSat-1.  The main reason for its increased size is that imaging at 2.5m resolution demands a larger camera – but the increased capability doesn’t end there.  The distinctive heptagonal SSTL-300 platform is highly agile enabling it to roll off-centre to acquire images in a variety of modes to suit the application and the response times required and the data handling and power system are also significantly enhanced to provide greater throughput as well as quality of imagery.   

During disasters, NigeriaSat-2 will complement its fellow Disaster Monitoring Constellation satellites by using its high resolution imager to “zoom in” on areas of interest and determine if individual buildings are damaged, bridges destroyed or roads impassable.  It is also the first satellite in the African Resource Management (ARM) constellation. 

Nigeria’s national space agency (NASRDA) also plans to harness the satellite’s new capabilities and fast image downloading to map the entire country in detail every four months.  The high resolution and geo-location accuracy of the satellite make it possible to monitor urban development in sprawling cities such as Lagos, and for planning infrastructure such as roads.  Geospatial data will also be used to update the land registry with accurate and current information. 

There are also benefits for commercial imaging campaigns.  NigeriaSat-2’s smaller pixel size improves the accuracy of the maps used for applications such as precision agriculture.  In this case more granular data improves fertiliser application maps, meaning that fertiliser can be applied more efficiently.    

At next week’s International Astronautical Congress in Cape Town, NASRDA and SSTL will present a selection of impressive high resolution images from NigeriaSat-2 collected in these early stages of the mission.   

NigeriaSat-2 adds new, higher resolution imaging capability to the Disaster Monitoring Constellation, a fleet of separately owned small satellites, coordinated by DMC International Imaging Ltd (DMCii) for daily global monitoring.

About SSTL

Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) is the world's leading small satellite company, delivering operational space missions for a range of applications including Earth observation, science and communications. The Company designs, manufactures and operates high performance satellites and ground systems for a fraction of the price normally associated with space missions, with over 400 staff working on turnkey satellite platforms, space-proven satellite subsystems and optical instruments. 

Since 1981 SSTL has built and launched 36 satellites – as well as providing training and development programmes, consultancy services, and mission studies for ESA, NASA , international governments and commercial customers, with its innovative approach that is changing the economics of space. 

Based in Guildford, UK, SSTL is owned by EADS Astrium NV.