Spot Image has been building and operating satellites since 1986. The company can point to a large archive of 20 million satellite images covering the planet and several operating satellites currently together with partnerships adding imagery from KOMPSAT, FORMOSAT and ENVISAT. Recently the company’s shareholder structure changed as EADS Astrium assumed majority ownership. This has resulted in a larger company under that name with Spot Image joining Infoterra to form a earth observation working group. These changes have compelled the group to offer advanced web services for its products and services in addition to other changes. Vector1 Media editor Jeff Thurston reports in the first part of the conference coverage.
The Diagora conference centre in Toulouse, France was home to the Spot Image International Conference from June 9-11, 2009. With nearly 450 in attendance, the program began the on the evening of the first night with a program focused upon Planet Action, {sidebar id=353 align=right} a corporate social responsibility initiative of Spot Image together with co-founding partner ESRI, along with numerous international partners. The thrust of the initiative is to raise awareness about climate change, while also providing enabling resources to local agencies.
Message from the President and CEO
Herve Buchwalter, president and CEO of Spot Image opened the official program. He welcomed the international audience of business partners and users.
A major and significant change since last year has been a change in ownership shareholding. Previously CNES (41%), Astrium EADS (40), Telespazio (7.1), SSC (6.7), IGN (2.7) and other partners formed the major shareholding. That has now changed, and CNES has effectively sold all shares of Spot Image and Astrium EADS has become major shareholder, controlling 82% of the company outstanding shares.
In terms of Spot Image itself, the company is structured into subsidiares including Spot Image Washington (100%), Spot Imaging Services – Cambridge (100%), Spot Asia – Singapore 70%, Beijing Spot Image (55%), Tokyo Spot Image (51%) and has recently initiated Spot Image Brasil.
About 70% of the company revenues are generated outside of Europe and 90% outside of France itself. EADS Astrium is a much larger entity, and also well-known to the wider geospatial community, firstly through its participation in the Airbus consortium and other military related industries, but also through its ownership in Infoterra, a geospatial technologies oriented company providing satellite based imagery – most recently through its TerraSAR-X launched satellite.
{sidebar id=348 align=left} The impact of the expanded Astrium EADS group, including Spot Image and Infoterra results in a dominate position relative to a wide number of available imaging satellites offering multiple services and products under a earth observation division operating internationally with 800 employees and generating 160 million Euro in revenues in 2008.
Buchwalter said, “Spot Image growth over 7 years can be directly linked to innovation and creativity within the company and across all steps of the value chain.” Indeed, Spot Image is not only a provider of imagery, but offers a wide range of geospatial supported services, both in a consulting capacity as well as through the growth of Web Services.
He indicated the expansion is also a function of the timeliness of imagery from existing satellites and pointed attention toward the upcoming launches of several new satellites from Spot Image.
In addition to Spot 2, 4 and 5 satellite imagery and related 3D products such as Reference3D, Spot DEM Precision, SPOT DEM and Coverages, imagery from both FORMOSAT-2 and KOMPSAT-2 are also available.
{sidebar id=349}Pleiades 1 & 2 are new satellites and designed to operate together, the first being launched in 2010 and the second in 2011. Work plans for these satellites will be highly flexible and can be uploaded to the satellites three times daily and urgent imaging needs can be programmed in as a little as 6 hours prior to acquisition.
Scenes will be provided in 20 km X 20km coverages providing 50 cm black-and-white or 2m multi-spectral images. Stereo pairs are also going to be possible with this pair of satellites.
Spot 6 and Spot 7 are now being planned (2012 and 2013, respectively) and will further extend and compliment the currently available Spot 5 satellite products.
Buchwalter said Spot Image will remain as the world leader in imaging due to its large archive of already existing imagery (20 mn images and > 70 bn sq. km.), growth in services and the planned and proposed new satellites being offered. There is a fundamental shift toward earth observation at this conference that was not as present as at the last in 2006, which was highly oriented toward military applications.
Clearly, the combination of joining EADS Astrium more closely and having access to TerraSAR-X and the upcoming TanDEM-X imagery and products are serving to enable a broader earth observation approach, one coupled to KOMPSAT and FORMOSAT. This caused the company to seek further ISO Certification 140001 – suitable for environmental applications – which has been completed. It also prompted participation in Planet Action.
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Web Services
Rob Postma of Spot Image outlined the changes in the company’s web services and new developments for delivering products and services through web interfaces. Postma pointed to the fact that Spot Image has 20 million images in archive and covers 7 billion sq. km. Of the planet with imagery. He indicated that four product / service priorities existed:
Geoimagery
Advanced processing
Geoinformation
Web access
Indeed, in my visits to the Spot Image website over time there has been considerable change in terms of web site development and potential available imagery, if I were in the market. It also appears attention has been paid to ease-of-use. “The proposed new Pleiades 1 will provide about 1 million sq. km. of imagery daily,” he said. He also mentioned that 10 task plans could be uploaded to the satellite daily, in other words, it would have high flexibility for tasking thus differentiating it from other products and services.
{sidebar id=351 align=right}It was interesting to learn that about 37 million square kilometers of the Reference3D product were about to come online. Infoterra Pixelfactory product, used to produce Spot Map, a high quality, seamless map is now available online to 60 countries. The audience also learned that Australia has available imagery now covering the entire country at 2.5 m resolution.
Efforts are continuing to expand web services. These include new search functionality online, available imagery, programming access, access to extended services and provision for more customised web services on a per client basis – consulting – which can be hosted by Spot Image. “We have moved from a pull to a push model,” Postma said.
In summary – the company has a long history of stored images and has been moving to make it available through online services. One cannot argue that stored imagery that is inaccessible gathers no revenue, so this step is integral to the company beginning to capitalise on investment more fully. It further builds capacity as users learn about imagery and begin to plan future projects to extend their own services. Some people may not be aware that the company has a large and growing quantity of DEM products available globally. Clearly Spot Image see’s the four new satellites as serving to continue the Spot 5 product line whose Spot 5 HRS product is most popularly known and used.
Planet Action
Prior to the official program, an evening of presentations pertaining to the Planet Action initiative were held with efforts from the Planet Action Team of Louis-Francois Guerre, Patricia Dankha, Jessi Dick and Jennifer Newlands.
Planet Action has 120 operating projects since it began in 2007. These local projects are commercial-free and originate on existing programs in local communities, providing them with resources such as imagery and GIS tools to conduct work with a view to raising awareness about climate change.
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While my air flight scheduling did not permit attending, the program included presentations from recent projects including those from Woods Hole Research Institute – USA, Green Belt Movement – Kenya and Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) – Brazil. ESRI is a co-founder of Planet Action. Other partners include Definiens, ITT, Digital Globe, NSPO, CRISP, CEODE and the French Space Agency (CNES).
Planet Action has two main goals:
To build capacity to understand and act upon climate change related issues and to support projects from the civil society that are engaged in action
To raise awareness and educate the public about climate change, the benefits of Earth Observation imagery and GIS technologies, and the role of local NGOs and scientists as they tackle these issues
Round Table Discussion
A round table discussion on the topic – The role of industry in the fight against climate change – was held at the end of the first day. The debate included (l. to r.: Jennifer Newlands, Chair – Spot Image, Herve Buchwalter – Spot Image, Bernard Cassagne – Forest Resources Management, Kurt Eckerstrom – ESRI, Peter Ndunda – Green Belt Movement of Kenya, Jeremy Debreu – Action Carbone and Ed Parsons – Google).
Ed Parsons articulated several key points during the discussion. He indicated that Google uses huge amounts of energy in the operation of its business and indicated that more efficient search could actually reduce the amount of energy used. An interesting point was made by drawing the analogy that book production also uses high quantities of energy, thus the benefits of digital publishing. Kurt Eckerstrom pointed to the fact that ESRI operates one of the greenest operations in the industry with interests in major conservation efforts around the world. The company is also producing tools that help to account for carbon tracking. He shared the view that a key goal was to help educate and inform those who are unaware of the situation – indeed – that is why ESRI has been a co-founder of Planet Action.
Herve Buchwalter reflects a new and growing awareness by executives in large corporations to become knowledgeable about and supportive of efforts to combat climate change. “We see these changes as major thrusts for changing how we go about our business and how society is changing,” he said. Peter Ndunda suggested that the best approaches would involve helping people at a grassroots level to understand their behaviour. He voiced the concern that geospatial professionals salaries use up a high percentage of funding designated for grassroots efforts prior to anything actually being achieved. He wondered how this can be addressed. Debreu suggested that more efforts need to be placed on expanding carbon credits to individuals, thus supporting the idea that change will necessarily be individually driven.
Both Buchwalter and Parsons confirmed that through publishing content widely, people could actually see large changes on the planet’s surface and thus geospatial tools, imagery and openness of spatial information served to provide trustworthy clues to uninformed people in such a way that great impacts in understanding could be achieved. Buchwalter said, “if we look at the Barcelona example, we can also see the impacts of change over time.” He was referring to an earlier display of Spot imagery for the city of Barcelona over time that showed the changing city skyline and re-development within the city over time. The animation served as a powerful way for understanding landscape changes.
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This is the first report of the Spot Image International Conference 2009 to be followed by additional reporting.
