A satellite ice monitoring service developed by Astri Polska for the monitoring of European inland waters will be implemented as a new functionality of the Copernicus satellite Earth observation programme. It will be used, among others, by crisis management organisations. It will be the first solution of this kind developed by a Polish company for the Copernicus programme.
Solutions provided by Astri Polska will make it possible to monitor the ice cover on European inland waters based on data provided by the Sentinel-2 optical satellite as part of the Copernicus programme. The algorithms will operate fully automatically, and the data will be processed in near real-time. This means that newly acquired satellite data will be available in the form of information products in the shortest time possible. The monitoring will cover inland waterways that are covered by the EU-Hydro database run by the European Environmental Agency, namely: rivers and canals that are more than 50 metres wide and water reservoirs that are more than 100 metres wide or whose surface exceeds 1 hectare. The service will be available free of charge to users all over the world.
“Our algorithm will be developed as part of the CoSIMS project, where. CoSIMS stands for ‘Copernicus Snow & Ice Monitoring Service’. The goal of the project is to create tools for the satellite-based monitoring of snow and ice in Europe. The solutions will constitute part of the land monitoring service run within the framework of the European Copernicus Earth observation satellite programme,” said Beata Weintrit, CoSIMS Project Coordinator at Astri Polska. – “We embarked on the contract on May 23rd. Although the completion of the CoSIMS project itself will take years, our service must be fully operational by the end of the year,” she added.
The Copernicus Earth Observation Programme is run by the European Union in cooperation with the i.e.: European Space Agency and European Environmental Agency (EEA). The main objective of the Programme is to develop methods for remote monitoring of the environment. Geoinformation services automatically provide users with specific information products that are based on processed satellite images etc. and can be accessed via a web browser. The intention is that a widespread usage of Copernicus information services will contribute to a more effective management of environmental resources.
The CoSIMS project is implemented by a consortium composed of Magellium (project leader), Astri Polska, CESBIO (Le Centre d’Etudes Spatiales de la BIOsphère), and Meteo-France on behalf of the European Environmental Agency (EEA). Our consortium partners will be responsible for development of Fractional and Permanent Snow Cover monitoring services that together with Ice Monitoring will constitute the CoSIMS service.
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