Polish satellite monitoring system will become part of the EU Copernicus program
Photo: Fotolia
Polish satellite monitoring system from Astri Polska will become part of the EU`s Earth Observation Programme Copernicus; it will be used, for example, by the crisis management services, the company announced.
The Earth observation programme Copernicus is an initiative implemented by the European Union in cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Environment Agency (EEA). Its main goal is to develop methods for remote monitoring of the state of the environment.
"The system developed by Astri Polska is a geoinformation service, which is an automated service providing users with specific information products based on, for example, processed satellite images, which the users can access via an Internet browser" - Astri Polska explains in a release. This is the first solution of this type developed for the Copernicus programme by a Polish company.
"We will develop the system for the European Environment Agency. It will enable monitoring of ice cover in inland waters of Europe based on the Copernicus data from the optical satellite Sentinel-2. This is particularly important for flood prevention in Europe, as one of the main causes of floods is ice in the waters" - explains Beata Weintrit from Astri Polska. Thanks to the use of satellite data, the services and institutions responsible for water management will have access to information about the condition of rivers and reservoirs in a large area within a short time after taking the photo.
"Our algorithms will be fully automatic, and the data will be processed in near real time" - the release reads. Monitoring will cover inland waters included in the database of the European Environment Agency "EU-Hydro" - rivers and canals over 50 meters wide, and water reservoirs over 100 meters wide or with an area exceeding 1 hectare.
"The service will be free and available to users all over the world. Our system will be operational by the end of the year" - Weintrit says.
Astri Polska specializes in the design and production of equipment used in the European space programs and the design of services and applications based on satellite data. It currently implements around 20 projects related to the development of space and satellite technologies and employs 80 Polish engineers.
PAP - Science in Poland, Magdalena Jarco
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