Geoland 2: Operational Monitoring Services for our Changing Enviroment

Project Description

With the ongoing climate change, the pressure on nature biodiversity and our own living conditions increases steadily. To mitigate these threats by effective adaptation strategies and counter measures a frequent and area-wide monitoring of the environment is crucial to provide decision makers with accurate, up-to-date and reliable information on the changing conditions of our natural resources.

Within the GMES initiative (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) the Land Services provide cross-border harmonized geo-information at global to local scales in a time- and cost-effective manner. These monitoring services have been defined, developed and implemented within a series of projects funded by the European Commission (geoland, BOSS4GMES) and the European Space Agency (GSE Land, GSE Forest Monitoring).

Building upon their results, geoland2 aims to organise a qualified production network, to build, validate and demonstrate operational processing lines and to set-up a user driven product quality assurance process.

The architecture of geoland2 is made up of two layers: The Core Mapping Services provide land cover, land use and land cover change, as well as a range of bio-physical parameters as an input to more elaborated products while the Core Information Services offer specific information for European Environmental Policies and international treaties on Climate Change, food security and the sustainable development of Africa.

Collaborating Companies or Organisations

Indra's Role

Indra's role in the project has been to develop local services focused on the operational development of the Urban Atlas service.

The Urban Atlas has as main customer to DG Regional Policy (DGREGIO) of the European Commission but with a vocation to provide useful information also at regional level.

The product consists of a land use mapping produced in the 307 largest urban areas in Europe (expanded to more than 500 in a subsequent update).

Indra has developed and proven its operational level leading a group of companies that has produced seven urban areas and developed methodologies for better update in future versions of the product.

DGREGIO aims at using this information service in the assessment and implementation of regional policies keeping this service updated every three years.

Indra also led the group that developed the methodology for obtaining the Wetlands layer of the High Resolution Layers of EEA production already operational under GIO Land.

Universities and Technological Centres

The participants universities and technology centers do by way of partner in the project.

Technologies used

• • Earth Observation
  • Satellite Imagery
  • Geographic Information Systems
  • Georeferenced Image processing
  • Photointerpretación

More information

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no FP-218795