Between the Poles: Airbus constellation of Earth observation satellites adds SPOT7

Geoff Zeiss

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Proven guidelines for reducing underground infrastructure damage at airports, university, industrial, and commercial campuses, and towns
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Sharing information about the location of underground utilities
The U.S. devotes an estimated $10 billion annually to locating underground infrastructure. Every construction project requiring excavation involves significant efforts in locating underground utilities prior to and during construction to reduce the risk of injuries and unexpected project delays. But this information is rarely shared and the location of underground infrastructure is recaptured over and over again. There are successful examples around the world where municipal and regional governments have helped enable a shared underground utility network database.
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Building information modeling (BIM) has been applied to design-build construction projects for many years. A growing number of countries are mandating BIM for public projects. While the UK government has said that "...we know that the largest prize for BIM lies in the operational stages of the project life-cycle", until recently there has not been hard data to support this conjecture. Similarly there has been only anecdotal support for an integrated BIM and geospatial approach for design, build, operate and maintain projects. Now we are beginning to see data from real world projects that offer evidence for the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach for construction projects.
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The BIM and geospatial interoperability challenge is the latest symptom of the broader problem of integrating AEC and geospatial workflows, that has contributed to low productivity in the construction sector. After the announcement about a year ago by Jack Dangermond and Andrew Anagnost of a new relationship to build a bridge between Autodesk and ESRI technologies, I thought it a good time to review progress toward interoperability between the AEC and geospatial worlds.
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I thought it would be worth while to include here a talk I gave at GEOGRAPHY 2050 Powering Our Future Planet at Columbia University in New York about the importance of accurate location information about underground infrastructure for the future development of the energy grid. With some notable exceptions accurately recording the location of subsurface infrastructure including oil, gas, electric power and other energy infrastructure is ignored - perhaps this is a case of out-of-sight is indeed out-of-mind. The reality is that knowing the location of underground energy infrastructure is critical for national security, for disaster planning and management, for public safety and for economic efficiency. Everyone is aware of at least one disaster resulting from or exacerbated by not knowing where our energy infrastructure is - the explosions in San Bruno in California (2010) and Belgium (2004) immediately come to mind.
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BIM + geospatial interoperability would avoid another CAD + GIS quagmire
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BVLOS drones improve power line inspections amid increasing fire and storm risks for utilities | Utility Dive
Transmission line inspections for vegetation management and other purposes are essential in ensuring grid reliability and resilience. We saw the devastating effect of vegetation encroachment in the recent California fires, which in part have been blamed on failure to maintain properly cleared transmission lines. With drones that can cover great distances in a single flight and provide detailed and accurate aerial imagery of transmission lines and other infrastructure, it is now possible to almost completely automate this expensive process. Automating transmission line inspections for vegetation management using BVLOS drones not only saves money, but also could improve the resiliency and reliability of the transmission grid.

« France moving toward mandating BIM for public procurement in 2017 | Main | Geospatial + BIM and full lifecycle building management »

December 02, 2014

Airbus constellation of Earth observation satellites adds SPOT7

Last June Airbus Defence and Space's SPOT 7 Earth-observation satellite was launched successfully from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in India. The first images from SPOT7 were released three days after the launch,

Today SPOT 7 was commercially launched, making its high-resolution imagery available to all users. SPOT 7 joins Airbus's constellation of SPOT 6, Pléiades 1A & 1B, TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X Earth observation satellites. SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 cover wide areas with a resolution of 1.5m. Pléiades 1A and 1B offers 50 cm resolution. TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X can dependably acquire 25 to 40 cm resolution as well as wide-area radar images independent of weather conditions.

With SPOT7 the acquisition capacity of the Airbus constellation has reached six million square kilometres per day. SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 are phased 180° on the same orbit as the Pléiades constellation, thus combining wide-area collection with the ability to image and revisit point targets the same day. The Airbus constellation makes it possible to view every day, every point on the globe in both high-resolution (1.5 m) by a SPOT satellite and in very high-resolution (50 cm) by a Pléiades satellite.

Posted at 12:30 PM in Earth from space, Earth observation from satellites, Imagery | Permalink

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Between the Poles

Geoff Zeiss

May 2023

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December 02, 2014

Airbus constellation of Earth observation satellites adds SPOT7

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