Conference Agenda

The European Space Agency (ESA) has established the Third Party Missions (TPM) Programme to enhance the accessibility and utilization of satellite data from non-ESA missions. This initiative allows ESA to distribute and support data from a variety of missions operated by international and commercial partners, including NewSpace companies, providing scientists and researchers with additional resources for a broad range of Earth Observation applications.

In this presentation, an in-depth overview of the TPM Programme will be provided, highlighting its objectives, benefits, and the diverse range of missions included under its umbrella. We will explore how the programme facilitates the integration of complementary datasets, thereby enriching the scientific community's ability to monitor and analyse global environmental and climatic changes, among others.

Aligned with the objectives of URBIS24, this presentation will focus on how TPM data supports urban monitoring and innovative EO-integrated solutions to address urban challenges. By leveraging these datasets, urban policymakers, researchers, and service providers can gain valuable insights into urban planning, climate resilience, infrastructure management, and more, fostering new collaborations and advancements in urban Earth Observation.

SatVu, a start-up company based in London (UK) is developing a constellation of ten satellites (“HotSats”) flying a Medium Wave Infrared camera, with the mission to capture thermal information of any target of the Earth during both night and day. Our MWIR sensor offers a unique perspective of the world, imaging at an unprecedented resolution of 3.5 m, and is a significant improvement over any commercially available space-based thermal sensor.

One area where high resolution thermal data is a game-changing technology is the example is the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI). The UN expects 68% of people to live in urban areas by 2050, up from 55% today. As global temperatures are also rising, many more people will be vulnerable to heat-related illness in the coming years. This is especially true where rapid urbanisation coincides with high vulnerability to climate change.

Every year, innovative solutions are adopted by city officials. The diversity of climate adaptation plans highlights that a strategy effective in one location may not be easily applicable to another. Each city is unique, influenced not only by its geographical location but also by factors such as demographics, land structure, and other distinctive characteristics. Regardless of that, more granular and frequent measurements of heat distribution in urban areas should become a tool in assessing the cost, effectiveness, and urgency of the local authorities’ response to extreme heat events.

In this presentation, we will showcase some of the images captured by HotSat-1 launched in June 2023. We will present the outcome of our partnership with Office of Planetary Observations who used one of our earliest data products as part of their nature-based solutions service, allowing better planning and management of cities across the world’s urban greening assets.

Challenge

The relevance of thermal remote sensing satellite data has become increasingly recognised for urban environmental monitoring in recent years, especially for tackling the growing Urban Heat Island effect. The problem with current thermal satellite data is that they are either only available in very high to high temporal resolution and low spatial resolution (>1,000m) respectively from geostationary or sun-synchronous satellites, or low temporal resolution and moderate spatial resolution of 30-100m. Such data are therefore only of limited suitability when regular monitoring of small-scale environmental factors is required.

Methodology

constellr develops the HiVE (High-precision Versatile Ecosphere monitoring mission) constellation of state-of-the-art high-resolution visible, near, and thermal infrared satellites, planned for launch by the end of 2024, to monitor land surface temperature (LST). With a 4- to 1-day revisit time (1 sat 2025 to 5 sats from 2028), 30 meters native spatial resolution, and 4-band multispectral TIR capabilities from 8-12µm enabling a temperature accuracy up 1.5 K, HiVE is uniquely equipped to provide accurate and timely data urban areas.

The HiVe´s secondary optical VNIR payload provides 10 spectral bands (similar to Sentinel-2) from 400-1000nm enabling the use of super resolution techniques for thermal sharpening.

Expected results

We will present constellr HiVE mission concept, status and provide insights into our upcoming activities to ensure high data quality from mid of 2025. On top we will present the added value of HiVE data for urban and infrastructure monitoring. We will demonstrate simulated HiVE data based on airborne campaigns as well as constellr LST30 which incorporates multiple available thermal public mission data and applies the constellr proprietary LST retrieval algorithm leading to higher sharpness at a 30m spatial resolution. We apply a time series of LST30 data on Freiburg, Germany during the 2023 heatwave to understand specific localized urban heat resilience challenges.

Lead author: Airbus Dimitri - BOULZE / Special campaigns & partnerships

Co-Author: Dassault Systèmes - Frederic BOS / Senior Client Executive

Airbus and Dassault Systèmes started discussions in 2020 about the possibility to combine Airbus expertise in 3D models production from satellite high resolution imagery; and Dassault Systèmes capabilities in physical simulation to generate “Virtual Twins”, trustworthy 3D replica of any area of interest worldwide, and use them as playground to simulate various physical phenomena. Airbus and Dassault Systèmes namely worked on Virtual Twins over various urban areas to demonstrate use cases around predictive maintenance, monitoring, prevention and crisis management.

The Rationale of Airbus and Dassault Systèmes to push for an ambition on virtual twins, namely over cities, encompasses the following assumptions:

• The number of EO sensors has soared in the last 10 years, with a resulting surge in data volume as well as data type available to EO users. With Pléiades Neo today and soon with CO3D and its native stereo acquisition, Airbus is therefore securing access to a high quality and reliable source of data for 3D content that can feed new usages.
• 3D datasets are the new frontier, and we can expect that they gradually replace 2D datasets in a large panel of uses, both in the commercial and institutional sector. Various GIS software providers (Google Earth, Google Maps, QGis, ArcGis, etc…) are defining new OGC standards allowing to visualise large 3D datasets in accessible, sometimes free tools. 3D is already included in Google Earth and it’s likely that the majority of these tools will follow the same trend, which will trigger a new leap in geospatial analysis. In a matter of years, Copernicus Services may need high resolution 3D coverage the same way they need 2D coverage today
• The advent of cloud computing: AI based solutions and analytics have transformed the way both defence and commercial users are consuming geospatial data, providing faster means to exploit data, automate processing and combine with other datasets to extract relevant insights. These technical bricks in which Airbus and Dassault Systèmes have started investing several years ago are a cornerstone of any strategy around virtual twins as the need for automation, big-data and in-depth analysis is mandatory.

In 2021, in the frame of the “France Relance” plan, Airbus and Dassault Systèmes agreed on a common goal and formed a partnership to generate trustworthy simulations and indicators that can help better anticipate environmental, social, economic or sanitary crises and establish adequate prevention and response plans. The project covered three main objectives:

• See how 3D models can be integrated in Dassault Systèmes’ simulation software environment. The exploration of use cases was spread across a wide spectrum of physical phenomena: fluid dynamics (hydro or aero), acoustic, thermal or electromagnetic propagation. The list of these physical domains is not exhaustive. A matrix of about forty use-cases/verticals/simulation services has been established and to date less than a dozen have been explored. The potential remains very important.
• Test and use different LODs (Level of Details) of 3D models and run simulations over urban areas, where the complexity of the 3D environment is the highest, and the need is the strongest. More than 10 urban areas have been produced already, using Pléiades and Pléiades Neo sensors, to calibrate the relevance and specific added value to different use cases. Several production chains were also used to test various levels of details and editing, and compare how simulations are affected.
• Analyse market size and select use cases with higher score between technical challenge and business potential. The idea being to address real use cases, on-boarding end-users with prototypes as early as possible to confirm added value of the solution, while building and packaging a service offer.

The project is still ongoing, and close to 10 additional 3D models will be produced by the end of the project, making them available for a wide variety of simulations.

End-users have been on-boarded all along the project (primarily cities and institutional actors) making sure to drive the approach and help assessing the right technical trade-offs.

The COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) system is an operational constellation of 5 SAR satellites (3 of first generation + 2 of second generation) with very high performing capabilities: very high resolution, large swaths, unique radiometric accuracy, high geolocation accuracy, better than 12 hours revisit, and several other characteristics.

Among the several COSMO-SkyMed capabilities, one of the most important is the possibility to perform interferometric acquisitions using Spotlight and Stripmap imaging modes. Especially important is the possibility to perform interferometry between Stripmap data acquired by the first and second generation, thus allowing to take advantage of a huge and very long-lasting archive with a projection to the future (2 new second generation satellites will follow in 2025-2026). Currently the system is able to acquire 5 interferometric acquisitions every cycle of 16 days.

During all the years, ASI has implemented (with the support of e-GEOS) a so-called background mission to populate the catalogue with useful acquisitions. For this we have focused on performing Stripmap interferometric acquisitions over several targets, including all the major world cities (having more than 200,000 inhabitants). In this way we have now a huge archive over all the most important urban areas that has monitored the situation for more than 10 years.

Using these acquisitions, it is possible to generate very precise change detection maps (using multitemporal combinations, with coherence analysis) and to analyze also millimetric vertical ground movements using the PS technique. Such activities allow to monitor closely the urban areas in time, regardless of the cloud cover, taking advantage of the very high resolution of the Stripmap mode (3 m) which is complementing the Sentinel-1 capabilities providing a more detailed analysis over dense urban areas.

Prométhée Earth Intelligence is a French start-up founded in 2020 aiming to democratize the use of satellite imagery to offer high value-added services in environmental or strategic intelligence. It relies on proprietary data from its own satellites, with ProtoMéthée currently in orbit, followed in 2025 by the Japetus demonstrator. By 2027, the Japetus constellation of 20 nanosatellites will be fully operational to provide high-revisit and high-reactivity data acquisition capabilities. The data will be available through the proprietary Earth Observation Platform (EOP), which enhances raw data by merging it with other complementary information sources to build solutions for operational services. This agile platform acts as a unique and aggregative access point which is linked to a cloud-based digital processing system. It is designed to facilitate EO access to a broader user community.

In particular, Prométhée Earth Intelligence offers an operational solution to protect cities from flooding, splitted in three application levels, by correlating physical and human geography :

• Situational Awareness Service to Understand, delivers a flood vulnerability map based on topographic (morphology of the relief) and contextual (land use and climate) information.
• Early Warning System to Prevent and Anticipate, highlights all the critical infrastructures and locates the potential landslide zones, evaluating the most endangered areas in case of flooding.
• Rapid Response service to Act, delivers a flood map emphasises impacted buildings and transport network status. A daily refresh will be computed on it, allowing accurate monitoring.

This new capability solution delivers a decision support capacity helpful for the authorities to handle flood events in urban areas. It is a scalable tool that complements and interfaces with existing information systems, based on the informational power of GEOINT and adaptable to current and future operational needs. This will be detailed through a scientific poster.