GMES is the future of providing information services to ministries and agencies which are based on satellite measurements. It is establishing a wide variety of European wide domain specific services (for example Coastal, Ice, Forestry, Oil spill) in close collaboration with the eventual users of the information.
SciSys is playing an important role in two such services that provide information to the humanitarian aid community (called Respond) and those interested in ground movement in urban areas (Called Terrafirma).
In Respond, SciSys is supplying the project lead and is defining the architecture required to join up the supply chain for mapping services for humanitarian aid. Respond has notably provided much needed mapping in the Darfur Region of Sudan. More information can be found at http://www.respond-int.org
In Terrafirma, SciSys is defining the architecture and already undertaking some technology trials that will lead to implementation in the next year. Terrafirma has already provided millimetric assessments of ground movement in many European cities - see http://www.terrafirma.eu.com
Technologies
Providing an infrastructure to join up multiple stages and actors in a supply chain needs to focus on connectivity of the "virtual organisation" and how the users can discover, order and exploit the information products.
SciSys has been working in developing the use of collaborative technologies that allow data and information to pass from one system to another despite any differences in the software used or the computer type.
Good examples are the use of
- Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards for moving and accessing mapping data across the internet
- GRID, a set of tools to allow users to use computing resources and access data seamlessly across high speed data links
Technology that allows the user to explore and exploit the information is also important. SciSys is using low cost Geographic Information System (GIS) components to provide visualisation tools for Terrafirma and are working on systems that allow users to visualise when the next available image will be available from a constellation of satellites.
