Proteus, a provider of satellite derived mapping, bathymetry and geospatial products, said it has strengthened its Professional Satellite Imagery Procurement Service by signing up as a reseller with international satellite imagery provider Airbus Defence and Space. Proteus is now an official reseller of Airbus’s satellite imagery data and value-added products.
“We are very excited to formalise our relationship with Airbus Defence and Space,” said Proteus CEO David Critchley. “We are currently providing our clients with a successful Satellite Imagery Procurement Service, adding the large product portfolio of Airbus Defence and Space to our current catalogue of data provides our customers with even more choice of high quality product and satellite tasking services.”
Proteus has been delivering geospatial solutions for mapping and classification projects using multispectral satellite imagery since 2011 and their experienced staff have all been working in the geospatial industry for over 15 years. Proteus’s satellite imagery projects have been delivered for environmental consultancies, oil and gas, engineering and other coastal zone applications in Europe, USA, the Middle East and Caribbean.
Emirates Palace, courtesy of DigitalGlobe, taken on November 14, 2014, by WorldView-3 satellite at a resolution of 30 cm.
Proteus, a provider of satellite derived mapping and geospatial services, announces the official launch of its new professional satellite image procurement service. The service provides an approach to satellite imagery sales that is sensor agnostic, calling upon partnerships and agreements with the majority of satellite operators. Because of this, Proteus has the capability to support all imagery purchasing requirements.
The service was developed from customer feedback when conducting imagery purchases, which indicated that the experience and knowledgeable advice provided by Proteus removed the stress and complexity they had previously experienced when attempting to complete a purchase and navigate the end-user licenses themselves.
“These days there are many satellite imagery providers, all with a range of products, resolutions, licensing conditions and costings,” David Critchley, CEO of Proteus explained. “This can be overwhelming and time consuming for the end users. Our aim is to break down all the technical barriers and find the best coverage for your area of interest. We strive to determine the most suitable imagery at the most competitive pricing.”
Proteus has now developed relationships with all the main satellite imagery suppliers and provide their customers with a comprehensive, sensor agnostic and personable service.
Proteus FZC, a provider of satellite-derived mapping and classification services, is now offering a daily water quality monitoring service for the Arabian Gulf. Derived from NASA satellite data, the new service provides daily online access to reports on six water quality parameters at 250-meter to 1-kilometer spatial resolution.
“We can further improve the accuracy of the standard NASA data by calibrating each data set to local water conditions,” said Proteus CEO David Critchley. “The easy-to-read reports are available online or can be delivered in PDF formats via email.”
Proteus now offers the daily service for organizations responsible for monitoring and maintaining the condition of coastal and offshore waters — environmental agencies, energy producers, desalination operators, marine engineering firms, and dredging companies.
“If an offshore infrastructure construction project is responsible for excessive water turbidity, the engineering company has to remediate the problem quickly,” Critchley said. “Likewise, desalination and power plants need to take precautionary actions if too much suspended sediment or sudden algal blooms are spotted near their operations.”
The daily water quality reports are derived from processed data collected by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) sensors which fly aboard the orbiting NASA Terra and Aqua satellites.
“The sensors typically provide water quality details to a depth of three meters, depending on water column clarity,” said Critchley
The daily water quality reports provide the following information:
Total suspended sediments (mg/L) at 250-meter resolution
Chlorophyll-a content (mg/m3) at 1-km resolution
Sea surface temperature (degrees C) at 1-km resolution
Turbidity or fluorescence line height (mW/cm2/µm/sr) at 1-km resolution
Diffuse attenuation coefficient (m-1 at 490 nm) at 1-km resolution
True color composite (image) at 250-meter resolution
The 250-meter resolution is suitable for marine monitoring because it enables data collection for the entire gulf region several times per day. When the regional 250-meter resolution MODIS-derived product reveals a water quality anomaly or if increased spatial detail is required, Proteus water quality customers have the option of requesting higher resolution reports processed from other satellites that can map events in more detail.
“We will soon expand the daily water quality monitoring service to ice-free oceans, seas and large lakes worldwide,” Critchley said.
Tree crowns above 1m2 are extracted, then a Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI) is applied to provide an indication of tree health. Green indicates a healthy tree, red indicates a less healthy tree (within the Abu Dhabi forest plantations). So far this process has been applied to over 4,000,000 trees in Abu Dhabi.
Proteus FZC, a provider of satellite-derived mapping and classification services, has completed a demonstration project using satellite imagery to inventory tree plantations in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. The tree mapping pilot is a spin-off of a larger Emirate-wide habitat and land use/land cover (LULC) project now being spearheaded by Proteus.
In the pilot, the Proteus team processed multispectral data collected by DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-2 commercial imaging satellite to identify the species and conditions of individual trees within the pilot area. Proteus managed the project, in which GMV of Spain performed image processing and automatic tree extraction with local ground-truthing support from Nautica Environmental Associates in Abu Dhabi.
“This pilot demonstrates the viability of using very high-resolution multispectral data to establish a baseline inventory of tree type and health within diverse forest plantations,” said Proteus Project Manager, Richard Flemmings. “We mapped every tree crown larger than one meter in diameter in the pilot area with minimal ground truthing and delivered the results in an Esri geodatabase.”
Abu Dhabi has planted forest plantations totaling nearly 20 million trees that provide aesthetic and environmental benefits throughout the Emirate. Comprised of gaff, acacia, mesquite and other species, these plantations require continuous irrigation with desalinated water at considerable expense. The Environment Agency — Abu Dhabi (EAD) — requested the pilot as it seeks to find an efficient and cost-effective way to monitor the forest stands.
“These forest plantations are valuable resources for Abu Dhabi,” said Flemmings. “EAD envisions a monitoring program that identifies isolated health problems so they can be remediated.”
Proteus applied image processing techniques using all eight WorldView-2 multispectral bands plus one panchromatic band, with an emphasis on the mid-infrared spectra. This multi-step processing distinguished several tree species by their individual canopies and detected stress, possibly related to irrigation, salinity or infestation issues, in some of the trees.
Compared to the traditional ways of monitoring forestry plantations in the area, which implies walking along the tree lines to detect damaged/dead trees, remote sensing offers a cost-effective alternative.
“We used pan-sharpened imagery to create the baseline plantation map, but less expensive lower-resolution imagery such as Landsat could be used for ongoing periodic monitoring,” said Flemmings. “This individual tree mapping technique can be applied to create forest inventories of other species elsewhere in the world.”
Aside from the tree plantation pilot, Proteus is engaged in a fine-scale satellite-derived terrestrial and marine LULC and habitat mapping project for the entire Emirate of Abu Dhabi. The three-phase, multi-million dollar project will ultimately include 60,000 sq. km. of land area and the coastal marine environment down to the 15-meter contour. Advanced processing algorithms are being used to extract LULC and habitat features from high-resolution multispectral satellite imagery acquired over both land and sea. Tree plantations are one of the LULC types identified by the Proteus team in the larger EAD project.
In the coastal Arabian Gulf, Proteus is delivering seabed classifications to depths of 15-20 meters. Deliverables for each phase of the Abu Dhabi mapping project include bathymetric analysis, orthorectified mosaic, LULC/habitat ecological classifications, geospatial models, printed maps at multiple scales, and knowledge transfer.
Since 2011, Proteus has been delivering solutions for mapping and classification projects using multispectral satellite imagery. These mapping projects have been delivered for environmental, oil & gas, engineering and other coastal zone applications in Europe, the United States, the Middle East, and the Caribbean.
Proteus FZC, a provider of satellite-derived mapping solutions, has delivered accurate bathymetric and seafloor classification maps for a joint UK-France amphibious military exercise on the Island of Corsica. In the pilot managed by the UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO), Proteus partnered with DigitalGlobe to derive accurate bathymetric measurements and identify four seabed types to a depth of 12 meters from multispectral satellite imagery without ground control.
“We completed the Corsica coastal marine mapping project at about one-tenth the time and cost of traditional sonar or LiDAR,” said Proteus CEO David Critchley. “Because the data is derived exclusively from satellite imagery, we leave no environmental footprint and face no airspace restrictions.”
For the joint military operation, the British and French armed forces requested detailed information about water depth and the submerged seabed along specific sections of the Corsican coastline so that amphibious military vehicles could be launched from larger vessels anchored offshore and safely landed on the island’s beaches. The custom maps created by Proteus were used by the military to select precisely where the landings would occur.
“The vertical accuracy of our bathymetric maps was verified at 10-15 percent of water depth,” said Critchley. “If ground truth data were available, the measurements would have been accurate to a solid 10 percent of depth.”
Working with eight-band multispectral image data with two-meter resolution collected by DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-2 satellite, the Proteus-led team achieved the bathymetric measurements in Corsica’s Mediterranean coastal zone to a total depth of 12 meters. In a separate processing procedure, the team also extracted four critical seafloor types from the imagery – sand, rock/debris, vegetation and mixed seabed.
Since 2011, Proteus has been producing seafloor survey and seabed classification projects using multispectral satellite imagery. The product generation technology that can be carried out in a fraction of the time and cost of traditional methods. These mapping projects have been delivered for environmental, oil and gas, marine biology and other coastal zone applications in Europe, the Middle East and Caribbean. Derived products have high accuracy, meeting the requirements of engineering, environmental monitoring and strategic geospatial planning applications.
The project was written up in the January/February 2013 issue of Hydro International magazine.
Proteus, a provider of satellite-derived bathymetric mapping and seabed classification services, represented the mapping industry in a British trade delegation to Tripoli organized by the Libya-British Business Council (LBBC). Proteus presented potential solutions to coastal mapping challenges faced by Libya during meetings with the National Oil Corporation, Ports and Maritime Transport Authority, University of Tripoli, and Libyan Center for Remote Sensing.
“At every meeting, we were introduced to government ministers and business leaders who are eager to begin rebuilding Libya,” said Proteus CEO, David Critchley. “Libya recognizes that mapping will be the critical first step in rebuilding infrastructure across the country.”
Invited to participate by Tilden International, Proteus was the sole mapping representative in the LBBC delegation, which included British companies involved in the energy, security and computing sectors. Held in late September 2013, the delegation mission was led by Sir Dominic Asquith, former British Ambassador to Libya.
Since 2011, Proteus has been delivering offshore mapping projects for environmental, oil and gas, marine biology and other coastal zone applications in Europe, the Middle East and Caribbean, completed in a fraction of the time and cost of traditional methods. Proteus is currently engaged in a major offshore project in the Arabian Gulf, providing bathymetric and seabed classification services in the coastal zone using satellite imagery.
“Whether exporting petroleum products from its shores or bringing tourists into the country, Libya sees development of its Mediterranean shipping ports as key to future economic success,” said Critchley. “Upgrading existing ports and building new ones will require mapping the seafloor several kilometers from the coast, and that’s why Proteus was invited to join the delegation.”
Proteus uses commercially developed processes to derive bathymetric and seafloor classification information from high-resolution, 8-band multispectral imagery collected by DigitalGlobe Inc.’s WorldView-2 satellite and acquired by Proteus through its direct relationship with DigitalGlobe. Derived products have high accuracy, meeting the requirements of engineering, environmental monitoring and strategic geospatial planning applications.
“Compared with maritime sonar and airborne LiDAR, satellite-derived bathymetric surveys are completed at a fraction of the time and cost,” said Critchley. “The ecological constraints, submerged reefs, and political issues that hamper traditional hydrographic mapping methods are of no hindrance to us.”
