European Space Imaging to cover European Cities with 50 cm satellite imagery – The first homogeneous WorldView-2 coverage for Copernicus/GMES Urban Atlas zones nearing completion
European Space Imaging (EUSI) continues its acquisitions of Europe’s cities with WorldView-2, the world’s most advanced VHR satellite. EUSI started the coverage in 2011 on a speculative basis in support of the Copernicus/GMES Urban Atlas project. Until today, already more than 80% of all European urban zones have been collected cloud-free.
The areas in collection are based on the GMES-Copernicus Urban Atlas project zones. The Urban Atlas provides pan-European comparable land use and land cover data for 305 Large Urban Zones with more than 100,000 inhabitants in Europe. The Urban Atlas is a joint initiative of the European Commission Directorate-General for Regional Policy and the Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry with the support of the European Space Agency and the European Environment Agency.
EUSI with the support of its partners DigitalGlobe and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) plans and collects the imagery through its local ground receiving station which offers collection flexibility, maximizes capacity and delivers highest quality.
WorldView-2’s 8-band multispectral imagery provides unique capabilities for classification, vegetation and bathymetry applications. This first homogeneous coverage supports various EU, national and regional projects, such as update of Urban Atlas, other Copernicus services, national/regional mapping programs.
EUSI expects to complete all collections by this summer.
About GMES-Copernicus
As the most ambitious Earth observation programme to date, the EU Copernicus programme for Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) will provide, accurate, timely and easily accessible information to improve the management of the environment, understand and mitigate the effects of climate change and ensure civil security.
About European Space Imaging
European Space Imaging (EUSI) is a leading supplier of very high-resolution satellite imagery to customers in Europe and North Africa. The company was founded in 2002 and is based in Munich, Germany. EUSI is the only European satellite data provider that operates its own very high-resolution satellite ground station for direct satellite tasking and local data downlink.