This augments the16 years or 80 petabytes of Earth-observation imagery that DigitalGlobe holds in its library.
Digital Globe has put all of the data on the public cloud (Amazon) and has provided a platform that supports efficient search, processing and workflows. GBDX is an online environment for efficiently running advanced algorithms for information extraction from imagery datasets at scale. It is a set of RESTful APIs, and algorithms that have already been implemented by Digital Globe or its partners include car counting, orthorectification, land use, land cover, and atmospheric compensation. One of the most important efficiencies of the GBDX architecture is that it avoids having to move huge volumes of data over the internet. It does this by bringing the application to the data, rather than the data to the application.
Methane is one of the more potent greenhouse gases for global warming. The concentration of methane in the atmosphere stabilized from about 1999 to 2007, but since 2007 began rising again. A recent study suggests that the more than 30% increase in U.S. methane emissions over the 2002–2014 period could account for 30–60% of the global growth of atmospheric methane seen in the past decade.
When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited President Barack Obama in March, one of the topics that was discussed was joint action on climate change. Specifically, Canada and the United States committed to new actions to reduce methane pollution from the oil and natural gas sector.
In March, 2014 the U.S. Administration issued Strategy to Reduce Methane Emissions, which outlined steps to cut methane emissions. In the summer of 2015 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed standards to directly address methane from new and modified sources in the oil and gas sector with the goal of reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 40 to 45 percent below 2012 levels by 2025. But studies from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and others have provided significant new data on methane emitted by existing operations in the oil and gas sector that show that "methane emissions are substantially higher than we previously understood" in the words of Gina McCarthy, EPA Administrator.
In 2012, the EDF initiated a series of 16 independent projects designed to find out how much and from where methane is escaping into the atmosphere across the entire natural gas supply chain: production; gathering lines and processing facilities; long-distance pipelines, storage, and local distribution; as well as some end users using natural gas, commercial trucks and refueling stations. This investigation involved nearly 100 research and industry experts.
Scientists collected data using aircraft and ground-based platforms in the Texas Barnett Shale. Using this data they estimated regional and facility-level methane emissions and found that regional methane emissions are 50 percent higher than estimates based on the Environmental Protection Agency's Greenhouse Gas Inventory.
Methane emissions from local gas distribution systems were also investigated it was and found that methane emissions from local natural gas distribution systems are significant. The EDF and Google Earth Outreach released interactive maps that show methane leaking from pipelines under city streets.
The Denver-Julesburg Flyover Study found that methane emissions were three times higher than estimates derived from EPA data.
A study assessed the spatial distribution of anthropogenic methane sources in the United States by combining comprehensive atmospheric methane observations, extensive spatial datasets, and a high-resolution atmospheric transport model. Based on the results of this analysis the authors concluded that the EPA underestimates methane emissions nationally by a factor of ∼1.5 and regionally by ∼4.9.
A recent study which analyzed GOSAT satellite and surface observations of atmospheric methane suggests that U.S. methane emissions have increased by more than 30% over the 2002–2014 period. This contrasts with EPA estimates which indicate that emissions remained flat over this period. The increase is largest in the central part of the country. The spatial pattern of the methane increase seen by satellite does not clearly identify the sources of the increase. The renewed growth in atmospheric methane between 2005 and 2010 is estimated to be due to an increase in global methane emissions of 17–22 teragrams per year (Tg/yr). The new results suggest that increasing U.S. anthropogenic methane emissions could account for up to 30–60% of this global increase. The authors state that a better understanding of U.S. anthropogenic methane emissions, particularly those from the livestock and oil and gas sectors, is needed. The U.S. EPA inventory gives only national totals, so identifying sectors responsible for the increase is difficult. A spatially resolved version of the U.S. EPA inventory is currently under development.
The EPA's next annual methane report is due to be published by April 15 and it will be interesting to see what the EPA is doing to address the significant difference between its estimates and the estimates from academic researchers.
The shale oil and gas sector in the U.S. has been largely unregulated. In 2005 Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which was an omnibus energy bill that included the so-called "Halliburton loophole" which exempted hydraulic fracturing from protections under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and CERCLA, which means that fracking has not been regulated at the federal level.
Since Prime Minister Trudeau's visit to President Obama the EPA has initiated a formal process to require companies operating existing oil and gas sources to provide information to assist in the development of comprehensive regulations to reduce methane emissions. The EPA is issuing an Information Collection Request (ICR) to gather information on existing sources of methane emissions, technologies to reduce those emissions and the costs of those technologies in the production, gathering, processing, and transmission and storage segments of the oil and gas sector. The goal is to take a closer look at regulating existing sources of methane emissions, in other words, to set more aggressive rules for reducing methane emissions from existing oil and gas facilities.
EPA intended to begin the ICR process In April by signing a draft information collection request that will be made available for public comment. The agency will revise that draft as necessary based on comment and send it to the Office of Management and Budget for additional review and input. Once the collection request is approved– which can include surveys and required emissions monitoring – it will go to industry, which is required to respond and attest that the information it provides is accurate. EPA's goal is to receive the first phase of information later this year.
The EPA began the ICR process May 12, 2016.
A Falcon 9 rocket delivered a Japanese satellite into Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) and successfully returned its first stage to SpaceX's "Of Course I Still Love You" drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. JCSAT-14 is a communications satellite owned by SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation.
Screen shot of the Falcon 9 first stage landing on the Of Course I Still Love You drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
This is the third successful return of a Falcon 9 first stage. One was returned to hard ground, and two have returned successfully to an ocean barge. This launch inserted its payload into a geosynchronous orbit which requires higher velocities than lower Earth orbits.
Falcon 9 is a two-stage rocket designed and manufactured by SpaceX for the transport of satellites and the Dragon spacecraft into orbit. Falcon 9's first stage has nine Merlin (named after the Rolls Royce engines used most famously in Spitfires ?) engines and can sustain the shutdown of up to two of these engines and still complete its mission. The Falcon 9 first stage generates more than 7.6 million N (1.7 million pounds) of thrust at sea level. It can deliver a payload of 22.8 tonnes to low Earth orbit (LEO), 8.3 tonnes to GTO, and an estimated 4 tonnes to Mars. A key feature of the first stage is that it is designed to be able to fly itself back to Earth to a safe landing, so it is reusable.
Another distinguishing feature of the Falcon 9 is that it uses a pneumatic stage separation system unlike the pyrotechnic systems used on most launch vehicles. A major advantage of pneumatics is that it can be tested non-destructively.
GeoBuiz Summit is an innovative conference that brings together key industry innovators and leaders to discuss and share knowledge and experience about the evolving technology trends, market behavior, and business models in the geospatial community including vertical markets such as construction and utilities.
According to a recent article in Science, 132 CubeSats were launched in 2014. The original 1U CubeSat, designed in 1999, was a 10 cm cube weighing less than a kilogram. They could be launched on Russian rockets for about $30,000. NASA has a program called the CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) which provides opportunities for nanosatellites to fly inexpensively as auxiliary payloads on rockets supporting major missions. Currently they can be launched for about $100,000. The economics of these small satellites is so compelling that there is talk of a constellation of CubeSats replacing Landsat 8, which was launched in 2013 at a cost of $855 million. CubeSats are not restricted to low Earth orbit. It is planned to launch 6U CubeSats into orbits around Mars next year. The more generic terms for these satellites is nanosatellites for satellites weighing less than a kilogram and microsatellites for satellites up to 100 kg.
The company was formed in 2010 under a different name. In April 2013 Planet Labs launched two demonstration satellites, "Dove 1" and "Dove 2". Planet Labs has launched Flock 1 comprised of 28 CubeSats for Earth observation at an altitude of 400 km. The satellites are intended to provide frequent snapshots of the planet at a resolution of about 5 m, allowing users to track changes such as traffic jams, deforestation, construction progress in close to real time. The primary applications right now are agriculture - monitoring crop productivity, environmental compliance - monitoring restoration after mining, and commercial mapping - identifying new developments that require mapping.
Skybox Imaging, acquired by Google, has launched the SkySat-1 and SkySat-2 satellites (each larger than nanosatellites at about 100 kg) which capture sub-meter imagery and HD-video of any spot on earth, multiple times per day to provide timely high-resolution imagery, HD video, and analytics. First imagery can be seen here.
In November 2013 two nanosatellites, NanoSatisfi's ArduSat 1 and ArduSat X, supported by Kickstarter crowdfunding were placed in orbit from the International Space Station . NanoSatisfi has since been renamed. Spire Global Inc, has launched 4 out of more than 50 planned remote sensing cubesats into orbit at altitudes of 500–600 km. Spire's remote sensing satellites range from cubesat 1U to 3U and are built with Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components wherever possible to lower costs.
MarketsandMarkets has released a report entitled Nanosatellite and Microsatellite Market [Geographic Information system, Payload, Space Science, Satellite Communication, Satellite Imagery, Remote Sensing, Scientific Research, Reconnaissance, Satellite Launch] - Worldwide Market Forecast (2014 - 2019) in which it attempts to quantify the nano and microsatellite market. Nano and microsatellites includes satellites that weigh about 100 kg (such as the Skybox satellites) and less. According to MarketsandMarkets commercial as well as private ventures have started investing to capitalize on the opportunities presented through low-cost small satellite missions related to communication, earth-observation, remote-sensing, and many others. Integration of commercial-off-the-shelf electronic circuits is accelerating the demand for small satellites. MarketsandMarkets forecasts that the market for nanosatellites and microsatellites will grow at a rate (CAGR) of 21.8% per year from $700 million in 2014 to $1.9 billion in 2019.
Geospatial World has just published the results of a survey of 650 of its readers conducted between November 2014 and January 2015 targeted on their geospatial technology usage.
The geospatial technologies respondents were asked to report on their usage of are comprehensive; GIS, GNSS (better known as GPS in North America), satellite remote sensing, aerial photography, 3D Data, total stations, laser scanning/LiDAR, BIM, indoor positioning, UAVs/UAS, and ground penetrating radar (GPR). Some of these have been widely used for years and represent mature markets such as GIS, GNSS, satellite remote sensing, aerial photography, and total stations. Some are relatively new and are still being deployed in new market sectors such as laser scanning/LiDAR and 3D data. Others are new innovations and are just beginning to get some market penetration such as BIM, indoor positioning, UAVs/UAS and ground penetrating radar (GPR).
One of the things that I found interesting is that more often than not Asia/Pacific ranks highest or tied for highest in frequently using many of the newer technologies, for example, 3D Data (~40%), GPR (~12%), and BIM (~20%). Asia/Pacific's leading adoption of newer technologies is even more noticeable when considering total usage (frequent+occasional); 3D data (~90%), LiDAR (~75%), BIM (~75%), indoor positioning (~65%), UAVs/UAS (~55%), and GPR (~22%). This suggests that the adoption of new geospatial technology may be more rapid in Asia/Pacific. This is perhaps due to Asia/Pacific first of all being very aware of and eager to adopt new technology and secondly being less saddled with legacy business processes tied to older technology which is a major problem in the developed economies of North America and Europe.