Natural Resource Management
Landscape Change
We live in a constantly changing world with natural phenomena and manmade environmental change as widespread as they are commonplace. The Telespazio VEGA UK solution to the challenge of how to obtain synoptic and current information is through cost effective environmental mapping and monitoring from Earth Observation satellite imaging. Telespazio VEGA has developed flowlines using a combination of wide area Sentinel-1 imagery and hot spotting of high resolution SAR for operational and regular national scale change detection services. Automated SAR algorithms detect changes which are analysed by our Earth Observation specialists using open source and commercial optical data to validate and determine cause for;
- Coastal Erosion and Degradation
- Agricultural Cropping and Land Capital monitoring
- Urban and Infrastructure Development
- Landslides and River Erosion.
Call us on +44 (0)1582 399000 for details of how our services can help.
Illegal Logging
Illegal logging threatens some of the world’s most valuable forests – from the Amazon to the Far East. And yet, for many of the people that live in these forests, illegal logging is a vital source of income – sometimes it is the only way to survive. Developing a solution that separates large scale illegal operations from licenced and permitted removal is at the heart of Telespazio’s forestry service.
Developed using a SAR and optical satellite data processing chain, this service provides custom deforestation alerts to assist Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) organisations.
Waste Management
The illegal dumping of waste has become a huge environmental problem over the past few decades including severe health effects of water contamination. Waste crime supports a huge criminal market at the expense of the public purse – at least £1bn a year in England.
Telespazio VEGA UK and its partner Air and Space Evidence are developing space-based services to help combat this with two new services which have been market tested:
- Detection of illegal landfill sites using advanced optical and SAR processing
- Monitoring of suspected illegal sites and identification non-licenced practices
- Tracking of high value waste streams as part of an intelligence-led service.
Aimed at regulators with statutory due diligence responsibilities and commercial operators whose profits are being undermined please contact Telespazio VEGA UK for more details.
Ice Mapping
As sea routes open up with the annual recession of ice caps, Telespazio VEGA is able to serve organisations who operate in the Arctic – from shipping to oil exploration and tourism to fishing. With a four SAR instruments in near polar orbits, we can offer unprecedented coverage of up to 20 -50 times per day depending on latitude. Call us for details of
- Ice berg tracking
- Ice thickness and extent mapping
- Oil spill detection and mapping.
Flood Mapping
Around 5.2m (one-sixth) of properties in England are at risk of flooding. More than 2.4m properties are at risk of flooding from rivers or the sea, of which nearly 0.5m are at significant risk, and 1m of these are also vulnerable to surface-water flooding. A further 2.8m properties are susceptible to surface water … a situation mirrored in many other flood prone regions of the world.
Telespazio VEGA has pioneered an innovative SmartTasking™ tool that can acquire SAR imagery before or near peak flow allowing our analysts to create flood extent mapping that is right on cue. Taking advantage of a satellite ground station in the UK, flood hazard maps can be produced within 60 minutes of the data being acquired in space.
Working with flood modelling professionals, products include hydrologically interpolated flood hazard maps based on observable SAR updated every 12 hours and available via WMS (or ReslienceDirect for the UK Resilience Community).
Maritime Surveillance
The Earth is more than 70% oceans and Earth Observation satellites are probably the only consistent view mankind will ever get of them. 
Roughly 90% of world trade is carried by the international shipping industry with over 50,000 merchant ships trading internationally, transporting every kind of cargo. This brings problems of pollution from plastics to oil eventually reaching the remotest and most sacrosanct parts of our planet.
Illegal Unreported Unregulated (IUU) fishing is a major issue too. West Africa accounts for an estimated 40 per cent of fish caught – the highest level worldwide, but elsewhere the figures are equally eye watering at above 30% for most oceanic regions of the world.
And high value cargoes attract criminal activity. Telespazio VEGA UK provides services through real time tracking partners providing rapid response satellite surveillance of vessels on Watch Lists showing anomalous behaviours.
Telespazio VEGA offers a maritime surveillance service for
- Vessel detection and tracking fused with cross-correlated satellite-AIS
- Sea state mapping – wind and wave products
- Oil slick detection and mapping
- Pattern of Life analysis for EEZ protection, counter-piracy and IUU applications.