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Natural Resources Institute |
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About the Natural Resources Institute NRI employs 300 people in a wide range of scientific and socio-economic disciplines, from atmospheric physics and climate change, to participatory methods and social anthropology. NRI forms partnerships with institutions world-wide to tackle social, economic and technical problems that threaten sustainable development of natural and managed (human influenced) ecosystems in both the developed and developing world. As part of the University of Greenwich, NRI addresses health, education, business, engineering and urban and rural development. The Institute supports the UK's largest group of social scientists specialising in development. The Environmental Sciences Department (ESD) at NRI researches, develops, delivers and supports environmental information systems capable of capturing and analysing physical, chemical and biological data for the effective management of natural resources and for improved decision support. ESD uses integrated methods for environmental information collection and management, combining geographical information systems (GIS) and remote sensing techniques with ground-truthed data (physical, biological and chemical) to monitor the environment and seek answers to questions of natural resources management. In past years, there has been a dearth of ground station receivers to support the needs of developing countries; the very countries often cited as most likely to benefit from the capabilities of satellite remote sensing. Much of NRI's remote sensing work has therefore been to enable access to satellite information by direct reception in-country so that the information can be used immediately and effectively. The lack of more direct access to satellite Earth observation (EO) data is a major global restriction on resource management needs in both industrialised and developing countries. Governments, value added companies, scientists and satellite operators have all expressed concern over the low levels of throughput and uptake of EO data. The removal of this obstacle lies in wider deployment of direct readout satellite transmissions coupled with the capabilities of low-cost, PC based reception systems for data acquisition and processing. NRI and our collaborators (for example: equipment manufacturers Bradford University Remote Sensing Ltd.) have over ten years experience in pioneering direct reception of satellite data onto PC for use in developing countries. We have developed a problem solving approach known as:
LARST (Local Application of Remote Sensing Techniques) BURS and NRI developed and implemented one of the first PC Meteosat PDUS systems in 1987. Many of these are still operational in Africa. BURS and NRI developed one of the first PC based NOAA HRPT stations in 1990, specifically designed with manual 'horn' antenna for reliable capture. Many such systems are now operational in developing countries, with a large and growing number of applications. NRI is working closely together with BURS and other collaborators, including most recently the Netherlands Aerospace Laboratory (NLR), to research innovative approaches to the development and manufacture of low-cost, reception systems. The most recent development is RAPIDS (Real-time Acquisition and Processing Integrated Data System) that enables local area, least cost access to high resolution (ERS and SPOT) Earth Observation data.
RAPIDS - Real-time Acquisition and Processing Integrated Data System ERS-SAR and SPOT images acquired by RAPIDS can be used as output products to support natural resources monitoring and management in a variety applications. An increasing number of applications that use high resolution optical and SAR data are being developed to support environmental monitoring and decision making around the world. Easier and less expensive access to high resolution EO data would lead to massive growth in its utilisation by developing countries, especially if the flow of data is streamlined to generate information that fits the local context and information needs. Decision makers need up to date environmental information in order to manage natural resources more effectively. Remote sensing data, integrated with GIS, can provide useful environmental information on agricultural crops, forest status, the coastal zone, natural hazards (e.g. flood monitoring) and urban growth. To generate that information, users need effective and timely access to the data supply. The single most important comparative advantage of EO is that it provides up-to-the-minute observations of an area of interest. The RAPIDS ground station provides a solution that meets local and/or national needs for timely and least cost access to modest amounts of environmental data specific to local areas and context. With RAPIDS, the ground segment has been scaled down to support operations within only a local area footprint. This means the station can be inexpensive, easy to transport, install and maintain.
The RAPIDS project has received support from:
For more information please contact the RAPIDS Project Team:
LARST Manager
Tel: +44 (0) 1634 883003
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