Together with the Swiss Space Office, the European Space Agency’s Integrated Applications Promotion (IAP) programme wishes to announce a vacancy for a Swiss ESA IAP Ambassador Platform manager. This manager will be responsible for the Swiss IAP Ambassador Platform (AP), and will start their duties on 1st October 2012.

Integrated Applications Promotion

The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver ever more benefits to all the citizens of Europe.

An element of ARTES Applications, the objective of ESA’s Integrated Applications Promotion (IAP) programme is the development of operational services for a wide range of users through the combination of different systems. By using and integrating different space assets (Satellite Communication, Satellite Navigation, Earth Observation, Manned Space Technologies), improved or new services on a regional, national or European scale can be created. Intrinsic to these new applications is the added value of space and the long-term sustainability of the resulting services. The programme thereby responds to user needs in areas such as health, safety, energy, transport and development.

Role & Objectives of the Swiss IAP Ambassador Platform

The main roles and objectives of an Ambassador Platform (AP) within its sector or region of responsibility are to:

• Spread and increase awareness of IAP amongst communities not normally familiar with ESA’s space programmes, to inform potential stakeholders, and to galvanize their interest in these programmes;
• Federate the demand so as to obtain the critical mass capable to justify the satellite applications and result in sustainable services;
• Motivate/stimulate the relevant stakeholders to submit viable proposals, and/or to propose partnerships with ESA, where IAP might be instrumental in filling their operational gaps;
• Be an ‘honest broker’ between ESA’s relevant opportunities on the one hand, and the stakeholders (e.g. solution/service providers, user communities, potential partners) interested in participating and/or partnering in these programmes on the other hand.

Main tasks of the Ambassador Platform

• Set up relations with users/stakeholders (institutions, decision makers, co-financers, service providers, solution providers, etc.).
• Organise workshops and awareness events to serve the relevant users/stakeholders.
• Co-administer an IAP community portal representing the activities of the Ambassador Platform.

Who should apply?

Candidates should have a good understanding across the broad range of space applications relevant to IAP. They should have experience and a strong capability in partnership building, organising workshops and stimulating proposals for the IAP programme from Swiss industry and the user community. Particularly important is the role of identifying new users, understanding their needs and translating those needs into partnerships with industry as well as proposals for new activities.

Candidates should also possess good communication skills, be able to manage relationships, work in a team and be self-motivated and disciplined.

The AP is expected to play a “neutral” role in the IAP programme, acting as a hub between ESA, industry and the user community. The Swiss AP might be hosted by any relevant entity compatible with the IAP programme goal and mandate. The AP manager functionality will be ensured possibly via a full time mandate. Alternatively, ad hoc arrangements may be envisaged according to the identified candidate.

How to apply?

If you or your institution is interested in responding to the Swiss Ambassador Platform vacancy, please send your CV with a covering letter, description of any specific thematic areas of interest for the AP role, and a list of publications to iap@esa.int before 30th July 2012. The duration for the role of AP is foreseen to be one year at first with the potential for a one year extension (1+1). ESA, the Swiss Space Office and the AP will mutually decide on the option for renewal before the end of this period.
More information on Ambassador Platforms is also available by downloading the Official Information Flyer.

The Integrated Applications Promotion (IAP) programme of the European Space Agency (ESA)  is inviting public and commercial end-user organisations to propose ideas and suggestions for new services in Critical Infrastructure as defined below. The aim is to generate ideas leading to services that will improve business performance and operations, help enforce new regulatory standards, or enable improved resilience.
The ideas will be used to help define and consolidate requirements for user-driven services supported through the IAP programme.

Critical Infrastructures

Critical Infrastructures can be defined as those handling essential goods (e.g. water, energy, food, confidential information) and/or services (e.g. health, financial transactions or resilience services). Infrastructures are  critical when they represent key enablers in a large variety of economic sectors. Loss or damage of critical infrastructure would have a severe and widespread impact, e.g. disruption of supplies or services, injury or loss of human lives, risks to or destruction of the environment, breach of national security or economic interests.

Criticality is also determined by the level of endangerment the infrastructure is subject to, and by its vulnerability to such hazards. Infrastructures are particularly exposed to hazards when physically spread out, e.g. linear infrastructures such as pipelines. Hazards can be diffuse (e.g. low intensity hazards affecting infrastructure over a long period of time) or acute (e.g. sudden attacks, accidents, natural hazards). They can also be predictable (e.g. corrosion) or unpredictable (e.g. tsunami or terrorist attack).

Hazards to critical infrastructure need not only be physical. For instance, cyber attacks may damage internet-linked control systems that are related to critical infrastructures such as the electrical grid, water treatment facilities, refineries, pipelines and dams.

Critical infrastructures are most often man-made, such as power plants or airports. Yet they can also be natural. For example, wetlands are a  natural infrastructure that store water and thereby mitigate floods.

Critical infrastructures typically enable the production, processing, transportation, storage or protection of essential goods, as well as the provision of basic services such as:

• Water (e.g. water pipes, treatment plants, water towers, dykes, dams, canals).
• Food (e.g. roads, warehouses, ports).
• Energy (e.g. pipelines, refineries, energy grids, power plants).
• Confidential or critically sensitive information (e.g. telecommunication infrastructure).

• Health and well-being (e.g. hospitals, waste treatment plants).

• Environmental protection (e.g. pollution prevention, CO₂ storage).

Call for User Ideas

Themes that it is intended to cover in this Call for User Ideas include (but are not restricted to):

• Mitigation: Deployment of protective systems to prevent damage or disruption by resilience to hazards. For mitigation of cyber attacks this should include encryption techniques and other methods.
• Preparedness: Monitoring conditions and taking preventive actions, e.g. identification, monitoring & quantification of hazards, vulnerability and risks; infrastructure health monitoring; preventive maintenance.
• Response: Activation of emergency spare capacity to satisfy peak demand, or to back-up failed infrastructure, e.g. space telecommunications as a back-up communications infrastructure.
• Recovery: Supporting strategies minimising the propagation of negative effects caused after disruption such as evacuation of people and emergency repairs, and help in the assessment of damage caused to or by disrupted infrastructure.
• Any other promising topic.

How to participate?

The Call for User Ideas on Critical Infrastructure is driven purely by the users’ perspective and their needs. The ideas submitted will be used to help define and consolidate themes and priorities of future IAP projects. This may include both Feasibility Studies (through Open Competitions or Direct Negotiation), or directly through Demonstration Projects. 

Full details of the Call and on how to submit your ideas can be found here.

Your ideas and suggestions should reach us by 22nd June 2012.

Please be assured that all inputs will be treated confidentially. Your ideas are highly valued, and will help shape the IAP programme of ESA in order to meet your needs.

Communications via satellite are changing the way the forest industry harvests trees. A new approach being tested by ESA combines satcoms and cellular services to relay important information almost immediately so that fewer trees are used to produce more timber.

Irish company Treemetrics, in cooperation with ESA, is developing a new system via the ARTES 3-4 SATMODO project. The SATMODO system will be used to provide a data back-haul and communications platform for harvesting vehicles, whereby the harvesting work flow can be managed in near realtime to deliver a fully integrated management system to customers.

Managers can now send instructions directly to computers in the vehicles via satellite, instructing operators how to cut to make the best use of the trees.
All trees are not created equal. Some are more suited to be used to make pulp, while others are better suited as 'sawlogs'. for cutting into timber in a sawmill, making them more valuable.

Such trees are greater in diameter, straighter and have fewer knots. Cutting down valuable sawlog trees for producing pulp is a waste and reduces the crop's worth.
Treemetrics had already designed a new way to assess the value of a timber crop before harvest using 3D laser scanners to measure the shape, size and straightness of standing trees. The software produces .a cut instruction. file, based on the customer.s request, which tells the machine and its operator how to harvest the forest.

Until now, managers had to give harvesters the data they needed to cut trees via email, by phone, or face to face. Emailed information had to be manually entered into a control computer on the vehicle and uploaded every time the machine required a new instruction file.

Now, thanks to satcoms, ESA provides the missing link in the chain: SATMODO's two-way realtime or near-realtime connection with the harvesting machines.
By gathering information on what the actual timber yield is per hectare and sending back this information through SATMODO, the actual harvest can be determined almost in real time and amended on the spot, rather than waiting until after the entire forest has been cut.

SATMODO consists of a hybrid satellite/terrestrial wireless device installed in the vehicle, transmitting data in real time via the new Inmarsat IsatM2M service supporting two-way burst messaging over worldwide satellite coverage (except the poles), using L-band remote terminals with highly compact antennae.
SATMODO also provides a communications 'safety net' for harvesters who frequently work in remote locations. It keeps workers in constant contact in areas where land-based mobile networks simply won't work.

To test the SATMODO system, the hybrid device will be installed in 20 harvesting vehicles, allowing individual machines or groups of machines to be monitored. Harvesting workflow will be managed in near-realtime, creating a fully integrated management system.

Based in Cork, Ireland and endorsed by Ireland's Minister for Research and Innovation, Mr. Seán Sherlock, Treemetrics has spent years developing measurement and analytics technology to replace traditional forestry methods.
The company approached ESA through its Integrated Applications programme to help develop their technology further through the use of satellites.

 "ESA with its innovative integrated application platform is very pleased to support a great idea coming from this young entrepreneurship," said Amnon Ginati, the Head of the Integrated and Telecommunications-Related Applications Department at ESA.

"We are also very pleased with the endorsement that it is receiving both at a political level and from Enterprise Ireland."
 

The control and surveillance of borders is an essential function of any state which if done efficiently, can lead to a reduction in cross-border crime and illegal migration.

For the last year Astrium, in collaboration with the Greek Border Guard and the Greek Institute for Security Studies, has been studying the feasibility of using space assets to support the surveillance and control of land borders.

Greece controls the part of the external land border of the European Union over which the majority of illegal migrants enter Europe. It also faces challenges with cross-border criminality, particularly on the Greek / Albanian border.

In the IAP feasibility study just completed, it was possible to confirm the usefulness of satellite communications, tracking, and Earth observation techniques as contributors to the control of the Greek border. This included the provision of services to the Border Guards during a short proof of concept demonstration which was conducted during the summer of 2011 on the Greek / Albanian border.

During this proof of concept demonstration techniques for tracking patrols and distributing the information to commanders, the use of satellite communications, and Earth observation techniques were demonstrated. The Earth observation products included reference mapping, hot spot monitoring, and techniques to develop permeability mapping for the border area. These products were distributed to the field locations over satellite communications links.

The feasibility project has now come to an end and Astrium intends to take the concept forward with a follow-on demonstration project in 2012.

The optimisation of freight transport through ports holds interesting challenges for solutions utilising the added value of satellites. Addressing the challenges of freight operators such as the reduction of delays, optimisation of traffic management, and exchange of information have been priority topics at a workshop held in Liverpool on December 15th, 2011, as part of a recently started ESA IAP activity addressing the subject.

The workshop was attended by representatives of the port community of Liverpool including Mersey Maritime, The Mersey Partnership, Peel Ports, JMD Haulage, and Atlantic Container Lines, and representatives from the project teams and ESA.

Following the award of two parallel projects for this activity, representatives from both teams, one led by AIMES and the other by GMV, were given the opportunity to directly discuss the top priority needs and challenges with the users. These needs and challenges will serve as input for specification of an integrated solution and associated services supporting the optimisation of freight transport through ports and meeting the priorities of the port community.

In support of a solution which can be deployed in more international ports, both project teams will also engage with other users and stakeholders in the near future. Furthermore, The Mersey Partnership, Mersey Maritime and users present at the meeting will further engage with users and stakeholders in the Liverpool area and their international partners.

The workshop has provided both teams with an excellent start to identify innovative and sustainable services addressing freight transport through ports and utilising space assets to realise this.

The team led by GMV (ES) further includes Teirlog (ES), BAE (UK), Brimatech (AU) and TeleConsult (AU). The consortium led by AIMES (UK) further consists of Containerport (UK), Avanti (UK), DMCii (UK) and ISL (D).

Selected offshore vessels within EU waters and beyond are now in sight of EU customs officials as an ESA demonstration project, in support to the European Maritime Safety Agency’s Blue Belt pilot project, gets fully underway.

The ESA IAP Demonstration Project (ARTES element 20) led by the prime contractor CLS (Collecte Localisation Satellites), with exactEarth Europe and KSAT as sub-contractors, has been delivering SAT-AIS data to EMSA since 20 October 13:00 UTC.

The satellite data will be carefully assessed to ensure it meets end-user and stakeholder requirements. It will also determine whether SAT-AIS services offer added value to the terrestrial AIS data for this type of ship tracking based service.

EMSA initiated the Blue Belt pilot project to promote short sea shipping and assist  EU customs authorities by providing them with additional information about ships, their journey and their cargoes within the EU. A total of 250 voluntary vessels or “blue ships” are being tracked. Customs authorities of EU Member States receive a timely notification report before the arrival of a blue ship to an EU port.

The ESA demonstration project provides a service based on satellite-based AIS data complementing the terrestrial data collected by EMSA. This service detects offshore vessels equipped with AIS tracking devices which are impossible to detect by shore-based systems alone. Knowing the actual vessel journey beyond the coastal region is important to Custom authorities. This can only be achieved by using satellite AIS data.

Bird strikes remain an issue for civil aviation and the “Bird Strikes Risk Reduction for Civil Aviation” IAP feasibility study is currently seeking feedback from the aviation community, and from airports in particular, on a new set of proposed services that might help reduce the risk of bird strikes.

The study is in the process of identifying new satellite-based services that should help to reduce the risk of bird strikes and that could be implemented in the near-term.

To capture user requirements, test demand for those new services, and explore their commercial viability an online survey has been launched, which takes 5-10 minutes to complete, and is open to all aviation stakeholders.

We encourage all stakeholders with an interest in bird strike reduction to complete the survey. Your answers will help to understand the needs of the aviation market and the level of demand for these new services.

Take part in the survey now.

For more details on the survey, please visit Helios Ltd. website, prime contractor of the study or ESA IAP Programme (iap@esa.int). Survey closes 31st of January 2012