A space science centre in Slovenia supported by the European Regional Development Fund is leading the way in using satellite data for earth monitoring.
- 14 September 2015
'There is hardly a socio-economic challenge in which the space-borne earth observation data was not very helpful.
SPACE-SI, the Slovenian Centre of Excellence for Space Sciences and Technologies, was established in 2010 by a consortium of academic institutions, high-tech SMEs and large industrial and insurance companies.
The Centre’s research and development activities are focused on high-resolution interactive remote sensing and formation flying missions. This is made possible by the development of micro and nano satellite platforms, an advanced ground control infrastructure as well as satellite integration and testing facilities.
Cost-effective remote sensing
These advanced remote sensing technologies will permit more frequent and cost-effective remote sensing applications in a wide range of areas including ecology, agriculture, forestry, land cover mapping, urbanism and maritime, as well as for monitoring climate change, the use of natural resources and disasters.
SPACE-SI has developed a high precision interactive remote sensing satellite designed to acquire multispectral images and real time high-definition video. The satellite is capable of providing high resolution imagery from an altitude of 600 km.
Remote sensing applications
A complete and fully automatic processing chain from raw satellite data to web-delivered map-ready images has been created. For the efficient utilisation of geo-located data, a crowd-sourced dissemination platform called ‘Geopedia’ was set up and thousands of data sets with several million data entries have been collected over the past few years.
Real-life testing
SPACE-SI has tested these systems in several real-life situations including advanced visualisation of real-time high-resolution forecasts of weather and pollution dispersion, rapid estimation of damages caused by floods, detection of invasive plants, illegal dump site cleaning as well as several other research and educational initiatives which raised public awareness about the ecological and socio-economic benefits that can be achieved in the region by the new micro and nano satellite technologies.
Total investment and EU funding
Total investment for the project “Slovenian Centre of Excellence for Space Sciences and Technologies” is EUR 9 254 218, of which the EU’s European Regional Development Fund is contributing EUR 7 866 085 from the Operational Programme “Strengthening Regional Development Potentials” for the 2007 to 2013 programming period.