Tag: Geo big data

Introducing Grasp Global's Cutting-Edge Product CatalogUE for Advanced Air Quality Monitoring"

PUBLIC GRASP CATALOGUE BUILT UPON ARLAS.

 25 May 2023, Media Release

 

Lille – Toulouse: 25 May, 2023 GRASP Global has launched its “Public GRASP Products Catalogue” for businesses and organisations tracking and studying air quality, the company announced today. The platform offers advanced remote sensing products that enable the forecasting of hazardous air pollution events and estimation of past exposure. The catalogue also includes data sets that can be used to help understand climate change. The catalogue was built by Gisaia, a geospatial big data technology company.

Screenshot of the "Public GRASP Catalogue"

The Public GRASP Products Catalogue includes a visualisation tool to explore the data. The products in the catalogue are created from satellite data from a variety of European instruments, which are then processed into advanced remote sensing products by GRASP.

The GRASP processing system is unique in its capability to combine data from multiple space sensors as well as incorporate data from ground instruments. This allows for the study of specific areas with high precision.

COMING SOON!

The catalogue will soon include data from GRASP’s own GAPMAP-0 space instrument, which was launched on April 22, 2023. This marks the first time a commercial space instrument has been deployed for the characterization of particulate air pollution in cities and communities.

When completed, the GAPMAP series of instruments will comprise a constellation of ten advanced cubesats that will collect 100 times more data globally than traditional air quality instruments already in space.

GAPMAP products will be available to the public alongside other existing products in the catalogue, providing users with valuable information about the Earth’s surface, clouds, and atmospheric aerosols.

MONITORING FOR EFFECTIVE MEASURES

Air pollution is among the greatest environmental risks to public health, according to the World Health Organisation. Outdoor air pollution is estimated to have caused 7 million premature deaths worldwide in 2019.

GRASP facilitates the use of satellite measurements to establish whether particles are likely man made (industrial and vehicular emissions) or from natural sources such as wildfire smoke or desert dust and whether they are produced locally or transported from more distant locations.

Thus the Public GRASP Products Catalogue can be a critical tool to determine the sources and downwind areas affected by air pollution. This provides a significant weapon for the public and policymakers to fight for improved air quality by holding the producers responsible.

“The GRASP software makes it possible to use the satellite measurements to establish whether particles are likely produced by industry or swept in from natural sources such as wildfire smoke or desert dust. This is useful for governments, cities, and even companies who want to monitor air pollution and design effective mitigation measures,” said Dr. David Fuertes, GRASP Global’s co-founder and CEO.

The catalogue is linked to the existing GRASP Open platform, which currently has around 1,200 users from the scientific community in 64 countries. It is built upon ARLAS-Server, an open-source technology brick for big data visualisation and exploration. Catalogue users can easily and quickly find relevant products through spatial as well as temporal filters. It is run on Gisaia’s ARLAS-Cloud service.

“We are honoured to be part of a mission that helps to address one of the world’s greatest challenges. We thank GRASP for choosing our technology and trusting our team with this assignment,” said Laurent Dezou, Gisaia’s CEO.

“The long term strategy is to keep developing the tool, adding analytics capabilities thanks to the power of ARLAS,” added Dr. Fuertes.

GRASP Global Services supports worldwide efforts to monitor the health of people and the planet. Space agencies, governments, city authorities, and companies that wish to effectively track air pollution are invited to explore the publicly available catalogue.

 

For more details

To learn more about the Public GRASP Products Catalogue, contact GRASP Global at office@grasp-sas.com.

Additional RESOURCES

Additional Resources:
Follow GRASP Global and Gisaïa for updates:
Follow GRASP Global on Twitter, LinkedIn
Follow Gisaïa on Twitter, LinkedIn

About GRASP Global

GRASP Global is a start-up company that employs a variety of tools to monitor and understand the Earth’s atmosphere and surface.

These tools include the development and deployment of spaceborne cubesats, ground instruments, and the GRASP algorithm. The GRASP algorithm provides unique capabilities to combine data from multiple instruments to provide advanced products for air quality and climate change.

GRASP has more than a decade of experience in developing hardware and software for space applications and has worked with the largest international space agencies. The company has been engaged in the development of the operational algorithms for generating surface and aerosol products for Sentinel-4, 3MI, and CO2M future ESA and EUMETSAT missions.

GRASP designs and manufactures ground instruments that are deployed in global networks by NASA and the SPARTAN network.

Recently, GRASP launched the first in a series of cubesats designed to monitor the atmosphere for air quality and climate applications.
For more information about GRASP Global, visit www.grasp-sas.com

About Gisaia

Gisaïa is an expert in geospatial intelligence with experience in facilitating the rapid deployment of technology solutions for deeper geospatial and big data analysis.

Our ARLAS framework® is built to serve efficiently: every function is developed to not only support the ease of operations but also deliver expected results.

Gisaïa offers geospatial technological expertise to players in various sectors. Using ARLAS®, Gisaia supports users in developing products and services for diverse use-cases.

Some of Gisaïa’s references in the spatial industry include: Airbus Defence and Space, the French Space Agency, the French Public Research Institution, IRD and GRASP Global.

For more information about Gisaia visit: www.gisaia.com and ARLAS: www.arlas.io

Arlas EO solution software for building Earth Observation Data catalogues

Gisaia IN

DOMINO-X PROJECT CONSORTIUM

  22 Octobre 2021, Media Release

Media release, 22 Octobre 2021

Our team joins others from the French space sectors to form a consortium that has been chosen by the Directorate General of Enterprises (DGE) and Centre National d’Études Spatiales for the DOMINO-X project.

We are proud and happy to contribute to this innovative initiative that will exploit Cloud and Artificial Intelligence technologies to standardize the architectures of ground-based Earth Observation segments and promote the emergence of a modular product and service offering. This will facilitate a need to offer customers lower costs for their requests.

Airbus Defence and Space are leading the DOMINO-X  consortium that brings together other experts from: Airbus, Thales Alenia Space, Safran, CS Group, Orange and Capgemini, Gisaïa, Stack Labs, Human design Group, Geotrend and Leanspace.

Gisaïa will be fronting our solution, ARLAS  for geospatial data analytics . This is not the first time that Gisaïa joins some of the consortium members and offers solutions that simplify the access to Earth Observation products. ARLAS is part of the framework that Theia and Dinamis are built on. 

ARLAS is open source architecture software that is also built on the latest big data technologies making it both easily interoperable with other solutions. It scales easily with a growing archive . This is important in the DOMINO-X mission which seeks to explore volumes of Earth Observation data, from diverse product families. But that is not all, ARLAS will also be offering interactive visualisation of the data with a simplified filtering process that makes it easy to quickly sort through data and find what one is looking for. 

The DOMINO-X ultimate quest is to deliver valuable insights for decision making from Earth Observation data by making it accessible to as many users as possible.

For more details contact 

dolphine.rambaud@gisaia.com

 About Gisaïa:

Gisaïa brings seven years of geo-big data analytics expertise, and a robust geo-analytics solution, “ARLASⓇ”. The ARLASⓇ framework has been tried and tested in diverse use cases for geospatial intelligence, especially in Earth observation data optimisation.

Gisaia wins EU Horizon2020 UFO Challenge with ARLAS for geospatial data - AIS data. European Union Horizon2020 UFO Challenge 2021 Winners

FAIR WINS UFO 2021 Challenge

EUROPE UNION Horizon 2020 UFO Challenge

 06 July 2021, Media Release

 

FAIR Consortium,

Media brief, 06 July 2021

Gisaïa, Skyline Partners, e-Odyn are excited to announce that their consortium won a grant by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme coordinated by Aerospace Valley. The award was through a tendering process that saw the consortium emerge with top scores for their proposal responding to “Emerging indUstries new value chains boosted by small Flying Objects – UFO” 

The UFO project seeks to develop cross-sectoral industrial value-chains between selected emerging industries, to stimulate new products and services from small and medium enterprises. 

Mr Thaddé Bouchard, the UFO Coordinator at Aerospace Valley shares what got FAIR on the winning list.

“Based on a high quality application, the project FAIR presents for UFO a great opportunity to combine new market opportunities with climate change tackling. The parametric products proposed by FAIR, leveraging on advanced scientific and insurance models, represent a highly innovative approach for ship insurance. FAIR proposes a promising solution in contrast with traditional practices of the insurance industry in the marine sector demonstrating how satellite data can foster the value chains of emerging industries.”

The award will allow the consortium to bring together their aggregated technologies to develop and test a parametric index insurance product for the marine sector. Mr Bouchard notes that FAIR put together the right actors to successfully execute the project.

The grant runs between May 2021 – May 2022. After the one year development period, the consortium aims to put a fully transparent risk transfer product that protects ship owners while also benefiting the environment . This will be achieved through full automatiomation of risk calculations based on Earth observation data to cover overlooked aspects of operations.

The consortium, which is made up of marine data specialists, geo-big data analytics experts and parametrics insurance specialists, believes that this project will open up a new revenue stream for Small Flying Objects (SFOs), in high value marine insurance . 

For more details contact 

dolphine.rambaud@gisaia.com

ALSO SEE

UFO’s media release from published here on their website.

 

About the consortium:

eOdyn’s solutions rely on its Omni-Situ ocean dynamics (wind, wave, surface current) measurement technology. It delivers high temporal and spatial resolution, in real-time with virtually global offshore coverage, thanks to machine learning algorithms mining into marine traffic data.

Gisaïa brings seven years of geo-big data analytics expertise, and a robust geo-analytics solution, “ARLASⓇ”. The ARLASⓇ framework has been tried and tested in diverse use cases for geospatial intelligence, especially in Earth observation data value creation. The ARLASⓇ framework already powers INSDEXⓇ, an index insurance technology platform produced and run by Skyline Partners.

Skyline Partner is a UK Insurtech company, specialised in index-based parametric insurance. Our solutions are data & technology-driven and underwritten by top tier international re/insurers with superior ratings. Skyline has developed its own index insurance technology platform INSDEX® and aggregates high-value data from multiple sources.

Index Insurance - Geospatial Intelligence.

INSDEX POWERED BY ARLAS.

 21 September 2020, Media Release

London – Toulouse: 21 September 2020 – Skyline Partners and Gisaïa announce their strategic partnership and the launch of, Skyline’s index insurance technology, starting with Solar.

Solar is a unique index insurance solution by Skyline for renewable solar energy, powered by Gisaïa’s geospatial solution ARLAS that will bring a unique risk transfer and management platform for clients to explore, monitor and insure the lack of solar radiation.

The same data used to pay claims will be used to monitor their risks in full transparency for customers and risk carriers.

Combined with faster and guaranteed payouts, Solar will support project developers and green investors in securing better funding terms and help them manage their risk appetite.

“Gisaïa’s expertise in geospatial big data exploration has been proven in the high-tech space industry. Their ability to deliver high quality geospatial visualisation is unprecedented in the insurance industry. We are very excited to partner with them and bring this unique value proposition. Our shared focus on innovation, technology and data cement this partnership for the long term.” Laurent Sabatié and Gethin Jones, Skyline Partners Co-Founders and Directors.

“Skyline Partners have unique expertise and experience in parametric insurance underwriting. Skyline’s ability to keep up with innovative trends and even become early adopters aligns with our quest to explore new spaces to deploy our ARLAS® framework. We are thrilled to find a partner who shares in our push for excellence and positive customer experiences” Laurent Dezou and Sylvain Gaudan, Gisaïa Co-founders and Directors.

Index-based insurance, whilst already a well-known mechanism, has been slow to emerge as an established risk transfer option by risk carriers and customers.  This is starting to change and index insurance is now accelerating to complement traditional programmes, in markets where cover gaps or exclusions exist, or conditions are tightening.

With Skyline aims at facilitating and spreading the use of index insurance, as an efficient and transparent means of risk transfer with fast and guaranteed access to cash at the occurrence of adverse events.

New upgrades will soon be released, to accompany existing Skyline index solutions for renewable wind energy, agriculture and natural catastrophes. In addition, Skyline has also developed a beta version of index insurance technology for distributors and risk carriers that integrates the same visualisation capabilities, but also index risk modelling, large scale pricing and payout trigger notifications.

By combining Skyline’s index modelling capabilities with Gisaïa’s big data geospatial expertise, the partnership will create a powerful and unprecedented proposition for the insurance industry. It will bring significant value to customers, brokers and carriers to help them comprehend, manage and transfer risks, in line with their specific needs.

 

For more details

Contact Skyline to discuss index-based insurance: enquiries@skyline.partners

 

 

Additional RESOURCES

Please follow Skyline Partners and Gisaïa for updates on the joint venture:

Follow Skyline Partners on Twitter,  LinkedIn

Follow Gisaïa on Twitter,  LinkedIn

About Skyline Partners

Skyline Partners is a private-equity funded UK insurtech company, focusing solely on index-based parametric insurance. Our solutions are data, technology-driven, and underwritten by top tier international re/insurers with superior ratings. Skyline has developed its own index insurance technology platform and aggregates high-value data from multiple sources. Our initial focus is on Renewable Energy, Agriculture, and Natural Catastrophes, but our ambition is to develop index solutions for all classes and segments. For more information on our vision and solutions, visit www.skyline.partners

About Gisaia

Gisaïa is an expert in geospatial intelligence with experience in facilitating rapid deployment of technology solutions for deeper geospatial-big data analysis. Our ARLAS ® framework is built to serve efficiently: every function is developed to not only support the ease of operations but also, deliver expected results. We have tried and tested the potential of ARLAS ® framework’s versatility in diverse use-cases, with great results. For more information about Gisaia visit: www.gisaia.com and ARLAS: www.arlas.io

Watch demo here: 

 

 

TRACING THE DANGER IN THE AIR

If we understand it, we can fix it

July 27, 2020

4.2 million people die every year. 

That number of deaths is linked to outdoor air pollution as recorded by the World Health Organisation (WHO). When you include indoor pollution, the number goes up to 7 million people every year. 

While most of these deaths are in developing and middle-income countries, major cities in developed countries still record higher than recommended levels of substances linked to dangerous pollutants.

So, what are these pollutants and how do they affect people?

The OpenAQ database that is used in ARLAS’s – also an open-source framework- demonstration, collects data from 12,000 stations spread across 93 countries. The stations monitored by OpenAQ record diverse air pollutants; NO₂, SO₂, NO₃, BC, PM₂.₅, PM₁₀, and CO₂.

NO₂, Nitrogen Dioxide, is produced in abnormal quantities by human activities like burning of fuel, motor vehicle emissions, and power plants. It is toxic and easy to inhale, known to trigger asthma.

The PM₂.₅ is also a killer pollutant. Simply referred to as ‘Particulate Matter’, it is composed of solid particles and liquid droplets. It is highly inhalable causing many health problems, especially linked to the heart.

PM₁₀ is four times bigger than PM₂.₅ but just as dangerous because it can also be easily inhaled.

The trouble with air pollution is that it affects even those who didn’t create it. The big question would then be, how to trace the danger in the air and prevent exposure to these deadly agents? While many answers speak to long-term strategies, the immediate response involves aggressive monitoring and warning systems that give individuals the ability to make decisions that protect them. 

Having reliable air pollution monitoring tools like ARLAS ensures that everyone in the decision-making chain is well equipped to act.

 

THE COVID-19 SCENARIO

The world ground to a halt and immediately opened the skies – quite literary in some locations – to the possibilities of tackling air pollution. The near-global lockdown courtesy of COVID-19 made it apparent for ‘pollution effects believers and non-believers’, that the Earth had been choking.

On the left, Beijing on a clearer day and on the right, the city covered in smog, a feature common with high pollution

It was no surprise to see pollution levels go down as mobility reduced and non-essential factories’ tracks go on a standstill, cutting pollutants by significant numbers. 

China for example is on record as the highest contributor to CO₂ levels globally. During their lockdown, their CO₂ emissions went down by about 25%, equivalent to 150,000 tons. 

To put that into perspective, that is nearly five times what  Angola emits yearly.

We tested the theory of human contribution to air pollution. Using ARLAS, we compared March – April 2019, March – April 2020, and June 2020 data. This period represents, before and during COVID-19 for the same periods and just after the lockdown was lifted in some countries.

Comparision of the Evolution of PM₂.₅ emissions in the Beijing/Tianjin/Hebei/Shandong provinces from January to March 2019 versus 2020 

Focusing on provinces around Beijing, ARLAS shows  PM₂.₅ levels reducing by about 30% over the period when the lockdown is ongoing. It is clear from this demonstration that reduced human activity also reduced the volume of pollutants released in the air. There is also a significant reduction in PM₁₀ levels. 

Some activities that are traditionally low contributors to pollution like home heating and data centres increased their pollution contribution as human activities migrated home and online. This kept some pollutants volumes high.

 

OTHER ARLAS GENERAL OBSERVATIONS

On ARLAS, a dive down to specific stations reveals a more localized picture. 

Based on the dangers associated with PM₂.₅ and PM₁₀, the WHO advises that exposure to these two agents should be kept below 20μg/m3 for  PM₁₀  and  10 μg/m3  for PM₂.₅. Some locations record levels that are over five times higher than the recommended values. 

Residents of New Delhi benefited from a 56% drop in PM₂.₅ emissions between 26 April – 7 May, 2020, compared to the same period in 2019.

But, it was still, way above the recommended threshold.

Comparision of the PM₂.₅ emissions over New Dehli city between 26 April – 7 May 2019 (mean of 95.8μg/m3)  and 26 April – 7 May 2020 (mean of 43.4 μg/m3)

NO₂ emissions also have an adverse effect on health especially when higher than 100μg/m3 on an hourly average. Between January and August 2019, Paris experienced levels above 100μg/m3 85 times.  In 2020, it was cut down 21 times to only 4 measures of similar quantities that were recorded at the end of June, just after the lockdown.

Temporal comparision of the 1st Semester 2019 versus the 1st Semester 2020 of NO2 emissions higher than 100μg/m3 over the City of Paris
NO2_New Delhi
Zoom on the legend Over the City of Paris :
Above: Distribution of numbers of measures of quantities of NO₂ emissions. Here, you see a selection of emissions above 100μg/m3.
Below: Distribution of the average of NO₂ emissions over time (In the 1st semester of 2019, there are 13 peaks. For the same period in 2020, only 1 peak). 

AIR POLLUTION STAKEHOLDERS

Strict monitoring of air pollution is a growing phenomenon with more stations being set up to facilitate this. The European Union region has stringent policies on pollution which have resulted in lower deaths linked to air pollution. France for instance has reduced air pollution linked deaths by half in only 25 years.

Pollution data gives the ability to analyse it and fix it. 

An ecosystem of monitoring and prevention would ideally save many lives: different players acting from different angles, easily and quickly guided by data. 

To start, policymakers like scientists and regulators, require needlepoint precision to determine their actions.

Travel companies that issue alerts on destinations based on pollution levels could help many at-risk groups to make informed choices – for example, people with preexisting pulmonary conditions. Could this lead to cheaper insurance premiums for travellers to/during low pollution zones and periods? Or even better, saving lives.

Individuals may also want to proactively stay connected to pollution information within their localities or elsewhere they intend to visit. Access to mobile applications that have credible up to date data would put pollution-fighting power in their hands like; where to find a job or buy a home amongst other human habitation decisions.

WHO is keen to have more stations set-up because the more air pollution data is collected, the clearer the picture. The OpenAQ currently collects up to 588 million air quality measurements. This is big data that ARLAS can quickly and easily process for Air pollution analysis.

 

AN OPEN APPROACH TO ADDRESSING AIR POLLUTION

The irony of the COVID-19 pandemic is that within the initial limited time of confinement – mid March – end of May 2020 – more lives may have been saved from the direct effects of exposure to pollution than were lost due to COVID-19 during the same period. 

Scientists are already linking higher critical COVID-19 impact amongst people who were previously exposed to high levels of pollution.

All efforts towards air pollution monitoring are expected to help reduce premature deaths linked to toxic air. If you are working in monitoring, policy setting or warning mechanisms around pollution, check out our demo to get a glimpse of Arlas at work on OpenAQ pollution data.

Get in touch with us at contact@gisaia.com if you would like to discuss tools and services to get you acting faster.

 

EXTERNAL SOURCES

Open AQ Website

ESA Article “Global Air pollution maps now available”

WHO Article “9 out of 10 people worldwide breathe polluted air, but more countries are taking action”

Forbes Article “Coronavirus Lockdown May Save More Lives By Preventing Pollution Than By Preventing Infection”

Our world in data Aricle “Air pollution is one of the world’s leading risk factors for death”