Polish Institute of Geodesy and Cartography Joins the Copernicus Relays Programme
“Copernicus Relays” is a title assigned by the European Commission to the domestic Earth Observation experts in the European Union member states. The job of the aforesaid group is to share their knowledge and experience in order to promote usage of the data derived from the Copernicus programme services.
Institute of Geodesy and Cartography is carrying out research and application activities within the scope of remote-sensing, geodynamics, surveying and other associated domains, in the areas related to the needs defined by the government and local authorities, as well as for the purposes closely tied to the national security. One of the important areas of the activities undertaken by the Institute is related to researching the applications of satellite remote sensing for sectors such as agriculture, forestry, climate changes, land use, environmental protection, spatial development and many other, related areas. By involving the Institute of Geodesy and Cartography in the “Copernicus Relays” programme, and through many years of experience this entity gathered in the field of remote sensing, the consortium will be able to promote the use of satellite-gathered data in Poland even more intensely.
Consortium formed by Astri Polska and Kapitech received the “Copernicus Relays” title back in 2016. Since then, the companies have been actively promoting the benefits that are entailed by usage of satellite data provided by the European “Copernicus” Earth Observation programme in a variety of spheres of economy. The companies also support Hackathon events, helping the participants to make good use of the data provided by the EO satellites. These businesses are also engaged in organization of workshops dealing with the basic use of the “ESA SNAP” ESA software that is used to process the imagery downloaded from the EO Satellites. In the late 2017, following a positive assessment of its activities undertaken so far, the European Commission authorized the consortium to undertake more work throughout the upcoming year.
Copernicus is an EU programme coordinated by the European Commission working together with ESA and other European entities. The objective of the initiative is to deliver information about the Earth provided by the Sentinel satellites and to develop the information services based on EO satellite-data and in situ data. The services provide the users with reliable and accurate information within the six main thematic domains: Land Monitoring, Marine Environment Monitoring, Atmosphere Monitoring, Emergency Management, Security and Climate Change.