News and Events

RapidEye presentation and workshop

6 October 2009

introduction - Tamme van der Wal

Precision agriculture is a very 'hot' theme and involves many different aspects. The current interest in PA is mainly due to the guidance applications. Crop status monitoring and variable rate application are now upcoming aspects. In this introduction the role and potential of remote sensing is put in perspective of other aspects of precision agriculture. Also, the audience is challenged to look at remote sensing from the opportunity of different business models. Two are presented.

RapidEye - Georg Lösel

In a clear presentation dr. Georg Lösel presented the company RapidEye and the imagery they are creating with their own constellation of satellites. He made specific remarks towards the increased capabilities of the RapidEye constellation for agricultural purposes, like the multi spectral imagery including the RedEdge band (specifically sensitive to crop 'health'), the 5x5 meter pixel size and the almost daily revisit.

 

RapidEye is a german satellite imagery provider. Its satellites are build and designed for land applications. Agriculture, forestry etc. RapidEye is now 1 year operational. Each satellite can take strips of 1500 km of imagery per orbit. Through smart programming, cloudy areas are avoided and imagery is taken at the best moment of the best spots.
During the workshop the audience was specifically interested in costs and the delivery assurance. Mr. Lösel indicated that the pricing for near-real-time imagery is competitive to other systems and that the high revisit frequency allows them to guarantee an image at least once a month but - weather conditions permitting - more imagery is possible.
Farmers and other customers must allow a 48 time lag between image acquisition and delivery.
The upcoming facility of RapidEye called the Kiosk is an innovative way of searching and ordering imagery (mainly archived data).
RapidEye is now imaging large areas to get full coverages and map every part of the earth.

The workshop was organised in collaboration between different groups and organisations.