Experiences with RapidEye

Gisat presented at the 2009 MARS annual conference in Sicily.

The 2009 GeoCAP Annual Conference – the fifteen of the series – was jointly organized by the GeoCAP Action of the MARS Unit and the Italian Agenzia per le Erogazioni in Agricoltura (AGEA). The conference, entitled Geomatics in support of the CAP took place from 18 to 20 November 2009 in Taormina (Sicily).

The main purpose of the conference was to offer an opportunity for MS Administrations, EU officials, Image Providers and contractors to meet and discuss particular problems or innovations. During the conference various topics were covered: controls with Remote Sensing (CwRS), Land Parcel Identification Systems (LPIS) management and quality assessment, GPS technologies in support of CAP controls, Eligibility for direct supports, Cross compliance …
It was the main “rendez-vous” to review the 2009 achievements, the problems and solutions found by Member States, as well as the technical progress and plans for the 2010 campaign.

Gisat, the national contractor for the control with remote sensing has presented its experiences with the use of RapidEye data during the control campaign.
The first part of the presentation was focused on geometrical issues mostly related to orthorectification process. It was proved that using the RPC method single pixel accuracy can be achieved even without any ground control points (obviously the proper DEM is needed).
The other part described our experiences with the use of RapidEye imagery within CAPI. The focus was on discrimination of arable crops, grassland, parcel boundaries detection and detection of non-eligible use indicating e.g. abandoned land.

The results achieved have also been acknowledged by the fact that Jiri Sustera, remote sensing expert working at Gisat, has been invited as co-author of the article RapidEye – Automated High-Speed High-Accuracy Orthorectification and Mosaicking written by Dr. Philip Cheng, Senior Scientist at PCI Geomatics, and published in October/November 2009 GeoInformatics magazine.