SIBELIUs (eOsphere) (IPP funded)

www.eosphere.co.uk

Overview

Improved severe-weather resilience for herding communities using satellite Earth observation (EO). The solution provides improved capacity for distributing new and upgraded environmental information products. Solution provides information regarding pasture, snow and drought, including absolute regional averages, anomalies and trends, to stakeholders supporting herding communities including the insurance sector, government agencies coordinating livestock and land use, and directly to the herders through text messaging.

Mongolian pastoralist

Solution benefits

  • Solution provides information regarding pasture, snow and drought, including absolute regional averages, anomalies and trends.
  • Improved products will have complete country coverage, provided more frequently, for longer periods of the year, more accurately and with improved spatial resolution.
  • Benefits for the herding community will be achieved by using improved environmental information through three main channels: (1) the insurance sector, (2) government agencies coordinating livestock and land use, (3) directly to the herders through text messaging.
  • Applicable for environmental monitoring especially for pasture, snow and drought in countries with herding communities.

Key technical features

  • A Mongolian Open Data Cube will form a key component of the SIBELIUs infrastructure which will allow time series of EO data and derived products to be queried by staff at the country’s Meteorological Institute and other Government agencies.
  • The SIBELIUs solution makes use of free and open EO data making it sustainable, in particular Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8.
  • The SIBELIUs solution is aiming to update environmental products every two weeks, which meets requirements for relatively slowly evolving conditions such as pasture.

Case studies

SIBELIUs, supported by IPP, will deliver greater severe weather resilience for herders by providing new EO derived environmental products to key stakeholders supporting herding communities in Mongolia. SIBELIUs is building capacity at Mongolia’s National Meteorology Institute (NAMEM) to provide new and enhanced environmental products. SIBELIUs will channel its benefits through three existing networks:

  • developing new insurance products for herders
  • support for government agencies for managing reserve regions
  • distributing products via a mobile phone text messaging service

Organisation overview

eOsphere was established in 2001 and is strongly focused on solving real remote sensing problems for a range of customers and end users. Key application areas include the provision of affordable satellite ground receiving stations for environmental and hazard monitoring.