Month: May 2012

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Distorting headline in Irish Times about climate chnage

Latest statistics show no evidence that global warming is taking place.

Is the headline for an article on publication of a set of new 30 year benchmanrks for irish waether forcasting from met.ie.

But the point of the article is that 30 Years is too short a period over which to assess climate change – i.e. the figures are not “evidence” one way or the other (not that the figures dont show any change they do with 0.75 degree incease in average temp).

But lots of people will only read the headline and come to the wrong conclusion

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Private space

The successful docking of the Space X Dragon Module could be the start of a new wave of space innovation from the private sector – potentially tying in with a new , rightwing climate change deniging american president and reports from congress on aging public sector funded EO tech, resulting in a shrinking of NASA in EO and payload lift and increasing realiance on the private sector for space sector (though the space sector has always private sector to alrge extent- NASA didnt build rockets, private companies like lockheed did – its funding thats public).

Any how- heres a beautiful picture taken by a Dutch ESA astronaught onboard ISS of the dragon module approaching (thats namibia underneath)

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Summer school, using GPS in research

Barry Fennel of EI passes on the following: 

The University of Nottingham is hosting a FREE Summer Schoolfrom 13 to 15 August 2012.  We are looking for researchers, students and people who work in the various fields of Earth Observation, who want to find out how navigation satellites can assist their work.  The School will explain how satellite navigation works and include presentations by people who are using it to produce exciting new research.  There will opportunity for students who have suitable ideas to find out how they can get additional funding to develop them and even support to set up their own companies!

 This opportunity is open to anyone, even if you have never heard of navigation satellites! – for more information and registration details visit www.gfg2.eu  

 Gfg2 is a European Union funded project to promote the use of GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) for  GEEO (Global Environmental Earth Observation) and GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems).

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Ireland and the ESA

Last Friday Enterprise Ireland organised an event in Cork to promote Ireland’s membership of the European Space Agency. As part of that the RTE Mooney programme had a slot where they talked to Charlotte O Kelly of Techworks and Danny Gleeson.

You can find the podcast at: http://www.rte.ie/radio1/podcast/podcast_mooney.xml

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PhD in UK on LIDAR and Forestry

From a RSPSoc mailing:

Measuring forest carbon dynamics with a full-waveform laser scanner

University of Salford – School of Environment and Life Sciences

　Supervisor: Professor F M Danson

Applicants should be UK citizens* (due to the funding criteria) and have a first degree at upper second or first class level, or an MSc in a relevant discipline (for example Geography, Environmental Science, Biology, Forestry). Applications should be made online at the University of Salford website

http://www.salford.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/applying/applying-for-research

 * Not sure if “Granny” rule applies

 

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UAV regulation in Ireland

The Irish Aviation authority have just issued new regulation about the operation of Unmanned aerial Systems in ireland.

Here are the details, but in short, this doesnt include model aircraft for recreational use but as soon as you put a sensor on board and start chraging for a service it falls under these guidleines.

In short , there is no “right – to -fly”, each operations needs a licence to operate and each flight needs clearance. The technology at the moment is effectively limited to line-of-sight equipment, as more advanced systems do not meet the saftey requiremnts so far. Here’s a brief extract that sums things up:

It is IAA policy that UAS operations in Ireland must meet at least the same safety and operational standards as manned aircraft. Therefore, UAS operations must be as safe as manned aircraft insofar as they must not present or create a greater hazard to persons, property, vehicles or vessels, whilst in the air or on the ground, than those attributable to the operation of manned aircraft.

The underlying policy is that a UAS may not be flown in Ireland without the operator obtaining a specific Permission from the Authority. Additionally, where such a UAS is to be used for commercial purposes such as filming, photography, survey, surveillance, etc, the operator must apply to the Authority for an Aerial Work Permission to cover such activity.

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Galileo Competition

The National Space Centre is coordinating the Irish arm of a 1 million euro geolocation application completion from Galileo. Open to all you can enter with just an idea (all be it a well thought out one), a business plan or a system or equipment at prototype level. Examples of previous winners include:

  • Device-based distributed taxi-dispatching using GPS/GNSS and short-range communications
  • MEFID – the miniature electronic unit for remote detecting epileptic seizures of children
  • VIP-Is : Maps and LBSs for Visually Impaired People based on precIse satellIte navIgation and tactIle visualIzation
  • Geo-Coupon: A coupon demanding app based on where you have been

Brochure here. Closing Date 30th June

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Bog Surveillance

Interesting article in the Times today on the NPWS use of aircraft for monitoring bogs in the context of illegal cutting. Whilst I can understand the use of aircraft for ease of acquisition and reliability in the face bad weather.  But just to note that bog cutting is a seasonal activity, in better weather and that there is quite good coverage of the western seaboard for high-resolution archive imagery from quickbird, IKONOS etc to act as reference and the 40K spent on flights (no mention of processing costs post acquisition) could have bought ~30 on demand hi-resolution images ready-to-use covering around 8000 sqkm- these figures are approximates based on the last time i got a single tasked image- I’m sure the state with larger more regular orders could have gotten a much better deal.