GIM - Issue 3-2025 by Geomares Publishing

How space exploration and geospatial converge

A conversation with Thomas Zurbuchen on how studying the universe helps us better know our planet – and vice versa

The state of Earth observation sensors and technology

What surveyors can expect from Low Earth Orbit PNT

DeltaDTM: Mapping coastal terrain elevation

Director Strategy & Business Development

Durk Haarsma

Financial Director Meine van der Bijl

Technical Editor Huibert-Jan Lekkerkerk

Contributing Editors Dr Rohan Bennett, Lars Langhorst

Head of Content Wim van Wegen

Copy Editor Lynn Radford, Englishproof.nl

Marketing Advisors Peter Tapken, Sandro

Steunebrink, Myrthe van der Schuit

Circulation Manager Adrian Holland

Design Persmanager, The Hague

GIM International, one of the worldwide leading magazines in the geospatial industry, is published five times per year by Geomares. The magazine and related website and newsletter provide topical overviews and reports on the latest news, trends and developments in geomatics all around the world. GIM International is orientated towards a professional and managerial readership, those leading decision making, and has a worldwide circulation.

Subscriptions

GIM International is available five times per year on a subscription basis. Geospatial professionals can subscribe at any time via https://www.gim-international.com/subscribe/ print. Subscriptions will be automatically renewed upon expiry, unless Geomares receives written notification of cancellation at least 60 days before expiry date.

Turn complexity into confidence.

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Fair and friendly discovery

An intriguing and innovative concept is introduced in this issue of GIM International : a space cadastre (see page 44).

Professor Dr Tahsin Yomralıoğlu from Istanbul Technical University in Turkey advocates that outer space is rapidly evolving into a domain of major commercial activity, scientific exploration and strategic rivalry. This is a very fitting article in this issue dedicated to Earth observation, in which we also look at the growing connection between space exploration and the geospatial industry. In a high-profile interview by Wim van Wegen, GIM International ’s head of content, Thomas Zurbuchen – former lead of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope programme and now full professor with ETH Zurich – shares his inspiring perspectives on our planet and our industry (see page 10). Zurbuchen is convinced that nowhere else in the entire space sector holds more potential right now than the intersection of ‘space’ and ‘geospatial’. The ever-increasing volume of data available from sensors in satellite programmes by the likes of NASA and Copernicus can be analysed and put to use on Earth, creating new business opportunities – including for many startups. Zurbuchen’s message is an optimistic one, envisioning all kinds of new ways of working together for the betterment of life on Earth (and maybe

even in space). I myself am an optimist by nature, preferring to think in terms of new possibilities and challenges rather than problems and threats. Space possibly holds solutions to many of the issues that we are struggling with here on Earth. But when it comes to exploring the immense space above us, it is probably wise to temper our optimism with a degree of caution. After all, remember the ‘scramble for Africa’ when the continent was still unmapped in the modern sense. Many saw opportunities to become filthy rich at the expense of indigenous people and the land they lived on. Or consider the current ‘scramble for the oceans’, including the Arctic. Dollar signs are already appearing in the eyes of many people – and governments – as they anticipate the riches this largely unmapped realm could hold for their specific case. Neither of these have been fair and modest scrambles. It’s now the third time in human history we are on the brink of a race into a space that, according to adventurers, billionaires, scientists and politicians, holds the key to a diverse array of problems. If we do not respond to calls like the one from Yomralıoğlu, this race will be won by the strongest, richest and most privileged. It’s therefore good to think about a transformative paradigm that manages and organizes spatial rights and responsibilities in the space domain. It would also be good if geospatial concepts and technologies could play a role to ensure a journey of friendly and fair discovery.

Durk Haarsma director of strategy & business development

EAASI launches second thesis award as a platform for emerging talent

Following the success of its inaugural edition, the European Association of Aerial Surveying Industries (EAASI) is launching the second edition of its Outstanding Thesis Award – Spatial Business Bridge. This initiative is designed to spotlight postgraduate research that connects geospatial technologies with real-world business applications. The 2025 edition continues EAASI’s mission to bridge the gap between academic excellence and the operational needs of the aerial surveying sector, while also reflecting the growing demand for practical, industry-relevant innovation. Submissions are now open for the 2025 edition of the EAASI Outstanding Thesis Award. The award is open to master’s, doctoral, and post-doctoral students who have submitted a thesis or equivalent project report to a European university in 2023, 2024 or 2025. The final deadline for applications is 31 August 2025.

Woolpert strengthens global geospatial portfolio with acquisition of Bluesky International

Woolpert has acquired Bluesky International, the United Kingdom’s leading provider of aerial survey services and the preferred supplier of aerial imagery and elevation data to the UK government. Known for its multidisciplinary expertise, Bluesky delivers advanced geospatial solutions spanning aerial imaging, Lidar, 3D modelling and environmental mapping in sectors such as vegetation and renewable energy.

Headquartered in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, Bluesky employs more than 130 professionals across offices in the UK, Ireland, the USA and India. The acquisition significantly enhances Woolpert’s global reach and service offering. Woolpert, a recognized leader in geospatial and engineering services, is known for its ability to capture and process data from mountaintops to the ocean floor. The integration of Bluesky’s aircraft fleet, cutting-edge sensors, and robust data products further solidifies Woolpert’s position in key markets across North America, Europe, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region.

GeoTerra adopts Vexcel’s fourth-generation aerial camera system

GeoTerra, a leading US-based provider of aerial mapping services, has acquired the UltraCam Merlin 4.1 2010 digital aerial camera system from Vexcel Imaging. The purchase represents a shift to Vexcel’s fourth-generation imaging technology. With this addition, GeoTerra aims to enhance its capacity to produce accurate and consistent aerial imagery for a range of engineering and government mapping projects. The UltraCam Merlin 4.1 2010 is designed to support medium-format data acquisition with a focus on reliability and operational flexibility. The acquisition reflects broader trends in the geospatial sector, where investment in updated sensor technology continues to play a key role in maintaining data quality and project efficiency. GeoTerra supports diverse mapping projects across the USA, with a strong operational focus on the Pacific Northwest (PNW) – a region known for its rugged landscapes terrain and unique weather conditions. These environmental challenges demand dependable and adaptable technology. The UltraCam Merlin 4.1 addresses this need, ensuring GeoTerra can deliver consistent, high-quality data for projects ranging from large-scale orthophoto programmes to precise, small-scale engineering work.

With the newly acquired UltraCam Merlin 4.1 2010, the GeoTerra team is ready to take on upcoming survey missions. (Image courtesy: Vexcel Imaging)

On a mission: gathering data from the air.

Example of Bluesky aerial imagery: shown here is Lidar height data alongside aerial imagery of the city of Bristol, UK, overlaid with a tree map. (Image courtesy: Bluesky International)

Very high-resolution Maxar satellite imagery of downtown Singapore. (Image courtesy: Maxar)

UP42 and Maxar extend global access to advanced geospatial intelligence

Thanks to a new strategic partnership between UP42 and Maxar, a global leader in secure, high-precision geospatial solutions, UP42 users gain direct access to Maxar’s very-high-resolution satellite imagery and tasking capabilities, significantly enhancing the availability of commercial geospatial intelligence worldwide. The integration enables UP42 customers to task Maxar’s state-of-the-art satellite constellation, including the powerful WorldView Legion satellites. With revisit rates of up to 15 times per day over key locations, users can acquire near-real-time insights with exceptional detail and reliability. In the near future, the platform will also offer access to Maxar’s extensive archive of 30cm-class and 50cm-class imagery. When combined with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools available on the UP42 platform, this data provides a robust foundation for in-depth analysis of activity patterns and operational environments. “Maxar’s integration marks a major milestone for UP42, providing our customers with greater flexibility, scale and precision,” said Jussi Koski, CPO at UP42. “The ability to directly task Maxar satellites, along with upcoming archive access, makes UP42 a comprehensive source for leading geospatial data.”

Getac ecosystem meets utility-sector demands

For utility sectors, Getac has developed a comprehensive ecosystem of resilient technologies built around its rugged computing and mobile video solutions. These solutions integrate advanced technologies tailored to the specific requirements of public-service sectors, including infrastructure planning, asset maintenance, land surveying and field operations. Getac’s rugged devices are engineered to operate under the most extreme conditions, maintaining full reliability in any professional or environmental scenario. They are designed for deployment in sectors such as water, gas and electricity utilities, as well as infrastructure assets including wind turbines and geospatial applications. Each device complies with military-grade certifications, including MIL-STD-810H, ensuring resistance to dropping, temperature extremes, sand and dust. The technology supports a broad range of field operations, from the precise demands of surveying and the critical need for on-site safety, to workforce coordination and the seamless installation and monitoring of smart meters.

Getac’s rugged devices are engineered to perform reliably in harsh conditions. (Image courtesy: Getac)

Esri’s embrace of 3D Tiles marks new chapter for open geospatial standards

When industry leaders like Esri and Google embrace open standards, it’s a reinforcement of what the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and its members have long advocated. (Image courtesy: Bentley Systems)

At its 2025 Partner Conference, Esri announced that Google’s photorealistic 3D Tiles will be integrated into the ArcGIS ecosystem. Besides being a technical enhancement, this signals Esri’s continued commitment to open standards and interoperability – an increasingly important shift in the broader tech landscape. The integration builds on the momentum from 2023, when ArcGIS first adopted the 3D Tiles standard. Since then, 3D capabilities within the platform have rapidly expanded, with growing adoption across Esri’s user community. Now, with access to high-resolution, real-world 3D content covering more than 2,500 cities in 49 countries, users in fields such as intelligence, defence, public safety and humanitarian aid can unlock new insights and bring next-generation visualization and analysis workflows to life. Esri’s decision to adopt 3D Tiles reflects the growing demand among today’s users for not just accurate data, but also data that’s accessible, interoperable and ready to drive decision-making across disciplines. As industries move toward more dynamic, integrated systems, the value of open standards has never been clearer. By supporting a shared, community-based approach to streaming and sharing 3D geospatial content, Esri is strengthening the foundation for next-generation workflows. The result is a more consistent user experience, improved situational awareness, and faster innovation –particularly in sectors that depend on spatial data, such as urban planning, infrastructure development, defence and public safety. This momentum also underscores a broader industry realization: open standards are no longer an idealistic aspiration – they are a practical necessity for scaling capabilities in fields like artificial intelligence, simulation, emergency response and sustainable city design.

Mobilize Your RIEGL VZ-600i 3D Laser Scanner!

With the VZ-600i, RIEGL has set new standards in 3D laser scanning – it impresses as the scanner for extremely fast acquisition of high-precision data, especially for large-scale projects. Whether surveying industrial construction sites, bridge construction projects, or historic building ensembles – the scanner is your ideal tool!

How about using this scanner to capture kinematic data as well?

With the Kinematic App, the VZ-600i can be switched from static to kinematic data acquisition without any additional equipment. This further increases the speed of data acquisition and expands the application possibilities.

RIEGL opens high-tech hangar to strengthen airborne Lidar operations

RIEGL, a global leader in airborne, mobile, terrestrial, industrial and UAV-based laser scanning solutions, has officially opened a new, state-of-the-art hangar in Krems, Austria. Located just a short drive from RIEGL’s global headquarters in Horn, the facility represents a major step in the company’s strategic expansion and commitment to excellence in airborne Lidar. The grand opening event drew more than 750 attendees – including employees and their families, government officials, and key clients from across Central Europe – underscoring the significance of the occasion for the company and its partners. “This new hangar is more than just a building, it’s a strategic cornerstone in our mission to deliver worldclass airborne Lidar solutions,” noted Dr Johannes Riegl, founder and CEO. “It enables us to bring even greater precision, efficiency and flexibility to our airborne operations, while also providing a dedicated space for innovation, testing and collaboration.” The celebration featured a full programme designed to showcase RIEGL’s airborne capabilities. Guests were treated to helicopter rides, aerobatic flight demonstrations and a static display of aircraft and airborne Lidar sensors. The event also included guided tours of the hangar, offering an inside look at its advanced infrastructure and operational setup. Culinary highlights were curated by Eva Riegl, who coordinated a grand buffet and refreshments throughout the day. The facility will serve as the central hub for RIEGL’s airborne activities, and currently houses two aircraft: a Diamond DA62 MPP and a Cessna T206H. Both are equipped to support final calibrations and testing with RIEGL’s high-performance Lidar systems. Purpose-built to facilitate system integration, calibration and deployment, the hangar is set to enhance the company’s service capabilities on a global scale.

Opening address by Dr Johannes Riegl, CEO of RIEGL, at the inauguration of the new hangar. (Image courtesy: Walter Skokanitsch for RIEGL)

Leica Geosystems expands mobile mapping portfolio with Pegasus TRK300 system

Leica Geosystems, part of Hexagon, has introduced the Leica Pegasus TRK300, a compact and adaptable mobile mapping solution designed to support a range of geospatial applications. Mobile mapping continues to play a central role in enabling the efficient collection of geospatial data, underpinning developments such as smart city planning, infrastructure upgrades and digital twin implementation. The TRK300 is intended to support users with varying levels of experience in collecting high-quality point cloud data. “The Pegasus TRK300 opens up exciting opportunities for any business looking to enhance and grow their mapping capabilities, from identifying potholes to optimizing city centre traffic flows,” said Christian Schäfer, business director mobile mapping at Leica Geosystems. “Because it is lightweight and designed with the user in mind, a single person can easily transport it and mount it to a vehicle –delivering results with minimal effort.” Equipped with a dual-head, multibeam scanner, the Pegasus TRK300 captures high-resolution spatial data from multiple angles, helping to reduce blind spots. The system’s 300m range allows for efficient data collection across wide areas, reducing the number of passes required. This contributes to productivity gains in applications such as asset mapping and urban modelling.

Intergeo 2025 ticket shop now open for attendees

The Pegasus TRK300’s dual-head multibeam scanner maps the world in high resolution from every angle, minimizing blind spots and delivering a fuller, more accurate picture. (Image courtesy: Leica Geosystems)

FARO introduces new 3D reality capture solution

It may seem a while away, but the geospatial community can already look forward to Intergeo 2025. The ticket shop is now open for the leading international trade conference and exhibition for geoinformation and technology, which will take place in Frankfurt from 7-9 October. Visitors can now purchase tickets for both the conference and the exhibition. Early-bird discounts on conference tickets are available for those who book in advance, offering not only a discount but also early access to the extensive programme throughout the three-day event. The programme covers a wide range of current topics in the geospatial sector, including Earth observation, environmental monitoring, and the integration of artificial intelligence with geoinformation. Urban digital twins, smart city concepts, and open data will also be discussed. Technological innovations such as mobile mapping, laser scanning, autonomous sensor systems, satellite navigation, and unmanned systems will take centre stage. Developments in cartography and the management of official geoinformation will be explored, alongside sessions on building information modelling (BIM) for infrastructure, 3D city models, and monitoring solutions for structures and bridges.

FARO has introduced FARO Blink, a 3D reality capture solution aimed at simplifying and democratizing the process of capturing 3D data. This software-driven tool integrates advanced visualization and automated workflows via the FARO Sphere XG Digital Reality Platform, designed to make operations more intuitive and enable faster, more actionable insights. “Blink is a ground-breaking innovation designed to break down the barriers to 3D data, facilitating better insights from job sites through straightforward and user-friendly workflows,” said Peter J. Lau, FARO president and CEO. “By automating complex tasks and prioritizing simplicity, we’ve developed a cost-effective solution that enables anyone, regardless of their expertise, to achieve professional-quality data insights. The release further expands our product set and addressable market, offering 3D scanning to everyone, and is a continuation of our commitment to developing innovative technology that makes a real difference to how our customers work.” FARO Blink offers quality visualization and improved workflows for professionals in design, construction, surveying and operations. The solution’s modern design has already received recognition, including the Red Dot Design Award and silver level in the New York Design Awards. The ease of use allows teams to efficiently capture, view and share data, making project progress smoother.

newly launched FARO Blink 3D reality capture solution

FARO).

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(Image courtesy:

Frankfurt is the host city of Intergeo 2025. (Image courtesy: Rudy Balasko/Shutterstock)

Cross-sector collaboration to shape data-driven decisions on Earth and beyond

Where space exploration meets geospatial: a growing connection

By Wim van Wegen, head of content, GIM International

Leveraging satellite imagery, Earth observation is a prime example of where the geospatial field intersects with the space exploration industry. This point of intersection is currently where the greatest potential lies, thanks for instance to advances in data, artificial intelligence and sensor systems built by the geospatial sector to train the data, according to Thomas Zurbuchen – the man who led NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope programme to launch and into scientific operation. In this exclusive interview with GIM International, his inspiring insights put our planet – and our industry – in a cosmic perspective.

What does your current role entail, and which mission, vision and ambitions guide you in your work?

After joining ETH in August 2023, I started a programme focused on three activities. The first one is to build the – so far – only master’s space educational programme in Switzerland, because if you want to build an industry, you need talent. The second goal is to expand an existing activity focused on startups as part of the ESA BIC (Business Incubation Centre, Ed.) programme. We have one of the nodes here at ETH, and we’re in contact with around 75 startups at any time. The third aspect is to enhance the research impact of space, and building the infrastructure to do so. Underlying those three focus areas is the belief that space creates opportunities in a large domain: not just in engineering, but also in science, and especially – of course – in Earth observation and everything that relates to living on the best, most beautiful planet we’ve ever seen in the universe, which is ours.

As associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, you led the world’s foremost programme for conducting science in and from space, which included launching the James Webb Space Telescope. When it comes to mapping the Earth’s environment, what can surveyors and other geospatial professionals learn from the space industry? Whether exploring space or looking at the Earth, what matters is to make observations that provide context. In astrophysics, for example, that means having the right wavelength-range coverage and the right resolution to look at the universe’s first-generation galaxies, which was one of the James Webb’s Space Telescope’s prime objectives. In Earth science, I would say space gives the right context for looking at our own planet, including with respect to local impacts. Here in Switzerland, we recently had ‘coloured’ rain caused by desert sand from the Sahara being carried to us. It’s not unusual. But to understand the air over Switzerland, or anywhere, you need to understand the planet, and the best place to do that is from is space. The same is true for air pollution. In the US, for example, close to a quarter of all air pollution over California is actually Asian air pollution blown in from the Pacific. And a similar thing happens elsewhere, of course. The Earth is a complex interconnected system of systems, and the best place to observe it is in and from space. This also goes for mapping the Earth for other purposes.

How does geospatial data influence space exploration and astronomy?

Let’s take weather satellites as an example, because as part of the programme I ran at NASA, we also built weather satellites for the civil agencies in the USA. You can only launch if it’s the right weather – and not just on the ground, but also at all gradients all the way up through the atmosphere. I always found it slightly amusing that when we were trying to launch a weather satellite, the most important input to ensure the safety of that launch was data from a weather satellite that was already up there! Another thing is that all the aeronautics in space contribute to pollution on Earth – albeit accounting for less than 2% of all CO2 produced by humanity, but nonetheless it’s a contributor. I think such imperatives help us think not only how we act today, but how we act in the future with respect to our environment. So whether locally or strategically, the Earth sets important boundary conditions – which can be expressed as geospatial data – that are absolutely crucial when making spaceexploration decisions.

The purpose of ETH Zurich Space is to create synergies between all the space activities at ETH Zurich. How does this look in practice, and what are some standout initiatives or partnerships?

One of the things I’m most excited about is our partnership with multiple ETH professors in the area of earth observation. It’s focused on taking space data gathered using all kinds of technologies, from Lidar to gravity measurements and multispectral or even hyperspectral images. Switzerland’s small size and topographic diversity is an advantage: we have a very diverse dataset, thanks to the high mountains and the permafrost of the Alps. The question is, how do we take all this data and structure it to allow us to use modern techniques such as artificial intelligence and sensor systems we build here to train the data? By combining the space data with distributed sensors and drones, in which we already have a strong leadership component in Switzerland, as well as advanced analysis techniques, this will be a good example of integrating space data for the benefit of humanity – whether in precision farming, environmental monitoring, prediction and prevention of landslides and other natural dangers, or whatever.

Looking back, which key lessons from your NASA period continue to influence your work in your current role?

I had the enormous honour to work on 130-plus missions, of which 37 launched into space during my time as head of NASA, and a significant fraction of the missions consisted of Earth observation systems. I learned two critical lessons. First of all, it is the importance of the team for success. In fact, I’m much more optimistic than I used to be, because even though the missions were very hard and we struggled with many issues, I’ve seen what teams can do! Almost like magic, they can achieve missions that are full of miracles. The second lesson, whether by looking closely and thinking carefully about our own planet or looking in the deep universe or looking at samples from Bennu (a relatively small asteroid that passes close to Earth approximately every six years and was the target of the USA’s first asteroid-sampling mission: NASA’s successful OSIRIS-Rex mission, Ed.), is that nature is full of surprises and full of absolute beauty.

NASA’s slogan is ‘failure is not an option’. How does this align with the development of new space technologies, and especially ones that no one has ever dared to try before?

That’s really interesting. The phrase ‘failure is not an option’ is a quote by Gene Kranz who was flight director on the ground during the Apollo 13 mission, when astronauts were brought back to Earth after a lifethreatening engine failure. To a certain extent, that phrase has been the agency’s biggest blessing. When you’re working with astronauts, for example, or on the James Webb Space Telescope – which was a multicontinent investment of close to USD10

billion – you know that failure is an everpresent possibility. But the slogan focuses your mind on performing to the very best of your ability to reduce the risk of death, or the likelihood that a failure will dominate the mission. However, ‘failure is not an option’ has also been a curse, because ‘one-size-fitsall’ thinking about risk artificially increases the price of missions, thus slowing progress in understanding our planet and our universe. Without a failure-averse mindset, it would be possible to do many more missions and many more observations using technologies that are much faster and more advanced, even though we might fail from time to time. We should take more risks when it comes to new technologies for looking at our own planet and beyond.

That sounds like a relevant lesson for the geospatial industry as well. What else could geospatial professionals learn from the space industry’s principles? One critical principle is that innovation and iteration always go together. Innovation means doing something for the first time to achieve a purpose, while iteration is actually a polite word for failure. If somebody attempts something difficult, we want to encourage them, not to say ‘Hey, it could fail’. Of course it could fail; that is absolutely clear. It’s innovation. But whether what we thought would work doesn’t initially work the way we expected, or whether there is room for further improvement, it always requires iteration. If we stop iterating, we are not trying hard enough and that holds back innovation. Europe is currently one of the world leaders in the geospatial industry, but if we want to maintain that leadership role in the future, we need to innovate! That means supporting startups with the same energy and investment that they’re boosted elsewhere: not just in the US, but also China, Japan, India – there’s a whole burgeoning sector. I’m excited about the activities that are happening in Europe, but I just think there’s more to do there.

Still on the topic of innovation, how does academic research lead to the development of real-world solutions in the space industry, and how could that approach be translated to the geospatial and Earth observation sector?

I think it’s important to recognize that the whole process of doing research is ultimately about not just learning something new, but also sharing that information. So, while the research is an important part, scaling the results and making them useful is what really matters – especially in view of the opportunities but also the challenges we have we have on Earth. Think, for example, of making data about climate change of natural hazards available in the same way as we have access to weather data on our phones. Experience shows that the bestscaled solutions often get scaled by private industry, whether it’s a startup or an existing company that decides to invest in the idea. The geospatial industry is a good example of where the scalability of such solutions is in startups that come out of universities. But it’s critical that universities understand the commercial mechanisms and continue to support their students in scaling up their research findings for the benefit of humanity.

Artist’s rendering of the James Webb Space Telescope in orbit. (Image courtesy: NASA)

This James Webb Space Telescope’s image of the Carina Nebula reveals stars in their early formation. The scene is split: a dense, orangish nebula below resembles a mountain range, while the upper blueish area shows wispy clouds. Countless stars – ranging from faint points to bright ones with diffraction spikes – are scattered throughout. (Image courtesy: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI)

Both Switzerland and the USA, where you have spent a large part of your career, have been very fertile ground for startups, including geospatial startups. Which key factors create a climate of innovation?

A good environment for innovation has three ingredients: really good people with great ideas, the ability for those ideas to be built out, and the ability for those ideas to be scaled with funding. Looking at Europe, we have some amazingly talented people, and some of the systems for developing their ideas – whether at ETH, in the Netherlands or in many other European regions – are among the best in the world. There are pre-seed and seed opportunities, angel investors or other investment programmes. That’s very good. But I think there are two challenges. Firstly, even though Europe is unified in many ways – through the European Union or the Schengen Area – in practice, companies still often have to expand country by country, facing different regulations, languages and market dynamics in each one. That fragmentation reduces the effective market size, making it harder for a company to become profitable at scale. The USA has built an ecosystem around a truly unified single market, which makes it much easier to raise funding at various stages. In contrast, Europe is still lagging behind in this respect, especially in

The James Webb Space Telescope’s observatory is its space-based core, designed to capture light from the distant universe. Its Optical Telescope Element (OTE) acts as the eye, using a set of mirrors supported by a rigid backplane – the telescope’s spine – to collect light from space. This light is sent to the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM), which houses four main instruments: the Mid-Infrared Instrument, the Near-Infrared Spectrograph, the Near-Infrared Camera, and the Fine Guidance Sensor with its Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph. Together, they enable Webb to explore the earliest stars, galaxies and potential signs of life beyond Earth. (Image courtesy: NASA)

space-related industries. Secondly, we need an environment that’s encouraging for people who are trying, even though their likelihood of big financial success is less than 50% or perhaps less than 10% even. And if somebody fails, do they have to hide for the rest of their life or can they try again? I spend a lot of time trying to convince people that we need to actively build an ecosystem that supports

entrepreneurs – one that encourages them instead of criticizing them or treating failure as something shameful.

How could the geospatial industry and the space sector combine their unique strengths to create synergies that drive innovation and unlock new opportunities for addressing our planet’s global challenges?

In my opinion, there’s no place in the entire space sector with more opportunity right now than the intersection of the space industry and the geospatial industry. We already have a rich set of data – e.g. the Copernicus programme, NASA’s missions – as well as dozens of sensors and spacecraft collecting data as we speak, and much of it is publicly available. So, lots of data and sensors are there, but there’s still room for innovation – and not just in new sensors. We have seen a new spectral type of measurements, for example, from space that can be combined with the data technologies that are now coming to the forefront. Artificial intelligence and machine learning have been with us for a long time, of course, and are already being used in the geospatial industry, but the scale of the ability of such solutions is incredibly promising right now. I really think it’s the right time to build a startup at that intersection, and I would like to encourage a whole set of entrepreneurs to do so. In our observations here in Zurich, more than a third – and perhaps even half – of all startups are ‘downstream’ ones looking at how space data can be utilized on Earth as opposed to a new gadget or a new spacecraft.

Returning to orbit, how could closer collaboration between the space, astronomy and geospatial sectors further enhance our understanding of the universe and support missions beyond Earth, including those elsewhere in our solar system?

All observations we’ve ever done have first been observations of the Earth, whether infrared measurements, Lidar measurements and so on. These can then be launched to other planets so we can learn about Mars, the oceans below the icy surface of Europa, and Jupiter’s atmospheric structure, for instance. In that sense, Earth observation is the basis for what’s possible elsewhere. It’s also true that while technologies such as telescopes differ, the spacecraft used is basically the same. Therefore, developing platforms for Earth observation also supports the creation of platforms for astronomy and remote observations of other important space-related science.

Moving even deeper into space, if you had to envision the successor of the James Webb Space Telescope, which extra capabilities would you add?

Ideally, we should build a spacecraft that’s able to look at the atmospheres of planets like Earth. Currently, the planetary atmospheres we’re able to look at with the James Webb are not like Earth; they’re like mini-Neptunes (near infrared stars) or Jupiters (near sun-like stars). To build a spacecraft that can observe other exoplanets which have atmospheric compositions equivalent to Earth would require a system that’s probably a little bit bigger than James Webb and is way more stable – by a factor of 10 to 50. Then we could direct and integrate as that planet disappears behind the star and reappears, take cuts through the atmosphere and really look at its composition. The goal, of course, is not only to learn about planetary atmospheres, but also to look at traces for life elsewhere. That’s the telescope we’re dreaming about.

About Thomas Zurbuchen

Thomas Zurbuchen has been leading ETH Zurich Space since August 2023 and serves as a full professor of Space Science and Technology in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at ETH Zurich. From October 2016 until the end of 2022, Zurbuchen was NASA’s longest-serving associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate. During his tenure, NASA launched 37 science missions and initiated 54 more, including landmark projects such as the James Webb Space Telescope, the Perseverance and Ingenuity Mars missions, and the asteroid-deflecting DART mission. He played a pivotal role in shaping these missions and guiding them to success. Prior to his work at ETH and NASA, Zurbuchen was a professor of Space Science and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan. He is also featured prominently in the Netflix documentary Unknown: Cosmic Time Machine, which follows a team of scientists and engineers in their ambitious effort to launch the James Webb Space Telescope – which can safely be considered as a major leap forward in humanity’s understanding of the universe.

What message do you have for our readership of geospatial and Earth observation professionals?

I’m deeply convinced that in a world where many of the threats stem from nature – whether it’s severe weather conditions, climate change or the societal challenges we face – it’s the geospatial professionals who keep us safe, and also keep us looking forwards and understanding our future living environment. In fact, I can’t think of a community that’s more strategically important in terms of the well-being of our children and also of our planet. So, I just really hope that the geospatial community remains healthy and that new, talented and passionate people continue to join it.

Unknown: Cosmic Time Machine

This Netflix documentary, featuring Thomas Zurbuchen, chronicles the efforts of engineers and scientists behind the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope and its role in advancing our understanding of the universe. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27837488/

A view from Sentinel-3: Iceland without clouds

On 17 May 2025, the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission captured a rare, cloudfree glimpse of Iceland. Set in the remote reaches of the North Atlantic Ocean, Iceland is Europe’s westernmost country and one of the most northerly inhabited locations in the world. The island is renowned for its dramatic natural beauty, featuring a striking mix of volcanoes, glaciers, lava fields, lakes, hot springs and nearly 5,000km of rugged coastline.

With its cool climate and harsh terrain, Iceland supports sparse grasslands, bogs and moorlands rather than dense forests. This makes it challenging to distinguish vegetation from bare ground in standard true-colour satellite images. This false-colour image has been processed using the near-

infrared channel of Sentinel-3’s Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI). It highlights vegetation in shades of red, and makes it easier to distinguish between vegetated areas and bare ground or solidified lava fields which appear brownish. Darker or even black areas denote fresher lava flows.

This false-colour image of Iceland, acquired by Sentinel-3’s OLCI using near-infrared data, highlights vegetation in red. Brown areas indicate bare ground or older lava, while darker tones show fresher lava flows. (Image courtesy: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2025), processed by ESA)

More than 11% of the island is covered by glaciers, amounting to more surface area than on the whole of mainland Europe. The large, white area visible in the eastern part of the image is Vatnajökull National Park, home to the Vatnajökull Glacier. With an area of around 8,400km2 and an average ice thickness of more than 900m, Vatnajökull is the biggest glacier in Europe. The circular white patch in the centre is Hofsjökull, the country’s third-largest glacier and its largest active volcano. The elongated white area west of Hofsjökull is Langjökull, Iceland’s second-largest ice cap.

Water bodies such as rivers and glacial lakes appear as emerald green shapes scattered around the island. The colour is due to sediment in the water, which then flows into the ocean, dyeing its dark blue waters in hues of green visible along the coast. In the top left of the image, light blue swirls are visible in the sea off the coast of Greenland. These are small sea-ice fragments carried by the wind and ocean currents.

Captured during an exceptional heatwave in Iceland between 13 and 22 May 2025, this image includes land surface temperature data recorded on 17 May by Sentinel-3’s Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR).

Acknowledgement

This contribution has been adapted from a feature in the ‘In the Spotlight’ section of ESA’s website.

Fulfilling demands in the age of digital transformation

From property to governmental digital twin: the future cadastre in Switzerland

By Jürg Lüthy, City of Zurich, Switzerland

Having begun in the 1990s, the digitization of the property cadastre in Switzerland has now nearly been completed. At the same time, the cadastre of public-law restrictions on land ownership was also developed according to the C2014 concept. Today, cadastral data is an essential pillar of the national spatial data infrastructure, and is central to many governmental processes and directives. This article shows what demands the future cadastre can fulfil in the age of digital transformation.

In view of the comprehensive digitization of cadastral plans and the cadastral data that is now available in Switzerland, those involved in cadastral surveying can be proud of what has already been achieved. Ten years ago, easy access to data, whether via map services or open government data, was hardly conceivable, but today the country’s cadastre has an excellent reputation among users. They appreciate the reliability, the accuracy, the fact that it covers many requirements and the high level of up-todateness (with constant data updates). The reliability is reflected, among other things, by the fact that mortgage loans worth CHF 1,250 billion (against the nation’s GDP of approximately CHF 800 billion) were secured with the land register in 2023, and that only very few cases of disputed boundaries are brought before the courts.

Due to the high costs associated with data collection and the decentralized organization of the cadastral system, it was clear from the outset that data exchange between the systems was necessary. To this end, a conceptual data model was developed so that the data could be easily harmonized. Secondly, the data collection orders were linked to the obligation to deliver the data in a system-neutral format, structured according to a standardized, objectoriented data model. This ensured semantic

interoperability at an early stage and initiated the change from plan-oriented thinking to structured data. The conceptual ideas were later adopted for the development of the national spatial data infrastructure (NSDI).

Added value of digital cadastre data

As a result of its wide availability and high quality, the cadastral data is now also being used as base maps for many other GIS applications. Thanks to this usage, which goes beyond the original purpose, the high investments in data collection have already paid off.

However, the data from the property cadastre is not only used for orientation

purposes, i.e. as geospatial reference data. Additionally, many governmental processes today rely on the geometries of the cadastre for legally binding directives. These two examples illustrate this:

- In a building permit procedure, the authorities decide that, according to the cadastral data, the existing building may be extended by a maximum of 3.5m to maintain the prescribed boundary distance of 5m.

- An authority determines that the fees for the drainage of rainwater are calculated based on the sealed area per property. The degree of sealing is in turn derived from the land use in the cadastral data.

Multipurpose cadastre visualized as base map in the SDI of Zurich.

In other words, the cadastral data is used by various authorities as the basis for directives. The high quality and the associated high level of trust in the data enable many authorities to accept data without further clarification with the authorities responsible for the cadastral data. Therefore, those authorities have only limited influence over the actual usage of the data.

Potential for improvement and new challenges

However, 30 years after the start of the digitization of the cadastral system, it must be stated that the willingness for innovation and change in related sectors has been higher than in cadastral surveying itself. Despite methodological freedom, the same measuring and recording methods are still being used as 20 years ago. For example, drone surveying or mobile laser scanning are not used in the city of Zurich for ongoing data updates.

The authorities of the city of Zurich, at cantonal and federal level, are confronted with various challenges to sustainably secure the prosperity of society and the living space. The overarching strategies address topics such as the digital provision of government services and the promotion of innovative solutions through the broad availability of data and data-based algorithms such as artificial intelligence. In addition to increasing the effectiveness of government processes, the protection of natural resources and resilience to climate change have also been identified as key challenges.

This raises the question as to what extent the cadastre can contribute to these overarching strategies and to the ‘green-blue transformation’. The federal government, as the supreme supervisory authority for the cadastre, has taken the opportunity to develop a new vision for the cadastral data with a working group. Please note: the following developments were prepared from the perspective of the city of Zurich; they do not fully reflect the common position of the working group.

Beyond C2014: the vision of the city of Zurich

From the point of view of the city of Zurich, the cadastral system has an excellent chance of further strengthening its importance for the citizens, political administration and economy through strategic development, in view of the challenges facing today’s society. The following three pillars have been identified for the new vision:

1) The governmental digital twin

The development from property cadastre to tax cadastre to multipurpose cadastre is being supplemented by a further step: the governmental digital twin (GDT). For the GDT, the current data will be extended by the third and fourth dimensions. The advantages of the third dimension are undisputed, and the processes, technologies and algorithms for data collection and management have improved so significantly over time that the cost-benefit ratio is now appropriate. The fourth dimension facilitates the tracking of developments, which supports various simulations and the design of development scenarios. Besides the addition of these two dimensions, there will also be an expansion in terms of content. This will be consistently aligned with the needs of users and, for this purpose, there should be a new change board representing various user groups.

2) Single source of truth

In the spatial data infrastructure (SDI) of Zurich, there are several comparable tasks that are processed by different offices. Currently, several datasets on the same topic are maintained separately and only merged in the spatial data infrastructure (SDI). One example of this is the unsealing of surfaces, which takes place either on public roads, in public recreational facilities or around public buildings. For each type of land, a different authority is responsible for the task of unsealing. Depending on the authority, different rules apply for data collection.

In the future, each topic for which several authorities collect data will be coordinated or managed by the cadastre organization and handled in a single database.

Future governmental digital twin of Zurich.

3) Once-only principle

Construction activity in the public sector is increasingly based on the building information modelling (BIM) methodology, which means that high-quality, structured data is already available for the construction phase. After construction is complete, the BIM model must match the actual reality and therefore may need to be updated based on surveying. Many constructions are included in the cadastre in a generalized form, which means that this data must also be updated. Until now, this data has been recorded twice, each time with a different target.

In the future, the cadastral system must ensure that the once-only principle is consistently adhered to. The BIM model is updated during the construction phase. The extract from the BIM data that is relevant for widespread use is then integrated into the cadastral data.

Trust and accessibility

All the principles described above serve to ensure the reliability of the cadastral data and, building on this, to bring other data topics up to the same high level of quality. Together with its partners, the cadastre organization ensures that all the information contained in the cadastre meets a clearly defined quality standard, is kept up to date and is easily accessible. Every authority can base its processes and directives on the cadastral data and rely on them. The cadastral data can thus serve as a legally binding basis for any governmental procedures.

Conclusion

Since its inception, the cadastre has already promoted several developments in the government. Today, many authoritative processes depend on reliable spatial data. In addition to specialized data, reference data is often also required. The cadastre must therefore develop from a multipurpose cadastre into a governmental digital twin. The already strong position of the cadastral system should therefore be used to raise the data quality standard in other areas

About the author

Dr Jürg Lüthy is director of Geomatics + Surveying at the City of Zurich, the office for cadastral surveying and spatial data infrastructure at Switzerland’s largest city. He obtained a master’s degree in Rural Engineering and Survey from Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (Switzerland) in 1996, and he holds a PhD (2007) from the same institution. He is responsible for the international affairs for the national professional organization geosuisse, and is the Swiss delegate to FIG Commission 7.

Further reading

DIN e.V. (2024). DIN SPEC 91607:2024-11, Digitale Zwillinge für Städte und Kommunen, Berlin EJPD (1987). Die Zukunft unseres Bodens. Ein Beitrag zur Verbesserung der Bodeninformation und Bodennutzung Published by: Eidgenössisches Justiz- und Polizeidepartement, Eidgenössische Vermessungsdirektion, 1987 Steudler, Daniel et. al. (2014), CADASTRE 2014 and Beyond. FIG Publication No. 61. Copenhagen: International Federation of Surveyors (FIG), 2014.

that are processed on an interdisciplinary basis. Furthermore, data will mostly be recorded in the third and fourth dimensions in the future. The digital transformation of government tasks is being promoted and, with it, the role and importance of the cadastral system is being strengthened.

Construction projects as BIM data, seamlessly integrated in the digital twin.

The journey towards ever-sharper eyes on our world

Earth observation sensors and technology: the current state of play

By Wim van Wegen, head of content, GIM International

By offering the ability to track wildfires, flooding, land use, infrastructure and urban development, satellite imagery fuels smarter geospatial analysis for planning, risk assessment and environmental monitoring. This article outlines the evolution of Earth observation satellites over time and where we stand today in the USA, Europe and Asia. Against the backdrop of declining launch costs, miniaturization, reduced barriers to entry, artificial intelligence (AI) and multi-sensor fusion, it also looks ahead to the exciting new era of Earth observation for geospatial data acquisition.

Earth observation (EO) satellites come in many forms. They can differ in their orbital paths, the instruments they carry, and how those instruments capture data – from viewing angles and spatial resolution, to spectral sensitivity and swath width. These technical parameters are carefully chosen during mission planning, depending on the specific purpose. To observe weather patterns on a large scale and with high frequency, a geostationary orbit is ideal. From this high vantage point, approximately 36,000km above Earth, a satellite can continuously monitor almost an entire hemisphere. While the high altitude limits spatial resolution, this is generally sufficient for applications like tracking cloud movements over continents.

In contrast, applications that require detailed imagery of specific areas – e.g. monitoring the size of glacial lakes, mapping damage after a natural disaster, tracking deforestation or inspecting urban infrastructure – rely on high-resolution sensors. These are typically mounted on satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), between 500 and 1,200km above the planet. Since satellites in LEO move relative to the Earth’s surface and cannot continuously observe the same area, images can only be captured during the brief period when the

satellite passes overhead. The frequency of observations over the same location can be significantly increased by using satellite constellations – groups of satellites working together in coordinated orbits.

The origins of Earth observation Sputnik 1, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957, was technically the first artificial satellite, albeit not an Earth observation satellite in the modern sense. Nor was Sputnik 2, which was launched just one month after Sputnik 1 and was famous for carrying Laika the dog, the first living creature to orbit Earth. While it did not perform Earth observation activities, Sputnik 2 was the first platform capable of making scientific measurements in orbit because it was equipped with instruments to measure cosmic rays, solar radiation and other spacerelated parameters.

The Americans responded to the launch of the Sputniks by launching their first satelliteExplorer 1 - in 1958, marking the start of the ‘Space Race’ during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the USA. Later, after Explorer 3, which included a tape data recorder in the payload, it was concluded that the original Geiger counter had been ‘saturated’ by strong radiation coming from

1: A technical drawing of Landsat-1. (Image courtesy: NASA)

a belt of charged particles trapped in space by the Earth’s magnetic field. This belt of charged particles is now known as the Van Allen radiation belt.

Further developments followed quickly. TIROS-1, launched by NASA in April 1960, is widely considered the first true Earth observation satellite, specifically designed for meteorological applications. This was the first satellite to capture television images of

Figure

the Earth’s weather systems from space, and the visual cloud cover data significantly improved weather forecasting capabilities at the time. More importantly, although it didn’t yet offer the multispectral detail or sharp resolution that Landsat would later bring, TIROS-1 demonstrated that satellites could be used operationally for Earth observation, thus laying the foundation for today’s environmental monitoring systems.

Early days of Landsat

The early 1970s saw a rising wave of environmental awareness. The first Earth Day, held in April 1970, symbolized growing public concern for the planet and helped catalyse political action on environmental issues. Against this backdrop, the Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS) was launched as a proof of concept to demonstrate that satellite-based remote sensing could support better management of the environment and natural resources.

Based on the data and experience gathered from this pioneering mission, the USA decided to establish a long-term, operational Earth observation programme. ERTS was renamed Landsat 1, and the Landsat space programme has since become the world’s longestrunning EO initiative. Landsat 1 orbited Earth in a near-polar path at an altitude of approximately 900km. This type of orbit had a distinct advantage: as the satellite circled the globe, the Earth slowly rotated beneath it, allowing Landsat to scan long, continuous swaths of the planet’s surface. The orbit was also synchronized with the Sun, meaning the satellite passed over each region at roughly the same local solar-time with the Sun always behind the satellite on its daylight pass, ensuring consistent lighting conditions.

Landsat 1 completed an orbit every 103 minutes and returned to the same location every 18 days, building up a systematic,

repeatable record of Earth’s surface. On board, the satellite carried a multispectral scanner (MSS) and three return beam vidicon (RBV) video cameras, capable of capturing imagery in both visible and infrared wavelengths. This ushered in a new era of Earth observation from space.

Landsat’s technological leaps

While the instruments aboard Landsat 2 were identical in specification to those on Landsat 1, from Landsat 3 onwards satellite sensor technology underwent a remarkable evolution. Launched in March 1978 operated solely by NASA, marking the last time the agency managed a Landsat mission without a civilian partner, Landsat 3 had a multispectral scanner system that included a thermal infrared band, intended to capture temperature variations on Earth’s surface. Unfortunately this did not go entirely to plan, as the thermal IR band failed shortly after launch, limiting its utility. Nevertheless, the RBV sensor offered enhanced spatial resolution of 40m (compared to 80m in the earlier versions), providing better detail in the captured images.

The Landsat 4 and 5 satellites signalled a significant technological leap by introducing the thematic mapper (TM) sensor alongside the existing MSS. The TM represented a major advancement in remote sensing technology, setting a new benchmark for both spatial and spectral performance in terms of sharper imagery, improved spectral separation, greater geometric precision and finer radiometric resolution.

The TM collected data across seven spectral bands simultaneously, resulting in a much richer and more detailed view of Earth’s surface. Bands 1-5 and Band 7 recorded data at a spatial resolution of 30 by 30m, while Band 6 – which measured thermal infrared radiation, effectively capturing surface temperature – had a coarser resolution of 120 by 120m. Interestingly, Landsat satellites could only acquire scenes in this thermal band during nighttime. These capabilities made the TM sensor a powerful asset for applications ranging from environmental monitoring to land use and resource management.

Setbacks on the path to progress

Not every step of the Landsat programme was a success. Landsat 6 failed to reach orbit after its launch in 1993. The satellite had been upgraded by equipping it with the familiar MSS plus an enhanced thematic mapper (ETM). Despite this initial failure, Landsat 7 successfully introduced the enhanced thematic mapper plus (ETM+) six years later, in 1999. The ETM+ added a 15m-resolution panchromatic band to the existing TM bands, allowing for significantly

3: Each new Landsat satellite has brought improved sensors and more spectral bands, enabling broader and more detailed Earth observation. (Image courtesy: Laura Rocchio and Julia Barsi/NASA)

Figure 2: San Francisco Bay Area as imaged by ERTS-1 (later renamed Landsat 1).

Figure

Figure 4: Sentinel-2A and 2B fly in tandem in a polar orbit. As the Earth rotates beneath them, each satellite captures different scenes, together building a detailed composite view. (Image courtesy: ESA)

sharper black-and-white images and bringing the total of spectral bands to eight. In addition, the thermal band resolution was improved to 60m. With a 16-day revisit interval, these improvements enabled more precise monitoring of land cover changes, urban development and a wide range of environmental phenomena.

The journey continued in 2013 with the launch of Landsat 8, which brought significant advancements with two new instruments: the operational land imager (OLI) and the thermal infrared sensor (TIRS). OLI provided nine spectral bands, including a coastal aerosol band and a cirrus cloud detection band, increasing atmospheric correction and water studies. TIRS introduced two thermal bands with 100m resolution, improving the accuracy of surface temperature measurements. The instruments collectively offered 12-bit radiometric resolution, allowing for finer distinctions in detected energy levels.

The programme’s most recent addition is Landsat 9, which was launched into orbit in 2021. It continues the mission with instruments similar to Landsat 8 but with improved performance. The OLI-2 and TIRS-2 sensors maintain the same spectral and spatial resolutions but benefit from better calibration and data quality. Now with 14-bit

radiometric resolution, Landsat 9’s sensors can capture 16,384 levels of brightness per spectral band, which is far more than previous sensors. This higher sensitivity enables detection of subtle changes in vegetation, water quality, soil conditions and urban surfaces. It also improves performance in low-contrast environments such as shaded terrain, coastal zones and snow-covered areas. With reduced quantization error and smoother tonal transitions, the data is better suited for scientific analysis, time-series monitoring and visual interpretation.

Landsat 8 and 9 both record imagery in 11 spectral bands with spatial resolutions of 15m (panchromatic), 30m (most reflective bands) and 100m (thermal bands). Like Landsat 7, they each revisit the same location every 16 days, but when operated together, they offer eight-day global coverage. The images are typically divided into scenes enabling smooth downloading, each covering an area of approximately 185 by 185km.

Global archive of millions of images

Each generation of Landsat satellites has contributed to more detailed, accurate and comprehensive Earth observations, reinforcing the programme’s pivotal role in environmental monitoring and scientific research. Over the decades, it has produced millions of satellite images. These images, which are archived in the USA and at Landsat receiving stations around the world. They are a unique resource providing invaluable data for scientific research into the changing conditions on our planet as well as for a wide range of practical applications.

Europe’s Copernicus programme

The European counterpart to the Landsat programme is the firmly established Copernicus programme, led by the European Union (EU) in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA). The programme is named after Nicolaus Copernicus (14731543), the scientist whose theory of a

Figure 5: The island of South Georgia, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. (Image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data, processed by ESA)

heliocentric universe – revolving around the Sun rather than the Earth – marked a big shift in our understanding of the cosmos and laid the groundwork for modern science. Like Landsat, the Copernicus programme is built on the principle of free and open access to satellite data and has rapidly become a cornerstone of global Earth observation.

At the heart of the programme is the Sentinel-2 mission, with Sentinel-2A (2015) and Sentinel-2B (2017) forming a twin-satellite constellation dedicated to high-resolution optical imaging of land and coastal surfaces. Each satellite is equipped with a multispectral imager (MSI), allowing imagery to be captured in 13 spectral bands: four at 10m resolution (visible and near-infrared), six at 20m (red edge and shortwave infrared) and three at 60m (for atmospheric correction). With a 290km swath width and a five-day revisit cycle, Sentinel-2 delivers frequent wide-area coverage with consistent image quality.

Game-changing complementary datasets

Thanks to its accuracy, accessibility, and compatibility with established tools, Sentinel-2 has become an essential resource in both operational workflows and scientific research. In fact, it is often regarded as a game changer for the geospatial community, particularly when used in conjunction with the Landsat programme. While Landsat offers an unmatched historical archive, Sentinel-2 adds more frequent revisits, additional spectral detail (especially in the red edge) and also sharper resolution in certain bands. Together, the two programmes provide complementary datasets for time-series analysis, land cover monitoring, precision agriculture and disaster response.

ESA is currently developing six new Sentinel Expansion missions to further broaden the Copernicus Space Component, including CO2M, CHIME and LSTM. These missions are set to deliver highresolution, application-ready data on carbon emissions, vegetation health and land temperature. For geospatial professionals, this means even richer datasets, more frequent updates and expanded analytical possibilities across domains like climate modelling, precision agriculture and land-use planning.

Figure 6: For over half a century, Landsat imagery has supported a wide array of applications, enabling experts across a multitude of disciplines to better understand, manage and communicate about our changing planet. (Image courtesy: NASA)

Earth observation in Asia

Besides North America and Europe, Asia has also grown into a powerhouse in Earth observation, with countries like Japan and China making significant advances in satellite-based geospatial intelligence:

Japan’s Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) programme, operated by JAXA, plays a key role in generating high-quality geospatial data. ALOS-1 and ALOS-2 are twinning optical sensors with L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR), enabling the monitoring of land deformation, infrastructure stability, forest cover and natural disasters – even under cloud cover or at night. ALOS-4 was launched in July 2024 and further strengthens Japan’s ability to support disaster response, climate analysis and large-scale mapping through advanced radar imaging. ALOS-4 observes areas up to 35km2 and significantly improves imaging capabilities compared to its predecessor. In high-resolution mode (3m), it expands the swath from 50km (ALOS-2) to 200km. In wide-area mode, it increases coverage from 350km at 100m resolution to 700km at 25m resolution. This high-end combination of resolution and swath allows for imaging all of Japan up to 20 times a year, compared to just four times with ALOS-2.

China’s Gaofen satellites, part of the China High-resolution Earth Observation System (CHEOS), together form a rapidly growing constellation that delivers diverse geospatial datasets. With satellites offering both high-resolution optical and SAR capabilities, the Gaofen programme supports applications such as precision agriculture, urban expansion tracking, environmental monitoring and land-use planning. By 2030, China is expected to operate at least 40 EO satellites, marking a significant expansion of its space-based monitoring capabilities.

Both ALOS and Gaofen exemplify how Asian EO programmes are not only expanding regional capabilities but also enriching the global pool of Earth observation data. Their outputs are already widely and increasingly used for numerous applications, such as to map earthquake-affected regions in near real time and to track seasonal shifts in crop production across large agricultural zones.

New era of Earth observation

Due to the enormous financial resources and advanced technical expertise required to build, launch and operate Earth observation satellites, space-based EO systems were the exclusive territory of national space agencies and a few state-backed programmes for many decades. However, over the past decade, declining launch costs, miniaturization of components and reduced barriers to entry have opened the market to private companies, investors and venture capitalists. This shift is especially evident in the rise of small satellite constellations focused on geospatial data acquisition.

Companies like Planet have deployed hundreds of compact Dove satellites, providing daily, medium-resolution imagery of nearly every

Further reading

UCS satellite database: https://www.ucs.org/resources/satellitedatabase

Landsat science: https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov

Ginger Butcher, Linda Owen, and Christopher Barnes. Landsat: the cornerstone of global land imaging, GIM International Vol 33, January/February 2019, https://www.gim-international.com/ content/article/landsat-the-cornerstone-of-global-land-imaging

Copernicus: https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_ Earth/Copernicus

ALOS Research and Application Project: https://www.eorc.jaxa. jp/ALOS/en/index_e.htm

Shusong Huang, Wenping Qi, Shuai Zhang, Tian Xia, Jingqiao Wang, and Yong Zeng. Recent progress of Earth observation satellites in China, Chinese Journal of Space Science, Volume 44, Issue 4: 731 - 740 (2024), https://www.sciengine.com/CJSS/ doi/10.11728/cjss2024.04.2024-yg23

Spacepage: https://www.spacepage.be

About the author

Wim van Wegen is head of content at GIM International and Hydro International. In his role, he is responsible for the print and online publications of one of the world’s leading geomatics and hydrography trade media brands. He is also a contributor of columns and feature articles, and often interviews renowned experts in the geospatial industry. Van Wegen has a bachelor degree in European studies from the NHL University of Applied Sciences in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands.

point on Earth. Planet’s continuously refreshed dataset has become clouds and darkness, which is crucial for consistent monitoring in challenging conditions.

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Open-source tool for small-scale rainfall simulation

Reducing flood risk in urban areas

By Markus Metz, mundialis, Germany

One visible effect of climate change is the increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as heavy rainfall. Many urban areas are not prepared for such extreme events, as illustrated by the disastrous floods in various parts of Europe in recent years. Small-scale rainfall simulation is a valuable tool for making urban areas more resilient against such extreme events. This article presents an open-source tool for small-scale rainfall simulation that helps to plan mitigating measures.

Due to climate change, the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events is increasing. These extremely heavy rainfall events can lead to catastrophic flash floods, causing not only widespread destruction but also significant loss of life. Climate change has roughly doubled the likelihood of extreme weather events, making even developed nations vulnerable to such events. What until recently was regarded as a once-in-a-century flood is now becoming a more common and probable event. Instead of just attaching a plaque to a wall to mark a historically high water level, municipalities must take preventive action.

Vulnerability of urban areas

Many urban areas are apparently not prepared for the increased frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall events. In July 2021, for example, heavy rainfalls caused devastating floods impacting Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and other surrounding areas in Western Europe. In September 2024, torrential rain from Storm Boris heavily affected many Central European countries, including Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Germany. Shortly afterwards, in October 2024, torrential rain caused by an isolated low-pressure area at high levels brought over a year’s worth of precipitation to several areas in eastern Spain. The resulting floodwaters cost approximately 232 lives. Outside Europe, Pakistan suffered one of the world’s deadliest floods in 2022 which killed more than 1,700 people and forced a state of emergency to be declared.

Mitigating measures

Fortunately, there are a variety of countermeasures that can be implemented to mitigate the impact of flooding. These can generally be categorized into ‘hard’ (infrastructure-related) and ‘soft’ (naturebased) solutions. ‘Hard’ solutions include improved drainage systems by increasing the capacity of existing sewer systems, installing larger pipes and ensuring regular maintenance to prevent blockages. Separating storm drains from sewage systems is also crucial to prevent overflows during heavy rainfall. Flood walls and

levees can be built along rivers and coastlines to prevent water from inundating low-lying areas. Water tanks can be installed to temporarily store excess rainwater, reducing the strain on drainage systems. Pumping stations can be used to pump water away from flooded areas where gravity drainage is not feasible.

‘Soft’ solutions include the concept of ‘sponge cities’ – urban landscapes that can absorb and retain rainwater. Creating or restoring natural areas can improve the excess-water storage capacity. Restoring natural floodplains allows rivers to overflow their banks, reducing the risk of flooding downstream. More parks, gardens and trees can help to absorb rainwater and reduce runoff. Sustainable urban drainage systems mimic natural drainage processes to manage stormwater.

Rainfall simulation over space and time

To reduce the impact of heavy rainfall events, the combined efficiency of all these potential mitigating measures must be carefully coordinated and evaluated. This can be achieved using rainfall simulations. The open-source GRASS GIS software for geospatial processing provides numerous tools for hydrological modelling. Particularly, rainfall simulations can be performed on fine spatial and temporal scale with the GRASS GIS module r.sim.water.

This module is a landscape-scale simulation model of overland flow designed for spatially variable terrain, soil, cover and excess rainfall conditions. The implemented method to solve equations describing 2D shallow water flow provides robustness necessary for spatially variable conditions and high resolutions. Key inputs of the model are elevation, first-order partial derivatives of elevation for flow gradients, and surface roughness influencing the speed of water runoff. Rainfall itself can be controlled by specifying the intensity and duration of a rainfall event.

The input elevation model should ideally be a digital terrain model (true ground height). Buildings should be added to it, but not

vegetation, because water can flow through ground covered with vegetation, but not through buildings. In practice, resolutions higher than 10cm mostly increase computational time without providing more useful spatial detail.

Fine-tuning the simulation

The number of water particles used in the simulation controls the simulation’s speed (the fewer, the faster) and accuracy (the more, the higher). Optionally, results of intermediate time steps can be saved to evaluate the rise of water depth over time. In order to represent structures such as man-made channels, ditches or culverts, the partial derivatives dx and dy can be modified to adjust the direction of surface water runoff such that the flow gradients follow these structures. This kind of modification can also be used to simulate potential new drainage structures.

The infiltration rate depending on soil properties and land cover is also an important property of the terrain influencing water depth and discharge. The r.sim.water manual provides details of the various parameters to adjust the simulation, more theoretical and technical background as well as relevant references. Key results of the module are water depth and water discharge (speed of water flow). Optionally, these outputs can be created for time steps during the simulation.

Practical examples

A severe flash flood event occurred in the Malá Svinka Basin in Eastern Slovakia in July 1998. Hofierka and Knutová (2015) simulated this event with the GRASS GIS r.sim.water module and compared the

Figure 1: Simulated water depth after a) 5 min, b) 20 min, and c) 60 min.

Various tools and methodologies enable realistic simulation of extreme rainfall and evaluation of combined mitigation measures

results to real observations of the flash flood event. Rainfall intensity during the flash flood event was estimated at 100mm/hour; this value was also used in the simulation. The aim of the simulation was to identify areas contributing water runoff to flooding in urban areas and subsequently to plan corresponding flood protection measures. During the event, a 4m flood-wave hit several villages in the area. In the simulation, the highest water depth levels reached 4.3m in the main valley in the 60th minute, providing a very good match with the real event.

Another example for hydrological modelling (tutorial by B. Harmon) illustrates the importance of spatially varying surface roughness which can be derived from land cover maps. In this simple example, only three land cover types are distinguished: ‘grassland/ herbaceous’ with highest surface roughness, ‘high intensity developed’ with fairly low surface roughness, and ‘barren land’ with lowest surface roughness. Main input is a digital elevation model (DEM) with 1m resolution. Land cover is derived from orthophotos with 0.5m resolution. Rainfall is set to 100mm/hour for 30 minutes. After assigning separate roughness values to different land cover types, the simulated rainfall water can flow more easily along valleys and accumulates much faster in low-lying areas.

Conclusion

Considering the recent extreme rainfall events and the damage these events caused in urban areas, there is an urgent need to make such urban areas more resilient against heavy rainfall and flooding. Various tools and methodologies make it possible to not only realistically simulate extreme rainfall events, but also to

About the author

Markus Metz is remote sensing specialist at mundialis GmbH & Co KG in Bonn, Germany. He received his PhD in Biology from the University of Oldenburg and moved into GIS and remote sensing via biogeography. Metz is a long-time developer of the core components of GRASS GIS.

Further reading

Manual of r.sim.water, GRASS GIS 2025, accessed 8 April 2025, https://grass.osgeo.org/grass-stable/manuals/r.sim.water.html Hofierka, J., Knutová, M., 2015. Simulating spatial aspects of a flash flood using the Monte Carlo method and GRASS GIS: a case study of the Malá Svinka Basin (Slovakia), accessed 8 April 2025

Hydrological modelling tutorial by B. Harmon, https:// baharmon.github.io/hydrology-in-grass

Urbanization stormwater runoff, EPA 2025, accessed 8 April 2025, https://doi.org/10.1515/geo-2015-0013

https://www.epa.gov/caddis/urbanization-stormwater-runoff

Forero-Ortiz, E., Martínez-Gomariz, E., Cañas Porcuna, M., 2020. A review of flood impact assessment approaches for underground infrastructures in urban areas: a focus on transport systems. Hydrological Sciences Journal 65(11), 1943–1955. https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2020.1784424

Four sustainable solutions to urban flooding, Green City Times, accessed 8 April 2025, https://www.greencitytimes.com/4sustainable-solutions-to-urban-flooding/

evaluate a combination of potential mitigating measures. The tool presented here, the GRASS GIS module r.sim.water, is based on sound and robust scientific theory described in a number of peerreviewed articles. Since the tool is open source, its code base can be inspected, plus suggestions for further improvement have a high chance of being implemented. The versatility and results of this tool can help decision-makers to better protect the property and lives of inhabitants of urban spaces.

Figure 2: Simulated water depth a) with constant roughness, and b) with different roughness values according to land cover. The colour-coding scheme is identical, but the range of values for water depth increases with spatially varying surface roughness.

The imperative role of leveraging remotely sensed data

Fast-tracking cadastral mapping for sustainable development

By Israel Oluwaseun Taiwo, Federal Polytechnic Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria

It is widely known that cadastral mapping is crucial for effective land administration and sustainable development. Remotely sensed data from UAVs, aerial photos and satellite imagery offers significant advantages for cadastral mapping over traditional ground-based surveying. However, challenges hinder the use of remotely sensed data in some developing contexts that would benefit most from these technologies. Using Ekiti State, Nigeria, as a case study, this article describes the comparative advantages of aerial imagery, particularly from UAVs, for cadastral mapping.

Remotely sensed data has always offered significant advantages for cadastral mapping over traditional ground-based surveying. Among others, the benefits include improved access to difficult terrains, and comprehensive data collection. Following recent advancements in technology, other advantages of remotely sensed data include faster data collection, high accuracy, and cost-effectiveness.

The need in land administration

Conventional ground-based cadastral mapping approaches are often slow,

labour-intensive, and expensive, hindering the ability to keep pace with rapid urbanization and the evolving demands of land administration. This is particularly problematic in developing countries, where resources and infrastructure may be limited. The reliance on outdated and incomplete cadastral data due to these inefficient methods creates a cascade of problems, including tenure insecurity, disputes, conflicts and impeded land use planning, infrastructure development, and revenue generation. Furthermore, the lack of accessible and up-to-date land information

poses challenges for government agencies, financial institutions and private investors, all of whom require reliable cadastral data to make informed decisions and facilitate transactions. The absence of such data can stifle economic growth and development. The rise of informal settlements and rapid urbanization further exacerbates these challenges, as traditional surveying methods struggle to cope with the dynamic nature of these environments, leading to data gaps and inadequate land management. The increasing availability and affordability of high-resolution aerial imagery, particularly from satellites and uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), presents a significant opportunity to overcome these challenges. Aerial imagery can rapidly capture comprehensive and accurate land data, even in remote or inaccessible areas. This technology offers a cost-effective and efficient alternative to traditional ground surveys, enabling large-scale cadastral mapping and regular updates. By leveraging aerial imagery, land administration agencies can create accurate, complete and up-to-date cadastral databases, improving tenure security, reducing land disputes and facilitating better land use planning – including for small properties that are often overlooked by other mapping methods. Failure to embrace aerial imagery for cadastral mapping

Figure 1: Digitized boundary from the crop farmland of Aaye-Oja Ekiti rural settlement, at 0.5m resolution. (Courtesy: Taiwo I. O. et al. 2024)

perpetuates inefficiencies, data gaps and land-related conflicts, ultimately hindering sustainable development and economic growth.

Benefits of remote sensing data advancements

Several challenges have been given as reasons for the non-usage of remotely sensed imageries for cadastral mapping. These include inadequate technical capacity, inadequate infrastructure, data accuracy concerns, regulatory frameworks and reliance on traditional methods. However, the landscape of technology keeps changing. Traditionally, acquiring orthophotos from aerial photos for cadastral mapping was costly and often unaffordable in developing contexts. However, advancements in technology have significantly reduced these costs. Furthermore, historical concerns about the accuracy of remotely sensed data have largely been addressed, as high-resolution imagery (up to 0.01m) now offers accuracy levels comparable to traditional ground-surveying techniques, meeting conventional accuracy standards in most countries. With the advantages that UAVs offer for image acquisition, plus the ease of use and processing, technical capacity and infrastructure for image acquisition is improving. Other challenges – such as reliance on traditional methods, and lack of effective local regulatory frameworks to guide the acquisition and use of remotely sensed data for cadastral mapping – continue to change gradually over time. However, a faster pace of change is needed to make the cadastral mapping component of land administration more fit-for-purpose and to aid the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Fit-for-purpose land administration

The fit-for-purpose land administration (FFPLA) approach tailors land administration systems to specific local needs and conditions. FFPLA offers a streamlined, efficient and economical alternative to traditional processes, particularly in rapidly urbanizing areas. FFPLA emphasizes:

1. Flexibility: adapting methods to diverse land uses and tenure types

2. Inclusivity: encompassing all tenure types and land categories

3. Participatory: engaging communities in data capture and utilization

4. Affordability: ensuring cost-effectiveness for governments and communities

5. Reliability: providing authoritative and up-to-date information

6. Attainability: enabling implementation within available resources and timeframes

7. Upgradeability: allowing for incremental improvements over time. In the context of systematic cadastral mapping, the FFPLA approach advocates for aerial imagery because of the advantage of broad coverage. For subsequent updating that requires subtitling, other methods – especially GNSS – can be more appropriate, depending on the context of usage.

Comparing remote sensing and ground-based methods

In Ekiti, mapping with remotely sensed imagery was compared against conventional ground-based techniques. The findings (see Table 1) demonstrate that while for ground-based surveys there are long-standing, well-defined procedures that provide a sense of familiarity and legal acceptance, UAV-based mapping – especially with accurate GNSS-derived ground control points (GCPs) and very high-resolution satellite imagery – can achieve accuracy comparable to traditional ground-based methods. GNSS is highlighted for its efficiency and cost-effectiveness in establishing control points

for UAV mapping. The research emphasizes the fit-for-purpose approach. This means that the best method depends on the specific needs of the project. For example, in very densely vegetated areas, ground-truthing will be necessary, even with UAVs. However, UAVs are superior when it comes to broad coverage.

The findings can be summarized as follows:

• Speed and efficiency: remotely sensed data can be collected much faster than when using traditional ground methods. This means quicker project completion and reduced labour costs.

• Accessibility: UAVs can cover areas that are difficult or dangerous for ground crews to access, like rough terrain or dense vegetation.

• Coverage: UAVs can cover large areas relatively quickly, providing a comprehensive overview.

• Cost-effectiveness: Despite the initial investment, UAV surveys can be more cost-effective in the long run due to reduced time, labour and equipment needs compared to extensive ground surveys.

• Detailed data: UAVs capture high-resolution images, leading to very detailed orthomosaics and 3D models. This is valuable for precise boundary delineation and analysis.

• Accuracy: with today’s increased resolutions, especially those produced by UAVs, remotely sensed imagery can produce accuracies comparable to ground-based surveying techniques.

Cadastral mapping resolution guide

The assessment conducted to identify the suitability of various resolutions of remotely sensed data for cadastral mapping shows that purpose is key in identifying fit-for-purpose resolutions. With fast-tracking land registration in mind, various resolutions were recommended for different rural, peri-urban and urban contexts of informal and formal settlement typologies. The settlements listed in Table 2 represent communities where mapping and research were conducted in Ekiti State, Nigeria. Lower or higher resolutions may be adopted as the need dictates.

Table 1: Suitability of GNSS, theodolite, total station traversing and UAV for cadastral mapping. (Courtesy: Taiwo I. O. et al. 2024)

Table 2: Cadastral mapping resolution guide. (Courtesy: Taiwo I. O. et al. 2024)

Aerial imagery for cadastral mapping holds immense significance for land administration and the achievement of the SDGs

Following the resolution guide in Table 2, Figure 1 shows the digitized boundaries of farmlands in Aaye-oja Ekiti, obtained from the 0.5m-resolution imagery of the area. Figure 2 shows the digitized boundary, buildings and roads from the 0.1m-resolution image of the peri-urban settlement of Maryland Avenue, highlighting the significance of clearly seen physical boundaries in the area. The discernibility of cadastral boundary features relies significantly on the presence and visibility of physical demarcations from space

About the author

Israel Oluwaseun Taiwo is a lecturer and researcher. He is the current head of the Surveying and Geoinformatics Department at the Federal Polytechnic Ado-Ekiti, and is chair of the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) Working Group 7.2 on Fit-for-Purpose Land Administration.

and image resolution. This resolution guide helps to strike a balance between cadastral mapping accuracy and the need in a broad context, and to guide regulatory frameworks and imagery data acquisition processes and usage.

Conclusion

While GNSS methods of cadastral mapping excel in the accurate, efficient and cost-effective collection of boundary data, UAVs and other high-resolution remotely sensed data sources stand out when it comes to acquiring comprehensive and wide coverage data. Recent advancements in UAV and aerial imaging technologies makes these data sources comparatively more accurate, costeffective and hence efficient than some other methods of data collection, such as theodolite and total station traverses.

Further reading

Taiwo, I. O., Ibitoye, M. O., Oladejo, S.O., & Koeva, M. (2024). Fitness of Multi-Resolution Remotely Sensed Data for Cadastral Mapping in Ekiti State, Nigeria. Remote Sensing, 16(19), Article 19, https://doi.org/10.3390/rs16193670

Taiwo, I.O., Ibitoye, O.M., Oladejo, S.O. Comparison between Aerial Imagery and Conventional Cadastral Mapping Methods in Ekiti State Nigeria; towards a Fit-for-Purpose Approach. Survey Review 2024, 1–14, https://doi.org/10.1080/00396265.2 024.2390237

The adoption of aerial imagery for cadastral mapping holds immense significance for land administration and the achievement of the SDGs. By enabling faster, accurate and cost-effective data collection, aerial imagery facilitates efficient land management, reduces land disputes, and enhances tenure security. These advancements directly contribute to SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) by supporting inclusive and sustainable urbanization. Furthermore, improved land administration through aerial imagery can unlock economic opportunities, promote responsible resource management, and contribute to poverty reduction (SDG 1). Ultimately, the integration of remotely sensed data into cadastral mapping processes is crucial for achieving a more sustainable and equitable future.

Figure 2: Digitized features from the Peri-Urban settlement of Maryland Avenue, Ado - Ekiti at 0.1m resolution. (Courtesy: Taiwo I. O. et al. 2024)

How to create an open, global coastal digital terrain model

DeltaDTM: mapping coastal terrain elevation

By Maarten Pronk, Marieke Eleveld and Hugo Ledoux

A state-of-the-art global coastal digital terrain model (DTM) with a resolution of 1 arcsecond (~30m) has been created by researchers at Deltares and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. In their work, they extensively use elevation models as input for their numerical models, but they noticed that freely available elevation models were not sufficiently accurate for their purposes. To address this, they developed a new elevation model by integrating data from the latest ICESat-2 and GEDI missions with the CopernicusDEM data. This article details their methodology.

To accurately model future extreme water levels caused by sea level rise (SLR), subsidence and worsening storm surges, elevation data with high vertical accuracy (within 1m) is essential for all coastal areas worldwide. Local airborne Lidar data is sometimes used for this purpose, but this is expensive and only available in more affluent parts of the world rather than globally.

In areas where this data is missing, such as in Southeast Asia, global digital elevation models (DEMs) are utilized to assess coastal flood risk, among other things. However, these models are based on digital surface models (DSMs) that measure only the upper part of canopy and buildings, and thus do not represent the bare earth and height everywhere. In vegetated areas, the differences between the model and terrain can be tens of metres.

Challenges in high-resolution Lidar DEMs

Since 2018, the spaceborne Lidar missions ICESat-2 and GEDI have provided global, albeit sparse, terrain measurements. ICESat-2 alone has been used to create a global coastal digital terrain model (GLL_DTM v2 [Vernimmen & Hooijer, 2023]), achieving high accuracy (mean absolute error [MAE] of 0.34m) but with a low horizontal spatial resolution of 1km. When ICESat-2 and GEDI are combined, a 500m-resolution Lidarbased DEM could be achieved globally (Pronk, Eleveld & Ledoux, 2024).

To achieve higher-resolution DEMs with spaceborne Lidar, this data must be combined with global DEMs. Several efforts have been made to correct biases in global DEMs for areas covered by vegetation or buildings using spaceborne Lidar and auxiliary datasets like tree-cover or urban agglomeration maps. CoastalDEM, FABDEM

and DiluviumDEM all use ICESat-2 data to correct the surface data present in global DEMs. Except for DiluviumDEM, however, these corrected DSMs are not in the public domain – they are only free for research purposes – and nor are the machine learning models used to generate them.

Figure 1: Explanation of the classification process of DeltaDTM in (a) Kalimantan, Indonesia and (b) the Netherlands. The top row shows CopernicusDEM – the input DSM for DeltaDTM – and the reference airborne Lidar DTM for this area. The middle row shows the classification of the terrain pixels, with the ESA WorldCover map as reference. The bottom row shows DeltaDTM, the result of the interpolation of the terrain, with the normalized DSM as reference. The normalized DSM is created by subtracting DeltaDTM from CopernicusDEM, resulting in a map of surface heights above the terrain.

Figure 2: DeltaDTM is the first open, global coastal terrain model with sub-metre vertical accuracy, correcting surface biases in CopernicusDEM using ICESat-2 and GEDI data.

4-step methodology of DeltaDTM

The newly developed DeltaDTM is the first open and global coastal terrain model with a vertical accuracy within 1m. It corrects the vertical biases in surface data (e.g. canopy, buildings) present in CopernicusDEM by utilizing ICESat-2 and GEDI terrain elevation measurements. The method involves four key steps:

1) Spatial filtering: removing pits and other outliers present in CopernicusDEM

2) Co-registration: vertically aligning CopernicusDEM with ICESat-2 to eliminate any vertical bias

3) Filtering of non-ground points: classifying CopernicusDEM into terrain and non-terrain using morphological filters and removing the non-terrain elevation pixels

4) Void filling: spatially interpolating the values removed in the previous step using the adjusted inverse distance weighing (AIDW) method.

1) Spatial filtering

The base elevation model DeltaDTM used as the starting point is the CopernicusDEM GLO-30 dataset, provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and the European Space Agency (ESA). The dataset is distributed in tiles of 1 by 1 degree, with a spatial resolution of one arcsecond (~30m at the equator). It is based on

TanDEM-X interferometric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data and is freely available for the entire globe.

CopernicusDEM contains many small low outliers, often the result of multi-bounce backscattering errors in urban areas, such as around electricity poles. A 25 by 25-pixel window (~750 x 750m) function is used to remove all values below two standard deviations of all elevation values in the window. The window size is sufficient to filter larger patches (3 by 3 pixels) of low outliers, as observed in CopernicusDEM. Likewise, all elevation values are removed in case the height errors exceed 0.75m according to the CopernicusDEM height error data, or CopernicusDEM was infilled (patched) with another DEM. The 0.75m value was empirically chosen based on the outliers observed in validation areas. Furthermore, quality filters are applied on both the ICESat-2 and GEDI data. For ICESat-2, only data with the flag ‘subset_te_flag’ set to 1 is kept. For GEDI, the same filtering as used in standard processing for the derived GEDI L3A product is used, and only data with the ‘sensitivity’ flag above 0.95 is kept.

2) Co-registration

Any elevation dataset will have biases due to instrument and processing errors, and these biases can be determined and corrected by using a second – more accurate – elevation dataset. The ICESat-2 ATL08 data is used to correct the terrain elevation bias in the CopernicusDEM dataset. GEDI is not used for the bias correction, as it is less accurate for terrain elevation assessment than ICESat-2 and does not cover latitudes above 56°.

Figure 3: A comparison of corrected DSMs based on the reference dataset for Kalimantan, Indonesia. The top row shows DEMs, while the centre row shows the differences with the reference elevation in the top left. The ESA WorldCover land-cover map is given for context in the centre left. The bottom row shows the hillshades for all DEMs to efficiently assess their ability to represent the landscape.

For each quarter of a CopernicusDEM tile (0.5 by 0.5 degree), the elevation of the ICESat-2 points is compared to the elevation of the CopernicusDEM data for all landcovers without trees or buildings. In this way, the distribution of CopernicusDEM minus ICESat-2 could be calculated, and the peak of this distribution was denoted as the bias for each tile.

The resulting point dataset, containing the bias at the centre coordinates of each quarter of a CopernicusDEM tile, was used to create a bias correction raster for the whole tile by interpolating using a nearest neighbour algorithm. Afterwards, this bias correction raster was applied to the original CopernicusDEM tile.

3) Filtering of non-ground points

Like any current global radar or optical-based DEM, CopernicusDEM measures the surface of the Earth and thus includes vegetation, building heights and other civil constructions. To remove these biases and determine the true ‘bare-earth’ surface, morphological surface filters are applied that are supported by terrain measurements from the ICESat-2 ATL08 and GEDI L2A data.

Morphological filters relate to the morphology (shape) of features and work on subsections (windows) of raster (image) data, to which non-linear (such as minimum) filters are applied. These filters are often used for terrain classification of airborne Lidar datasets, but require at least some terrain measurements in each area to work. On its own, CopernicusDEM is not suitable for such filtering, as it does not contain any terrain measurements in large parts of the world, such as tropical forests. Moreover, these filters normally operate on the scales of individual trees and houses, using raster resolutions of one metre, not ~30m as in the case of CopernicusDEM.

CopernicusDEM data is replaced with ICESat-2 ATL08 data (Neuenschwander & Pitts, 2019) and GEDI L2A terrain data (Dubayah, Hofton, Blair, Armston, Tang & Luthcke, 2021) when available, ‘burning’ the Lidar-derived elevations into the bias-corrected CopernicusDEM raster. This enables the use of morphological filters,

albeit with much larger windows sizes than usual morphological filter operations. Specific algorithm settings – such as slopes and the initial height threshold – are dynamically derived per landcover class from ICESat-2 ATL08 and GEDI L2A data.

4) Void filling

The resulting non-terrain cells – on average 50% of a tile – are filled by AIDW interpolation of the remaining terrain points. The resulting interpolated surface is unrealistically smooth for a terrain. To create a more realistic visual landscape representation, the roughness of the surface – derived from the original CopernicusDEM – is added to the interpolated terrain values only. In the worst case, this adds random noise to the DEM, like the noise present in non-interpolated CopernicusDEM elevation values. In the best case, however, it represents actual topography patterns such as ditches or small canals underneath the canopy. Overall, the additions are small and balanced (roughly having a zero mean) and do not affect the accuracy.

Validation and conclusion

The DeltaDTM dataset has been validated against public local airborne Lidar reference datasets in Australia, the USA (Florida), Indonesia (see Figure 3), Latvia, the Marshall Islands, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom. Of the corrected elevation models, DeltaDTM performs best for all land cover classes combined, with a bias of -0.03m, an MAE of 0.42m, and a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.71m. 92% of DeltaDTM is within 1m of the reference surface, 98% within 2m and 100% within 5m. The next best DEM is DiluviumDEM, followed by FABDEM (although this is closely matched by CoastalDEM, but not for the percentage within 1m).

Each corrected DSM has its own strengths and performs differently per land cover class. For example, FABDEM has been optimized for urban areas and has a similar performance for ‘Built-up’ as DeltaDTM, with an MAE of 0.69m and 0.55m respectively. In areas

Accessing the DeltaDTM data

DeltaDTM is licensed under the CC BY 4.0 licence, which means that you are free to share and adapt the dataset, if you give appropriate credit.

DeltaDTM is available as a zipped (.zip) archive per continent (to a total of 35 GB) at https://doi.org/10.4121/21997565. It is also hosted as a Google Earth Engine collection under the collection ID users/maartenpronk/deltadtm/v1-1.

An example on how to access the dataset is provided at https://code.earthengine.google.com/?scriptPath=users/ maartenpronk/deltadtm:v1.

Since the initial release, several updates to DeltaDTM have been made. Since version 1.1, it goes up to 30m above sea level. The ICESat-2 and GEDI missions are ongoing, so further updates and improvements to DeltaDTM are to be expected.

Figure 4: The confidence level associated with modelling SLR in increments of 0.5-2m given the vertical uncertainty (RMSE) of a DEM. The overall RMSE for all corrected DEMs is given. DeltaDTM can be used to model SLR in increments of 1m with 50% confidence.

with no vegetation or buildings, like ‘Wetland’ or ‘Cropland’, an uncorrected DSM such as CopernicusDEM performs like corrected DSMs. CopernicusDEM has an MAE of 0.43m for ‘Cropland’, whereas FABDEM and DeltaDTM have an MAE of 0.38m and 0.32m, respectively. As expected, the errors for ‘Tree cover’ are greatest, with 87% of DeltaDTM elevations within 1m, one of its lowest values overall. DiluviumDEM is next, with 60% within 1m, followed by CoastalDEM at 49% and FABDEM at 42%.

In the reference area with most ‘Tree cover’, all datasets have lower accuracies. Clearly, extensive and dense forest in the tropics is hard to correct for. DeltaDTM is closest to the airborne Lidar reference, having the smallest errors overall, but it still misses smaller patches of forest. The hillshades show artefacts in the processing of CoastalDEM and DiluviumDEM. Both CoastalDEM and DiluviumDEM

About the authors

Further reading

Vernimmen, R.; Hooijer, A. (2023). New LiDAR-Based Elevation Model Shows Greatest Increase in Global Coastal Exposure to Flooding to Be Caused by Early-Stage SeaLevel Rise, Earth’s Future, Vol. 11, No. 1, e2022EF002880. doi:10.1029/2022EF002880

Pronk, M.; Eleveld, M.; Ledoux, H. (2024). Assessing Vertical Accuracy and Spatial Coverage of ICESat-2 and GEDI Spaceborne Lidar for Creating Global Terrain Models, Remote Sensing, Vol. 16, No. 13, 2259. doi:10.3390/rs16132259

European Space Agency; Airbus. (2022). Copernicus DEM, European Space Agency. doi:10.5270/ESA-c5d3d65

Neuenschwander, A.; Pitts, K. (2019). The ATL08 land and vegetation product for the ICESat-2 Mission, Remote Sensing of Environment, Vol. 221, 247–259. doi:10/gf9wmm

Dubayah, R.; Hofton, M.; Blair, J.; Armston, J.; Tang, H.; Luthcke, S. (2021). GEDI L2A Elevation and Height Metrics Data Global Footprint Level V002, NASA EOSDIS Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center. doi:10.5067/GEDI/GEDI02_A.002

Maarten Pronk is a researcher at Deltares and an external PhD candidate at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He holds a MSc in Geomatics from the Delft University of Technology. His research concerns elevation modelling, especially in lowlands prone to coastal flooding.

Marieke Eleveld is a senior advisor-researcher and has been at Deltares since 2016. She has a background in physical geography (MSc PhD, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands) and is specialized in remote sensing and modelling of delta and coastal systems. In her research, she combines Earth system information from satellite observations with insights from modelling.

Hugo Ledoux is an associateprofessor in 3D Geoinformation at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of South Wales (UK). For his research, he is particularly interested in combining the fields of GIS and computational geometry.

display machine learning artefacts in the form of square patches of pixels with different elevations, whereas DiluviumDEM also has large differences between individual corrected pixels, resulting in a high overall slope.

It should be realized that given the overall RMSE of 0.71m, DeltaDTM can be used to model SLR in increments of 1.40m or higher at 68% confidence level (Figure 4). For 1m SLR increments, the confidence level will be 52%.

Acknowledgements

This article reuses text and figures from the paper: Pronk, M., Hooijer, A., Eilander, D. et al. DeltaDTM: A global coastal digital terrain model. Sci Data 11, 273 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1038/ s41597-024-03091-9, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To see a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

GIM International interviews Henning Sandfort, president of Hexagon’s Geosystems division and CEO of Leica

Geosystems

Supporting innovation by helping surveyors do more with less

By Wim van Wegen, head of content, GIM International

Against the backdrop of a geospatial talent shortage and budget cuts in adjacent industries, the focus of Hexagon’s Geosystems division for the coming years is to make it even easier for geospatial professionals to deploy technology to improve their efficiency. In this exclusive interview, Henning Sandfort, the division’s new president, discusses the importance of leveraging ‘big’ geospatial data to create value and drive growth, supported by technologies such as the cloud, AI and autonomous systems. “Customers’ readiness to challenge established practices and rethink how they do business opens up significant opportunities, not just for us at Hexagon, but for the industry as a whole,” he says.

Congratulations on your new role at Hexagon. What are you most looking forward to in your new position?

Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve been fascinated by infrastructure and technology that helps the world turn, which led me to study engineering. Today, I love the fact that our customers are the hidden champions supporting everyday life. By enabling them to measure and make sense of the geospatial environment with our hardware and software products, we empower surveyors and many other types of professionals to ensure that buildings, tunnels, bridges, water dams and the like are constructed and operated safely. What I find particularly fascinating is that we are part of a continuous evolution – from cartographers working with the first maps in ancient times, to today’s surveyors using drones, artificial intelligence and other high-tech equipment to get the job done efficiently. As an engineer, the incredible accuracy and precision we’re now able to achieve sometimes astonishes me.

In terms of my new role, I’m very passionate about building and scaling up companies based on technology. I see clear potential here for growing the business based on our global team’s strong technological and application-related knowhow on the one

hand, and the market opportunities on the other. Another thing I’m looking forward to is ‘unlearning’ much of what I learned at my previous company so that I can live and breathe a new company culture and embrace a new and exciting way of doing things.

How will the experience gained in your previous role at Siemens Smart Infrastructure help you in your new position?

The valuable experience I gained in the B2B (business-to-business, Ed.) technologybased business spanning a combination of hardware and software will for sure support me effectively in my role at Hexagon. We’ve all faced quite significant challenges, starting with Covid and then the supply chain crisis, inflation and geopolitical tensions. In such times, you need to chart a course for the business, drive engagement in the organization, and ensure you really understand how you can add value for your customers – how you can make a difference out there.

What will be the main focus of Hexagon’s Geosystems division for the coming years?

The foundation of any successful business is to be close to your customers and

markets. Besides our broad coverage when it comes to sales, we also have a strong service organization. This helps us to not only support our customers, but also to continuously learn from how they actually work. It’s about listening. I believe the next big step in value creation – not only for us, but also for the industry as a whole – will be in total cost of ownership and understanding how to improve the day-to-day workflows of our end customers. This ties in with the topic of big geospatial data. With so much data out there, the question is, how do you leverage it? How do you make it work for you? Our continuous learning approach and interaction with our customers and end users will help us to shape that successfully.

In the geospatial industry, success often comes down to equipping teams with the right tools. How do you see Hexagon’s role in creating the right ecosystem that best supports service providers and other companies?

The foundation of Hexagon’s market position, which we’ve built over the decades that we have been in business, is to continuously help our customers to innovate. We do that by providing solutions that leverage the latest technology tailored to their specific application areas. Ultimately, the goal is to put

technology to work to drive productivity, so you can do more with less. The geospatial sector is facing a talent shortage and an environment of budget cuts, so we need to ensure that we are making it easy for people to use and deploy new technology to improve efficiency without sacrificing accuracy. This is quite a challenge, because today’s technology has so many opportunities and potential that you need to really understand the application well to achieve this.

Another key aspect of our business is service and life cycle support. What matters to our customers is the long-term performance of the equipment they use to map and monitor buildings and infrastructure. Therefore, service will continue to be an important way of contributing to our customers’ business – and not only related to hardware, but also in terms of software-based services. Lastly, in today’s world, innovation is not only about incorporating and adopting new technology, but also being able to easily interface it with other systems, other software or other workflows. So interoperability is another aspect of creating the right ecosystem to support our customers’ operations.

There is a lot of buzz around AI. What is your view on its potential for delivering significant benefits for geospatial professionals?

Together with cloud computing, edge computing and other advanced technologies, artificial intelligence will for sure have a fundamental impact in many ways. AI helps our customers expand the services and applications they can offer. For B2B companies like us, it’s also about applying AI models to further improve how we operate, innovate and provide value to our customers.

To deploy AI in a productive way, you need a deep understanding of the application

But to deploy AI in a productive way, you need a deep understanding of the application. Hexagon’s Geosystems division started working on this quite a few years ago. A new version of the point cloud classification engine in Leica Cyclone 3DR provides 20% faster performance compared to the previous update, helping accelerate the creation of models and object identification. This is just one example of how we can make technology matter in our customers’ day-to-day work.

Looking ahead, I foresee that technology – from the cloud to AI – will bring many more changes: how companies work together, how they partner with customers, and how they engage with customers over the life cycle. I think we’ve only seen a small fraction of what it can do for us.

How does Hexagon integrate satellite imagery and spaceborne remote sensing data into its solutions, and how is this reflected in partnerships with satellite data providers?

Satellite imagery provides a constantly updating macro view on Earth’s systems, and is a great tool for disaster response and monitoring environmental changes over time. It’s also a useful tool where airborne sensors are a challenge to mobilize – such as in geopolitically sensitive regions or very remote areas. Data collected with our airborne sensors or from our content programme complements satellite imagery by offering the higher resolution and precision that many applications require. In Southern California, for example, satellite data provides a broad overview of land cover changes and water body extents over time, but airborne data delivers higher accuracy for local land cover classification and elevation modelling to support more effective water management strategies.

Collaborations and partnerships among data providers are essential. By combining the expertise of various organizations, we enable new applications and insights and equip our customers with the data they need to make informed decisions.

Let’s turn our attention to the construction industry, which a few years ago was seen as lagging behind in terms of digitalization. How would you describe the current state of the industry today?

Construction remains plagued by inefficiencies, and we know that overarching productivity gains in this sector have lagged behind those in other industries for decades – including the slower pace of digital transformation. Deploying digitalization at scale is inherently more difficult in construction than in other industries because of complex value chains and stakeholder ecosystems. For

instance, it has very strict regulations and industry-specific protocols, plus a wide array of stakeholders who also differ across countries to some extent. While the broad and fragmented nature of the sector has inevitably meant the slower advancement of digitalization, I think there has definitely been progress in the past decade, and it’s clearly on the agenda of many of our customers and also of my former customers in the building industry.

Even so, many industry players are still sitting on a lot of unused operational data, locked away in isolated systems. So the key question is, how do you break down those barriers and bridge the domain silos so that everyone can benefit from one another’s data? That’s where adding contextual information – such as scan data – plays a crucial role. It provides a common reference point that helps link different datasets, making the operational data more meaningful and easier to use. Thanks to technology, such as the cloud and abundant connectivity, it’s now much easier to collaborate on data, gain context and then act on it. But we have to acknowledge that there’s still a long way to go before we deploy all the technology to create a better end-to-end flow of data and enhance the efficiency of the whole sector.

Having said that, I perceive a noticeable shift in how customers view their operations and the future. As the younger generation progresses into more senior roles, they bring their own thoughts and perspectives, and are potentially bolder when it comes to applying technology, interfacing and driving growth. We also see this trend among our public-sector customers, particularly when discussing the application of BIM (building information modelling, Ed.) to visualize their assets and manage them differently. This readiness to challenge established

We all are in an ecosystem that gravitates towards autonomy. We play a role in that and there’s still an ocean of opportunities yet to be revealed

practices and rethink how they do business opens up significant opportunities, not just for us at Hexagon, but for the industry as a whole.

Staying with construction for a moment, many developed countries face major challenges in renovating highways, railways, bridges and more, while developing countries are creating new infrastructure. What’s your perspective on the opportunities this presents?

It’s true that there’s a different split between greenfield and brownfield projects, depending on which geography you’re in. When it comes to the resilience of existing infrastructure, our advanced monitoring solutions support long-term structural health by providing data as the basis for investments in preventative maintenance and planned improvements.

In terms of brownfield projects, and especially buildings, it’s often about making spaces adaptable for different uses over their lifetime. The effectiveness and efficiency with which you transform brownfield sites depends on accurately capturing the reality and utilizing what is already there. Scanning – be that airborne, mobile or indoor – is a big element of that. It actually drives a lot of demand for the geospatial industry and will be an essential part in shaping how the industry will move forward.

Moreover, whether for brownfield or greenfield projects, I believe improving efficiency – through automation, innovation and the adoption of technology – can both help address the labour shortages that are affecting most of our customers, and can also help meet sustainability goals by reducing waste. That’s another aspect that definitely offers opportunities for the geospatial industry.

Moving on from automation and AI, autonomy is another very important topic for our readers. How is Hexagon guiding this exciting development?

We’re increasingly seeing a shift beyond pure automation, which is governed by predefined patterns, to systems that are context-aware and can make decisions without human intervention. However, it’s a gradual and continuous process; it’s not as if the whole world will suddenly run autonomously from a certain date. The first step is to collect the data, and that’s already being done on a large scale. The tougher part is putting it into context, making sense of it and then – with deep domain and application expertise – building more autonomous solutions, step by step. Along that journey, Hexagon contributes the high-accuracy measurement technology that gives context to data so that the software can then perform autonomous decision-making with precision. Our deep understanding of each application enables us to then integrate it into customers’ workflows so that autonomy becomes usable in their day-to-day operations. Human expertise is not only preserved through autonomy, but also enhanced by granting people more time to contribute where human ingenuity is essential.

About Henning Sandfort

Henning Sandfort is a member of Hexagon’s executive management team, president of Hexagon’s Geosystems division and CEO of Leica Geosystems. In these roles, he is responsible for shaping and directing the overall global strategy for the Geosystems division and the Leica Geosystems brand. Before joining Hexagon, he served as global CEO of the Building Products Business Unit in Siemens Smart Infrastructure for six years. Prior to that, he served as a top management consultant, product & portfolio manager and business leader in the industrial and building businesses at Siemens AG. Sandfort holds a Diploma in Industrial Engineering & Management from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany).

We are all in an ecosystem that gravitates towards autonomy. We play a role in that, and there’s still an ocean of opportunities yet to be revealed. No matter where we end up, I regard this as a fundamental trend that will definitely shape us as a company and the broader industry as much as we shape it.

Besides opportunities, the geospatial industry also faces some challenges and perhaps even threats. What do you regard as the main ones?

If you drill down into our industry, in view of the need to ensure the sustainable improvement of key infrastructure, one of the most fundamental challenges is the skills shortage. The shortage of talent is not restricted to the various trades that make up the construction industry but also affects the geospatial profession. As mentioned earlier, by cutting out repetitive processes, technology can help us keep pace with the growing opportunities by allowing experts to complete more projects, and faster, with fewer resources. At the same time, we also need to focus on bringing younger surveyors up to speed more quickly and making some aspects of geospatial technology more accessible so that a wider range of users can handle repetitive, routine tasks – freeing up experts to focus on the work where their skills are essential.

Another challenge lies in handling the huge volumes of geospatial data that are acquired – whether terrestrial or airborne. The IT side of it is critical to master and yet needs to be integrated more into training and employee development. So in a way, these two challenges are interconnected. There’s not just a lack of talent in the geospatial profession, but also a shortage of some of the in-demand skills needed in modern-day surveying. That’s why we find it so important to develop solutions that help our customers leverage their knowhow without them needing to be an expert on AI or data handling.

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The future of high-precision positioning

What can surveyors expect from LEO-PNT?

By Eldar Rubinov, FrontierSI, Australia

Increased instances of radio frequency interference and poor performance in obstructed environments limit surveyors’ use of GNSS in certain instances and applications. Low Earth Orbit (LEO) positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) constellations are emerging as a transformative solution, offering stronger signals, enhanced performance in difficult environments, and greater resilience. This article examines the evolving LEO-PNT landscape, its significance in high-precision positioning, and what surveyors can expect as this technology advances.

Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) have been the backbone of PNT services for decades, serving billions of users daily across defence and civilian applications. GNSS technologies, along with various augmentation systems, underpin modern society and are used widely – not just by geospatial professionals, but also for applications such as maritime navigation, precision aircraft landings and timing for critical infrastructures. Whilst GNSS has served – and continues to serve – global society exceptionally well, there has been a rise in jamming and spoofing incidents and GNSS system failures, both on the ground and in space. In addition to the inherent vulnerabilities of GNSS, there are significant performance challenges in certain environments, such as urban canyons or under tree canopy. The world’s positioning needs have evolved significantly since GNSS was originally developed and, in many cases, it no longer fully meets modern application requirements. So what are LEO-PNT systems? How can they address the limitations of traditional GNSS to play a pivotal role in the future satellite navigation ecosystem? And which existing and emerging LEO-PNT solutions should geospatial professionals be aware of?

Differences between LEO-PNT and GNSS

LEO-PNT systems differ from traditional GNSS in a number of ways:

• Orbital altitude: GNSS satellites are

positioned in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) at altitudes of 19,000-23,000km, while LEO satellites typically orbit the Earth at altitudes of 500-1,200km.

• Number of satellites: LEO constellations require significantly more satellites (200500) to maintain enough satellites in view for continuous coverage. In contrast, GNSS requires around 30 satellites.

• Signal strength: LEO satellites transmit stronger signals due to their proximity

to Earth, enhancing resilience to radio frequency interference (RFI).

• Signal frequency: while GNSS primarily operates in the L-band, LEO-PNT services utilize a broader range of frequencies including L, S, C and UHF/VHF, each offering distinct advantages and challenges.

• Timescale reference: unlike GNSS satellites equipped with onboard atomic clocks, LEO satellites depend on alternative time synchronization methods, including ground

ESA FutureNAV satellites. (Image courtesy: ESA)

corrections, GNSS or geostationary satellite assistance, and intersatellite links.

• Ownership and business models: traditional GNSS systems are government-run, while LEO-PNT initiatives are driven largely by commercial ventures, creating a market-driven approach to PNT services.

3 types of LEO-PNT approaches

LEO-PNT systems can be categorized into three primary approaches:

• Dedicated PNT systems: purpose-built constellations designed to provide precise PNT services – similar to GNSS, but in LEO.

• Signals of opportunity (SOP): the use of existing satellite signals from non-PNT constellations (e.g. Starlink, OneWeb) for PNT purposes.

• Fused communication and PNT systems: satellite constellations combining communication services with PNT functionalities, allowing dual-use applications.

Dedicated PNT providers

Several companies and agencies are actively developing dedicated LEO-PNT services (see Table 1). These include Iridium STL, Xona Space and TrustPoint in the USA, JAXA and ArkEdge Space in Japan, Centispace, Geely and SatNet LEO in China, and ESA FutureNAV in Europe. Additionally, Fergani Space (Turkey) and GNSSaS (UAE) have announced plans to develop LEO-PNT constellations.

Iridium and ArkEdge Space are not targeted at high-accuracy, centimetre-level positioning applications so might be of less interest to the geospatial community. However, all other providers have the potential to provide high-accuracy instantaneous positioning services. Xona Space, Geely, Centispace and SatNet LEO are developing LEO-PNT constellations to provide services in L-band. This makes them compatible with existing GNSS user equipment, although firmware updates will be necessary in order to incorporate new signals. Meanwhile, TrustPoint and JAXA are leveraging C-band. This provides some unique advantages, such as less congested spectrum and less susceptibility to RFI. ESA has commissioned two consortia, led by GMV and Thales Alenia Space, to deploy a 10-satellite mini constellation aimed at testing multiple frequency bands. LEO-PNT systems can improve positioning in two ways. Firstly, they can transmit differential corrections, which are currently being transmitted by geostationary satellites. The first example of that emerged in March this year, when Xona Space and Trimble announced that Trimble’s correction services will be delivered via Xona’s PULSAR satellites in the future. Secondly, LEO-PNT satellites can provide additional ranging signals which can work either supplementary to or independently from GNSS.

FrontierSI’s State of the Market Report on LEO-PNT. (Image courtesy: FrontierSI)

Fused communications and PNT systems

In addition, a significant number of LEO satellite constellations are currently being developed for communications, high-speed internet, telematics, the Internet of Things (IoT), air traffic management and more (see Table 2). In principle, these could also provide some PNT services. Some of the companies, including China SatNet, Geely, Amazon and Eutelsat OneWeb Gen II, have hinted that they are

working on some form of PNT services, but no details have been provided at this stage.

The shift to receiving LEO signals

Receiver manufacturers across the globe are already testing and introducing innovative products designed to process signals beyond traditional GNSS. This shift marks a new phase of evolution in the industry, reshaping the marketplace and creating opportunities for emerging technology companies to enter the user receiver market. Given this evolution in the market, the GNSS receiver industry is undergoing a pivotal transformation to leverage these opportunities. Some companies are developing entirely new products to fully leverage the unique attributes of LEO signals, while others are upgrading existing GNSS receivers to integrate these capabilities. Receiver manufacturers are facing unique challenges and must address various technical and business model considerations, which are often intertwined with one another. Since the new PNT service offerings are still evolving, the information that is available for decision-making purposes is dynamic. Some key considerations for manufacturers include which frequency bands to support, which market to target, and who should pay for the service. When choosing which LEO-PNT service to support, the primary factor for receiver manufacturers is their confidence in the PNT service provider’s ability to deliver the service.

Future outlook

The LEO-PNT market is set for rapid expansion, with most providers targeting initial operating capability (IOC) within the next two to three years, and full operational capability (FOC) by the end of this decade. The industry will likely see:

- Increased government and military interest in resilient PNT solutions

- Greater collaboration between commercial and public sectors to

Eldar Rubinov leads FrontierSI’s satellite navigation portfolio, focusing on GNSS innovation, LEO-PNT and resilient positioning. He is establishing Australia’s first GNSS test range facility and advancing high-precision applications through partnerships with academia, industry and emerging LEO-PNT providers.

establish interoperability standards

- Expansion of hybrid GNSS/LEO-PNT receivers to support multilayered positioning solutions

- Advancements in signal processing techniques, improving accuracy and reliability in contested environments.

Conclusion

The transition to LEO-based PNT services represents a paradigm shift in satellite positioning. While GNSS will continue to serve as the foundation for global positioning, LEO-PNT systems offer enhanced resilience, faster updates and improved performance in challenging environments. The coming years will be crucial in shaping how LEOPNT systems integrate with GNSS infrastructure in practice. As new LEO constellations come online, industry stakeholders must navigate regulatory and market challenges related to service adoption, standardization and competition to fully realize LEO-PNT’s potential. FrontierSI will continue to publish its annual ‘State of the Market Report’ to track progress and guide stakeholders toward a robust and sustainable LEO-PNT ecosystem.

Further reading

State of the Market Report on Low Earth Orbit Positioning, Navigation and Timing (LEO-PNT), 2024 Edition https://frontiersi.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/FrontierSIState-of-Market-Report-LEO-PNT-2024-Edition-v1.1.pdf

About the author

A GIS-integrated model for managing extraterrestrial land

Toward a space cadastre

By Prof Dr Tahsin Yomralıoğlu, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey

With the exponential growth of scientific, commercial and exploratory activities in space, humanity now faces a new array of spatial, legal and institutional challenges that go beyond Earth-based paradigms. These challenges include unresolved questions related to ownership, jurisdiction, liability and the sustainable management of off-Earth resources and infrastructures. This article proposes the concept of ‘space cadastre’ as a fundamental paradigm for the evolution of global space governance: a multidimensional (4D) system that systematically records, organizes and manages spatial rights and responsibilities in the space domain, utilizing geographic information science, jurisprudence and information technologies. The concept can offer a structured, transparent and internationally interoperable system to promote sustainable development, peaceful cooperation and conflict resolution in the expanding boundaries of space, as a cornerstone for future space exploration and management.

Outer space is rapidly evolving into a domain of major commercial activity, scientific exploration and strategic rivalry. The proliferation of satellite constellations, the emergence of space tourism initiatives, and the growing feasibility of asteroid and lunar mining have shifted the perception of outer space from a global common interest to a contested sphere of economic and territorial interests. Today, more than 10,000 operational satellites coexist with an estimated one million pieces of orbital debris, contributing to an increasingly congested and hazardous environment. This transformation compels a fundamental reconsideration of how we define and manage ‘space land’ – a concept akin to terrestrial land parcels, yet governed by vastly different legal and physical constraints. While some national legislations – such as those enacted by the USA and Luxembourg - have sought to legalize private-sector resource use in space, there remains a critical lack of universally accepted mechanisms for the recognition, registration and enforcement of spatial rights beyond Earth.

The concept of space cadastre can be defined as a reflection of traditional

land cadastral systems applied on Earth, extending to the space domain. This innovative approach was developed to address the complexities that arise in the management of property, activities and resources in space. Space cadastre represents a broad area encompassing not only the boundaries between Earth and space, but also the regulation of property

and rights acquired in space on celestial bodies. In this context, space cadastre offers a structured, transparent and internationally interoperable system to promote sustainable development, peaceful cooperation and conflict resolution in the expanding boundaries of space. This system plays an important role in establishing the legal and technical basis necessary for recording,

Figure 1: Basic components of the space cadastre concept.

verifying and sharing property and rights related to celestial bodies (Fig. 1).

Legal foundations and institutional gaps

Despite the foundational importance of international space law, existing treaties remain limited in scope and applicability – particularly in matters of property rights and spatial jurisdiction. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST), while establishing critical principles such as the non-appropriation of celestial bodies by states, remains silent on private ownership. The 1979 Moon Agreement, which sought to establish a regime for resource

The space environment is inherently multidimensional and dynamic, complicating data acquisition and real-time monitoring

management and equitable sharing, has not been widely ratified, and therefore lacks global legitimacy and enforcement power. This legal and institutional void creates significant uncertainty for activities involving infrastructure deployment, resource extraction and spatial planning in outer space. Moreover, there is currently no globally recognized body empowered to adjudicate spatial disputes or maintain an authoritative and enforceable register of extraterrestrial property rights.

In this context, the space cadastre emerges not only as a technological solution, but also as a necessary institutional innovation. A space cadastre would serve as a legally recognized, technologically supported registry system that records, verifies and disseminates spatial claims in a transparent, standardized and internationally accessible manner. By interfacing with both domestic legal systems and international norms, such a cadastre would enhance legal certainty, reduce conflict potential and foster the responsible and sustainable development of space-based activities.

Essential components in the technological infrastructure

The realization of a comprehensive and operational space cadastre depends on the integration of advanced geospatial technologies, precise positioning systems and secure, interoperable digital infrastructures. In contrast to terrestrial land management systems –where spatial units are fixed, and terrain is relatively stable – the space environment is inherently multidimensional, dynamic and complex. This introduces significant challenges in terms of data acquisition, realtime monitoring and the legal attribution of spatial units in motion. To address these challenges, the technological foundation of a space cadastre must consist of the following essential components:

a) 3D and 4D geographic information systems (GIS): These systems enable dynamic visualization and analysis of volumetric space, tracking orbital positions and trajectories over time. They allow spatial-temporal modelling of satellites, space stations, debris fields and designated activity zones (Fig 2).

b) Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) and laser-based tracking: GNSS, together with ground-based and spaceborne laser ranging systems, support real-time tracking and positioning of space assets with high precision. These are essential for maintaining the temporal accuracy and geodetic reliability of the registry.

c) Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT): To ensure the immutability, transparency and verification of spatial claims and rights, DLT offers a decentralized and secure system of ownership records. This strengthens accountability and legal traceability across multiple jurisdictions.

d) Earth Observation systems and deep-space sensor networks: These technologies allow the monitoring of active and passive objects in space, detecting anomalies, collisions and unauthorized spatial activities. They also enable the verification of registered cadastre units against physical conditions.

e) Legal-spatial databases and ISO-compliant standards: The structure of the cadastre must conform to internationally recognized models such as ISO 19152 (Land Administration Domain Model, ‘LADM’), extending traditional concepts like rights, restrictions and responsibilities (RRRs) into orbital and celestial domains.

Collectively, these components contribute to the development of a space-based digital twin – a dynamic geospatial representation of outer space and its registered uses. Such a system not only facilitates registration and verification processes, but also underpins broader functions such as space situational awareness (SSA), space traffic management (STM), orbital debris tracking and compliance with planetary protection protocols.

Towards a multidimensional spatial reference system

Traditional cadastral systems have historically functioned in two dimensions (2D), and progressive developments have included a third dimension (3D) to account for vertical stratification in complex urban and built environments. However, the spatial reality of outer

Figure 2: Conceptual structure of the GIS-based Space Cadastral Model (SpC-GIS).

space inherently presents a four-dimensional (4D) framework in which objects are not only positioned in three-dimensional space (x, y, z), but are also in constant motion through time (t). Consequently, any spatial management mechanism must include both dynamic temporal variables and volumetric spatial references. In this context, orbital corridors, planetary surfaces and even asteroid belts must be treated as temporally bounded, legally interpretable and technically observable geographic units. Defining such entities requires a new spatial referencing system that can account for orbital mechanics, gravitational effects and temporal rights of use. Here, the principles of space geodesy become central to ensuring accurate, real-time positioning and tracking of orbital assets and infrastructure.

A space cadastre must be based on a geodetically sound and temporally integrated reference framework, treating orbital slots and surface parcels on celestial bodies as dynamic legal domains. These can then be linked to various forms of spatial claims, leases and usage rights, facilitating an interoperable registration system that aligns physical movement with legal governance in outer space.

From Earth to orbit: learning from terrestrial systems

Drawing on centuries of terrestrial land management experience, the development of a space cadastre aims to adapt the legal, institutional and technical infrastructure of traditional cadastral systems to the

unique context of outer space. While fundamental principles such as demarcation of boundaries, property classification, property registration and usage rights and restrictions remain conceptually relevant, their application to orbital and planetary space requires significant rethinking and reformulation.

In space, ‘boundaries’ do not refer to fixed and immutable physical lines, but rather to dynamic zones of influence or occupation shaped by orbital mechanics, mission parameters and temporal constraints. Therefore, space cadastres must support the delineation of complex spatial units such as

orbital envelopes, planetary surface areas and transit corridors, accounting for both volumetric and temporal claims. Similarly, types of property in

space may include not

Figure 3: Conceptual model of the space cadastre system.

Figure 4: Schematic representation of the space cadastral system.

in the increasingly complex spatial fabric of the outer space environment.

Challenges and strategic priorities

only ownership and lease agreements, but also special use permits, operational slots and even custodial management arrangements for planetary commons or heritage sites.

The concept of mortgage also develops in the extraterrestrial context. Encumbrances may include restrictions resulting from planetary protection protocols, orbital conflict-free zones or even space traffic management regimes. In this context, the cadastre serves not only as a record of spatial use claims, but also as a tool for coordinating legal, environmental and operational considerations. Furthermore, the space cadastre may be instrumental in assigning responsibility for damages resulting from space debris or impact events, which are increasingly likely as orbital congestion increases. Integrating such functions with environmental protection mechanisms, such as the definition and regulation of exclusion zones around ecologically or culturally sensitive lunar or planetary areas, enhances the role of the cadastre in promoting responsible and sustainable space development. Overall, a space cadastre modelled with scientific rigour and based on adaptable terrestrial frameworks stands as a cornerstone for establishing order, accountability and governance

Despite the compelling conceptual clarity of a space cadastre, its realization necessitates a deliberate, phased and interdisciplinary implementation strategy grounded in scientific, legal and technological collaboration. The transition from theory to practice requires overcoming structural, legal and operational challenges that span national jurisdictions and institutional frameworks (Fig 3).

a) Conceptual framework design: The first essential step involves the development of a globally accepted conceptual model tailored to space-specific spatial units. This includes formalizing the geometric and legal definition of orbital corridors, celestial surface parcels and temporal usage rights. The adaptation of the ISO 19152 (LADM) to the extraterrestrial context would provide a structured legal-spatial schema.

b) Legal harmonization and institutional alignment: To ensure legitimacy and enforceability, international legal harmonization is necessary. This includes updating existing treaties or formulating new agreements to address property rights, resource access and dispute resolution mechanisms. Institutional engagement from bodies such as the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and national

Figure 5: The International Space Station orbits the blue planet Earth in the vastness of space. As space activity accelerates, humanity faces new spatial, legal and institutional challenges that extend beyond Earth-bound frameworks. (Image courtesy: Dima Zel/Shutterstock; elements furnished by NASA)

space agencies will be critical in aligning practices and resolving jurisdictional overlaps.

c) Technological infrastructure and data governance:

Establishing a secure and interoperable infrastructure is vital. This entails real-time geospatial data integration through satellite tracking, blockchain registries for spatial rights verification, and SSA/ STM platforms for orbital safety. Standards for data interoperability, privacy and access must be globally coordinated to ensure consistency and reliability.

d) Pilot projects and operational testbeds: Before scaling, pilot implementations should be conducted – registering satellite constellations, lunar sites or orbital slots using prototype cadastre systems. These testbeds would facilitate validation of legal models, user interfaces and system reliability while helping refine procedures and identify practical obstacles.

e) Multilateral engagement and policy dialogue: A functioning space cadastre must be embedded in a globally recognized governance architecture. Ongoing dialogue among public, private and academic stakeholders is necessary to ensure inclusivity, neutrality and adaptability. Mechanisms for periodic review, policy feedback and knowledge-sharing would support long-term resilience and legitimacy.

In summary, the development and deployment of a space cadastre is not a single technical challenge, but a multifaceted effort requiring coordinated progress across scientific, legal and institutional domains. By adopting a strategic, phased and collaborative approach, the international community can move toward an operational framework that can regulate spatial rights and responsibilities in the increasingly complex domain of outer space.

About the author

Prof Dr Tahsin Yomralıoğlu is a Professor of Geomatics at Istanbul Technical University, Turkey. He specializes in land administration, GIS-based infrastructure and spatial management systems. His interdisciplinary work combines the fields of surveying engineering, land management and geoinformation, and he currently leads a national research and development centre on GIS.

Conclusion

Space cadastre has the potential to evolve from a theoretical proposal into a critical framework for future space management. As activities such as the deployment of space vehicles, lunar exploration projects and sustainable use of space resources increase, the need for an integrated, multidisciplinary management model becomes more evident. In this context, a space cadastre can meet this need by providing a harmonious combination of geographic databases, legal guidelines and institutional mechanisms. This system brings together innovative solutions such as 4D spatial referencing technologies, space geodesy and blockchain-based registration infrastructures. Thus, it enables the transparent and accountable management of spatial rights, responsibilities and activities in orbits and celestial bodies.

Space cadastre also requires the establishment of internationally accepted and collaborative structures to regulate space activities. These structures play a critical role in preventing conflicts in the space environment, ensuring equity in resource use and supporting the sustainability of extraterrestrial areas. As a result, the implementation of space cadastre can be considered as a transformation process that promotes the transition from temporary and independent space operations to a globally managed and integrated spatial management system. This initiative has the potential to be a cornerstone for future space exploration and management.

Further reading

• Lyall, F. & Larsen, P. B. (2018). Space Law: A Review. Routledge.

• Masson-Zwaan, T. & Hofmann, M. (2022). Introduction to Space Law. Kluwer.

• UNOOSA (2024). Space Law Treaties and Principles, https:// www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties.html (Accessed 10 02 2024).

• Williamson, I., Enemark, S., Wallace, J., & Rajabifard, A. (2010). Land Administration for Sustainable Development. Esri Press.

• Yomralioglu, T. (2024). Space cadastre: A new paradigm for the future of space. In Proceedings of the 37th IAA Symposium on Space Policy, Regulations and Economics (pp. 546-566).

International Astronautical Federation (IAF). https://doi. org/10.52202/078380-0054

Highlights from the FIG General Assembly 2025

Actively engaged and enhancing knowledge

The FIG 48th General Assembly was held on 6 and 10 April 2025 in Brisbane, Australia, as part of the FIG Working Week 2025. Around 300 delegates participated, consisting of representatives from 57 member associations, and observers representing affiliate, academic and corporate members and others with interest in the business of FIG.

A full-day programme on 6 April included reports from the FIG president, chairs and others, as well as presentations of the candidates for the chair-elect positions and bidders for FIG Working Week 2029. On 10 April, the second General Assembly day revealed the results of the elections, reported on activities during the Working Week, and finished with the closing speech by FIG President Diane Dumashie.

New honorary member

The FIG General Assembly approved the proposal by the Swedish association to appoint Mikael Lilje, Sweden, as an honorary member of FIG. He has served FIG over many years, first in Commission 5, including as chair of the commission, and thereafter as vice president for two terms. The nomination was supported by Rob Sarib, Australia, a

From left to right: The current commission chairs (pictured) presented updates on their work plans to the General Assembly and welcomed the new chairs-elects: Mark Scanlon, ASC Australia (C1), Rosario Casanova, AAU, Uruguay (C2), Markus Schaffert, DVW, Germany (C3), Gordon Johnston, RICS, United Kingdom (C4), Kevin Ahlgren, AAGS, United States (C5), Peter Bauer, OVG, Austria (C6), Kirsikka Riekkinen, MIL Finland (C7), Naa Dedei Tagoe, LiSAG, Ghana (C8), Małgorzata Renigier-Biłozor, SGP, Poland (C9), and Celestine Nkechi Eke, NIQS, Nigeria (C10).

long-term Commission 5 representative and current chair of the Regional Capacity Development Network in Asia/Pacific (APCPD), who provided lively and fun anecdotes that gave a good description of the nominee. Hopefully, Mikael will continue his involvement in FIG activities for many years to come.

New members

Another tradition during the General Assembly is the admission of new members to the association. The FIG president presented the certificates and extended a warm welcome to the Society of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineers Azerbaijan as a new member association, to the Zanzibar Commission for Lands as an affiliate member, and to Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina – UFSC, Brazil, and University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland, as academic members.

CHC Navigation from China has become a platinum corporate member of FIG. Other new corporate members are Meter Platform & Application Company from Saudi Arabia, Global GIS PVT LTD from Sri Lanka, and Alisteshaar Geospatial Consultancy from Saudi Arabia.

Commission chairs-elects

According to the FIG statutes, Commission chairs-elects are elected two years prior to the year they are elected chairs. The FIG Council submitted a proposal to the General Assembly to change this to one year prior, as two years ahead is quite a long time. Last year, the General Assembly agreed to postpone the election of the chairs-elects

until 2025. This year, the General Assembly agreed to make this new procedure permanent.

Destination for FIG Working Week 2029

Two strong bids for FIG Working Week 2029 were up against each other, which resulted in an exciting campaign. Ultimately, the General Assembly elected Halifax, Canada, to be the destination for FIG Working Week 2029, with the national association Canadian Institute of Geomatics (CIG) as local host.

FIG membership benefits

Both at the General Assembly and in the Presidents Meeting, FIG President Diane Dumashie drew special attention to the benefits of being a member of FIG. This was previously discussed in 2023 and 2024, and the final updated benefits are now available on the FIG website.

In her closing speech, the president thanked everyone for their active engagement, and for the developments in the many areas that FIG covers. These include specific activities related to climate action, special work on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) undertaken by all commissions, networks and others, and the work to enhance the knowledge of surveying and its related roles/ topics among young people to attract them to the profession.

By Louise Friis-Hansen, FIG director

More information www.fig.net

2026 ISPRS Congress in Toronto From imagery to understanding

The XXV Congress of the ISPRS will take place in Toronto, Canada, from 4-11 July 2026. Hosted by the Canadian Remote Sensing Society – Société canadienne de télédétection (CRSS-SCT), this event represents the culmination of the four-year ISPRS cycle and will be held jointly with the 47th Canadian Symposium of Remote Sensing. The Second Announcement and Call for Papers was released at the 2025 Geospatial Week in Dubai in April 2025.

Under the theme ‘From imagery to understanding’, the rich congress programme will feature inspiring plenary sessions, scientific presentations of the latest research developments, thematic and special sessions, applied presentations of interesting and successful projects, instructive tutorials, engaging forum sessions, the Youth Forum to showcase the leaders of tomorrow, and industry technology and lightning sessions for demonstrating new, state-of-the-art technology.

Daily plenary sessions will feature excellent keynote speakers to inspire attendees with

their experiences each day. Confirmed keynote speakers include Marc Pollefeys, ETH Zurich; Chen Jun, National Geomatics Centre of China; Michael Daly, York University; Xiaoxiang Zhu, Technical University of Munich; Marguerite Madden, University of Georgia; and Minda Suchan, MDA Space.