Page 1 of 2
Next saurabh.mishra@GISdevelopment.net Earth Observation (EO) is broadly the acquisition and exploitation of data acquired from remote (aircraft- or satellite-based) observations of the Earth. It covers a diverse range of remote sensing applications, including weather forecasting, environmental monitoring, surveillance and numerous scientific applications in the atmospheric, land and ocean domains. With increasing demand from various walks of life, which includes individuals, groups and commercial enterprises, new EO applications are being developed. Insurance sector (helping assess risk) and planning emergency response services (in case of natural or man-induced disasters) are few of the examples of areas offering newer markets to the remote sensing data products. The EO Value Adding (VA) sector is the group of companies that processes the raw or semi-processed data from the remote sensing instruments, and converts the data into information that is commercially useful end users. The mutiple ways in which value to the source data added are -
EMERGENCE OF EOVA Certain essentialities put up by the growth trends in demand have led to the building up of the VA industry. Remote sensing continued to show movement toward market education and geospatial information adoption and becoming a part of emerging broader geospatial market (and even broader IT market trends). Web-based mapping providers (Google) have made more people aware of remote sensing technology and aided further insights to its commercial applications. The affect is evident from the remarkable growth of "aftermarket" of VA companies. Key trends witnessed nowadays as part of merger (with IT) are -
These trends are likely to continue and could substantially influence how the remote sensing industry develops. Llyod E Stallkamp, in his paper “RS data as a Public Good” suggests that 'public good' is best served by having value added products provided by private business. With the industry taking Value Addition Transforming data into information: An enterprise GeoEye Ad turn to value-additions, speculations are being made towards the developments of applications to potential areas (niche markets) as agriculture, communications, travel, tourism, etc. (Table 2). This being the scenario, the companies seem to have followed what Donald B. Segal, president, Spatial Insights, recommended to the data providers. According to him data providers must Reconsider packaging of the data to be more inline with the geographies of the business user "Scenes", "sensor footprints", and "flight paths" are meaningless to the business user. They simply want their area of interest (site, county, market, etc.), and they want it yesterday. Provide data in a GIS-ready format, rectified to a common projection Charging extra to geometrically corrected data or to mosaic the data to form seamless coverage of a study area is nuts. Build this into the price if need be, but don't burden the buyer with these details. Most businesspersons are blissfully ignorant about map projections and are quite happy to remain that way. Make it easy to order and deliver it quickly. Finding out the cost and availability of coverage online is cumbersome - if not impossible - in most cases. For "archived" imagery, shipment should be faster than the "5- business day" estimate given by most providers. Delivery of compressed data via email or FTP could/should be accomplished within hours. For most clients, the projects are short-fused and are over within a day or so.Waiting 5-7 days to receive data just doesn't work. Revisit pricing strategies While the price of imagery has come down over the years, it is still relatively expensive, particularly for the small to mid-sized companies that aren't yet convinced of its value. Basic economics would suggest that lower prices will spark interest in a much larger portion of the potential market.  Page 1 of 2
Next |