China, Brazil partner to provide free remote sensing data for Africa
At the 4th meeting of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) that was just held in Cape Town, South Africa, China and Brazil issued a joint statement announcing a plan to provide Africa with free satellite imagery. Ground stations within the African continent will be set up to receive the data from the China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite (CBERS) Program. The first station, in South Africa, will begin receiving imagery shortly, with others to begin operating in 2008. Researchers and scholars in many countries have relied on Landsat and other US satellites for environmental remote sensing data in the past, but this project shows that increasingly other countries and regions are stepping up and working to continue to provide the data that is needed to understand the impacts of climate issues and even shorter-terms events like natural disasters on the environment.
Via http://www.macauhub.com.mo/en/news.php?ID=4456
5 Replies to “China, Brazil partner to provide free remote sensing data for Africa”
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Good idea, Africa needs as much support as possible to get to the level where it can be able to have its own Satellite imagery. This will help in planning our bad infrastructure, our cities etc. One question though, what is the resolution for this satellite image?
CBERS-2B camera resolution is 2.7m/px, but it has also a few different instruments with lower res
http://www.cbers.inpe.br/en/programas/cbers1-2_cameras.htm
Dear colleagues,
Irrespective of the experience and prediction that climate change impacts are/will hit(ting) Africa the hardest, the belaboured and beleguered poor continent (of enormous potential) has remained the highest payer for remotely rensed imagery. This makes the China-Brazil offer of free imagery one of the most considerate and climate change-friendliest moves that I’ve heard about so far. We, in CRADLE (the Centre for Research and Action on Developing Locales, regions and the Environment) cannot wait for this promise to be fulfilled. We hereby ask for further information on how to access the offered imagery for leveraging our research programmes. Kind regards,
Richard INGWE
Great idea. Make sure the data will be distributed freely to the end-user. Disclose the (meta)data via a standardized Spatial Data Infrastucture (SDI) tool like GeoNetwork opensource, allowing easy access to the data and interoperability with other geo-information suppliers….
Here you’ll find the instructions to download the CBERS data: http://www.unsdi.nl/news/newsarchive/03510d9b820c45203.html