21 FlightCom Magazine
Defence
FOOD SECURITY
FROM SATELLITES
T
HERE are already hundreds
of millions of people who
go to be hungry each day in
Africa, and governments will
have to find ways to house,
clothe, feed, educate, skill,
employ and provide healthcare to many
more people than existing infrastructure
and agriculture can sustain.
They key to proper planning and
management of resources is seeing both the
macro and the micro pictures. The recent
advent of very high resolution optical and
radar earth observation satellites is rapidly
changing the way defence, security and
land-use planners, farmers and other people
in the value chain are able to work.
Satellites and Food Security
Food insecurity is a continuous
challenge in Africa. In South Africa, despite
the agricultural sector being responsible for
approximately 7% of formal employment
and being crucial to South Africa’s overall
socio-economic stability, the industry is
faced with increasing uncertainty and low
investment incentives.
Key challenges include population
growth, limited water availability and
droughts, as well as other environmentalfactors such as pest damage and disease. In
addition, South Africa is host to a number of
invasive plant species, which pose a threat
to the sustainable production of healthy
crops. These challenges can cause major
crop failures, significant damage and losses.
South African farmers therefore need the
appropriate near-real-time information on
crop conditions; something satellites are
very good at doing cost-effectively and for
all of the different growing cycles.THE APT RESPONSE
In response to farmers’ requirements,
Airbus partnered with the South Africa
National Space Agency (SANSA), to design
and implement Crop Watch for South
Africa. This is a portal to valuable space
data and imagery tailored to inform the
optimised production of irrigated and dry
land crops. It is also part-funded by the UK
Space Agency.
SANSA was established in 2010 to
promote the use of, and derive greater value
from, space science and technology, for
the benefit of South African society and
industries.
The UK Space Agency’s International
Partnership Space Programme (IPSP) is aGBP £32 million two-year pilot initiative
that opens opportunities for the UK to
share expertise in satellite services and
technology overseas through mutually
beneficial international partnerships that
promote wide societal and economic
benefits from the use of satellite technology.
All of the data within the project,
with the exception of field boundaries and
ground truth information, was derived from
satellite imagery. The DMC Constellation
satellites were tasked to provide the
primary dataset. The DMC Constellation
provides rapid repeat coverage of the largest
countries, regions and even continents. The
DMC Constellation is capable of acquiring
multispectral imagery at 22-24m resolution
and panchromatic imagery at 12m. With their
640km swathe, they acquire significantly
larger images than other satellites of similar
resolution, making them ideal for wide area
agricultural monitoring. Their fast revisit
time is another key strength, allowing the
delivery of a dense time-series of images.
Additional imagery was provided by the
Airbus Sentinel-2, Landsat-8 and Spot 6/7
satellites.
The captured satellite imagery is
analysed using Airbus’ Overland software,It is said that the next great war will be fought over water.
The UN predicts Africa’s population will expand to 2.3 billion
people by 2050 - the equivalent of adding nearly twice China’s
current population to Africa’s current populace. This has serious
implications for national defence and security.