The Austrian node of the natural resources satellite remote sensing cloud service platform: examples of Sino-Austrian cooperation

ABSTRACT

The Austrian node of the Natural Resources Satellite Remote Sensing Cloud Service Platform was established in 2016 through a cooperation agreement between the Land Satellite Remote Sensing Application Center (LASAC), Ministry of Natural Resources of the Peoples Republic of China and the University of Vienna, Austria. Under this agreement panchromatic and multispectral data of the Chinese ZY-3 satellite are pushed to the server at the University of Vienna for use in education and research. So far, nearly 500 GB of data have been uploaded to the server. This technical note briefly introduces the ZY-3 system and illustrates the implementation of the agreement by the first China-Sat Workshop and several case studies. Some of them are already completed, others are still ongoing. They include a geometric accuracy validation of ZY-3 data, an animated visualization of image quick views on a spherical display to demonstrate the time series of the image coverage for Austria and Laos, and the use of ZY-3 data to study the spread of bark beetle in the province of Lower Austria. An accuracy study of DTMs from ZY-3 stereo data, as well as a land cover analysis and comparison of Austria with ZY-3 and other sensors are still ongoing.

KEYWORDS:

• Remote sensing
• geographic information systems
• ZY-3 satellite
• hyperglobe
• Land Satellite Remote Sensing Application Center (LASAC)

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank LASAC for providing satellite data to conduct this research and M. Holzapfel, Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna, Austria, for the data processing for the accuracy evaluation of ZY-3 image in Austria.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from Land Satellite Remote Sensing Application Center, Ministry of Natural Resources of the Peoples Republic of China. Restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for this study. Data are available from the authors with the permission of Land Satellite Remote Sensing Application Center. http://www.lasac.cn

Notes

1. Before an organizational reform in 2018 LASAC used to be the Satellite Surveying and Mapping Application Center (SASMAC) of the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation of China.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China for Strategic International Cooperation in Science and Technology Innovation (Grant No. 2016YFE0205300) as well as a grant under the Eurasia Pacific UNINET program of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research to the University of Vienna (Grant No. EPU 32/2017).

Notes on contributors

Wolfgang Kainz

Wolfgang Kainz is a full professor of cartography and geo-information science at the Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna, Austria. He received his PhD degree from Graz University of Technology, Austria. His research interests are mathematical foundations of GIS, fuzzy logic, and topology.

Xinming Tang

Xinming Tang is the chief engineer of Land Satellite Remote Sensing Application Center (LASAC), Ministry of Natural Resource (MNR), and chief scientist of technology innovation team, Ministry of Science and Technology, China. He received his PhD degree from Twente University, The Netherlands. His research interests are satellite data processing and application, spatial and temporal database.

Yucai Xue

Yucai Xue is a research associate of Land Satellite Remote Sensing Application Center (LASAC), Ministry of Natural Resource (MNR), China. She received her PhD degree from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, China. Her research interests are satellites data onboard compression and remote sensing applications.