Earth Observation for Ukraine

Supporting Ukraine

War in Ukraine is a terrible tragedy not only for humanity but also for the environment. Ukraine is a large agricultural country covering 60 million hectares of which 42 million is agricultural land. Therefore, Ukraine is an important producer and exporter of wheat, spring barley, sun flower oil/seed, corn and sugar beets.

As a result of the war and a naval blockade of Ukrainian ships over Black Sea, these commodities will not reach importers, most of whom are underdeveloped countries suffering from the food deficit. On top of this, inflation and embargo on Russian goods (including fertilizers) could result in an increase of food prices by 8% to 22% according to the FAO.

Consequently, the population of undernourished people will increase by 8 to 13 million people in 2022/23, with the most pronounced increases taking place in Asia-Pacific, followed by sub-Saharan Africa, and the Near East and North Africa (FAO, 2022).  Europe consumes half of Ukraine’s production of sunflower oil, which can be found in a variety of food and it may be difficult to replace (e.g. in baby food). This pressure on the vegetable oil market will most likely lead to an increase in biofuel prices.   

EU4UA initiative

CloudFerro has started a bottom-up EO4UA initiative that aims at supporting Ukrainian and international authorities in assessing environmental losses by provisioning processing capabilities combined with a large repository consisting of Earth Observation (EO) satellite data and higher-level products generated by end-users. Within the repository there will be “core” data sets (e.g. Sentinels’ imageries, crop classifications, boundaries of agricultural fields, etc.) which are indispensable for versatile environmental analyses. Results of analyses conducted by end-users, together with generated products, will also be stored within the repository to facilitate consecutive studies.  

The members of EO4UA initiative are EO professionals from private, public and academic sectors willing to support Ukraine by providing state-of-the-art expertise in EO analytics and by cooperating with the Ukrainian scientists. The EO4UA initiative is open for new members who will make a significant contribution to help Ukraine. In this respect a funding system is foreseen for computing grants especially for Ukrainian researches. For more info please contact: eo4ua@cloudferro.com  

EO4UA News

• 13.10.2022 - seminar about the EO4UA at Big Geodata Talks organized by ITC
• 10.10.2022 - CloudFerro published daily Sentinel-1 & Sentinel-2 composites. See EO4UA geoportal.
• 26-28.2022 - EO4UA initiative was presented at XXII symposium of Geoinformation, Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing of Environment Working Group in Cracow, Poland 
• 07.09.2022 - Anhalt University was awarded OCRE grant to support EO4UA initiative. Congratulations!
• 06.09.2022 - Center of Applied Geomatics of Institute of Geodesy and Cartography was awarded OCRE grant to investigate forest change Scandinavia, Poland and Ukraine. Congratulations!
• 25.07.2022 - SISTEMA GmbH joins EO4UA. Welcome!!!
• 29.06 - 1.07.2022 - EO4UA provides CREODIAS environment and EO4UA data repository for EUSpace4Ukraine hackathon organised by EUSPA
• 1.07.2022 - Kyiv Polytechnic Institute receives NoR funding sponsored by ESA for CREODIAS environment
• 17.06.2022 - Polissia National University joins EO4UA. Welcome!!!
• 15.06.2022 - EO4UA is in TVP POZNAŃ
• 09.06.2022 - Sinergise provides delineated agricultural fields (seasons 2016-2022) for entire Ukraine based on Sentinel-2 imagery to EO4UA.
• 24-26.05.2022 - EO4UA demos on the ESA LPS 2022 conference. Visit us in Bonn!
• 17.05.2022 - EO4UA cooperates with the EUSPA within the EUSpace4Ukraine project
• 16.05.2022 - EO4UA geoportal for data discovery over Ukraine is online
• 13.05.2022 - EO4UA is popular in media: www.trojka.polskieradio.pl geoforum.pl www.technology.org newseverything.in news7g.com www.msm.com www.rmf24.pl
• 11.05.2022 - Vista company running Food Security TEP joins EO4UA
• 06.05.2022 - coordination meeting between GEOGLAM and EO4UA
• 27.04.2022 - New GPU-enabled software developed by the CGI company  for Sentinel-1 CARD product generation will be tested over Ukraine by the JRC within the C-SCALE project
• 21.04.2022 - coordination meeting between WorldCereal and EO4UA
• 20.04.2022 - second meeting of the EO4UA initiative
• 12.04.2022 - Institute of Geodesy and Cartography and Forest Research Institute join EO4UA
• 01.04.2022 - EO4UA webpage is online
• 31.03.2022 - CloudFerro funds CREODIAS environment for Kyiv Polytechnic Institute
• 30.03.2022 - Centre of New Technologies (CeNT) University of Warsaw and SatAgro joins the EO4UA 
• 25.03.2022 - Airbus Defense and Space joins the EO4UA initiative with the soCAP products over selected AOIs 
• 23.03.2022 - first meeting of the EO4UA initiative with Kyiv Polytechnic Institute 

EO4UA initiative

CloudFerro has started a bottom-up EO4UA initiative that aims at supporting Ukrainian and international authorities in assessing environmental losses by provisioning processing capabilities combined with a large repository consisting of Earth Observation (EO) satellite data and higher-level products generated by end-users. Within the repository there will be “core” data sets (e.g. Sentinels’ imageries, crop classifications, boundaries of agricultural fields, etc.) which are indispensable for versatile environmental analyses. Results of analyses conducted by end-users, together with generated products, will also be stored within the repository to facilitate consecutive studies.  

The members of EO4UA initiative are EO professionals from private, public and academic sectors willing to support Ukraine by providing state-of-the-art expertise in EO analytics and by cooperating with the Ukrainian scientists. The EO4UA initiative is open for new members who will make a significant contribution to help Ukraine. In this respect a funding system is foreseen for computing grants especially for Ukrainian researches. For more info please contact: eo4ua@cloudferro.com  

EO4UA Objectives

• To monitor Ukrainian environment, especially food production and forestry 
• To help Ukrainian scientists to continue their research work 
• To gather EO experts willing to help Ukrainians 
• To provide a large processing environment combined with an EO data repository 
• To facilitate consecutive studies by providing outcomes of the previous ones 
• To inform general public about the environmental condition in Ukraine  

EO4UA Action Plan

1. [Done] Provide CREODIAS environment for Kyiv Polytechnic Institute
2. [Done] Generate Sentinel-1 CARD products over Ukraine for 2021 and 2022 
3. [In progress] Generate Sentinel-2 L2A MAJA product over Ukraine for 2021 and 2022 
4. [Done] Delineate agriculture fields using soCAP for selected AOIs 
5. [Done] Generate soCAP products for selected AOIs 
6. [In progress] Classify crops over Ukraine using Sentinel imagery 
7. [In progress] Monitor forest fires and deforestation over Ukraine using Sentinel imagery
8. [In progress] Predict crop yields in 2022
9. [Done] Provide CREODIAS environment for EUSpace4Ukraine hackathon organized by EUSPA

EO4UA Members & Supporters