22 satellite imagery analysts and experts from seven EDA Member States (Austria, Belgium, Spain, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland) plus Denmark, as well as six analysts from the European Union Satellite Centre (EU SATCEN) and one from the European Border and Coast Agency (FRONTEX) met from 19-21 October at the SATCEN headquarter in Torrejón de Ardoz/Madrid for a REACT study implementation meeting.
The REACT (Radar imagEry Applications supporting ACTionable intelligence) study, initiated and managed by the European Defence Agency (EDA) in cooperation with EU SATCEN and participating Member States, aims at giving more value to imagery data, identifying areas where military imagery analysts can be assisted by tools/workflows to produce valuable and possibly actionable intelligence, according to users’ information requests. The study is focused on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery processes and in the combined use of SAR and electro-optical images. The study has been awarded to an international consortium composed by: e-GEOS, Telespazio Ibérica and INTA. The contract was signed in January 2016.
The aim of the REACT implementation session was to test, in a pseudo-operational environment, the workflows for the exploitation of satellite radar imagery defined during the previous phases of the study. Several workflows were tested: Monitoring, Damage Assessment, Search/Targeting. New algorithms, still in a research and development phase, were also presented. For each of programme topics, the operational experts received a “Request for Information” task.
The operators were tasked to perform imagery processing and imagery analysis in accordance with the workflows previously defined during the REACT study. Satellite radar imagery was provided by the EU SATCEN and by the industrial consortium.
The session proved to be extremely useful for the participating experts in many respects, especially because it helped them to face the intrinsic complexity of working with radar imagery and provided practical information in each step of the defined workflow. The expertise acquired during the session will also help the imagery analysts to establish effective working procedures for radar imagery exploitation, understand the pros and cons of using the several software suites available and evaluate the state of the art of new tools and algorithms for radar imagery exploitation (e.g Automatic Target Detection & Recognition).
An additional similar session will be organized in Rome in December for two scenarios typically encountered during FRONTEX activities: pre-frontier and coastal monitoring.
The results of the REACT activities will feed into the work of the forthcoming EDA Project Team Space Based Earth Observation. In addition to that, the lessons learned during the meeting on the new tools and algorithms may also be discussed in the relevant EDA CapTechs.
More information: