SmartEnds is a Belgium-based company that combines smart sensor technology supported by space-based solutions with artificial intelligence to optimise waste collection and reduce landfill waste. 

The challenge

The global waste management industry is expected to reach $2.3 trillion by 2030, yet much of it still relies on analogue systems. Traditionally, waste collection systems operate on fixed schedules, following rigid one-size-fits-all models. Trucks operate on fixed schedules, regardless of whether bins are overflowing or nearly empty, a practice that has become increasingly outdated and inefficient.

The consequences of this approach are significant:

• Overuse of fleets and personnel, leading to inflated operational costs.
• No real-time visibility into bin status, resulting in missed overflows or unnecessary pickups.
• Lack of automation, making it impossible to optimise routes or track performance.
• Limited data on bin locations and contents, especially in large or remote areas.

Solution

To tackle these challenges, SmartEnds introduced a cutting-edge waste management system powered by IoT sensors, smart cameras, and AI-driven software. Their technology is designed to work across a wide range of bin types, from compact city bins to massive industrial containers.

Key innovations include:

• Sensor Integration: These smart sensors detect fill levels, last collection time, and even the type of waste, flagging hazardous materials when necessary.
• Smart Cameras: Visual verification tools help ensure recycling quality and detect contamination.
• Software Optimisation: All data is fed into a central platform that calculates the most efficient collection routes, reducing fuel consumption and labour hours.

Regarding the space components, two are the main solutions which are integrated in these systems, supporting the overall activities and innovations: the first is Spatial Intelligence with GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System), which enhances location accuracy, especially for large or mobile containers.

And the second one is about Advanced Connectivity, especially in remote or rural zones, where satellite communication ensures uninterrupted data flow.

Results

Implementing these technologies has empowered users to achieve: 

• Fleet Reduction: Translating into lower fuel costs and reduced emissions.
• Environmental Gains: In most cases, optimised routing has led to a 30–40% reduction in road usage, easing traffic congestion and cutting carbon output.
• Operational Efficiency: Collection is faster and more accurate, with fewer missed pickups and less overflow.
• Cost Savings: Municipalities and private companies report at least 30% savings in operational costs thanks to smarter route planning and better resource allocation.

The post Transforming Waste Management Through Smart Technology appeared first on Eurisy.

The Maltese Planning Authority is the national government agency responsible for land use and spatial planning in Malta. It also serves as the country’s national mapping authority, providing essential cartographic data to support the development permit system and ensure that urban development aligns with planning regulations.

The challenge

For over a decade, the Planning Authority relied on aerial photography to produce maps of the Maltese Islands. However, with rapid and constant urban development — new constructions, extensions, and land-use changes — there was an increasing need to update maps more frequently and monitor change across the entire country.
Aerial imagery, while detailed, posed several obstacles: it required special flight permits, favourable weather conditions, and costly equipment. Drone surveys offered flexibility but covered only urban areas, making them impractical for nationwide mapping. The Planning Authority therefore sought a simpler, faster, and more scalable solution that could provide regular, high-resolution imagery over Malta as a whole.

The satellite solution

To meet these needs, the Planning Authority adopted high-resolution commercial satellite imagery: satellite data provides synoptic coverage — capturing the entire island in a single snapshot — and can be acquired regularly (one to two times per week), with access to a rich archive of past images. This allows them to select cloud-free images for specific time periods and conduct change detection analyses, supporting urban planning policies such as modification of development zones. Although commercial imagery involves a cost, it remains more affordable than aerial photography and offers greater temporal flexibility. Transitioning to satellite-based mapping required a mindset shift and specialised training for the Planning Authority’s geomatics team, enabling staff to interpret and integrate satellite data effectively into existing workflows.

The results

The use of satellite imagery has significantly improved the efficiency and accuracy of urban monitoring in Malta. The Planning Authority now produces value-added datasets, including national land-use maps, derived from satellite analyses. The Authority is also exploring the use of AI-based tools for automatic building detection, further enhancing its capacity to track and analyse urban change. By embracing satellite technology, they have strengthened their ability to plan sustainably, leveraging both current and archived imagery to maintain an up-to-date view of the country’s evolving landscape — a model that could inspire other national mapping agencies across Europe.

The post The use of satellite imagery for urban spatial planning by the Malta Planning Authority appeared first on Eurisy.

QuantCube Technology is a fintech company that provides high quality financial performance indicators to its clients.

Founded in 2013 by two entrepreneurs with strong expertise in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data, the company counts today in its portfolio of clients financial institutions such as Moody’s, the World Bank, Banque de France, Ardian, and Union Bancaire Privée (UBP).

The challenge

Financial forecasting is the process by which companies think about and prepare for the future. Forecasting involves assessing historical and current data concerning macroeconomics, environmental, social and governance factors.

While plenty of official economic data exists, these are often published with a lag of three or four months and for some areas of the world such data is difficult to access. As an example, up-to-date information on urban growth or maritime traffic, which can be linked to economic growth, is not available for many geographic areas, and it needs to be retrieved from sources other than official reports.

The satellite solution

Copernicus data are used by QuantCube to collect real-time information on four wide sectors of activity that are crucial to economic growth.

Agriculture: Sentinel-2 images, as well as meteorological data, are used to calculate real-time estimates of the crop yield per region and country, allowing for better tracking of agricultural activities.

Pollution: Sentinel-5p satellite images allow QuantCube to estimate the level of pollution per region and per country, focusing on the industrialised areas. Assessing the level of pollution (and in particular of NO2 emissions), allows for the tracking of industrial production.

Urban growth: Sentinel-2 images are used to measure and monitor urbanised surfaces and their yearly evolution. This helps QuantCube to track how cities change over time.

Water stress: Sentinel-2 satellite images allow for the montoring of water sources. Monitoring the fluctuation of water surfaces enables QuantCube to foresee droughts, which have a noticeable impact on water-intensive economic sectors.

To obtain the best possible accuracy, QuantCube Technology couples information extracted from satellite imagery with other data sources, such as job offers, sentiment data from social media, or logistics flows data.

The results of the analyses are delivered in real-time via the QuantCube Macroeconomic Intelligence Platform. The platform offers users different levels of granularity, ranging from sector data to country-level macroeconomic indices.

The results

The use of Copernicus-based data adds a significant value-adding layer to QuantCube’s offer of macro smart data, providing  information on regions where official statistics and indicators are difficult to obtain or are made available with some delay. In addition, the satellite images also allow for the monitoring of changes in a specific region or country over time to detect unusual trends.

In 2021, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub and the Bank of Italy placed QuantCube among the finalists for the G20 green and sustainable financial challenge, which was launched during the Italian G20 presidency.

“As climate change is increasingly affecting economic growth, environmental parameters are becoming more and more important for financial predictions. Hence, the use of satellite data will continue to play a crucial role in enabling companies to produce reliable financial and macroeconomic forecasts”. Alice Froidevaux, Lead Data Scientist, QuantCube Technology

READ THE FULL STORY

The post QuantCube: Improving financial estimates and forecasts with the use of Copernicus appeared first on Eurisy.

Village Data Analytics (VIDA) is a German-based SME created by two professionals with the aim of facilitating electrification in rural areas.

VIDA provides a software that yields information and management tools to governments, development organisations, investors, banks, companies, and NGOs on off-the-grid communities in remote areas.

The challenge

Sierra Leone is one of the world’s poorest countries, where only 23% of the population has access to electricity, which is below the sub-Saharan average of 30%. This hinders modern education and healthcare, job creation, competitiveness, and poverty reduction.

The lack of information on electrification is one of the main challenges for decision-makers to correctly plan electrification, especially in rural areas.

In January 2021, the World Bank approved a $50 million grant from the International Development Association (IDA) to improve access to electricity in Sierra Leone and enhance institutional capacity and commercial management of the sector.

The “Enhancing Sierra Leone Energy Access” project aims at helping the country’s economic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic by providing access to low-cost electricity to households, businesses, health clinics and schools.

Within this framework, the creators of VIDA wanted to provide off-grid energy planners with information on where to extend the energy grid, also using mini-grids and solar-home systems.

The satellite solution

VIDA is a machine learning-based software that analyses satellite imagery, publicly available geospatial data, on ground survey data, and energy modelling to identify and characterise rural villages.

To visualise such information on maps, VIDA relies on Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 images, as well as products derived from nightlight and very high-resolution imageries, and publicly available GIS data such as Open Street Maps (OSM) road data.

Earth Observation imageries are analysed by VIDA to obtain standardised data about villages at the individual household level, such as their position, their distance from the energy grid, the presence of roads and infrastructure, of cultivated fields, and the environmental features of the surrounding areas.

Such data are coupled with ground data on villages’ demographic, topographic, agricultural, and socio-economic features that are obtained from public authorities, existing databases, and surveys.

The results

The interactive map available on VIDA allows the government and stakeholders to pick relevant information from large amounts of data that can effectively support the electrification process at the local level.

In Sierra Leone, more than 500 villages were analysed with VIDA. The software delivered a long list of villages suitable for mini-grid development that could be presented to stakeholders. The settlements are sorted according to building connection count and settlement density, grid proximity, and infrastructure data, such as road access, proximity to a school or a hospital.

The use of the VIDA software and analysis helped unlock a $20 0m credit for electrification and will contribute to the electrification of over 500 new mini grids in the country.

“The Government of Sierra Leone can now accurately position the electricity grid and the villages, estimate their energy demand, and decide on how to best electrify them”. Tobias Engelmeier, founder of VIDA.

READ THE FULL STORY

The post VIDA: Supporting access to electricity in Sierra Leone appeared first on Eurisy.

The Environmental Protection Department of the City of Prague approves and implements the Climate Change Adaptation Strategy and its Implementation Plans.

The Department designs, manages and finances adaptation projects and analyses of some selected data. For these tasks the Department is supported, among others, by the Prague Institute for Planning and Development, which manages the Prague Geoportal, making available a number of maps of Prague.

The challenge

Considering the conspicuous presence of paved spaces, built areas and industrial infrastructure, Prague is particularly vulnerable to extreme heat events.

To implement adaptive measures, the Environmental Protection Department sought to visualise heat vulnerability and the areas that are affected the most in Prague, especially nearby public transport stops, where two-thirds of the city’s population spend a considerable amount of time.

The satellite solution

To assess the effects of climate change on transport stops, the Department asked for the support of ECOTEN Urban Comfort, a local start-up specialised in urban and environmental engineering.

As a first step, the company defined the indices to be taken into account for a heat assessment.

Among such indices, thermal exposure, which indicates the distribution of heat over the city, was calculated by identifying the warmest areas of the city during the days in which temperatures exceeded 30 °C. These data were extracted from images acquired by the Landsat 8 satellite in the summers between 2015 and 2019.

Adaptive capacity, which is the ability of the urban ecosystem to be resilient to heat events, was assessed by mapping greeneries and water bodies around public transport stops. This index was calculated by summing up the Advanced Vegetation Index and the Normalised Differential Water Index, both measured through data from the European Sentinel-2A satellite.

Combing all the indices, ECOTEN was able to produce the Urban Heat Vulnerability Map of the City of Prague.

The results

The Map classifies bus and tram stops in five categories, according to their degree of vulnerability to high temperatures.

Based on the information provided by the map, the Environmental Protection Department is taking measures to make transport stops more resilient to heatwaves and hence more comfortable for residents and tourists.

For example, green lawns were placed on the roofs of the most affected stops, together with misting devices and drinkable water fountains.

“Thanks to the Copernicus satellites, we have reliable, objective and shareable data to act against climate change”. Tereza Líbová, Climate change adaptation specialist, Department of Environmental Protection, City of Prague

READ THE FULL STORY

The post Prague: Copernicus to mitigate the effects of climate change at public transport stops appeared first on Eurisy.

D-ICE is a French SME working on technological solutions to diminish the impact of boats on the environment.

The company is based in Nantes, with a team of 26 people, and operates in the fields of routing, clean energy and safety at sea. D-ICE assists ship owners and operators to find solutions to diminish their impact on the environment. In particular, they work on assessing the interest of adding wind-assisted ship propulsion systems onboard merchant ships.

The challenge

More than 3% of global carbon dioxide emissions can be attributed to ocean-going vessels, which is equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from over 205 million cars. Moreover, boats powered by fuel also cause noise pollution that negatively affects marine life.

The carbon dioxide emissions of ships are directly proportional to fuel consumption and speed. To reduce their environmental impact and to align with the objectives of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the shipping industry is looking for solutions to reduce fuel consumption by using wind-assisted propulsion systems.

D-ICE decided to create systems to help ship operators to assess the interest of adding wind-assisted ship propulsion systems onboard their ships.

The satellite solution

Since 2020, D-ICE developed the SATORI software, an online service that estimates the fuel consumption of ships on specific routes. SATORI is particularly interesting to evaluate the performances of wind-assisted ship propulsion systems.

Initially funded by the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS), SATORI relies on data from Copernicus satellites to acquire information on weather, wind, waves and sea currents on sea routes. Those historical data are made freely available by the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service through two products: the Global Waves Reanalysis Waverys and the Global Ocean Physics Reanalysis.

The data are used to calculate ships’ motions and interactions with the environment. Indeed, the evaluation of wind, waves and currents is necessary for the model to calculate the speed of ships and their engine power between two points at a specific time.

The results

SATORI is built for shipowners, naval architects and providers of propulsion systems. Customers access SATORI through a web portal, where they can enter the ships’ data and their potential speed according to different directions and winds.

Users can perform statistical weather routing studies on the online interface, choose a route and the time periods on which they wish to assess the ships’ average consumption, and then create their own data visualisation to obtain the required forecasts (environmental conditions to be encountered, fuel saving associated with wind-assisted propulsion, ship motions).

SATORI has been already used by some notable skippers. For example, Total and Z&B are today using the software on some of their ships, while AYRO and Chantiers de l’Atlantique rely on it to design wind-assisted ship propulsion systems.

The same algorithm which powers SATORI was used to perform a study for the design team of the new Banque Populaire trimaran after their boat capsized during the Route du Rhum yacht race in 2018.

In 2021, the boat Maître Coq won the greatest sailing race around the world, solo, non-stop and without assistance: the Vendée Globe. D-ICE provided the skipper, Yannick Bestaven, with a software that contained a database of historical routes.

This database was computed with the same algorithm as SATORI. This tool helped him to confirm his routes’ choices and to eventually win the race.

“Thanks to this new technology, the shipping community can now validate business models around the new targets of the International Maritime Organization and take action to reduce greenhouse gases emissions globally”. Sylvain Faguet, D-ICE
Engineering.

READ THE FULL STORY

The post D-ICE: Helping ships to reduce their carbon footprint appeared first on Eurisy.

Port-la-Nouvelle is a French town in the Occitanie region, in the south of France, on the Mediterranean coast.

The historic port of Port-la-Nouvelle extends over 2.5 kilometres, and it represents a major economic asset in the area. Owned by the Region, it includes a commercial port, a fishing harbour, and a marina. The Chamber of Commerce of Aude is responsible for its daily management. This commercial port has historically specialised in the import of oil and the export of cereals.

The challenge

In 2018, the Occitanie region decided to start important works to adapt the commercial port of Port-la-Nouvelle to new traffics and allow for the development of new sectors.

Notably, the regional plan foresees the installation of floating wind-turbines and the creation of a green hydrogen production plant as from 2024. These works are part of a regional policy that aims at combining the economic development of the region with the valorisation of its environment.

Carrying out the works around the harbour implied dredging, which could bring back to the surface sediments on the seafloor, hence endangering the marine environment and the natural areas nearby.

To guarantee that the port expansion works were carried out sustainably, the Directorate for the Sea needed a reliable water quality monitoring system in the area of the works.

The satellite solution

i-SEA- a company based in Aquitaine, supported the port authorities to monitor water turbidity nearby the works, by using data from the Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 Copernicus satellites. The satellites provided data on water turbidity in the past and the near future.

Before the works started, satellite imagery allowed I-SEA and the Region to better understand the hydro-sedimentary processes of the site of Port-la-Nouvelle. During the works, the data contributed to in-situ monitoring, by providing a big  picture of water turbidity levels and a forecast of the turbidity levels expected within the next three days.

The results

Thanks to the Copernicus data, it was possible to avoid damage to the nearby natural areas and to prevent the infiltration of a turbid plume in the nearby pond of Bages Sigean.

The predictive method provided the personnel responsible the works in the Region with daily objective tools to monitor the impact of the expansion of the port on water turbidity and to adapt the works according to the forecasted turbidity levels.

In 2024, the commercial harbour of Port-la-Nouvelle will welcome the first floating wind turbines in the Mediterranean Sea. This operation is part of a regional strategy to achieve sustainable development in the littoral by using technology to boost the local economy, while safeguarding the environment.

“We do our best efforts to ensure that economic development is based on the safeguard and valorisation of the region’s natural resources”. Benjamin Grente, Directorate for the Sea, Occitanie Region.

READ THE FULL STORY: Monitoring water turbidity in Port la Nouvelle

The post Port-la-Nouvelle: satellite data to monitor water turbidity during the port extension works appeared first on Eurisy.

The Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management

The Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management is committed to improving quality of life, access and mobility in a clean, safe and sustainable environment. The Ministry strives to create an efficient network of roads, railways, waterways, and airways, and to implement effective practices to better manage floods and improve air and water quality.

The challenge

The Maritime Spatial Planning Directive requires EU Member States to draw and apply maritime spatial plans. The Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management is the coordinating ministry for the integrated North Sea policy and manages the Dutch part of the North Sea. High on its agenda there is the construction of new offshore windfarms. However, the North Sea basin is under a lot of pressure and finding suitable locations is not an easy task.

Transforming governmental ambitions of sustainable use of the sea into something concrete means fitting all the needs in one coherent spatial plan, which implies trade-offs. The situation can become very complex when all the different stakeholders and interests are considered (e.g., marine protection, aquaculture, shipping lanes, recreational activities, existing telecom, energy corridors, etc.). Other pieces of the puzzle, such as the capacity of the electricity grid, the infrastructure required to get the energy from the windfarm on the national grid, and boundary conditions, are also crucial to meet the national ambitions for offshore windfarm development.

The satellite solution

The Breda University of Applied Sciences is a government-funded higher education institute in the Netherlands. Under the Academy for Games and Media, the University has a research programme concerning serious games and complex decision-making. One of its projects is a Maritime Spatial Planning simulation platform relying on game technology and design, meant for those who must spatially plan the sea. Since a few years, the MSP Challenge Simulation Platform is used within the Digital Twin North Sea project, a cooperation between government agencies, knowledge institutes and the business community to create a state-of-the-art support tool for policy makers, stakeholders, scientists, and citizens.

This ‘digital replica’ of the North Sea simulates spatial plans and their effects. The current Digital Twin North Sea consists of three components: a browser version, the MSP Challenge simulation platform, and a virtual reality prototype module. The tool offers a map of the North Sea basin to simulate the energy production and the infrastructure needed to get the maximum capacity from wind farms installed there to the national grid. Multiple layers are available, such as wind speed, wave height, bathymetry, and sediments. The map also displays the location of current offshore windfarms and shows where new windfarms are being considered for development. One important contributor to the tool is the Copernicus programme, which provides free and open marine data that are integrated in the different layers, and that consists of satellite images, models and data visualisations.

The results

The MSP Challenge Simulation Platform provides, on a free and open-source basis, an engaging tool for students, professionals and policy makers to better understand basic electrical engineering in offshore wind power development and the spatial implications of it. The Dutch Government has been continuously investing in the development and application of novel simulation and game technologies since the international conference on Maritime Spatial Planning held in Lisbon in 2011. The current simulation platform is the result of a fourth design iteration.

Because the MSP Challenge makes use of GIS data, the platform provides direct feedback while testing out different scenarios. Thanks to the platform, policy makers can now engage stakeholders in a pragmatic way. The multi-user system allows to create shared servers to work in a co-creative setting with multiple stakeholders at a time, both during live and online sessions. In addition to the North Sea, the platform also covers the Baltic Sea, the Clyde Marine Region, and the Adriatic Sea.

The post North Sea: Planning offshore wind energy in the Digital Twin of the Sea appeared first on Eurisy.

Copenhagen Solutions Lab

Copenhagen Solutions Lab is an internal consultancy of the Technical and Environmental Department of the Municipality of Copenhagen, in Denmark. With a staff of eight people, Copenhagen Solutions Lab works on issues of transversal interest among the City’s departments by using innovative technologies to promote green urban strategies and policies.

The challenge

Air quality is an issue that concerns several municipal departments, including those responsible for adaptation to climate change, environmental protection, transport, biodiversity, water, economic development, and, — especially — health.

Indeed, even in a clean city like Copenhagen, air pollution is identified as one of the main causes of premature deaths and it is suspected of exacerbating illnesses such as cancers, cardiovascular, respiratory and lung diseases, and even neuro-logical disorders like autism, dementia, Parkinson’s, depressions, and more

Traditionally, air quality is monitored through sensors at static stations located around the city. These provide a generic representation of air quality, and in particular its annual average, which reveals long-term trends. Nevertheless, traditional measurements are not able to deliver precise information on where and when pollutants are most present during the day and people are exposed to it.

Copenhagen Solutions Lab was looking for ways to localise air pollution at the street level and to understand when specific city spots are particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon.

The satellite solution

In 2017, Google offered to support the efforts of Copenhagen Solutions Lab by using the methodology developed within their Air View Project, with the help of the University of Utrecht and the University of Aarhus.

Google equipped its Street View cars with air quality sensors and collected data on air quality in every street of Copenhagen. The measurements targeted the pollutants that are emitted in the city, especially nitrogen dioxide, ultrafine particulate matter and black carbon.

The cars logged one measurement per second, collecting very granular spatial data on air quality, which could be geolocated thanks to the Satellite Navigation systems embedded in the cars. These passed on every street at least six times during one and a half year, in order to get the seasonal distribution of air pollution. This was done until March 2020, when the city lockdown caused by the COVID-19 crisis was declared in Copenhagen.

The spatial accuracy of the information collected in such a way allows for the identification of correlations between human activities, infrastructure and air pollution, according to the time of the day and the season.

The results

In October 2019, a preliminary map of air quality in Copenhagen was published and presented by the City’s Deputy Mayor at the meeting of the mayors of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, that was taking place in Copenhagen.

In the same year, the project caught the attention of other local and international partners. Gehl Architects, a Copenhagen-based urban design agency, got interested in the map and decided to use it to understand how they could reduce the effects of air pollution on children by redesigning public spaces. This initiative, The Thrive Zone project, funded by the Bernard van Leer Foundation and the ICLEI Action Fund, aims at designing urban solutions to increase air quality and reduce exposure to pollution, and at involving citizens in data collection, design and in behavioural changes.

In particular, Gehl mapped childcare institutions and interviewed care workers and care givers on children’ movements in two neighbourhoods, and crossed such data with the information they had on air quality to understand how air pollution impacts on them. Afterwards, Gehl produced a “Cleaner Air Network” map, indicating the areas where air quality is better and where children could spend more time, suggesting urban design interventions.

The final map of Copenhagen’s air quality was released openly in the Spring 2021, accessible to anyone. The map allows for the identification of the most polluted areas (major inroads, airport and the city centre) for the different pollutants, i.e. nitrogen dioxide, ultrafine particulates and black carbon. The map aims at serving all departments of the City’s administration, by putting air quality at the core of city policies.

Copenhagen AirView NO2

The dataset and the model to use it are made available to support urban policies aimed at reducing the exposure to pollution, especially for the most vulnerable groups. Meanwhile, the Thrive Zone project continues to test how implementation can happen in existing urban areas and document effects in real life settings, e.g. by using bushes and trees to contrast fine particles, or by building spaces for children and the elderly where air quality is higher) and to make residents less exposed to pollution by changing their behaviour (i.e. by spending less time in polluted areas).

“By making scientific data available to citizens, we have the potential to make global challenges relevant at the local scale”, Rasmus Reeh, Copenhagen Solutions Lab

The post Copenhagen: Rethinking the urban space by mapping air pollution appeared first on Eurisy.

The Public Service of Wallonia

Wallonia is one of three regions of the federal state of Belgium, alongside Flanders and the Brussels-Capital Region. Located in the southern part of the Country, Wallonia covers 55% of Belgium and hosts one third of the Country’s population.

The Public Service of Wallonia (PSW) is in charge of implementing the policy of the Walloon region and it is the primary interface between the regional institutions and the local administrations and citizens of Wallonia. The PSW employs around 10 000 people in its central department of Namur and the decentralised departments in Wallonia and Brussels.

The challenge

In recent years, most of the competences related to territorial management in Belgium have been delegated to the governments of the three regions. This means that a number of users of geospatial data are now situated at the regional, provincial and municipal levels.

For Wallonia, the Geomatics department of the PSW is in charge of harmonising territorial data collection and distribution, and of facilitating data acquisition and use by the region’s public and private institutions. To comply with the EU INSPIRE Directive, the Team needs to acquire precise, accurate and easily updatable information, including data on land cover (LC) and land use (LU). Indeed, such data are of paramount importance for Walloon administrations, which use them for climate reporting, flood mapping, land take monitoring, forest management, agriculture planning, and land visualisation, among others.

Until 2017, the existing land cover and land use (LCLU) map of Wallonia was derived from cadastral and agricultural information but did not allow users to distinguish information on LC from information on LU.

The satellite solution

In 2017, the Public Service of Wallonia launched a project to produce new maps of LCLU for the whole regional territory based on annual aerial photos and time series of satellite imagery. The maps were built within the framework of the WALOUS project (Wallonia Land Cover and Use) funded by the PSW and realised by three research units from the Free University of Brussels, the Catholic University of Louvain and the Scientific Institute of Public Service (ISSEP).

The WALOUS maps’ specifications resulted from a large consultation of the regional stakeholders (public administrations, universities, city administrations and some private companies).

The maps integrate the latest georeferenced data on the whole Walloon territory.  Manmade assets, such as buildings and infrastructure, are classified in the WALOUS land use map very precisely by using the sub-metric resolution of orthophotos, digital elevation models and other geodatabases, while vegetation and rural areas are better distinguished thanks to seasonal information from decametric satellite imagery (from the European satellites Sentinel 1 and Sentinel 2). The algorithm producing the final maps integrates all data collected to characterise the different classes.

The benefits

The satellite-based maps produced within WALOUS are made available online and can be consulted by all interested organisations and individuals for free, offering a tool to better understand the regional territory.

View of the Semois river – On the left, the land use map. On the right, the land cover map. (Source: WALOUS storymap: https://geoportail.wallonie.be/walous, Powered by Esri)

The land cover (LC) map highlights the physical and biological coverage of the territory, allowing for the identification of natural features, such as trees, waters, shrubs, and grassland, as well as manmade assets, e.g. buildings, rails, routes, and infrastructure. The LC map provides information that can be used by public administrations and private actors to facilitate decision-making. As an example, the Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environment of the PSW uses the map to support farmers in making their declarations, while the Walloon Air and Climate Agency (AWAC) uses the information to estimate greenhouse gas emissions.

The land use (LU) map details the uses of the regional territory. Indeed, a parcel occupied by trees can correspond to several purposes, for example a residential garden, a recreational area or a natural area. The WALOUS map classifies land uses under different categories: primary, secondary, or tertiary production, transport networks, logistics and public utility networks, residential use, natural areas and other uses. Sub-categories are also available to get more insights into land uses. The land use map is used by the Walloon administrations for several purposes, e.g. to update the regional flood hazard map and assess the potential damage associated with flooding and to manage and monitor the inventory of abandoned sites to be requalified.

According to the user survey, the required update frequency of the maps is every two years, and in 2020 a procurement process was carried out to perform a first update of the map to monitor changes in land cover.

“Combining aerial and satellite information and distinguishing land cover from land use in two different maps changed the use of LULC maps in Wallonia, while allowing the PSW to respond to the EU INSPIRE directive requirements. Moreover, the frequent revisit of input data allows the PSW to plan regular updates of the maps, which is required for statistical and decision-making purposes”. Nathalie Stephenne, Geomatics Department, Public Service of Wallonia

READ THE FULL STORY

The post The Public Service of Wallonia (Belgium) relies on satellite imagery for a comprehensive view of land cover and use appeared first on Eurisy.