RapidEye Support Oil Spill Monitoring in Australia

08 October 2009, 10:54am

Brandenburg / Havel, Germany, October 8, 2009 – RapidEye, the only geospatial solutions provider to own and operate a constellation of five Earth Observation satellites, announced today that they have supplied the German company EOMAP GmbH & Co. KG (Earth Observation and Mapping) with satellite imagery to support mapping services for oil spill monitoring in Australia. EOMAP creates solutions to produce standardized map
products from Earth Observation data, and incorporated RapidEye data into their mapping of the ecological disaster of an oil spill near the coast of western Australia in September this year.

The incident occurred in early August when oil, gas and condensate started seeping into the Timor Sea near Darwin in western Australia. The spill covered several thousand square kilometers with approximately 400 barrels leaking daily. The spill threatened the commercially important fish stocks, the marine ecosystem and coral colonies on the western Australian coastline.

“Our constellation of five Earth Observation satellites is quite flexible, making it relatively easy to image the oil spill area near the western Australian coastline. In this particular situation, EOMAP was able to create highprecision maps from our up-to-date, high resolution satellite data over this area which supported them in their water monitoring efforts. This situation shows how capable the RapidEye system is to support crisis management for natural disasters," commented Michael Prechtel, Head of Sales and Marketing for RapidEye.

“Timely and accurate detection of surface oil slicks is fundamental for monitoring oil spill hazards and operating drift forecast models. By using RapidEye high resolution satellite imagery in addition to imagery from other sensors such as MODIS and MERIS, we enhanced the chance to obtain cloud-free, high quality images for the detection of oil spills. RapidEye data is extremely valuable to emergency response management, as their system is capable of reaching any point on Earth within a day and allows for frequent revisits,” stated Dr. Thomas Heege, Managing Director of EOMAP GmbH & Co. KG.

If you are interested in demonstration products (free test data) from Australia, please visit RapidEye's demo products web site at the link below, or email demoproducts@rapideye.de.

Images of your region or area of interest can be chosen from the expanding collection of imagery in the RapidEye Library by contacting a distributor at the link below, or RapidEye directly. The Library is continuously growing, with new images being downloaded from the satellites every day. For more information, please contact the company's website or email an inquiry to sales@rapideye.de.

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