The logo clearly announces the color. © ESA
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What is the impact of the COVID-19 health crisis on our societies? To monitor visible changes and their evolution over time, ESA and the European Union have set up the RACE platform (Rapid Action Coronavirus Earth observation).
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It is intended to be easy to access.
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A simple interface to follow precise environmental indicators, worldwide: this is the idea of the RACE platform, which shares a wide spectrum of data collected on site, grouping air and water quality, industrial activities, commercial port activity, construction, agriculture, etc.
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Josef Aschbacher, the responsible for the observation of Earth for ESA, explains: ” Europe has the best earth observation capabilities in the world, and we are happy to provide them to Europeans and to all citizens (…). Across the countries of the European Union and ESA members, the RACE platform shows crucial examples of the socio-economic and environmental application of Earth observation ”
One finds there, among others, “pollution” cards (in reality NO emissions2) captured by the Sentinel 5p satellite, worldwide, since the start of the pandemic.
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Indicators and data processing
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With RACE, the institutions also wish to show that the study of satellite data, whether public (like that of the European constellation Copernicus) or private, can lead to “high level” indicators helping to understand the impact of major crises on our societies and their consequences. Thanks to an artificial intelligence algorithm, some of these indicators can already be found on RACE, such as the number of ships at anchor in a particular port, the number of trains stopped at marshalling yards, the cars awaiting delivery to manufacturers or aircraft on the airport tarmac.
Examples already used, but which, within a single tool, can paint a more complete socio-economic portrait of the evolution of the crisis, and of the recovery.
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What place for RACE?
It should be noted that RACE is still incomplete, but 30 public and private ESA partners have committed to providing data, which is quite rare… This also points to a weakness often criticized in the Copernicus program, whose images are used in the whole world, but whose results on the creation of data analysis companies have not really materialized.
RACE is a relevant example of what satellite data allows. It remains to be seen whether the platform will be well used in these times of economic recovery, and whether it will give ideas for new satellite applications.
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