BDS + Gaofen Satellites Herald Newfangled Results

In July 12, a storm slammed into Beijing, of which has been early warned one day ahead by the local meteorological department. Shortly before the storm, meteorological forecast had been applied in furnishing accurate information in celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of CPC.

Recently, the Seminar on Development of Digital Earth Industries was held, wherein Sun Jian, the president of China Meteorological Service Association (CMSA), said that, the progress in meteorological science and technology has boosted the public satisfaction of domestic meteorological services, reaching its almost unsurpassable ceiling of 92%.

Meanwhile, he also pointed out that, Digital Earth could achieve more in the meteorological industry, “for example, BDS + Gaofen satellites are likely to revolutionize the meteorological forecast.”

Wu Yirong, academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences and president of Aerospace Information Research Institute, CAS (hereafter “AIRCAS”), also indicated that, the application of aerospace information is promising in the future.

Aerospace information sees continuous outburst

Statistics show that there are over 300 in-orbit operating satellites in China, ranking the second after the U.S. Moreover, technical progress further improves satellite resolution, spawning more and more sub-meter images.

Overcome with emotion, Wu exclaimed, “As for professionals like me in earth observation research, it’s beyond our imagination that there are so many aerospace earth observation data with so high resolution. With aerospace big data, it is in no doubt that many applications are showing up.”

He said that, with the steady development of aerospace information, Digital Earth that is the last link holds the most market value.

Digital Earth is first proposed in the U.S. in 1998. It adopts the means of earth observation, digital technology and geographic information technology concerning remote sensing satellite, navigation satellite and aerial photography to construct a smart global information model that is digitalized, visualized and networked.

Shao Zongyou, vice-president of Geovis Technology Co., Ltd, (hereafter “GEOVIS”) pointed out that, although the demand for aerospace big data is ticking up in a large number of industries such as natural resources, traffic, emergencies and agriculture, satellite-supported services in these industries are puny. The reason for this lies in the data access links that are too many, and too professional and complicated to be exploitable in ground-based industries.

Shao continued with an example of “people who go through formalities in public agencies may become bewildered in the face of many service windows.”

To solve this, GEOVIS has made a series of technical breakthroughs under the support of AIRCAS. For example, GEOVIS developed a “one-stop office platform,” GEOVIS Digital Earth, a software that integrates many intermediate links regarding satellite photography, decoding, modeling and application, and ground-based applications only need to face the software.

As simple as it may seem to be, more integration links are involved, harder the development becomes. Shao noted that, Digital Earth itself is difficult to have a handle on, because it requires various new-generation information technologies, such as high-performance computing, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, big data and even virtual reality (VR).

For example, artificial identification, which was used to acquire earth observation data in the past, has been replaced by man-machine coordination for intelligent extraction of hefty data, relieving people from laborious work.

Wu considered this, however, far from enough. “In the future, fully automated operation in the front end can be realized through periodic artificial training in the back end.”

“Aerospace information has become a mainstay in the development of information technology, and hopefully, is the sole research direction among technical professionals in the very field to provide all information from the aerospace. Submarine cables may peter out some day when the aerospace information network is formed,” said Wu.

BDS + Gaofen satellites herald promising prospects

On July 31, 2020, BDS-3 was open to the pubic, marking a new era of BDS’s global service.

As is reported, nearly 3,000 ground stations, whose highest accuracy can reach the centimeter level during real-time processing and the millimeter level for post-processing, are widely distributed across China to provides comprehensive services in such industries as transportation, public safety, disaster reduction and relief, agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery, and urban governance.

According to Wu Haitao, vice general engineer of BDS, subsequent focus will be laid on how to improve the construction, management and utilization of BDS while actively promoting the integration and innovation of BDS+ and the aerospace application of +BDS. In his opinion, Digital Earth, as the hosting platform integrating satellite resources with industry applications, gains an edge over promoting BDS application integration and coordinated industrial development.

“The development of BDS + applications has no ceilings.” said Zhang Quande, vice president of GNSS & LBS Association of China. Aerospace information provided by BDS is indispensable in both technical and application terms, because modern logistics relies on high-precision location tracking and time synchronization, and smart agriculture must be supported by high-precision construction information, unmanned drone fleets need accurate time and location ...5G, blockchain, AI, Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing and other digital economies.

However, Zhang found in investigations that there were only talks without action in many regions, GPS is still their first choice. “Everything has its position, to find it needs navigation.” Zhang clamored for more efforts in prioritizing standardized BDS to boost the rapid development of the BDS industry and build a digital China.

Shao, instead, proposed to integrate Gaofen constellation with BDS constellation, concertedly providing the national key infrastructure with high-precision space information services.

In fact, similar plans have long shown up, e.g. the GPS+EOS in the U.S., Galileo + Copernicus in Europe, and earth resources technology satellite (ERTS) + GLONASS in Russia.

China’s self-supply rate of earth images has been greatly improved thanks to the rapid development of domestic aerospace industry, which, further, raises the quality of the images to the highest level abroad, providing an independent and controllable data source in building Digital Earth.

“The idea and the research route like BDS + Gaofen are avant-garde worldwide,” said Shao. With the two being integrated, a platform for many research topics that were impossible to solve by a single means in the past may be available in the future. For instance, by establishing a more refined time-space big data control platform in smart cities, the images of buildings, components and facilities, which are refined to a centimeter-level, can be used for 3D presentation of natural features and underground pipe network, for more targeted emergency prevention and control of meteorological and geological disasters, and even for carbon neutrality-related precise emission assessment.

“I believe, after the new-generation Digital Earth integrates the Gaofen system and BDS, domestic ground-based application industries surely become stronger in data acquisition, treatment and storage,” continued Shao.