Satellite Observing Systems

Satellite observing systems are unrivalled in expertise in all aspects of satellite remote sensing of the marine environment. Serving the public and private sector organisations by providing:

Google Android: The New Fighter In The Ring

It is said that Apple’s iPhone started the mobile phone revolution, but today, names like Blackberry and Nokia are very much head to head in the global Smartphone and app wars. The new player to enter the foray is Google’s Android. Google has developed its own operating system, Android, and many big names seem to be interested in running it on their machines.

The android is catching on very quickly, with a well integrated and smooth operating system and plenty of features. Plenty of andriod apps are also available, ensuring that the Droid does not lag behind in the mobile app race.

The Android OS has proven to be a success, and a welcome competitor in a market clearly dominated by Apple’s iPhone. T mobile’s HTC G1 was the first mobile to use Google’s Android operating system. The phone has received mixed reviews, but was a market success, with millions of users going for the HTC.

Some top manufacturers such as LG, Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung among others have expressed an interest and desire in manufacturing Android Smartphones, that is, phones that can run the Android OS.

The foreseeable advantage that the Google android will no doubt have over the iPhone is that Android Apps will offer users a good amount of choice when it comes to handsets. While Apple’s OS is confined only to Apple’s iPhone!

• Consultancy on the applications and exploitation of marine remote sensing,
• High quality marine statistics and climatology,
• Real-time sea-state monitoring from space delivered to ships at sea,
• Training programmes world-wide.

Some of the problem areas recently tackled by us including ongoing programmes, are:

• Calibration of radar altimeters on the ERS-1, ERS-2 and ENVISAT satellites,
• Statistical data on the occurrence of the highest wave at an offshore site or along a shipping route anywhere in the world,
• The prevalence of oil slicks in summer off a tourist beach in the mediterranean,
• Seasonal cycles in the vertical migration of nutrients along a coastline, and their dependence on marine weather patterns,
• A model of sea level changes around Britain's coastline over the last decade,
• The design of an easy-access coastal information system containing data derived from the satellite record,
• Accessibility of environmental information of coastal zones by NATO navies,
• Trends in global climate change revealed in the middle of the Atlantic by satellite observations repeated over a decade.

The latest venture is the design of a system of dedicated microsats that will deliver observations of storm location and intensity in 'real-time' to forecasting centres and ships at sea.

We have longer experience in the field of creating useful marine products from raw satellite data than any company in Europe, and this is reflected in the number of Training Workshops it has been asked to organise around the world.

• We are completely current with the programmes and aspirations of all the major space agencies and we are a leading promoter of 'real-time' constellations.
  
  
• No organisation, whose interest lies in the sea, can afford to remain ignorant of the increasingly relevant role of satellite surveillance to its operations.