GAF AG, an internationally active geo-information technology and consulting company, announces that it has been awarded by World Bank (WB) and European Space Agency (ESA) with Service Production in Bolivia. In the framework of eoworld , which is a partnership program of WB and ESA, together with its partner EOMAP GAF will provide dedicated state of the art Earth Observation products regarding Water Quality, Land Use and Land Use change for the Lake Titicaca sub-basin in Bolivia and Peru.
International financial institutions (IFI) provide financial support and professional advice for development activities on local to regional scale in developing countries. Their activities are generally organized in dedicated projects financed by long-term loans or grants covering social and economical development aspects in a wide range of fields. For certain fields Earth Observation (EO) products and services have been identified as a useful tool to support the monitoring and management of IFI projects, to improve the efficiency of the investments made and finally to assess the impact and social benefits of the financed development activity.
ESA, as part of its Value Adding Element (VAE) programme, has been interacting with the IFI and their stakeholders to understand their working environment and information requirements in particular for EO services. Especially with WB, ESA started a partnership program named eoworld in 2010. Within this programme, first dozen of Bank teams from across a variety of sectors and representing all regions were selected through a competitive process to receive assistance of ESA to apply Earth Observation services in selected operations.
“The main aim of the eoworld initiative is to demonstrate the value of European and Canadian satellites, both ESA and national missions, and the capabilities of specialised value-adding companies that can provide information services to benefit the World Bank’s operations,” said Stephen Coulson, ESA’s Head of Industry Section.
This process has resulted in dedicated service specifications for World Bank, which have been put out for tender. GAF has been awarded with the MONITORING OF WATER QUALITY AND LAND USE CHANGES IN THE LAKE TITICACA BASIN project, which is directly driven by the requirements of the supported WB project and its local stakeholders in Bolivia.
During a 2 days meeting in April at WB’s headquarters in Washington DC, together with ESA, WB and EOMAP, all service products have been finalised. For an area of about 47 000 km² in Bolivia and Peru (Lake Titicaca sub-basin), together with EOMAP GAF will provide dedicated state of the art EO products which have been customised to meet the specific user requirements of WB best possible. Including Water Quality products such as information on Turbidity, Suspended Matter and Chlorophyll-A as well as mapping products on Land Use/Land Cover and Land Use/Land Cover Change, the service will deliver products for environmental monitoring of Lake Titicaca between the years 2003 and 2010. All delivered products will be validated together with the service performance by WB and local stakeholders. The benefit of the information service will be assessed relatively to the objectives of the project as well.
Project activities started in April 2011 and will be concluded in February 2012.
For more detailed information, consult the news section of ESA’s website or the EOWORLD project website from WB.
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