This week, Arnaud van den Berg has signed his contract with the director of Orbital Eye, Erik Zoutman, to start as a business developer at Orbital Eye. Arnaud has a Bachelor’s degree in International Business Administration from the Radboud University Nijmegen, and a Master’s degree Business Information Management from the Erasmus University Rotterdam. In his free time, you can find Arnaud cycling or traveling, preferably to sunny places. We believe that his passion for international business, technology and innovation can help us in making sure that more and more companies will keep their assets safe using our Earth Observation Based technology!

Welcome Arnaud!

MARINE-EO is a commercial Horizon 2020 project in which S[&]T, Orbital Eye B.V., and Sonaca competed against two other consortia in developing services for helping coast guards and other maritime authorities increase their situational awareness by pointing out potential security anomalies around oceanic and coastal areas. (read more: https://marine-eo.eu )
The Maritime Scene Investigation (MSI) prototype is built around Orbital Eye’s radar-based change-detection system and uses a fusion of satellite and ship-positioning data to detect and classify potentially anomalous ship behaviour or coastal infractions.

Marine-EO PCP Project is ready for the final phase of a project that will deliver tailored solutions for public authorities and security agencies in #EU.

DELFT, The Netherlands Oct. 2, 2018 – Orbital Eye B.V., a member of the S[&]T group, announced today that it has signed a co-operation agreement with the German based energy company innogy SE.
Orbital Eye and innogy will work together in the development and exploitation of a Satellite based Monitoring method informing Network Operators about dangerous activities near their gas pipelines or power cables. With this co-operation a first step is made towards a fully automated and digitized Right-of-Way monitoring method for the Energy Distribution sector. This innovative solution will help the sector to reduce tens of millions per year of damage caused by outage and repair work, caused by unsupervised excavation activities, while increasing the external safety of their networks.

How can pipeline operators monitor hundreds to thousands of kilometres of pipeline in a fast and cost-effective way?

Pipeline works following a PIMSyS detection alert
Today pipeline operators are faced with numerous challenges, from detecting threats at an early stage, whether in crowded or deserted areas, to prioritising inspection activities in a sensible and sustainable manner, to monitoring pipelines regardless of the weather.

Using the free and open data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 constellation, the Dutch high-tech service company Orbital Eye B.V. delivers advanced monitoring solutions to network operators.
Remote sensing is a powerful tool that allows large, remote, inaccessible areas to be examined.
Satellites, such as the Sentinels of the European Copernicus programme are excellent for detecting change. Images from these satellites greatly improve the viability of commercial operations. The revisit frequency – directly determining the monitoring frequency for periodic surveillance purposes – can be as high as once every three days.
The Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) on Sentinel-1 covers Earth’s landmass entirely regardless of the weather or daylight.
Orbital Eye created a pipeline monitoring tool – PIMSyS (Pipeline Integrity Management System from Space) – that offers solutions for monitoring critical infrastructure such as transmission pipelines, powerlines, roads and railways. Developed as Orbital Eye’s core product, PIMSyS shows pipeline operators exactly where and when potential hazards occur. It combines accurate and up-to-date monitoring data with smart tools to visualise relevant context data such as planned third-party activities, and support inspection work processes and planning.
PIMSyS
Using SAR Coherent Change Detection technology (SAR-CCD), change maps are generated by comparing two radar images of the same geographic region, taken at different times. This highlights areas where a significant change has occurred between the two image dates. For highlighted areas with a high probability of a Third Party Interference (TPI) and overlapping the pipeline corridor, a warning is generated by PIMSyS in the form of a GIS object (see orange balloon marker).
The SAR data provided by Sentinel-1 satellites enable reliable and sustainable periodic monitoring of large geographical areas. Being weather independent, they provide a high degree of spatial and temporal availability.
Marco Betting, Managing Director of Orbital Eye, says, “With both Sentinel-1 satellites in orbit since end of 2016, Orbital Eye is increasing the monitoring frequency for European Pipeline Operators up to 10 times a month. This will hugely increase the probability of detection of short-lived third party activities in the corridors of their networks”.
While Sentinel-1 radar data are best used for the detection of anomalies in the extremely large areas of pipeline corridors, multispectral satellite images – for instance those of Sentinel-2 – can be used to further zoom-in on any anomalies that have been detected with the radar. This better classifies the detected changes.
“Although Orbital Eye’s monitoring technology already applies advanced filters for removing non-hazardous events in agricultural and harbour areas, developments will further increase the selectivity of our monitoring technology by fusing optical data with our radar detections in order to minimise ‘false alarms’ and maximise the situational awareness of pipeline operators,” concluded Mr Betting.
About the Sentinels
The Sentinels are a fleet of dedicated EU-owned satellites, designed to deliver the wealth of data and imagery that are central to Europe’s Copernicus environmental programme.
In partnership with EU Member States, the European Commission leads and coordinates this programme, to improve the management of the environment, safeguarding lives every day. ESA is in charge of the space component, responsible for developing the family of Copernicus Sentinel satellites and ensuring the flow of data for the Copernicus services, while the operations of the Sentinels have been entrusted to ESA and EUMETSAT.

‘De meest gangbare inspectiemethode is een periodieke controle per helikopter’, vertelt Erik Zoutman, oprichter van Orbital Eye. ‘Dat is een tamelijk dure methode, die bovendien milieubelastend is en veel geluidsoverlast veroorzaakt. Wij denken door satellietgegevens te gebruiken een aantrekkelijk alternatief te hebben.’ Zoutman werkte na zijn studie elektrotechniek aan de UT eerst een tijd bij de ruimtevaartafdeling van TNO in Delft.
Vervolgens richtte hij in 2000 het in Delft gevestigde S [&] T op, een bedrijf dat onder meer software ontwikkelt voor de ruimtevaart­instrumentatie. Zoutman: ‘We hebben op een gegeven moment een project gedaan, waarbij we keken of we satellietradargegevens konden gebruiken voor het inspecteren van pijpleidingen.’ Uit dat succesvolle project rolde startup Orbital Eye, dat een softwarepakket heeft ontwikkeld waarmee het sinds 2015 op de markt is. De benodigde gegevens komen van ESA-aardobservatiesatellieten; twee tot drie uur nadat deze boven een specifiek gebied hebben gevlogen, is de gewenste informatie beschikbaar en komt automatisch bij de klant terecht.

Grote groeimarkt

‘De radar kijkt niet naar de pijpleiding, maar naar wat er in de omgeving gebeurt’, aldus Zoutman. ‘Corrosie is bijvoorbeeld met radar niet op te merken. Maar als de corrosie lekkage tot gevolg heeft, zie je dat meteen aan de vegetatie in de directe omgeving.’
Zoutman verwacht een grote groeimarkt, vooral in het buitenland: ‘Eigenlijk durf ik te stellen dat iedereen die nu nog inspecteert met een helikopter, over zal stappen op gebruik van satellietgegevens, omdat het goedkoper, veiliger en nauwkeuriger is. Op dit moment heeft Orbital Eye geen concurrenten, maar omdat wij succesvol zijn, zal er ongetwijfeld op korte termijn een concurrerend bedrijf opdoemen. Maar de markt is groot. We hebben net champagne gedronken, omdat we in het buitenland weer een grote klant hebben binnengehaald. We mogen de naam van het bedrijf niet noemen. Maar we hebben de komende tijd weer veel werk.’