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EO Industry Strategic Update
Wednesday, March 3
9:45 a.m.

The Industry Strategic Update panel will provide an overview of the growing international commercial electro-optical (EO) remote sensing industry — an industry that has experienced dramatic growth over the last 20 years and is currently in the midst of another significant market expansion. With an expected increase in the total number of international commercial players coupled by advancements in space and sensor technology and image processing the future holds much promise and competition for this growing world market. By 2020 it is expected that 180 new EO satellites will be launched by both government and commercial operators. Subsequently, the commercial EO data market is expected to grow to US$2.2 billion by 2018 with EO Value Added Services projected to reach US$2.3 billion in 2018. These industry representatives will discuss recent developments in their plans for taking advantage of this expected market growth.

User Communities: Improving the Response
Wednesday, March 3
1:45 p.m.

User community representatives from around the globe describe commercial imagery applications they use and provide their recommendations to facilitate greater uses of this data. Presentations will be given by each panelist on their point of view, followed by a Q&A session with the audience.

Resolution Limits: Balancing National Security Interests While Allowing Commercial Imagery Providers to Sell at Its Best Resolution
Thursday, March 4
9:00 a.m.

At the birth of commercial remote sensing industry, the ceiling was 1 meter. Now, international commercial remote sensing providers are catching up to the world leaders: the U.S. commercial imagery providers. While technology allows resolution to become more crisp and clear, there seems to be an underlying drumbeat to keep pressure on the U.S. Government to relax restriction limitations. This pressure is being exerted by the desire of U.S. companies to continue to lead in this field; while international companies keep pace by building and providing better imagery, hoping to erode and finally surpass the U.S. industry’s lead. Does it come down to economics and physics? Or does national security interest play a larger role than the U.S. Government cares to admit? Join our diverse panel of experts to hear what they believe will be the critical points to move forward and whether the U.S. Government should remove all resolution prohibitions.

Commercial Space Radar
Thursday, March 4
10:30 a.m.

This panel will review the new international space radar systems: Cosmo Skymed (Italy), TerraSAR-X (Germany) and RADARSAT2 (Canada). These radars all offer high resolution, wide area coverage, and dual- or quad- polarmetric imaging. They can support all-weather collections in support of a range of applications including mapping of ice fields, maritime surveillance, environmental monitoring, disaster response, change detection, topographic mapping, land surface subsidence measuring and many others. Vendor representatives will discuss the technical capabilities of the radars and their plans for future developments and follow-on systems.

How Healthy is the Global Industrial Base?
Thursday, March 4
1:30 p.m.

The mergers and acquisitions in the commercial remote sensing (CRS) industry in the past decade, coupled with the meteoric rise in the number of international CRS companies have brought into question — how healthy is the global industrial base to support the CRS industry? Questions of transparent funding, taxpayer value and acquisition modes are all key questions for the industrial base. To what degree is the U.S. Government’s behavior part of the problem? And is there enough demand to sustain continued growth in the industrial base? These and other questions lie at the heart of the matter in determining the health of the global industrial base.

The Future of Commercial Space
Thursday, March 4
3:15 p.m.

Commercial space and commercial remote sensing (CRS) in particular, has witnessed a remarkable transformation over the past decade. Now commercial operators have entered the market with new collection capabilities. Globally, many commercial operators are leveraging improved sensor technologies and smaller satellite design and are reaping the advantages of advances in computer processing and cloud computing to provide solutions that meet basic collection needs are timely and less expensive. The barriers to entry into the commercial market, while still relatively high, are lowering every day. What does the proliferation of new technologies, capabilities and applications — including web service delivery and access — mean for the future of CRS? What are the commercial implications of these advances as well as the government opportunities and concerns related to these developments? This panel will explore these issues from a variety of perspectives — government, industry and from the research community.

Remote Sensing 2.0 CEO Roundtable
Friday, March 5
9:30 a.m.

Leadership can no longer be defined in terms of ownership and control of leading platforms. Instead, tomorrow’s leadership will be defined by products and services which provide timely and complete informational value — rather than just delivering pixels. This rapidly evolving transformation can be described as Remote Sensing 2.0. Remote Sensing 2.0 takes advantage of multiple data sources, technology and equipment available from the international suppliers and the commercial markets, in addition to proprietary, domestic intellectual property. As the global appetite for geospatial information and intelligence products and services continues to expand, international cooperation will continue to be a key enabler to driving GEOINT solutions and applications for customers. We will explore specific ways in which global partnerships have been exploited in furtherance of Remote Sensing 2.0, such as multiple phenomenology partnerships and cross-border technology collaboration.

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