Information from Digital Earth Africa
Digital Earth Africa has made Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar satellite data available in an analysis-ready format within the Digital Earth Africa platform. Radar satellite imagery is not affected by cloud cover, making it beneficial to countries in tropical and equatorial regions which experience frequent cloud cover.
European company Sinergise processed the Sentinel-1 radar data from 2017, which is captured every 12 days, totalling approximately 50 000 scenes every year. From now on, the radar data will be routinely processed for the entire continent, with the Digital Earth Africa platform providing a time-series of information.
It will be processed according to Analysis Ready Data (ARD) specifications developed by the Committee on Earth Observing Satellites (CEOS). ARD reduces the barrier to use, allowing thematic specialists in areas such as land cover, forest management, agriculture and water resources to apply the data.
While satellite radar data has many uses, the applications traditionally call for high levels of expertise in pre-processing and interpretation. CEOS has been developing ARD specifications since 2016 to allow data to be processed in an easier to use and interoperable format. The Normalised Radar Backscatter is the simplest product as it allows changes through time to be detected.