Final Report Summary - G-SEXTANT (SERVICE PROVISION OF GEOSPATIAL INTELLIGENCE IN EU EXTERNAL ACTIONS SUPPORT) Executive Summary:Previous pre-operational Copernicus Security-related projects, such as G-MOSAIC, developed technologically non-mature geospatial services and identified related gaps. Further research and development were needed to transform them into operational products and services. Building on the outcomes of and lessons learned from precursor projects, the EU-funded G-SEXTANT project (Service provision of geospatial intelligence in EU External Actions support) addressed technological and governance-related gaps in order to develop a standardised portfolio of Earth Observation (EO) products and services. Overall, the aim was to support the geospatial information needs of EU External Action users and stakeholders, such as the European External Action Service (EEAS). This included mapping and EO products ready to contribute the improvement of crisis prevention, preparedness and response capacities.To achieve this, project partners performed products and services in six lines of research and innovation:• Humanitarian crisis (situation analysis and monitoring of refugee/internally displaced person (IDP) camps, monitoring repatriation processes of displaced population and informal settlement characterization); • Land conflict (land degradation around refugee/IDP camps; land use changes as conflict indicators and monitoring large-scale land investments);• Natural resources (situation analysis of mining sites and oil fields);• Illicit crops (situation awareness of illicit crops cultivation areas and illicit crops warning service);• Monitoring border trafficability and • Tools for monitoring nuclear sites and activities. All project results considered feedback from users to improve the final operational EO products and services. During the first reporting period, security user scenarios were defined. From mid-2013 until end of 2014 the project started developing pre-operational services and receiving requests from users. The development of technological products and tools for each line of research and innovation had been successfully finished and presented in a dedicated workshop addressed to representatives from institutions and organizations involved in security related activities: EU institutions, Member States and National Administrations. Selected G-SEXTANT products have be proposed for Copernicus operational phase and onwards, plus additional research for non-mature products. The security user community can greatly benefit from these products, resulting in the better protection of European citizens.Project Context and Objectives:The Copernicus service for Security applications aims to support the relevant European Union policies in the following priority areas : • Support to EU External Action; • Border Surveillance and• Maritime Surveillance.G-SEXTANT aimed to improve and enhance the Copernicus services for Security applications in Support to EU External Action by researching and developing techniques and products, as identified in the context of precursor projects (such as G-MOSAIC ).Between 2009 and 2012, the G-MOSAIC project developed a wide portfolio of Copernicus services for Security applications. Some of these services were considered more advanced by users and providers and therefore in need of an additional (but limited) research and development phase before becoming operational. Other services were deemed to be less developed, and therefore in need of much further technological development over a longer period of time. G-SEXTANT was therefore focusing on the less technologically mature products developed within G-MOSAIC. The heritage of G-MOSAIC was continued in the following products/tools: Situation analysis and monitoring of refugee/IDP camps; Monitoring repatriation processes of displaced population; Environmental impact around refugee/IDP camps; Situation analysis of mining sites and oil fields; Situation awareness of illicit crops cultivation areas; Illicit crops warning service; Monitoring border trafficability and Tools for monitoring nuclear sites and activities. Additionally, new products were developed in G-SEXTANT, such as Informal settlements characterization, Land use changes as conflict indicators and Monitoring of large-scale land investments.On this basis, the European Commission and its Research Executive Agency (REA) decided to fund, under the FP7 Programme, two different projects: G-NEXT (focusing on the current pre-operational services) and G-SEXTANT (focusing on the non-mature services and development of new services). The ultimate aim of G-SEXTANT has been to incorporate into the Copernicus Security portfolio those services considered suitable to enter into the operational phase.The main goals of the G-SEXTANT (Service provision of geospatial intelligence in EU External Actions support) project are:• The definition of Support to External Action geospatial services;• The preparation and delivery of pre-operational services, developed in the context of Copernicus service for Security applications; and • Enhancement of existing capabilities through R&D focusing on specific gaps previously identified.• The analysis of synergies, policies, benefits and service evolution.Project Results:Main results of G-SEXTANT project are focused on: improvement of current geospatial technologies and methodologies from user requirements, development of services to an operational status to Support External Action Service, the analysis of synergies with other related initiatives and the identification of further research in this domain.Definition of services and products to support to External Action G-SEXTANT project has been enhanced existing Security services on the basis of a detailed analysis of user requirements and through continued research and development. The former European Commission’s Directorate General for Enterprise and Industry has formed a dedicated working group (SEA-Working Group) to address the Security dimension of Copernicus and is gathering the requirements related to the European External Action Service (EEAS) through consultation. In addition, the project relied on the direct participation and feedback of other European and international users, such as:• DG DEVCO (Directorate General for Development and Cooperation) EuropeAid, interested in land conflict situation awareness to get information on potential land use changes in agricultural areas. • UN HABITAT (United Nations Human Settlements Programme), interested in Humanitarian crisis products, specifically in the development of new approaches for the detection and the monitoring of slum areas or informal settlements. • UNCS (United Nations Cartographic Section), actively involved in border monitoring with the aim to analyze different aspects of the borders, including trafficability issue. • UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), actively involved in the area of Illicit crops (products for situation awareness of illicit crops cultivation areas and Illicit crops warning service). Main requirements were to improve efficiency and accuracy of illicit crop monitoring, as well as lowering the cost of the methods currently in use. • IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), involved in monitoring of nuclear sites and activities in the context of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). IAEA provided user requirements and feedback on tools development.• BICC (Bonn International Center for Conversion), acted as a user and partner in the domain of natural resources exploitation and land conflict situation awareness. Tasks as a partner comprised the integration of additional data sources (e.g. socio-political, social-economic data, in-situ data, background information) to guide the image interpretation, to manifest and complement the derived satellite-based information. As a user, utilized G-SEXTANT products as additional information source and complementing tool within their work. • EU SatCen, interested in monitoring of nuclear sites and activities to obtain advanced tools for improvement of the detection of valuable information inside the satellite imagery (with focus put on SAR imagery). • SANSA (South African National Space Agency), Cooperating closely with UN-HABITAT on their common tasks, mainly regarding monitoring of informal urban settlements. SANSA selected the South African test site in Rustenburg and provided reference information and provided feedback during the product development.Gathering user requirements has played an essential role in the design and development of the final services and products. In this way, the project combines the knowledge and experience of different users with the expertise of the members of the project consortium. The identification of user needs were drawn from the SEA-Working Group Portfolio, requirements of users actively involved in the project and several meetings with European security domain users and stakeholders.In order to support the needs of the EEAS, the following portfolio of products and services (as crucial objective) were defined in the context of the G-SEXTANT project and related services and products developed during the project:• The Humanitarian crisis service serves the purpose of demonstrating that the technological improvements made in G-SEXTANT are able to assist the European External Action Service in managing timely and efficient humanitarian relief operations, by offering information on temporary (e.g. refugee/Internal Displaced Persons- IDP- camps) and informal settlements (slums). Users highlighted the need to access more efficient and low-cost services.• The excessive exploitation of natural resources often precipitates the outbreak of conflicts. The G-SEXTANT Natural resources service provides information on mining activities related to different types of minerals. The information extracted is linked to situations in surrounding settlements and their subsequent evolution, to changes in land use, and to reports on past, ongoing or potential violent/armed conflicts. This service can also be used to analyse areas surrounding oil extraction plants in order to identify any major grievances emerging in areas where such activities are taking place.• The Land conflict service provides geospatial information on land use changes in relation to conflict-prone situations such as the transition of a political or societal system, the impact of refugee/IDP camps on the environment or large-scale land investments. The rationale is to effectively link empirically observable changes in the natural habitat and social systems, so as to allow for predictions about changes occurring in one of them based on developments in the other.• G-SEXTANT also aimed to refine the tools related to the Monitoring of nuclear sites and activities by enhancing Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) visualisation and SAR/optical change detection capabilities, which can be then be assimilated with an integrated platform for non-proliferation experts.• The G-SEXTANT Illicit crops service can support users by providing enhanced information on illicit crop cultivations. Users need reliable data on the locations and the distribution of illicit crop areas, as well as on areas that could potentially be used for such purposes, changes occurring in these areas (variations in land cover from forest to agricultural plantations, new settlements, etc.). This information is needed to enable users to assess the impact of the relevant policies being implemented, in order to prevent such illegal activities.• A specific user involved in the project required detailed mapping and knowledge of borders of areas of interest for EU missions and/or operations. The G-SEXTANT Border trafficability service provides valuable information on border conflicts outside European boundaries through products such as maps showing border trafficability, background information including land cover, critical infrastructure and analyses of border crossing points.Technological enhancementsOne key-element of the G-SEXTANT project was the further development and improvement of methodologies developed in precursor projects within the following seven processing chains: Reference mapping, Thematic mapping, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and optical change detection, Feature extraction, extraction of Digital Elevation Models (DEM) and 3D modelling and the Survey on adaption of new sensors. Altogether, 58 methodologies within these seven categories have been developed and/or applied. Technological enhancement was achieved during the project lifecycle and the SEA operational service:• Refinement of the processing chain of reference mapping, permitting time and cost reduction in the production by using a “cartographic update” approach based on standardization of basic cartographic information from open sources and low cost data and improvement of classification and object extraction methods of relevant features (rivers, buildings, border settlements, roads and cart tracks, etc.).• Thematic mapping:o Object-based image analysis focusing on the identification of informal settlement candidates and statistical analysis of the urban classes aiming to create clear decision criteria per urban class.o An object-based toolbox to support manual classification refinements of automated results to improve post processing time and accuracy. The manual interaction is supported by automated processes (domain specific delineation of homogenous areas / region growing algorithms supporting digitizing routines; systematical step-by-step analysis of relevant parts of the thematic map; automated clearing up routines etc. ) , .o Fully automated (parameter free) land cover pre-classification method. Land cover pre-classifications in fully automatic mode based on a physical model-based expert system ,.o Multitemporal change detection analysis of land cover/land use (LC/LU) in high (HR) or very high (VHR) resolution imagery of different sensors. Fully automated change detection method based on land-cover pre-classifications method and automatic OBIA post-classification change detection technique, . The change results are aggregated as information layers in regular or arbitrary units (e.g. grids, hexagons or administrative units). Multitemporal changes detection method concepto Development of a risk map for illicit crops (poppy). The risk assessment combined socio-economic factors with environmental factors known to be related to opium poppy cultivation in order to assess the location-specific (independent of administrative boundaries) risk of opium poppy cultivation , .o Improvement of methodology from Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) to provide built-up-area scale (10 m) and building scale (2.5 m) products .o Settlement information extraction using roads and textural measurements: road candidates at different spatial resolution; road density at the block level (200/300 m) and settlement irregularity measure using HR and VHR data.• Optical change detection:o Change detection based on mutual information mining: geometrical feature extraction in both images using several techniques. o Development of robust and transferable rule-sets based on object-based classification change detection.• Feature extraction:o Fully automated oil well pad extraction by SAR polarimetry and OBIA .o Built-up area extraction technique based on robust and transferable rule-sets and machine learning approach .Built-up area extraction technique concepto Development of object-based dwelling extraction algorithms: (1) transferable master rule-sets using adapted segmentation, relative spectral differences, form parameters and relations to neighbouring objects ; (2) two stage analysis workflow from fast algorithm focusing on easy-to-extract dwellings to a second stage distinguishing several classes ; (3) dwelling indication algorithm detecting large edges structures considered as human-induced and (4) template matching and OBIA algorithm based on the calculation of a probability layer which is integrated into OBIA classification rule-sets.o Automated dwelling extraction based on WorldView 2 coastal band: adaption and improvement of automatic dwelling count algorithm to camp situations with more or less consistent bright dwelling objects .o Extraction of indicators for agricultural activities based on analysis of field fragmentation indicating abandonment/expansion of agricultural activity .o Change analysis/monitoring of indicators for agricultural activity based on the extraction of linear agricultural features applied to monitoring large-scale land investments.• Tools for monitoring of nuclear sites and activities o Pseudo-automatic changes map based on Multi-temporal (MT) RedGreenBlue (RGB) image.o Activity map based on analysis of target of interest backscattering response and interferometric phase coherence time behaviour; usage of high temporal sampling interferometric series including short term pairs (e.g. 1 day) and semi-automatic change detection procedure for very long-term monitoring.o Optical change detection tools for monitoring nuclear sites: bi-temporal segmentation; objects correspondence; statistical change detection and change classification .• Digital Terrain Models (DTM) and 3D modellingo Terrain extraction from surface models based on the development of object-based filtering model using object specific properties (form/shape parameters) and relationships between objects and identification of built-up objects and higher vegetation as a prerequisite to extract DTMs from DSMs (Digital Surface Models) .As conclusion several state-of-the-art algorithms and completely new approaches were implemented including:• Object-Based Image Analysis (OBIA);• Machine Learning;• Template matching;• Morphology techniques and• SAR interferometry (coherence) and polarimetry.Methodologies within Thematic Mapping, Optical Change Detection and Feature Extraction seem to be the most advances one. It should be underlined that scientific relevant publications were derived from G-SEXTANT, published in international workshops, conferences, journals, etc.A list of publications is available at the project website: http://externalaction.security-copernicus.eu/publications/articles-and-papers/g-sextant-list-publications-1.Enhanced products and new tools were tested in two production cycles. In the 1st Production Cycle preliminary products were developed which have been further enhanced and optimized in the 2nd Production Cycle according to the user feedback and the findings derived in the validation and verification activities. 16 study sites were analyzed in the 1st Production Cycle and 53 products elaborated. During the 2nd Production Cycle, 22 sites were under study and 58 products resulted. G-SEXTANT study sites of the 2nd Production CycleDevelopment of mature Security servicesThe final G-SEXTANT portfolio includes six different service elements and correspondent products for each one, as it is shown in the figure below. G-SEXTANT portfolioThe product specifications were based on technical feasibility analysis of users’ requests. Detailed specifications of products (cartographic extraction rules, nomenclatures and extraction guidelines, databases and cartographic specifications, etc.) were according to this feasibility analysis. In addition, templates were elaborated in the project to have standardized products, including map formats and product nomenclature.Some products and tools elaborated in G-SEXTANT are available to be incorporated to the service in Support to EU External Action; others still need a pre-operational environment and therefore more development. A short summary of G-SEXTANT products/tools & services achievements as follows:• The product Situation awareness of illicit crops cultivation was already used in operations by the user (UNODC). This is a clear success case of development of a new product within G-SEXTANT. Even more the product is included in a user publication “Afghanistan Opium Survey Report 2014”, UNODC . The concept of risk implemented in the Afghanistan test case developed during the project, which combines the socio-economic and environmental indicators, has several advantages: the assessment clearly shows that substantial differences within Afghanistan exist, both in terms of the values and the nature of vulnerability to opium poppy cultivation and the environmental suitability of the land. Furthermore, each single region can be decomposed into its components, allowing the identification of the contributions of the single indicators to the overall risk in a spatially explicit way independent from administrative units. In this way, the risk assessment can support the development of context and location specific interventions that aim at reducing vulnerabilities. By considering the results of the vulnerability assessment, the drivers of vulnerability can be better explored and can assist with addressing opium poppy cultivation in a localised manner. The vulnerability component can potentially be implemented as a monitoring tool to evaluate changes in time and the impact of various interventions. • Regarding Land conflict products, geo-spatial techniques were improved (basically related to OBIA methodologies) and the application of Land use changes as conflict indicators in external action operations is considered as demonstrated (this service was tested in and operational environment), internally verified/validated and supported by scientific publications. Even more, the Land use/cover and changes product is already included in SEA pre-operational service. Now, the challenge is to introduce these improvements in operational mode and high demanding operational chains.• The overall objective of the Humanitarian crisis service was the analysis of temporary settlements (refugee/IDP camps) and informal settlements (slums) in fast growing cities of developing countries. The products developed within this service aimed to provide information on refugee camp infrastructure, the number of people in need and their spatial distribution (crucial for successful relief and recovery operations) and information on potential informal settlement areas separated from total urban built-up structure. Situation analysis in refugee/IDP camps product gave an overview on the camp situation and thus can support humanitarian aid especially with regard to camp planning and management purposes. Different semi--automatic approaches were applied which delivered good to moderate results (depending on the accuracy measure used for verification) with a clear tendency to underestimations, both, for the spatially explicit verification of dwelling areas and dwelling numbers. Monitoring of refugee/IDP camps product illustrates the spatio-temporal developments in the built-up area coverage within a camp. By means of the change maps detailed spatial changes of the built-up area within the camp-extent were easy to assess. Such information can support humanitarian aid especially with regard to camp planning and management purposes. The high potential of remote sensing, to retrospectively reveal and document settlement developments in refugee camps within crisis situations based on VHR-satellite imagery from different sensors could be demonstrated. Monitoring repatriation processes of displaced population product showed the potential of retrospective and up-to-date monitoring possibilities in regard of camp evolution as well as environmental factors to support information on repatriation processes of refugees or a stabilization of the camp situation vice versa. A high degree of automation and transferability of the classification and feature extraction rule-sets between the different images could be reached, indicating a good status of maturity to be applied to camps of similar conditions. Informal settlements characterization product provides a set of robust information layers that can be used to extract potential informal settlement areas from total urban built-up structure. Under the hypothesis that there are structural differences in the formal and informal settlements that are visible and/or measureable in the images (e.g. building size and density, road network) the information layers contain features, which are suitable to distinguish poverty areas from other built-up areas in the city. The methodology for identification of informal settlements was developed in the context of Rustenburg, South Africa. In the second production phase this approach was applied to the imagery of Nairobi and proofed to deliver quality results. It is expected that the approach is applicable in other contexts as well and hence is suitable for an operational service.Service related to Humanitarian crisis is considered ready to operations and supported by scientific findings and/or verification/validation internal procedures. G-SEXTANT partners have been involved in developments at the highest international level in these topics and clear analysis of technical service capacity was provided.• The product Land degradation around refugee/IDP camps product included in Land conflict service is also considered ready to operations. The methods to identify dwellings were well consolidated by G-SEXTANT partners and many peer-review papers were published in this thematic domain. Single trees analysis within a camp area (as a new concept developed during G-SEXTANT) product fits the needs of the user and provides enough accurate results. Accordingly, in an operational environment is needed to evaluate the cost/benefit assessment related to visual interpretation methodologies and the proposed G-SEXTANT semi-automatic techniques.• The general concept of Monitoring border trafficability product is easily transferable but the processing chain needs to be readapted to each area of interest based on its characteristics and the geospatial and imagery available. The product has potentiality to be developed in the mid-long term.• Specific Tools for monitoring nuclear sites and activities were developed to help users to identify relevant changes between two or more acquisition times and to integrate of multi-type information. These tools assist the user to verify the correctness and completeness of the member states' declarations, and to prepare for on-site inspections and other technical visits.• Situation analysis of mining sites and oil fields product provided methodologies to detect mining sites and the assessment of their impact, and to identify major grievances around oil extraction. The main finding of this service is the implementation of tools for a better understanding of interlinkages between resource extraction and conflicts. The user extensively used the product in its research but pre-operational environment is needed.• A new product Monitoring large-scale land investments was developed in G-SEXTANT being a clear promising product to be developed and demonstrated in (pre-)operational environment in the future. In that sense, the highest potential of this product is perhaps to monitor the crucial follow-up processes of land acquisitions by verifying if and how much of a sold or leased area is actually developed. Also it is needed to identify potential further needs and uses regarding the product.• The use of EO technology in illicit crops assessment and monitoring was proved in pre-operational conditions (e.g. Lao PDR test case). A clear statement of capabilities related to Illicit crops warning service was identified (opium cultivation). For the detection of opium cultivation is important to have field data in order to assure that these fields correspond to poppy. The illicit crop warning service evolved during the two production cycles especially in the direction of automation and scope: the focus shifted therefore from a detailed analysis (e.g. single field scale) to a broader identification of indicators for illicit crop cultivations. This is also based on the interaction with the user UNODC and their needs, since fine scale analysis needs to be done anyhow in the field (aerial campaigns, field campaigns) but to limit these campaigns to certain reasons (stratified) would help considerably. Within this service is possible to extract clear-cuts, agricultural areas, settlements, arable land (since poppy fields are strongly spatial correlated with other existing agricultural areas), etc. An example of a product developed within G-SEXTANT: ‘Automatic post-classification land cover change detection in Landsat images: Analysis of changes in agricultural areas during the Syrian crisis’ which focuses on the changes of vegetation mainly in irrigated agricultural areas. Credits: PLUS for the G-SEXTANT Project; Source: Tiede, D., Lüthje, F., Baraldi, A., 2014. Automatic post-classification land cover change detection in Landsat images: Analysis of changes in agricultural areas during the Syrian crisis, in: Seyfert, E., Gülch, E., Heipke, C., Schiewe, J., Sester, M. (Eds.), Band 23: Geoinformationen Öffnen Das Tor Zur Welt, 34. Jahrestagung in Hamburg 2014. Publikationen der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Photogrammetrie, Fernerkundung und Geoinformation (DGPF) e.V. Potsdam.Analysis of synergies with other related initiativesSynergies between both pre-operational Copernicus Security External Action project (G-NEXT and G-SEXTANT) have been extensively exploited so far, including user involvement and user coordination; SEA portfolio drafting; dissemination activities and ethical issues. Synergies between Emergency Management Service (EMS) and SEA service have been explored and analysed jointly by G-NEXT and G-SEXTANT projects.Further technological research identificationFurther technological research and new lines of interest for a next future has been identified as evolution of G-SEXTANT project. The proposed evolution rationale of G-SEXTANT is based on the integration of new sensors; technological evolution of current and new layers and their standardization; data integration approach; development of products and crisis indicators at different level scales (multi-scale approach); dissemination of products taking into account confidentialities issues (multi-layer approach) and exploration of new tools and mechanism to disseminate products.New or future sensors and space systems need to be taken into account in further research, such as the Sentinels and satellite video systems. Civil thermal, nocturnal or hyperspectral satellites have limited capabilities and in many cases are not useful in services such as illicit crops or border monitoring, as it has been highlighted in G-SEXTANT. Other promising systems need to be assessed and their operational capabilities validated in the security domain as follows:• Civil systems providing images of 30 cm resolution or better could be increased, for example, current performance of counting of dwelling but introducing needed adaptation of current methods;• HD Video and Full Motion Video, both aerial or spatial (as recent systems deployed on the International Spatial Station or other satellites systems);• Planned satellite constellations, offering more frequent revisits; and • Potentially small satellites dedicated to a particular purpose.Obviously Sentinel data need to be incorporated into current development, especially in land conflict/natural services and surveillance of large borders. While selecting the most adequate imagery for a specific AOI and time window, it would be ideal to skip rainy and/or cloudy seasons. The provision of freely EO data, such as Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2, will facilitate to skip this restriction factor in the near future.The research evolution needs the integration of other sources of information (such as open sources, socio-economic data, etc.) according to user requirements. A good example of this integration is the Conflict report developed in the G-SEXTANT Situation analysis of mining sites and oil fields product which combined EO information with other variables and local data, or the product Situation awareness of illicit crops cultivation areas. The integration of other data sources will allow efficient use of the powerful synergies possible, when integrating state-of-the-art information extraction and techniques from the different disciplines, e.g. technological on one hand side and socio-economic on the other, but it needs to be further investigated and more deeply developed; as well as friendly tools (as the change detection methods used in the illicit crops service) or new ways to present products to final users (investigated in G-SEXTANT in the Land degradation around refugee/IDP camps).Apart from thematic layer improvement, new research is also needed in the development of crisis indicators, which will substantially support the early warning, risk reduction and analysis of crisis situations, if generated at appropriate scale and appropriate repetition and response manner. The development of crisis indicators could be complemented with a multi-scale approach from global to local scale. This means that the crisis indicators could be provided from global data (e.g. continental food crisis indicators), country level (e.g. environmental indicators of fragile states) or local/micro-local scale (e.g. type of roof of dwellings).And finally, the concept of multi-layer has been required by EEAS in order to guarantee data security issues. As result of the application of this concept, the final product should be composed by several thematic layers that can be disseminatedfollowing the applicable security regulations.New lines of research are proposed attending to European policies and global security risks:• Environmental and natural services, especially water access and availability as source of conflicts and illegal logging, no included in the G-SEXTANT portfolio;• Urban resilience, addressing humanitarian aid and disaster risk reduction and source of social instability and conflicts, not included in G-SEXTANT portfolio;• Risk related to climate change are clearly considered as one of the main future risk for national and global security;• Conflicts related to energy demand are expected, depending on the situation of the country and the type of resource, e.g. destabilization due unexpected or dramatic changes in electricity provision in the developing world or disruptions in the delivery of natural gas. But probably fuelwood will remain the predominant energy source in the developing world due cost of other energetic sources. The G-SEXTANT product Land degradation around refugee/IDP camps could be the base of an extended product to allow assessing the pressure on land and related conflicts;• There is also a growing interest in failed and fragile states, including effects on governance, economics, security and crime, human development, demography and environment. Potential Impact:G-SEXTANT impact is focused on several European policies, especially Development, Humanitarian Aid, Border Control outside EU, Environment and natural resources, Non-proliferation and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) operations.G-SEXTANT products could support development initiatives providing geospatial information on illicit crops as well as the EU is active in supporting 'alternative development' models for developing countries which are particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of illicit crops plantation. The EU needs reliable information on the location and distribution of illicit crops areas, or on areas potentially suitable for this purpose (G-SEXTANT Situation awareness of illicit crops cultivation areas product); and on changes occurring in monitored areas over time, for instance variations in land cover from forest to agricultural plantation, in order to assess the impact of its policies (G-SEXTANT Illicit crops warning). Humanitarian aid is one of the relevant services of G-SEXTANT and one of the main pillars of EU External Action. Technological improvements related to refugee/IDP camps and informal settlements (location and structure of camps, dwelling extraction and estimation of refugee population using advanced methodologies, assessment of camp development and camp structure, indicators for supporting and monitoring repatriation processes, impacts on the environment of refugee/IDP camps and informal settlements characterization) has been achieved during the project. The EU is engaged in border control activities not only along the external frontier of the Union, but also in other areas of the world where border issues may endanger European citizens' safety. The current general concept of G-SEXTANT Monitoring border trafficability product is easily transferable but the processing chain needs to be readapted to each area of interest based on its characteristics and the geospatial and imagery available.Environmental problems and their impact on the political and security stability of third countries are of particular concern for both DG ENV and the EEAS. Several related services have been enhanced in G-SEXTANT, such as Land use changes as conflict indicators (used in operations in Syria crisis) and Situation analysis of mining sites and oil fields. The EU is especially concerned with monitoring nuclear sites and activities at international level. Specific tools have been enhanced in G-SEXTAT to support user requirements in this domain.Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions are usually deployed in conflict-ridden contexts affected by similar natural, political, economic, social, logistical and operational problems which may require the EU to have valuable information. G-SEXTANT products, tools and services could be taken into account in this context. Regarding dissemination and visibility, several activities have been developed. These have been used to disseminate information about the project and have been designed to be closely aligned with the G-NEXT project. Following the request from the Research Executive Agency (REA) of the European Commission to ensure the close coordination of the two projects, the common look and feel of communication tools and the visual identity of the two projects were developed, leading to a single web entry and an aligned Communication Strategy and Action Plan. These communication tools were designed to target relevant stakeholders and provided information about the G-SEXTANT and G-NEXT projects.The website has attracted higher numbers of visitors during the G-SEXTANT project’s second reporting period, including relatively high numbers of visits from countries further than Europe. This demonstrated that the impact of the website reached further than European Countries as well as the importance of the website in the stakeholder communities. The G-SEXTANT project has been represented at several events during the second reporting period. A major highlight was the organisation of the “Copernicus Support to EU External Action Workshop”, which was attended by 72 high-level participants from the user community as well as high-level officials from the European Commission. Media coverage includes an article on the event, which has been published on the common website.List of Websites:http://externalaction.security-copernicus.eu/ Contact detailsMarino PalaciosG-SEXTANT CoordinatorIndra mpalacios@indra.es final1-g-sextant_logo.jpg Related documents final1-final_report_template_g-sextant.pdf
