On March 11^th, the kick-off meeting of the Horizon 2020 project mapKITE will take place in Castelldefels, Spain. The project will be driven by a consortium of ten members from six different countries, and will be coordinated by GeoNumerics. MapKITE is one of the nineteen projects funded by the European Global navigation Satellite system Agency (GSA), as an Innovation Action (IA) under the topic GALILEO-2-2014.

Diving into the technicalities of the proposed concept, mapKITE is a new mobile, terrestrial and aerial, geodata collection and mapping paradigm. Geodata acquisition in mapKITE is accomplished by a tandem terrestrial-aerial mapping system based on a terrestrial vehicle (TV) and on an unmanned aircraft (UA), both equipped with remote sensing payloads. In the mapKITE paradigm, the UA will follow the TV at an approximate constant flying height above ground while geodata are acquired simultaneously from the TV and the UA. The final product is high resolution, oriented, calibrated and integrated images of a corridor and its environment.

GeoNumerics today announced that Dr. Ismael Colomina, accepted the position of Chief Scientist, starting on March 1st, 2015.

Colomina was the Head of Geomatics of the Centre Tecnològic de Comunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC, Castelldefels, Spain) since the beginning of 2014. Prior to that, between 1998 and 2013, he was the Director of the Institute of Geomatics (IG) and the Head of Geodesy of the Institute of Cartography of Catalonia (ICC) where he worked from 1982 to 1998.

"I am proud to welcome such a creative and accomplished geomatician and mathematician to lead our scientific team," said Jaume Sastre, Chief Operations' Officer of GeoNumerics. "Ismael holds a record of original contributions to integrated geodesy, navigation and photogrammetry. He has been involved in many industrial-academic cooperative projects."

GeoNumerics today announced the appointment of Mr. Pere Molina as its Advanced Applications Programme Manager.

Up to now, Molina was a researcher at the Centre Tecnològic de Comunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC, Castelldefels, Spain) since the beginning of 2014, following his period between 2007 and 2013, as a research assistant and researcher, at the Institute of Geomatics (IG).

"I am happy to welcome Pere Molina to lead our advanced applications group," said Ismael Colomina, Chief Scientist of GeoNumerics. "Pere is an expert in multi-sensor orientation and navigation including satellite, inertial, photogrammetric and laser measurements. He has led various complex Spanish and European research and development (R&D) projects. He has a broad view of geomatics and navigation technology and masters the art of communicating scientific and technology concepts."

On February 1st, the project SAT406M kicked off. It is a three-year project, partially funded by the European Global navigation Satellite system Agency (GSA) within the frame of the European Union (EU) Research and Development Programme Horizon 2020 (H2020). SAT406M is an international collaboration of three companies: Mobit Telecom, the project coordinator, Thales Alenia Space, and GeoNumerics.

The objective of the project is to develop a wrist-worn Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) providing an end-to-end solution based on the Galileo Support to Search and Rescue (SAR) Service –the SAR/Galileo service– and particularly on its unique Return-Link-Service (RLS). This beacon will be COSPAR-SARSAT compatible, and will also integrate a Digital Selective Calling (DSC) transceiver compatible with marine VHF radios. Moreover, a new communication method enhancing the standard communication between the PLB and the SAR/Galileo system will be developed.