Knowledge base, Software

Discover SaVoir – basic tasks

Posted on by taitus

SaVoir

MULTI-SATELLITE SWATH PLANNER

SaVoir is a standalone application for quickly planning Earth observation Satellite sensing operations over selected Areas of Interest (AOI). By combining each satellite’s orbit, sensor field of view geometry and the shape and location of a user-defined AOI, SaVoir can determine the exact times when a satellite would be capable of observing the specified area.

Inputs

To find acquisition opportunities over a particular region for any given site of satellite and sensors, we need to create a scenario  and we must consider:

–a Time Period (with start and end dates)

– an Area of Interest (AOI) (i)(AOI) on the Earth

-a list of Satellites and Sensors, selected from user-defined scenarios, to work with.

Outputs

Savoir calculates the swath intersections and represents them simultaneously on:

  • An interactive 3D Map display

This view visualizes a scenario overlaid on a map. 

Different map features and maps can be used to view and highlight different aspects of a scenario. A time bar when displayed over the map view can be used to determine satellite position.

The ambient light can be adjusted using the Ambient Light submenu.  The reduction of the ambient light provides additional realism to the scene while additional ambient light facilitates viewing of the Earth’s surface. 

Additional realism in SaVoir is obtained through the use of digital elevation model data. A model of the Earth’s surface is constructed using the altitude measurements obtained from various sources. This model is used to deform the satellite image files to provide 3D realistic images of the Earth when the user is zoomed in and is viewing the Earth’s surface from an angle.

 

There are a number of special features that can be activated in SaVoir for better visualization and greater understanding, such as the umbra and penumbra cone produced by the Sun’s occultation at the current displayed map time or the latest image of global clouds , automatically downloaded periodically and shown as realistically as possible as it is even possible to fly “under” the clouds.

  • A Time Chart (Gantt)

The Gantt view shows when the acquisition takes place indicating how much of the Area of Interest is covered in a chronological time sequence.

A World Reference System (WRS) is often used for identifying images on a predefined geographical grid. The grid is defined by dividing a satellites swath into cells, and assigning a track and frame number to each cell. Every reiteration of the entire grid completes a cycle.

From the Gantt view the display of different percent coverage possibilities, of the duty cycle, of the Sun zenith angles and many other features are also available.

  • A Report view

This view visualizes scenario data as a row and column report. Rows represent areas of interest intersections as seen on the Gantt and Map views with columns providing detailed swath information.

 

Results can be exported to external tools like Excel for external processing

To read more about SaVoir features follow us.

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