Habits, moral, knowledge, skills are modified with the development of civilization. Lately the civilization changed due to technocratic reasons. Industrial revolution was followed by information revolution which transformed basic and, quite often, slower humanitarian processes. Geoinformatics is a sovereign participant of such transformations. Earlier inviolable borders of societies, virtual and real world, human perception of time and space are put to question. Added reality, situation awareness, 3D navigation, crowd sourcing and space sourcing (this way we call unbiased source of updated information related to space imagery) become inalienable elements of life of the so called golden billion. This is a new principle for global society division in the epoch of leadership of economies controlled by knowledge.
Therefore, heated polemics about the space future of Russia is not accidental as Russia is one of the pioneers in space. Not only competitiveness but self-identification of the country in the modern world as well depend a lot on the answer to this question.
Vladimir Gershenzon
Editor-in-Chief,
ScanEx RDC General Director
Contents
ERS Satellites: Yesenin’s Wisdom and Little Prince’s Covenant.Yu. Karash
State-of-the technologies change appearance of the civilization. Making us, intellect bearers, closer to each other, they separate us as social and emotional beings, who need to interact without any technical mediation. The author contemplates how Earth remote sensing (ERS) satellites influenced on the making and development of mankind.
Globalization: Technologies and Mentality or the Paradise Being Lost.V. Gershenzon
Space gives mankind an opportunity to rise above instantaneous problems and conflicts and feel as an integral mental and physical body. There are no boundaries in space and technologies inevitably become global by laws of nature: observations and imagery of the planet, navigation, and communications unite all regardless of continents and countries they happen to be at.
Technology. Space. Man’s Life
Yelena Tereshchenko, Ph.D. Candidate (Philosophy), lecturer at the Department of Philosophy under Lomonosov Moscow State University, tells about about the influence of philosophy on historic role of technological progress, on life and culture, on interrelations between space technologies and intellectual values.
Farewell to paper.Ye. Grishkovets
Please find here below an extract from a play about people’s farewell to paper as their routine life product. Paper departs from our life and gives way to electronic devices. Along with paper, we are losing not just our habit to read books in a hard copy format rather than on a computer screen, but we are losing something else, something more important.
Earth Fractals.S. Zhukov
Life is the remedy for death, creation is the remedy for life, and the earth surface is a sample for creation. The creator’s versatility is endless with repetition being one of the methods for complexity. The picture is made of numerous similar elements, or fractals. The author ‘makes a trip’ on the Earth with pictures taken from the International Space Station.
Geoglyphs on the Earth surface.А. Savostin
Geoglyphs are geometric or figure patterns of more than 4 meters in length, as a rule, drawn on the ground. The most impressive and widely known are the lines of the Nazca Desert in South America. Materials of Earth remote sensing and possibilities of web-services for depicting spatial data may become an unreplaceble tool in search of geoglyphs on the Earth surface and analysis of territories potentially suitable for their creation.
Application of ERS Data for Virtual Heritage.А. Leonov
Virtual heritage is digital copies, models of culture monuments and objects of nature. The idea of virtual heritage consists in preservation, recording of information about unique objects and provision of wide access to such information. Applications of “virtual heritage” are called to save information and give a possibility to use it for the study, education/self-education, including by means of game-like methods.
GIS-Education in the Lomonosov Moscow State University Business School.А. Pirogov
The degree of utilizing geoinformation systems (GIS) in various fields of business depends on the number of specialists, who understand efficiency of those technologies and possess at least a minimum set of skills for working with them. An optional course “Geographical Aspects of Business” was developed and introduced in the frames of the MSU GSBU baccalaureate on the “management” specialty, which sets the goal to introduce future discipline specialists with geographical topics being of current interest for management, provide skills of geospatial analysis and use geoinformation technologies in finding solutions to economic and managerial tasks.
The Geoportal “Cultural and Natural Heritage of Russia”.G. Potapov,Т. Khaybrakhmanov
Many geoportals today form thematic geoservices targeted to different consumers. Geoportal “Cultural and Natural Heritage of Russia” is used for monitoring natural and cultural monuments by involving mass users through variety multimedia capabilities of the ScanEx Web Geomixer technology. Capabilities of that system provide convenient solutions for many tasks such as educational goals or scientific research.
Mapping Services for Management of Hunting Farms.S. Zaichenko, Т. Khaybrakhmanov, М. Voronina, Е. Zykova
Appearance of web-mapping services featuring unique advantages over traditional mapping materials make them a reliable tool for integrated hunting management. Implementation of animals habitat monitoring allows controlling violations of natural conditions of various biological species contributing to sustained development of natural-territorial complexes of a farm.
Operational Satellite Monitoring: Modern Trends.А. Cheremisova
In summer – fall 2012 space information was widely used for various applications. In particular, there was satellite monitoring of emergency impacts and industrial activities. There were implemented different environmental projects and research work.
Modern forestry – one of the significant industries in the Russian economy.I. Kasimov
The total acreage of Russian forests constitutes over 8.8 million sq.km. To manage such significant forest resources it is required to unify and aggregate the used special information applying geoportal technology. Geoportal solutions, built based on GeoMixer™ software, enable to carry out global projects, where vector data arrays, raster data and operational data delivery services need to be put together.
National Space Program: the Need to Transform.V. Zubov
Russia drafted a new “Space Exploration Strategy until 2030 and Long-Term Perspective”. Which organizational, financial and personnel resource are expected to be involved in delivering this strategy designed to develop one of the critical national industries? Space exploration has ceased to be an important national development index for a few decades now. It is a fairly mature industry, with a fierce international competition, not dissimilar to the automotive industry. The historical experience shows that we need a domestic competition in order to succeed on the international market.
Legislative Regulation and Democratization of Work in Space Industry
The round table "Legislative regulation of Earth remote sensing technology application" was held in State Duma on October 22, 2012. Executive Director of the “Earth from Space” Association Valery Gerasimov speaks about the problems of “space legislation” and democratization of space industry in Russia.
