Frequently Asked Questions

EFTAS Fernerkundung Technologietransfer GmbH was founded in 1988 as a service company in remote sensing and GIS. As an acronym EFTAS stands for Development Projects, Remote Sensing, Technology Transfer, Applied Ecology, Systems Consulting.

We use the term GeoIT to refer to the entire set of hardware, software and applications for the acquisition, analysis and presentation of geodata and spatial information in technology pillars such as remote sensing, satellite navigation or spatial data infrastructures.

This term has not been established as a collective term for very long. EFTAS played a significant role in positioning it through the Geonet 2.0 project, in which major perception deficits in the sector were identified, so that the term GeoIT was determined and used for marketing purposes.

Link: "BROCHURE: KNOW WHERE!"

Geodata are data with spatial reference, which describe objects of reality (earth surface, lithosphere and atmosphere) by geometric and content attributes. The spatial reference can be based on two- or three-dimensional coordinates and is used, among other things, for linking and further processing of geodata. Geodata are processed, for example, with geographic information systems.

A geoinformation system refers to a system for data processing. The focus is on the collection, management, processing and presentation of spatial data for a wide variety of tasks.

Remote sensing describes the technologies of contact-free and sensor-supported earth observation from the air or from space, as well as the processing of the information obtained from it by image processing and image analysis.

Training data, also called ground truth data, are collected and used to calibrate data classification processes in remote sensing. These data can result from measurements made by satellites or from field acquisition. In situ mapping corresponds to the in situ collection of information on objects in the field. The range of parameters to be measured and possible measurement methods is wide. For example, land use or land cover is recorded.

One of our core expertise is the combination of remote sensing with large-scale mapping.

Land Use and Coverage Area frame Survey (LUCAS) is a land cover and land use statistics of Eurostat. Since 2006, changes within the European Union in land use and land cover are recorded every 3 years. LUCAS supports the monitoring of socio-ecological issues such as land use, land degradation and ecological impacts of agriculture.

IACS stands for Integrated Administration and Control System. This is a set of regulations to enforce a uniform agricultural policy in the EU member states. This is coupled with controls of area-based subsidies in agriculture. Since a very large number of checks have to be carried out in a very short time, remote sensing-based procedures are used in the area states.

A digital orthophoto (DOP) is created by photogrammetric methods from aerial photographs and is a distortion-free, true-to-scale image of the earth's surface. With the help of a Digital Terrain Model (DTM), distortions and displacements are mathematically compensated and georeferencing is made possible.

Photogrammetry summarizes the acquisition, processing, and storage of geometric information such as shape, size, or location about objects and processes from remote sensing imagery. Photogrammetry is often used to implement the stereo principle to realize 3D acquisitions using overlapping aerial images taken from different perspectives.

In the digital terrain model (DTM), the earth's surface is represented without buildings and vegetation using three-dimensional coordinates of a representative set of ground points. In contrast to the DTM, the digital surface model (DOM) represents the earth's surface with all associated objects such as buildings and vegetation.

SAR stands for Synthetic Aperture Radar and is a radar system with synthetic equipment which represents an imaging method of earth observation by means of long-wave microwave radiation. SAR is one of the active sensors in Earth observation satellites.

InSAR is the acronym for Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar and stands for radar interferometry. This is a non-contact remote sensing measurement technique using radar satellites. The earth's surface is imaged from two or more sensor positions. The intensity of the radar image provides information about materials on the surface when the radar data are analyzed. By taking multiple images and determining phase differences of the received intensities, a digital elevation model can be created, for example.

The additional D in DInSAR stands for "differential." This technique is used to observe phase changes between two images in a given time, so that terrain subsidence or uplift or lateral deformation can be monitored.

In hyperspectral remote sensing, broadband sensor systems in the wavelength range of the visible to mid-infrared range are imaged in very many spectral channels, so that very differentiated analyses are possible.

Earth observation is the instrument-based recording of the Earth's surface and the processing and analysis of the acquired data for the detection of spatial structures and the derivation of processes on the Earth's surface.

In the field of remote sensing, monitoring describes the observation and recording of qualitative and quantitative changes by means of time series investigation using aerial and satellite images.

Copernicus is a European infrastructure for global satellite-based environmental monitoring. An infrastructure with its own space component consisting of a fleet of satellites called Sentinel. The Sentinel systems continuously record measured values. Therefore, new data is regularly available in global coverage. The different sensors enable a wide variety of applications. Copernicus essentially covers the need for pan-European geoinformation. The data of both components are freely available and can be used in conjunction with other in-situ data sets even below the European scale.