Satellite imagery and GIS technologies for environmental protection and monitoring

We are witnessing the world becoming more and more transparent. Market requirements are putting companies under pressure to disclose an increasing amount of information on their activities. It is often impossible to secure financing from major international lending organizations and banks without disclosing information on finances, governance structure and deployed technologies.

Today, the consumer also wants to know the environmental and social "price" of the products he is buying. Timber, oil and gas and other resource extractive companies are increasingly finding themselves in a situation where their irresponsible environmental behavior - over-felling, oil spills, water contamination and disregard for community interests - becomes known to consumers and may pose a treat to their market position.

Rapid development of information technologies creates new tools that help the public easily get this previously difficult-to-access information. Space images are among these tools. While in the past high-resolution space images were mostly available to the military, today any internet user can see a picture of his garage roof using, for example, Google Earth / Google Maps.

"Transparent World" aims at providing independent and reliable information to all stakeholders using different space imagery:

• environmental situation in subsoil resources extraction areas;
• obvious violations of environmental regulations and illegal business activities;
• valuable nature areas and sites;
• threat to valuable nature areas through economic activities.

We believe that the openness and accessibility of such information will help:

• increase the effectiveness of actions by regulatory authorities, improve interfaces between monitoring and response units;
• improve the environmental standards of companies involved in the exploitation of natural resources and their emergency response capabilities;
• enforce discipline and strict compliance with environmental legislation;
• identify the entity responsible environmental damage and calculate the amount of damage.

Interactive maps are this site's specialty - with maps available here you can:

• zoom in and out capturing different areas;
• navigate to areas you are interested in;
• get additional information on the most important sites on the map.