41 - RADI

RADI (http://english.radi.cas.cn) is a comprehensive research institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). It was established in 2012 as a major initiative of CAS’s Innovation 2020 Program through the merger of two CAS institutes: the Institute of Remote Sensing Applications (IRSA) and the Center for Earth Observation and Digital Earth (CEODE). The mission of RADI is to explore leading technologies in Earth observation, geospatial information science and mechanisms for acquiring and distributing remote sensing information. It aims to construct and operate spaceborne, airborne and ground-based Earth observation systems that can provide resource-environmental spatial information at the regional and global level, forming a Digital Earth science platform. RADI is home to many cutting-edge research resources, including the State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, the CAS Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, the Center for Applied Technologies of Earth Observation, and the National Engineering Center for Geoinformatics.

RADI operates two national key S&T infrastructures: the China Remote Sensing Satellite Ground Station and the Airborne Remote Sensing Aircraft. The China Remote Sensing Satellite Ground Station boasts one of the world’s highest capacities for receiving, processing, and distributing satellite data, while the Airborne Remote Sensing Center, equipped with two Citation S/II high-altitude remote sensing aircraft, can conduct all-weather flight operations with different remote sensors.

RADI has developed several international S&T platforms and serve as the national international collaboration platform, including the International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE), International Centre on Space Technologies for Natural and Cultural Heritage under the auspices of UNESCO (HIST) and etc. These platforms enable RADI to carry out high-level research and international collaboration within the framework of international organizations such as UNESCO, ICSU, and TWAS.

The State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science and the CAS Laboratory of Digital Earth Science are two main research units under RADI, whose duties include providing the remote sensing product of snow, ice, and physical status of Tibetan Plateau and Polar areas. Dr Yubao Qiu is the main research who works on the snow, lake ice, and sea ice remote sensing, and with a strong experience on the Earth cold regions research.

Role in the project

RADI would be very relevant as partner by contribution with Chinese satellite remote sensing data for the Arctic regions. In particular some description of how satellite data management, archiving and distribution is done in RADI, because this will a central topic in the proposal. RADI has core competences in four major areas: remote sensing data acquisition and processing based on the spaceborn-airborne-ground Earth observation system; basic research into remote sensing and geospatial information science; information analysis on the global environment and resources based on the Digital Earth Science Platform; and research covering a broad spectrum of academic disciplines and international S&T collaborations.
The China Remote Sensing Satellite Ground Station, with over 3.3 million scenes of satellite data accumulated on file since 1986, is regarded as the largest Earth observation satellite data archive in China. At present, the nationwide ground station network for land observing satellite data is taking shape. Its three stations at Miyun, Kashi, and Sanya can receive data simultaneously from satellites covering the whole territory of China and 70% of Asia. At the same time, efforts have been made to construct stations in China’s southwest and northeast, and in Polar Regions. The station has become one of China’s key infrastructures for Earth observation through coordinated operation of various subsystems ranging from data receiving, data transmission, data processing, to data management, data retrieval and technical service.