The UN-SPIDER Regional Support Office (RSO) in Romania is hosted by the Romanian Space Agency (ROSA). The cooperation agreement between ROSA and UNOOSA was signed during the 52nd session of theCommittee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) on 4 June 2009.
At the national level, ROSA coordinates three specialized entities: The Romanian Centre for Remote Sensing Applied in Agriculture (CRUTA), the National Meteorological Administration (METEO Romania) and the Faculty of Land Reclamation and Environmental Engineering at the University of Agronomic Science and Veterinary Medicine Bucharest (USAMVB-FIFIM).
- The USAMVB-FIFIM specialized laboratories within the Romanian UN-SPIDER RSO have 20 workstations equipped with remote sensing and photogrammetric software (ENVI, LEOWorks, NEST, and Z-MAP) and 24 workstations equipped with GIS software (ArcGIS)
- Additionally, ROSA and the other entities of the Romanian UN-SPIDER RSO have cutting-edge workstations that run professional remote sensing software (ERDAS Imagine, KEO/KAOS, DEFINIENS)
- Courses (at university level): remote sensing, digital photogrammetry, cartography, GIS
- Advanced training in: emergency response and disaster management, optical and radar Earth Observation data processing, synthetic aperture radar interferometry (standard, differential, persistent scatterers, small baseline subsets), geospatial intelligence, image analysis, data clustering, data mining
- Expertise in organizing thematic training courses, summer schools and workshops ("GEOSS Summer School: Advancing Earth Observation Data Understanding" – Sinaia, 2009, "ROSA/ESA/DLR Radar Remote Sensing Course" – Bucharest, 2009, "GEOSS Summer School: Advancing Earth Observation Data Understanding on Crisis Management and Emergency Response" – Neptun, 2011, see http://events.rosa-rc.ro/ for more details, Bilateral Moldova-RSO Romania UN-SPIDER workshop – Chişinău, Rep. Moldova, 2010)
At ROSA, CRUTA and METEO Romania: 15 experts in the field of GIS and remote sensing
At USAMVB-FIFIM: a large number of students highly trained in GIS and remote sensing
Infrastructure
- High-performance algorithms for dedicated space applications
- Electronics and mechanical experimental and testing facilities to provide development and integration of nano-satellites, including ground stations
- Information and communication technology in support of RTD activities
- Group of servers running the last generation operation systems by Microsoft, Apple and Linux. The access within the network is restricted and monitored. The workstations are integrated into an Active Directory
- ROSA Research Centre provides GRID computing facilities: 28 cores, 84GB of RAM, aprox 1TB of storage, Globus Toolkit 4.2.0 middleware.
- The Knowledge-Centered Earth Observation processing system (ROKEO) integrates earth observation knowledge users with data suppliers and services providers and is a major development point for creating capacities.
- The Space Applications Centre integrates remote sensing, GIS, GNSS, GMES technologies in developing solutions for agricultural statistics, land reclamations, land use/ land cover applications and environmental applications using state of the art remote sensing software
- An integrated system of voice and data communication operates among ROSA Headquarters, IT and Research Centre. At local level, communication is realized through fiber optics, gigabit Ethernet and wireless. A router running a BGP protocol managing two Internet connections (12-100 Mbps from a commercial provider and 10 Gbps research and academic connectivity from ROEDUNET) securely operates the external link. ROSA Headquarters and Space Applications Centre (operated in common with CRUTA) are directly linked through a 100 Mbps MPLS connection.
- Landsat
- SPOT
- MODIS
- Vector maps
Established in 1991, by the Government Decision no. 923/ 20 Nov 1995, ROSA is an independent public institution.
The mission of the Agency:
- to coordinate the national space research and applications programs
- to promote space development
- to be the Government representative in the international space cooperation
- to develop specific project oriented research
ROSA is authorized to establish research and development centres oriented on specific objectives of the Romanian Space Programme
