ecm_61928_Integrated_Geospatial_Services

Contract award notice for the provision of integrated geospatial digital mapping services and associated remote sensing techniques for:

controls, compliance and monitoring; enforcing statutory environmental conditions and verifying subsidy scheme claims by remotely inspecting land through the use of computer aided photo interpretation (CAPI) and/ or machine learning techniques.

Land registration and digitising entails the creation and maintenance of geospatial data products that are used as key controls or reference data against which subsidy scheme claims are cross-checked.

Land registration service is administered by the RPA and the data is used extensively by DEFRA and outside the subsidy arena.

The business activities can be associated with the contract services include but are not limited to:

• Imagery product creation - including orthorectification and pre-processing
• Ground truthing, collecting in situ data and rapid field visits
• Crop and vegetation classification
• Remote sensing inspection and controls - computer aided photo interpretation (CAPI)
• Digitising - Rural land registration data maintenance (land parcel data layer, land cover data layer, hedge control data layer),
• Quality Control
• To provide quality trained resources that can be flexed up or down
• Reporting of performance and quality using Management Information (MI)
• Supplementary Business Analysis and IT support (Testing, Requirements input, Operational support, MI and performance monitoring)
• Geospatial consultancy to deliver proof of concepts and pilot studies to exploit advancements in technology and evolve the operation

The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) is an executive agency of Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) that is responsible for annual payments of over £2 billion in direct aid and rural development to farmers, land managers and food producers in England.