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Although grown illegally in Afghanistan and South-East Asia for the production of opium, poppy farming is perfectly legal in Europe, Turkey, India and Australia as a source of raw material for the pharmaceutical industry (morphine for example).
Poppy plants can grow from twenty to thirty centimetres to over one metre tall. The flower has four petals whose colour varies from white to red through different shades of pink and mauve depending on species and variety.
The latex is extracted by making incisions in the seed pod capsules: this is the raw opium.

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Illicit crop monitoring

Home > Geoinformation > Agriculture > Mapping and surveillance of illicit crop-growing

GOLDEN: a study for setting up a regional training centre on the mapping and monitoring of narcotic crops

The actors

Since 1979 the ONCB (Office of the Narcotics Control Board) has been conducting an annual survey of poppy-growing in Thailand.
Through collaboration over several years with Spot Image and other local and international organisations (the Asian Institute of Technology, the IGN etc.) ONCB personnel have acquired considerable experience in remote sensing and GIS.
Over the last ten years, the use of satellite imagery for the construction of cartographic and statistical databases has led to a considerable reduction in the amount of land used for poppy growing in Thailand.
Within the framework of the GOLDEN project, the ONCB set up a regional training centre at Chiang Mai, in the heart of the Golden Triangle. The Centre offers training courses to neighbouring countries confronted with the same problem of how to eradicate illicit crops while suggesting profitable substitution crops.

The project is being financed by the French government, Spot Image and the ONCB.

The objective

The regional training centre's assignments are to train personnel:

to make objective and detailed inventories of illicit crops,
to keep land areas under continual surveillance by detecting changes in surface cover,
to organise land surveillance missions: this includes preparing flight plans and collecting data,
to produce maps and statistics for database applications.

The Solution

Spot Image has collaborated with qualified partners to develop a suitable solution for local operations so that the regional training centre will be completely autonomous. This offer includes a dedicated software package, teacher training and creation of the necessary teaching materials, including the supply of SPOT images for case studies.

The Programme

Over two years, about ten experts have participated in GOLDEN, led by two project managers, one from Spot Image and another from ONCB.

The project was achieved in 7 stages:

Consulting
Professionals from all relevant fields were consulted to ensure successful completion of the project.
The consultants, who intervened at Chiang Mai in May and June 2003, helped analyse the needs while also evaluating the professional competence of local personnel and the available computing hardware.

Working with the ONCB team, the Spot Image project manager, along with an expert in remote sensing and GIS, a specialist in illicit crops and a systems expert drew up the specifications for a system for monitoring illicit crops as well as the cartographic reference system to be used.

Software development

ILLISYS v2 is a single software application for the entire production chain
This dedicated solution can process large volumes of data in a shared but secure environment using client-server architecture. It can be initialized to function in either administrator or user mode.
It offers the following functions:

Production chain management using a production scenario based on simple and practical procedures,
Georeferenced database management:
- vector data: administrative boundaries, transport infrastructure etc.
- raster data: satellite images, D.E.M., scanned topographical maps etc.
- alphanumeric data: field data, metadata etc.
Photo-interpretation and G.I.S functions with a set of tools for changing projections, viewing and enhancing images and for guided entry of vector information.

click to have a look on the Illisys configuration - Spot Image





trajectory on a satellite image map - Tablet PC - parcel seen by plane \| Spot Image

During aerial missions or land surveys, the system can be used remotely on a Tablet PC with a GPS link for real time determination of a given position and recording of the trajectory on a previously established satellite image map. Newly-located, illicit crop plots and collected data are integrated automatically,
Printing of maps with captions and superimposed grid reference lines, which can be exported in BMP and OLE formats for illustrating reports,
Printing of statistics matching queries predefined by the administrator, for complete reports.

Supply of SPOT data

Photo analysts face the following problems:
Small, widely scattered and inaccessible parcels:

in 2004, now that poppy growing in Thailand has diminished considerably, there remain only 128.52 hectares of illicit plots spread over more than 2 million hectares in the northern territories,
the average surface area of a poppy plantation is 0.18 ha,
these fields are located on steep slopes in inaccessible mountainous regions, frequently in the heart of primary forests and far from any infrastructures.

Variations in radiometric response:

on a given parcel, plants may have reached different stages of maturity and may also be grown along with other crops, which complicates the surveillance task,
some growers use fertilisers and practice irrigation for year-round production.





Poppy plants in mountainous areas





Poppy plants at various maturity stages

The images used for GOLDEN are SPOT 2.5 m colour images
The large acquisition footprint (60 x 60 km²) and high resolution of SPOT images facilitates the location of widely scattered plots and their identification by photo-interpretation.
The rectification of SPOT images on a reference grid common to all the data (WGS 84) allows different layers of information to be superimposed automatically and immediately. This means that satellite image maps can be created for identifying the location of poppy plantations and preparing missions.
Finally, the frequent acquisition and rapid delivery of the acquired scenes will be essential for future specialists working under operational conditions in their own production centres. Regular revisiting of scenes will be indispensable for ensuring effective surveillance of suspected poppy growing areas.

Equipment
A specially equipped classroom big enough for 12 trainees, is available at the ONCB for theory sessions. For practical sessions only 6 trainees will be taken at a time.
For land surveys, the trainees use special equipment comprising a Tablet PC with ILLISYS v2 installed and a GPS connection.

Training
Several training sessions have been held during the project, both in France and on site.
The first session, held in France in a Spot Image classroom, was devoted to 'hands-on' training and to indispensable technical discussions for adapting ILLISYS v2 to the specific requirements of the database to be used.
Subsequent sessions were held in the ONCB's premises, using the customised version of the software under operational conditions, for preparing case studies, both for land surveys and aerial missions.

Technical assistance
3 missions of between one and two weeks in length were undertaken:

to verify that the system (hardware, software and network) would function correctly under operational conditions and to evaluate the professional competence of the future trainers and of the system manager,
to assist the ONCB in setting up the geo-referenced database, used during the practical sessions,
to help the trainers prepare case studies (for practical sessions),
to coach the ONCB in day-to-day use of ILLISYS v2 (a user's manual was also provided),
to promote the Regional Training Centre by organising a regional seminar.

Promotion
In November 2004, a regional seminar was held at the Alliance Française in Chiang Mai to inform local and regional authorities of the training opportunities available at the Regional Training Centre and of Spot Image solutions for South-East Asia.

Concrete results

GOLDEN project has led to the setting-up of an operational, regional training centre. The trainers are specialised in image processing, photo-interpretation and system management and can now offer complete training courses to technicians from neighbouring countries, with the help of a syllabus, teaching materials and practical exercises developed from SPOT images.

Outlook

With this training programme on the processing of SPOT 5 images, the ONCB can now prepare Thai personnel to use data from the future observation satellite THEOS, planned for launch in mid-2007.
Spot Image can now offer a complete and tested solution for the management of illicit crops, to all countries concerned.

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