Click on the image above to see an animation of 5-meter natural color RapidEye imagery collected over Krestovsky Stadium, Russia on July 19, 2009, May 8, 2011, July 8, 2013, June 5, 2015 and May 6, 2016. In these images you can see the progression of the construction over the past seven years but as of May 6th the stadium still looked incomplete. It would be interesting to see if they really complete the project by now as the news stories suggest! (Images Courtesy: Planet)In this monthly feature, we span the globe to examine Our Changing Landscape with time series of medium resolution RapidEye satellite imagery. The RapidEye archive dates back to late 2008 and already contains more than 8 billion square kilometers of data. In December, we looked at the expansion of China into the South China Sea, and this month we move to another country commonly in the news recently, Russia, to check out the construction of Krestovsky Stadium.
The RapidEye Constellation
RapidEye is a constellation of five 5-meter medium resolution satellites each offering five spectral bands of information. The RapidEye constellation offers daily revisits to every location on the planet with a huge footprint that is 77-km wide. The data is priced competitively with a starting cost of $1.28 per square kilometer for all five spectral bands – academics do receive discounts. RapidEye adds a fifth band, the red edge, to the ‘traditional’ multispectral set of blue, green, red and near-infrared (NIR). The additional spectral data in the red edge band allows users to extract more useful land ‘information’ than can be from traditional 4-band imagery sources. When RapidEye imagery is ordered as a Level 3A Orthorectified product, images from multiple dates are extremely well registered, making it the ideal data source for Our Changing Landscape.
The Construction of Krestovsky Stadium
Krestovsky Island in Saint Petersburg, Russia has been the site of sport clubs and sporting events since the early 20th Century when the once swampy lands at the mouth of Neva River were gradually developed; eventually becoming the site of the 62,000 capacity structure, Kirov Stadium. The design and construction of a new stadium at the former site of Kirov Stadium commenced in 2006 and the old stadium was demolished in the same year. The design of the new stadium, Krestovsky Stadium, was initially completed by a Japanese firm and a local contractor, Avant, was selected to complete the project – originally slated for opening in 2009.
Well as is common with most large-scale infrastructure projects in Russia, the contractor was not selected for experience, rather for political expedience. A new contractor, Transstroy, was awarded the project in 2008 but it took until 2016 to complete the construction project! Estimates put the final construction price of the spaceship-shaped, 68,000-plus seat stadium at about $706 million.
Ah but the story is not over as in late 2016, FIFA inspected the stadium and found significant design and construction flaws, including too narrow corridors, a lack of adequate bathroom facilities and even an unstable playing field. If you would like to read more about the history of Krestovsky Stadium or Zenit Arena as it is known locally, here is a nice summary article. It is unclear how long the required modifications will take to complete but either way, it is time to turn to the 5-meter RapidEye archive to track the progress of this extremely delayed construction project from mid-2009 to mid-2016.
If you would like to find out more about using RapidEye for your academic studies, engineering projects or any landscape analysis, let us know at sales@apollomapping.com or (303) 993-3863.
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved - 
Leave a Reply