SISTEL Project: Minimizing the Impact of Clouds on Optical Images from Satellite Services
Vicomtech is collaborating with Föra on the SISTEL project, addressing the challenges posed by cloudy skies in optical imagery for remote sensing products and services.
28.04.2025
Satellite services are becoming increasingly important, not only for climate observation but also as operational management tools, such as water management, agricultural management, and emergency response.
However, cloud presence remains one of the main challenges for regions like the Basque Country when analyzing satellite products and services based on optical imagery, significantly diminishing their usefulness.
In this context, SISTEL was born, a project whose main objective is to tackle this challenge: reducing the impact of cloudy skies on optical images. The aim is to enhance the products and services offered by remote sensing companies like Föra, the leading company in this initiative.
As the project’s technical consultant, Vicomtech is working on algorithms to minimize the effect of clouds in optical images, thus improving the products and services Föra develops and offers to the market in critical areas such as forest management.
The R&D proposal of this project involves using radar-type images provided by the SENTINEL-1 satellite to remove clouds from optical images, enabling continuous and reliable monitoring of forest areas in cloudy regions. Vicomtech is developing algorithms that, by combining radar images from SENTINEL-1, optical images from SENTINEL-2, cloud masks, and Deep Learning models, have the ability to remove clouds from optical images and reconstruct them.
Derived products, such as cloud-free NDVI, obtained through the SARtoOPT algorithms developed by Vicomtech, will undergo a validation process for detecting forest clear-cutting areas in northern Spain.
The project is part of the PADIH program, promoted by the Government of Spain under the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan. This initiative seeks to enhance the competitiveness of SMEs by supporting the adoption of disruptive digital technologies, providing advisory services and innovation to companies across various productive sectors.
