RapidEye announced that its imagery is being used by the MALAREO project help with malaria control programs in countries in southern Africa. Basically, the satellite is mapping the habitats of mosquitoes, which are generally considered malaria risk area. Funded by the European Commission under FP7, the MALAREO project is a mixed European-African consortium that embodies many years of malaria control expertise with the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) EO Capacity.
The MALAREO study area in South Africa, Swaziland and Mozambique is approximately 25,000 square kilometers that RapidEye data provided via the EC/ESA GMES Space Component Data Access (GSC-DA). Over five different days between July 18 and November 10, 2011, the data was gathered with total cloud cover of less than one percent. RSS – Remote Sensing Solutions GmbH, partner in the project consortium, is responsible for data processing and the development of Earth Observation (EO) products.