A new video provides a chance to meet researchers and business innovators from ESA Φ-lab and get an overview of their stimulating working environment.
The work of ESA Φ-lab covers a remarkably wide scope in both Earth observation (EO) research and support to the commercialisation of EO products and services. In this brief but informative video, Φ-lab members from both the Explore and Invest offices talk about some of the fascinating activities they are involved in, embracing topics such as dengue outbreak risk assessment, embedded artificial intelligence on satellites and collaborating with EO start-ups.
Φ-lab is always looking for new recruits, so if you are interested in pushing the boundaries in leading-edge EO research, please get in touch.
Support from ESA’s Earth observation InCubed commercialisation programme has enabled two companies, GeoVille and EOX, to secure a major contract to provide an Austrian Area Monitoring Service. The consortium’s EO-WIDGET software provides the farming sector with critical satellite-derived information and is a key tool in compliance monitoring for the European Common Agricultural Policy.
Agricultural monitoring has gained ever-increasing attention recently in the face of a major global food crisis and growing concerns over food security. Within Europe, the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is a fundamental pillar of the continent’s food supply. The CAP now requires national governments to carry out increasingly extensive checks and controls of agricultural production and payment claims from farmers.
At the recent 2022 ESA Council at Ministerial Level, Member States affirmed the success of InCubed by renewing the programme with a 65% budget boost. InCubed’s new, wider remit encompasses a host of actions designed to further stimulate and accelerate European innovation and competitiveness in commercial Earth observation.
The ESA Council is the governing body that provides the policy guidelines within which the Agency develops the European space programme. The Council meets periodically at ministerial level, and at the last meeting, the 2022 ESA Council at Ministerial Level (CM22), Member States gave a ringing endorsement of ESA’s work, with an exceptional 17% subscription increase compared with CM19. This equates to a total of €17 billion, of which 16% is destined for the Earth Observation Programme (EOP) for continuing and developing its efforts in facing the global challenges of 2023 to 2026 and beyond and ensuring European strategic autonomy.
As an ESA Earth observation commercialisation initiative, InCubed is an optional programme for Member States and so is heavily dependent on the outcome of Ministerial Council meetings. For CM22, the Φ-lab Invest office submitted proposals for expanding the scope and reach of InCubed, leading to the successful allocation of additional funds amounting to €176 million overall programme size. Two new countries, Slovenia and Hungary, also joined, bringing the InCubed family to a total of 21 participating states.
Dubbed InCubed-2, the latest incarnation of the programme comprises a suite of enhancements termed ‘Invest Actions’. These have been added as a result of lessons learnt during previous InCubed phases and are intended to create a framework of partnerships and collaborations that will strengthen the InCubed offer and further support the evolution of the commercial Earth observation (EO) sector. Examples of planned activities include research on promising EO markets, awareness campaigns, creating InCubed ambassadors, start-up coaching, InCubed Business Innovation Factories, and a new, faster route for rapidly delivering proofs of concept using emerging technologies.
“The funds granted at CM22 will further empower us in our quest to advance European commercial EO,” comments InCubed Programme Manager Michele Castorina. “InCubed strives to bring together technical capabilities and investment to enable European entrepreneurs to operate in the global EO domain, and the Invest Actions will help underpin this vision by reinforcing relationships with private investors, venture builders and other key stakeholders.”
One Invest Action that is already underway is thematic calls. Conceived as competitive initiatives aimed at selecting and coaching promising companies, thematic calls are based on current societal issues that may benefit from EO technologies and data. The first call, covering the topic of Cultural and Natural Heritage, was launched recently and will be followed by further such competitions in the future.
Other InCubed events and campaigns are also on the way this year, including EO Commercialisation Days in May. This forum for entrepreneurs, investors, institutions and established companies will provide an ideal platform for commercial collaboration. Details of the event will be published shortly.
ESA has signed a letter of intent with Slovenian company Sinergise Ltd to foster Earth observation (EO) entrepreneurship and encourage the development of EO commercial solutions. The collaboration will target companies supported by ESA Φ-lab, the InCubed EO commercialisation programme, ESA’s Business Incubation Centres (ESA BICs) and ESA Technology Brokers.
Sinergise Ltd has extensive expertise in developing advanced geospatial information systems (GISs) based on cloud and web technologies. Established in 2008, the company focuses on high-impact fields such as Earth observation, making it easy for individuals, institutions and companies to retrieve actionable insights.
The intended partnership on Earth observation commercialisation with ESA is aimed at joint efforts between the two entities for bolstering the development of an active and vibrant EO commercial ecosystem, strengthening the usage of innovative technologies and raising awareness of EO-based services. The collaboration is particularly focused on enhancing the business cases of companies that are or have been supported through Φ-lab or the InCubed EO commercialisation programme, ESA BIC or ESA Technology Broker activities.
One of the key actions for accelerating entrepreneurship will be a free one-year enterprise-level subscription for Sinergise’s Sentinel Hub, an award-winning satellite imagery archiving, processing and distribution service. Located either in a cloud-based GIS or within the client environment, Sentinel Hub provides easy access to satellite data from missions such as Sentinel, Landsat, Planet, Pleiades and WorldView, and can help both space and non-space players leverage a wealth of EO-powered information.
Further details on the collaboration and how to take advantage of the Sentinel Hub offer will be communicated to InCubed and other ESA Φ-lab-supported companies in the coming months, and will also be distributed via the ESA BIC and ESA Technology Broker Network.
At a ceremony today at ESA’s ESRIN establishment, German company constellr signed a contract extension to design, develop and customer-validate its HiVE solution with ESA InCubed technical and financial support. Through the development of a microsatellite with an innovative Thermal Infrared (TIR) payload, HiVE will place advanced-warning data on crop stress at the fingertips of agribusiness companies, smart-farm operators and government policy makers.
Traditional approaches to measuring crop water-stress conditions include monitoring irrigation systems, indirect measurement of field temperatures, or aerial remote sensing of temperature via drones, all of which have drawbacks. Satellite remote sensing is available, but generally relies on optical imaging of leaf colour changes, meaning that at the time of detection irreversible crop damage has probably already occurred. Thermal infrared satellite measurements, which eliminate these drawbacks, are however becoming increasingly available.
constellr GmbH, a New Space start-up with offices in Freiburg and Brussels, saw an opportunity to provide immediate monitoring of crop health through specifically created TIR Earth observation satellites. By directly measuring leaf temperature from space, changes in plant transpiration can be spotted so that farmers can take remedial action days or weeks before critical crop deterioration ensues. constellr’s HiVE (High-resolution VEgetation monitoring) system will encompass a constellation of microsatellites with miniaturised TIR sensors in combination with a global ground-station-as-a-service infrastructure and cloud-based data platform. HiVE’s toolset will give both commercial and institutional customers actionable insights on crop conditions, helping to reduce the risk of crop loss and improve yield predictions.
The HiVE development is technically supported and partially funded by the ESA InCubed programme. At the contract extension signing today, constellr CTO Marius Bierdel commented on the significance of the investment: “Supported by the technical expertise and funding of InCubed, constellr is able to expedite the development of its first commercially operational satellite. This is a critical early part of our rapid infrastructure development cycle – a major driver for our competitiveness in the market and the key to bringing us a step closer to being a successful player in the space ecosystem.”
The German National Delegation to ESA was also represented at the meeting. “HiVE is the largest investment that we have made so far within InCubed,” explained Michael Nyenhuis, InCubed Programme Coordinator at the German Space Agency at DLR. “Given the current global issues of drought and food shortages, today’s launch of this development initiative is particularly timely, and we are sure that the final product will have a decisive role in optimising future irrigation management and biomass output.”
“This is a great example of how ESA can aid private-sector advances on solutions to climate problems and support a promising business initiative relevant to the agribusiness sector,” added ESA Director of Earth Observation Programmes Simonetta Cheli. “The technical support and business advice from ESA will undoubtedly provide an essential springboard for constellr in its journey to mission readiness and ultimately the delivery of this crucially important service.”
Commercialisation is universally recognised as essential for the future prosperity of all aspects of the European space sector, and Earth observation is no exception. The ESA InCubed programme, a co-funding initiative that helps entrepreneurs bring their innovative ideas to market, has enjoyed enormous success since the launch of its first activity in 2018 and continues to make a prodigious contribution to commercial Earth observation. The InCubed portfolio includes around 60 activities, with an impressive €63 million invested so far.
At the upcoming ESA Council at Ministerial Level, Member States will have the possibility to further empower InCubed in its far-reaching efforts to foster commercial innovation. The programme proposal makes the case for a wider remit, including a set of new ‘Invest Actions’ designed to help boost the European Earth observation economy and reinforce relationships with the private investor community.
Three activities launched under co-funding from the ESA InCubed programme respond to customer needs for improved information quality and precise measurement of trends and variations by exploiting Earth observation (EO) assets. Targeted sectors include agri-food, environmental protection, mining and oil and gas.
NEO (NL): SINERGI service
Earth observation data from optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors provides a wealth of information for an ever-increasing number of business applications, but there is often a lack of verification of such data from other sources. Dutch company NEO is developing SINERGI, a novel service that improves reliability by combining EO-derived change detection with crowd-sourced data and publicly available information.
NEO Chief Operating Officer Jan Erik Wien explains: “SINERGI represents a major step forward in the fusion of satellite and non-space data. It uses semantic integration technologies to add validation and additional context to EO-based information services, enabling customers to make informed and data-driven decisions in their operations and helping them to meet their ESG [Environmental, Social and Governance] commitments. Typical Big Data pools feeding into SINERGI might include local government records, planning permission documents or even social media posts.”
The intended customer segments for the service vary from governing authorities in areas such as construction, forestry law enforcement and environmental inspection, to private-sector businesses like insurance companies. SINERGI has now completed its main development and is being piloted with customers in the fields of building-related information and invasive plant species in waterways.
ABACO (IT): FIbEO product
Another example of fusing EO and ground-based data is FIbEO, a product conceived by the ABACO group and aimed at the food production industry. “We recognised a gap in the market in terms of information availability for guaranteeing food quality,” says ABACO Project Manager Marco Bonfigli. “For a given crop, agricultural players need to understand current biomass status, have access to intelligent yield estimates and be able to cross-check compliance with specifications. The FIbEO platform will provide such aggregated insight through ML [Machine Learning] algorithms that draw on both satellite imagery and historical data, ultimately helping growers, consortia and control bodies to create trustworthy food supply chains.”
The first target segment for FIbEO is viniculture, with collaboration currently ongoing with growers in Italy’s Chianti region. The first release of the platform will enable wineries not only to predict output but also to identify dead vines in the field in near-real time.
TRE Altamira (IT): BulletInSAR service
Turning once again to the topic of change detection through SAR sensing, Copernicus Sentinel-1 and other radar imaging constellations enable mm-accurate displacements of the Earth’s surface to be measured from space, providing invaluable information to operators in sectors such as mining, energy, civil engineering and civil protection agencies. TRE Altamira already provides customers with remote sensing ground-deformation information on their assets of interest, but the satellite data stream currently requires significant human processing in order to produce actionable end-user reports.
Feedback from TRE Altamira’s clients identified the requirement for faster response times, greater capacity for monitoring multiple assets and supplementary details on measurement reliability. BulletInSAR is the company’s solution, a tool that will deliver timely, scalable deformation reports by adopting an ML-based unsupervised process to cut out the human bottleneck.
Alessandro Ferretti is the company’s CEO: “Innovation and pushing the technology envelope have always been key elements of TRE Altamira’s identity, and BulletInSAR is no exception. As development gets underway, we’re really pitching for a superior user experience, a solution that will deliver fully automated reports using a cloud-hosted interface with tailored results screening. Co-funding from InCubed is of course a powerful enabler for TRE Altamira, helping to propel us forward as we take market-driven SAR ground-displacement reporting to the next level.”
ESA InCubed Officer Piera di Vito continues the theme: “All three of these activities are a perfect fit for InCubed’s DNA: supporting innovative ideas that spot a commercial need for AI-driven, EO-sourced data and insight. We are proud to see and help sustain such a competitive and dynamic ecosystem in the Earth observation domain, and the fact that SINERGI, FIbEO and BulletInSAR are at different stages in their development amply demonstrates the end-to-end nurturing that InCubed provides, from concept through to market readiness.”
During a visit yesterday to ESA’s ESRIN establishment, the Irish National Delegation to ESA took a tour of Φ-lab and discussed the importance of the ESA InCubed programme. The day’s schedule also included the signing of a contract for the InCubed-supported PROTELUM activity.
The Irish Delegation was received yesterday at ESRIN by Simonetta Cheli, Director of Earth Observation Programmes and head of the establishment. The visitors were given a tour of the site’s facilities and participated in a number of sessions covering ESA’s Earth observation (EO) programmes, Ireland’s space policy and technical discussions with the Earth Observation Directorate management team.
The tour featured a visit to Φ-lab, where Division Head Giuseppe Borghi explained the lab’s mission and highlighted some of its flagship programmes. Φ-lab’s focus on transformational innovation in commercial EO was a key theme of the day, with a number of managers from Irish space-sector businesses among the guests. Several of these companies have benefited directly from Φ-lab support with the co-funding of development activities through InCubed.
“Ireland has a strong tradition of entrepreneurship in many sectors and, as our industry representatives showed during the visit to ESRIN, New Space is no exception,” commented Damien English TD, Irish Minister of State for Business, Employment and Retail. “We continue to be impressed by the work that Φ-lab and its InCubed programme are doing in nurturing private-sector Research and Development in Earth observation. It is enabling Irish companies to realise their potential by accelerating the commercialisation of their products and services, which is a key deliverable highlighted in Ireland’s National Space Strategy for Enterprise.”
One such InCubed initiative is the PROTELUM activity, which was launched yesterday at a signing ceremony during the visit. Developed by Dublin-based Davra, PROTELUM is a management tool for the ongoing compliance assessment and monitoring of mining sites. The platform will cover the entire mining life cycle and will enable operators and regulators to continually identify safety risks, both underground and at the surface. The solution will apply analytical methods to data from sources such as industrial Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, EO satellites and drones in order to provide actionable insights and predictive modelling.
County Cork’s Treemetrics also attended the event and gave a brief overview of its Satforcert product in one of the technical sessions. Satforcert uses EO-derived data in combination with Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) to create more efficient and transparent processes for sustainable forest management certification. Currently enjoying its second stint of InCubed co-funding, the product has successfully completed end-user validation and is now being expanded to include features related to forest carbon storage and credits.
Other InCubed-supported companies present during the visit included mBryonics, Skytek, TechWorks Marine and Icon Geo.
Simonetta Cheli added: “It has been a pleasure to welcome the Irish Delegation today in what has been an extremely fruitful exchange of ideas on the current status and future direction of European Earth observation. The contribution from industry partners has been particularly stimulating, with for example Davra and Treemetrics both demonstrating how commercial EO can contribute to sustainable development by providing vital monitoring tools. We are therefore delighted to support the PROTELUM and Satforcert initiatives through the ESA InCubed programme.”
Michele Castorina, Head of the Φ-lab Invest Office, will talk about EO Market trends and present an overview of the ESA InCubed programme at the Industry Space Days (ISD) event, taking place on 28–29 September at ESA’s ESTEC establishment.
The ISD is an annual event organised by the ESA SME Office of the Directorate of Commercialisation, Industry and Procurement. Aimed at fostering cooperation between actors in the space sector, the gathering is free of charge and open to entities and investors from ESA Member States, Associate States, Cooperating States and the European Union. Participants can register here.
This year, Φ-lab’s Michele Castorina will be at the ISD to give attendees a flavour of the mission and activities of InCubed, including how companies, innovators and entrepreneurs can apply for co-funding of product/service development and commercialisation initiatives in the Earth observation sector. Michele will also be on hand for informal discussions with interested entities.
Telespazio has signed a contract with the ESA InCubed programme to develop an innovative service for improving access to Earth observation data. Derived from artificial intelligence (AI) models, I*STAR will allow new user groups to request customised, smart data acquisitions from satellite constellations simply, efficiently and promptly.
The community of Earth observation players is growing and diversifying, as is the number of missions and business models in the sector. Users need a simple solution that recommends intelligent acquisitions of satellite data, while national and international space agencies could benefit from a platform which enables them to promote their missions to those same users. All stakeholders are naturally keen to reduce operational costs.
I*STAR is being developed to address these needs by Telespazio, a joint venture between Leonardo (67%) and Thales (33%). The as-a-service solution will provide one-click access for organisations to acquire EO data. Using Deep Learning and Machine Learning algorithms, I*STAR can model user preferences with regard to satellite platforms, sensors, areas of interest and types of products, ensuring that even non-specialist customers can make specific requests from missions without the need for direct support from space operations. Through the automation of data acquisition processes, human intervention is reduced and resources are freed up, giving rise to tangible cost savings.
A further advantage of the service will be the ability to improve response times for disaster relief, allowing authorities and civil protection entities to react more efficiently and effectively.
Marco Brancati is Telespazio’s Head of Innovation and Technical governance: “I*STAR introduces a brand new solution in the Earth observation ground segment – the ability to request products or acquisitions according to user profiles while minimizing the need to know specific mission or to have operational skills. We’re very pleased and encouraged that the ESA InCubed programme has recognised our novel approach and given us the opportunity to bring I*STAR to market.”
“I*STAR is built on the idea that AI is a key enabler for new ways to exploit EO data,” commented Michele Castorina, Head of the Φ-lab Invest Office. “Improving usability and access for an ever-wider user community will help to invigorate commercial EO by providing a marketspace for both downstream and institutional operators.”
The I*STAR activity kicked off in April and is expected to hold its first major development review in October.
