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The European Union is taking first steps to help European SMEs and start-ups fund recruitment of the best talent for research and innovation from around the world. The EU will fund the recruitment of post-doctoral research associates from other countries to explore an innovation business idea in the European SMEs and start-ups.

What’s the big deal?

Innovation in SMEs is often hampered by a lack of access to specialised skills and knowledge. At the same time, many companies find it difficult to manage innovation processes effectively and struggle to recruit specialised knowledge as they don’t tend to have extensive international Networks or the well-known brand names of large enterprises.

This is where the SME Associate programme comes in. By developing such enterprise-led mobility programme, the EU aims to increase access to talent for SMEs and start-ups by encouraging mobility. Because of this experimental nature it applies a fixed period for the recruitment of the researcher aligned to Academic year in most European countries.

So who is it for?

The SME Associate is accessible to all SMEs and start-ups established in the EU Member States and countries associated to Horizon 2020. The researchers must at least hold a PhD (or equivalent), have demonstrated expertise in line with the job advertisement, and comply with the transnational mobility criteria.

The SMEs will receive an individual grant covering salary and related costs of employing a post-doctoral research associate, including full training costs. This could allow the company to employ the right talent from anywhere across the globe to conduct research for their innovation idea.

If you are a researcher, on the other hand, you will be able to partake in the business’s innovation process, learn industrial innovation and business management skills, as well as boost your CV with business experience abroad.

What’s next?

Read more about the programme; see whether you meet the requirements and apply as of 11 February 2016!

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Commercialisation is the process of turning products and services into a commercially viable value. Concerning Intellectual Property (IP), this term can be more specifically defined as the process of bringing IP to the market in view of future profits and business growth.

Commercialisation is the process of turning products and services into a commercially viable value. Concerning Intellectual Property (IP), this term can be more specifically defined as the process of bringing IP to the market in view of future profits and business growth.

It is certainly not an easy task to manage IP commercialisation as the success of this process depends on several internal and external factors such as business objectives, type of IP as well as economic and intellectual resources. In addition, since IP can be commercialised either directly by its owner, through an assignment or by building up business partnerships, the selection of the most appropriate tool is often challenging, especially for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs).

The purpose of the guide is to provide basic facts on Intellectual Property (IP) aspects in commercialisation activities.

Be aware of the following fact sheets provided by the IPR Helpdesk:
Commercialising Intellectual Property: Internal Product Development
How to Search for Patent Information
How to Search for Trade Marks
Design Searching
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Mechanisms
Defending and Enforcing IP

Your Guide to IP commercialisation

(3 May 2016, Brussels) The European Commission organises a second workshop dedicated to Access to Finance for European space industry

The workshop will focus on:

  • Next steps for space in the context of the Union’s Investment Plan;
  • Awareness raising regarding private investment sources (Business Angels, Venture Capital funds) to support entrepreneurship;
  • Links with the upcoming programming cycle of Horizon 2020 and COSME and synergies with the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF);
  • Outreach and advisory services for space relying on existing networks.

This workshop is aimed at public and private space sector representatives and will be an opportunity to discuss and exchange views about tools for access to finance for start-ups, established SMEs and larger companies.

High-level speakers from the Commission, the European Space Agency (ESA), national public institutions, Business Angels, Venture Capital Firms and Industry will share their experience and animate the discussion.

Agenda and registration details will be provided soon.

previous workshop

Even if they don’t know the term “geospatial” more and more people are using geospatial technology in their daily lives. From hailing an Uber to finding the nearest Starbucks, geoinformation has permeated almost every aspect of our lives.

Even pictures you take with your smart phone are geotagged. In an increasingly interconnected world, spatial relationships are revolutionizing the way we visualize data. Today, thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones, tablets and wearable gadgets, technologies like global positioning systems (GPS), geographical information systems (GIS), and remote sensing are no longer exclusive to defense and homeland security; they are becoming integral parts of our daily lives.

Hexagon President and CEO, Ola Rollén, recognizes this trend. “The explosion of geospatial data is outpacing even what the experts predicted,” he said. “Since more everyday products have become geospatially enabled, everything now has a geospatial component.” Other forward thinking IT companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, etc., are following this trend and buying up core geospatial firms that offer location-based services they can incorporate into their products.

An increasing number of businesses are nontraditional geospatial consumers are coming to recognize that location-based intelligence and analytics can boost their performance and help them better understand their customers. With the increasing demand for readily available, consistent, accurate, complete and current information, geospatial applications have become the primary tool for accessing sophisticated geographic information, and transform the raw data into actionable, authoritative intelligence.

From data collection to data management to dynamic information services

For years we struggled to get our hands on enough data to answer the questions we had about our changing world. Today, we have the inverse problem: with mobile laser scanners, mobile mapping, and the explosion of minisat and UAV data, we are recording so much of the earth’s surface every day that we have a hard time finding the piece we need in the deluge of data. We need applications that can not only organize the constant stream of fresh data, but access it on the fly and deliver it rapidly to decision-makers, helping them quickly sense, decide and act as the earth changes.
This need for storage and access of large amounts of data lead to many to the usage of cloud computing. Acting as a centralized repository, the cloud can make this data available instantaneously available to consumers across the globe. The ability to run accurate and rapid field-based analysis that produces immediately actionable information is the key to success in all businesses. There are a wide variety of how businesses and governments are currently leveraging innovative apps on Cloud platforms.

→ Smart Governance: Government agencies can utilize crowd-sourced feedback and notifies local or state government agencies with detailed information in less than a minute about the feedback from citizens.
→ Intelligent Navigation: The shortest distance between two points is not necessarily a straight line, especially when transporting over-size/overweight loads. You need intelligent systems that provide the best route for your cargo.
→ Smart Transportation: The basic spatial network of all roads and their properties need to be tagged and made intelligent to be used in a number of applications, from Intelligent Traffic Management systems to Advanced Driver Assistance systems and Telematics to deciding when to upgrade and repave the road network.

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China: With a successful launch of Beidou-22, China on Tuesday conducted its third successful orbital launch of the year. Beidou-22, which is a navigation satellite, was launched by a Long March-3A rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. The new satellite, the sixth Beidou-2IGSO, is based on the DFH-3 Bus and features a phased array antenna for navigation signals and a laser retroreflector.

According to reports, the new satellite will be used to replenish the current operating regional system. The current Beidou constellation of geostationary (GEO) and four middle Earth orbiting (MEO) spacecraft are transmitting open and authorized signals at B2 (1207.14 MHz) and an authorized service at B3 (1268.52 MHz). Real-time, stand-alone Beidou horizontal positioning accuracy was classed as better than 6 meters (95 percent) and with a vertical accuracy better than 10 meters (95 percent). The Compass Navigation Satellite System (CNSS) is China’s satellite navigation system, approved by the Chinese government in 2004, capable of providing continuous, real-time passive 3D geo-spatial positioning and speed measurement. The Chinese navigation system is being developed and deployed in three phases: Phase 1 (starting in 2003), consisted of an experimental regional navigation system, BeiDou-1, which provided active navigation service; Phase 2 (started in 2012), consisted of a reduced satellite constellation and provides open service over China. This phase aimed at deploying a system with passive positioning and timing capability over a regional area; Phase 3 (starting in 2020), by 2020, the system would reach full operational capability with a constellation of 27 MEOs plus 5 GEOs and the existing 3 IGSOs satellites of the regional system. CNSS would provide global navigation services, similarly to the GPS, GLONASS or Galileo systems. –

See more at

Nasa Space Flight

UrtheCast Corp. today announced the establishment of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

In June 2015, UrtheCast announced its plans to build, launch and operate the world’s first fully-integrated, multispectral optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) commercial constellation of Earth Observation satellites, which is now known as OptiSARTM. The OptiSARTMconstellation is expected to comprise 16 satellites (8 optical and 8 SAR) flying in two orbital planes, with each plane consisting of four satellite pairs, equally-spaced around the orbital plane. Each pair of satellites will consist of a dual-mode, high-resolution optical satellite (video and pushbroom) and a dual-band high-resolution SAR satellite (X-band and L-band), flying in tandem. By employing two orbital planes, the OptiSARTM constellation is expected to allow for maximum revisit rates in the mid-latitudes, while providing global coverage extending to the poles. The Company expects to deploy the OptiSARTM constellation over multiple launches and to begin operations in 2020. The constellation is expected to provide unmatched space-imaging capabilities, enhancing support to NGA’s national security mission and the broader global remote sensing community.

UrtheCast has established a CRADA with NGA to focus research and development (R&D) efforts to maximize the operational effectiveness of the OptiSARTM constellation. In partnering with NGA, the Company’s primary R&D areas will include:

  • Multi-Source Fusion: Exploitation Tools, Services & Analytic Processes
  • Improving/Ensuring Metric Accuracy
  • Optimizing Collection & Dissemination Strategies

This CRADA will allow UrtheCast to work closely with an experienced user and make early changes to its systems architecture, if deemed appropriate. The specific R&D under these areas will support UrtheCast’s government and commercial customer base.

UrtheCast’s President, CEO and co-founder, Wade Larson, said: “Our work on the OptiSARTMconstellation gives us confidence that it will bring unprecedented capabilities to this industry. We couldn’t be more pleased with the progress we’re making and are thrilled with the opportunity to partner with NGA on these critical R&D activities. We believe this CRADA will enhance OptiSAR’s ability to support our overall customer base.”

About UrtheCast Corp.

UrtheCast Corp. is a Vancouver-based technology company that serves the rapidly evolving geospatial and geoanalytics markets with a wide range of information-rich products and services. The Company currently operates four Earth Observation sensors in space, including two cameras aboard the International Space Station and two satellites, Deimos-1 and Deimos-2. Imagery and video data captured by these sensors are downlinked to ground stations across the planet and displayed on UrtheCast’s cloud-based web platform, or distributed directly to partners and customers. UrtheCast is also developing and anticipates launching the world’s first fully-integrated constellation of multispectral optical and SAR satellites, called OptiSARTM, which the Company believes will revolutionize monitoring of our planet with high quality, high resolution, and high revisit imagery in all weather conditions, any time of day. Common shares of UrtheCast trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange as ticker ‘UR’.

For more information, visit UrtheCast’s website at www.urthecast.com.

LONDON—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Technavio has announced the top five leading vendors in their recent global remote sensing satellite market report. This research report also lists five other prominent vendors that are expected to impact the market during the forecast period.

Competitive vendor landscape

The global remote sensing satellite market is highly competitive, and vendors compete based on cost, product quality, reliability, and aftermarket service. To survive and succeed in such an intensely competitive environment, it is crucial for vendors to provide cost-effective and high-quality satellite systems with latest technology and materials. The emergence of advanced satellite technologies and systems has transformed the space industry.

Lockheed Martin and Mitsubishi Electric are the two leading vendors in the market. Their focus is primarily on the implementation of lightweight materials, more of electric technologies, and robust systems. “Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for a number of major US military satellite programs. Mitsubishi Electric ranks second due to the development of both the IGS and the Quasi-Zenith spacecraft,” says Abhay Singh, a lead analyst at Technavio for space sector.

Top five remote sensing satellite market vendors

Airbus Defence and Space

Airbus Defence and Space was founded in 2014 after the restructuring of its parent company, the Airbus Group. It is headquartered in Toulouse, France. The company had 38,000 employees as of December 2014. It reported net revenue of USD 16.9 billion in FY2014.

The company engages in the design, development, and operating space systems ranging from launchers to the in-orbit delivery of satellites, planetary, deep-space missions, and activities in International Space Station’s capabilities enhancement programs. The company designs and manufactures space systems and satellite communications products that are used by various governments and institutions.

Ball Aerospace & Technologies

Ball Aerospace & Technologies was founded in 1956 and is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. The company designs, develops, and manufactures aerospace systems. The company operates as a subsidiary of Ball Corporation. The company serves defense and civilian government agencies and commercial customers.

Ball Aerospace has been offering high-resolution imagery data gathering capability in collaboration with a US-based space imagery and geospatial content provider, DigitalGlobe since the mid-90s. It has integrated a fleet of remote sensing satellites that are used for advanced geospatial solutions and commercial earth observation.

Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, US. The company engages in the R&D, production, and supply of advanced technology systems, products, and services to global defense and aerospace industries.

The company, through its space segment, engages in the design, development, and production of satellites and transportation systems. It collaborates with various governments, military organizations, and commercial customers for developing an extensive array of remote sensing, meteorological, navigation, and communication satellites.

Mitsubishi Electric

Mitsubishi Electric was founded in 1921 and is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. The company engages in the manufacture and sale of electrical and electronic systems and products across the globe.

Since 1960, the company has been associated with space technology development programs in Japan. It has participated in various payloads and bus components development programs across the globe. It has supplied the TURKSAT 4B satellite to the International Launch Services (a US-Russian joint venture) and eventually the satellite was launched into orbit on October 18, 2015.

Thales Alenia Space

Thales Alenia Space is a joint venture between Thales (67% share) and Italy-based aerospace company, Finmeccanica (33%). The company engages in the development of space telecommunication, earth observation, and navigation products, as well as orbital infrastructures. The company has an operation in over eight countries.

Thales Alenia Space designs, develops, and manufactures a comprehensive space system that is used for both commercial and government applications across the world. It provides remote sensing systems such as satellites, platforms, and payloads for defense, civilian, and dual-use applications.

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies.

Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com.
Contacts
Technavio Research
Jesse Maida
US: +1 630-333-9501
UK: +44 208 123 1770
Media & Marketing Executive
www.technavio.com

Earthstar Geographics LLC announced the release of their new TerraColor NextGen Landsat 8 satellite image mosaic covering Western Europe. The product is a seamless mosaic of pan-sharpened true color Landsat 8 satellite images from the 2013-2015 time frame that have been carefully processed to provide high quality color and contrast with minimal cloud cover. Coverage of all European Union states and several neighboring countries is provided.

“We are pleased to add the Western Europe coverage to our TerraColor NextGen product line to provide an up-to-date medium resolution base map of this important area,” said Eric Augenstein of Earthstar Geographics. “It provides a consistent, regional satellite view in true color for a wide variety of mapping applications and makes a perfect complement to high resolution imagery.” TerraColor NextGen products can be purchased by individual country, or regions for areas where adjacent countries have been produced (such as Europe and the Middle East). They are provided at 15-meter spatial resolution and are suitable for mapping at scales of 1:60,000 and higher.

About Earthstar Geographics LLC

Earthstar Geographics LLC specializes in products and services for the geospatial data industries with over 30 years of experience in satellite remote sensing and image processing. For complete information on the TerraColor imagery, visit the TerraColor website at www.terracolor.net

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The agricultural sector is crucial to South Africa’s socio-economic stability. The sector is sensitive to key issues including climate change, population growth, changes in consumer needs and shifts in the global economy and related markets. Volatility in these key issues is increasing. The result is lowering investment incentives in agriculture and increasing uncertainty within the sector.

Project overview

Monitoring of crops is thus an important activity. Challenges in this context include the wide areas over which crops are produced and the variabilities that exist within the growing cycles for different crops. Successful monitoring thus requires reliable, wide area observations that are closely spaced during growing seasons to adequately observe different trends and potential anomalies. For such monitoring to be sustainable, cost effectiveness is mandatory.

Monitoring crops from space benefits from several key strengths of satellite-enabled observations including objectivity, wide area coverage and rapid temporal revisit. Recent developments in instrument capabilities offer further encouragement enabling wide area, frequent observations to be made with improving spatial and spectral resolutions.

Challenge

The underlying challenges for CropWatch are both economic and societal. In South Africa the agricultural sector contributes only 3% to national GDP, which is far below the capacity of the sector. Nevertheless, its potential impact on empowerment and poverty relief is substantial since it is one of the most employment-intensive sectors – responsible for approximately 7% of formal employment. Consequently there is significant interest in improving monitoring capabilities in the agricultural sector to enhance GDP contribution and drive still larger impacts on empowerment and poverty relief.

Solution

CropWatch seeks to stimulate both economic and societal benefits in South Africa (and indeed across southern Africa). The main goal is to develop and demonstrate a set of crop stress assessment tools that use satellite data and agronomical information to optimise the monitoring of field crop areas in both irrigated and dry-land production systems in South Africa. Project activities thus include:

  • Acquisition of dense time series of optical images over two AOIs in South Africa (imagery includes DMC, SPOT and Landsat, but intention is to move to a Sentinel-2 input data stream).
  • Implementation of an operational production workflow to enable the routine generation of a range of biophysical parameters from the time series observations.
  • Development and implementation of an integrated crop stress model which combines the biophysical parameters with ancillary datasets to enable the monitoring of crop stress.
  • The project retains a user focus through routine engagement with the relevant stakeholder community.

Outcomes and next steps

To date CropWatch has been successful in developing and implementing the operational production workflow for the generation of the biophysical parameters. The integrated crop condition model is also able to generate the required crop condition products. The key next step is to address the dissemination component to enable effective distribution of the derived products within the stakeholder community.

Supplier: Airbus Defence and Space Ltd
Partner: South African National Space Agency

Source ADS

The global market for remote sensing products reached $8.4 billion in 2015. This market should reach nearly $8.9 billion in 2016 and $13.8 billion by 2021, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.3% over the five-year period from 2016 to 2021.

This report provides:

  • An overview of the global market for remote sensing technologies, including major remote sensing platforms, key remote sensing instruments, and applications accounting for the bulk of the industry
  • Analyses of global market trends, with data from 2015, estimates for 2016, and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2021
  • Estimates of demand for remote sensing products by region, instrument by application, and platform by application
  • An explanation of remote sensing image analysis techniques
  • Reviews of remote sensing patents, including patent abstracts and the names of the inventors and original patent assignees
  • Identification of the major organizations that form and support the global remote sensing community
  • Profiles of major players

Source: BCC Research
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