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6 October 2017. The African Union Commission has kick-started the assessment of grant applications for the GMES & Africa Support Programme at the Commission headquarters in Addis Ababa.

At the official opening of the proposals, the Chair of the Evaluation Committee and Director, Human Resources, Science and Technology, said “we have started the process of assessing the applications for the GMES & Africa Grant. The first process is to ensure that the applications received meet administrative and eligibility criteria. Proposals that meet the criteria will be reviewed by the evaluation team.”

Twenty seven envelops were opened before the Evaluation Committee members and team of assessors. The Team of Assessors is a broad-based cohort of African experts recruited by the African Union Commission to support the Evaluation Committee. The Committee comprises officials of various stakeholder departments of the Commission. The evaluation process is expected to last weeks.

The Global Monitoring for Environment and Security and Africa (GMES & Africa) Support Programme is the result of the longstanding cooperation between Africa and Europe in the area of space science & technology, which is one of the key priorities of the long-term EU-Africa Joint Strategy. GMES & Africa Support Programme is administered by the African Union Commission through the Human Resource, Science and Technology (HRST) Commission. It is designed to address the growing needs of African countries to access and use Earth Observation (EO) data for the implementation of sustainable development policies on the continent.

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October 17, 2017. The French Startup Earthcube is thrilled to announce a €3 Million seed funding with 360 Capital Partners.

This first fundraising round will enable them to double down on their commercial efforts and to continue the development of their state of the art artificial intelligence technology.

A unique way to enable global monitoring.
Availability of satellite imagery is booming. With higher frequency, resolution and reduced costs, those images have become an unparalleled source of information to monitor operations across the planet. Earthcube mission is to enable our customers to benefit from the wealth of information hidden in this ocean of pixels.

Surveillance for customers with highest reliability requirements.
Created in 2016, Earthcube offers a deep understanding of its customers’ operations together with advanced artificial intelligence solutions to alert on actual threats. No more. No less. Their technology combines know how of remote sensing sciences together with deep learning and computer vision approaches developed originally for medical imagery.

Ambitious goals for the future.
Earthcube developed and implemented over the last year their technology to monitor infrastructures for customers from several industries. With this first financing round,they will double the size of the team to accelerate our commercial development and to develop additional applications.

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The Association has grown significantly in the past few months.

EARSC has now 99 members from most European countries. For our members, the annual membership dues are a cost-effective way to stay informed, promote their company, engage with political and institutional representatives, have networking opportunities with other industry players which result in new businesses/partnerships and help to support the future of geo-information Industry.

Join us!
EARSC members list

6 September 2017. A new ESA initiative, Investing in Industrial Innovation in Earth Observation – also known as ‘InCubed’ – kicked off today with an open call for European businesses to apply for a chance to gain financial and practical support for industry projects.

Innovation, collaboration, partnership and speed are all key factors in making Earth observation a success in the up and coming Earth Observation commercial market. As part of its drive to shape Earth observation for the future, ESA has set up InCubed to help stimulate investment in industrial innovation for the Earth observation sector.

The goal is to support industry-led initiatives that will open new market opportunities, bring innovative systems and products faster to market, and compete in the global marketplace.

Through InCubed, companies developing innovative systems, components and products in the Earth observation business sector can approach ESA at any time for support to make their venture technically viable and commercially competitive. Proposals could be about satellites, constellations, instruments or big data analytics, for example.

“Earth observation is undergoing a paradigm shift,” said Josef Aschbacher, Director of ESA’s Earth Observation Programmes. “Commercial companies, big and small, are developing exciting assets, such as satellites, ground systems and data analytics solutions. ESA has set up a programme, called InCubed, to help European industry to establish a leading market position. Speed and flexibility in deciding and implementing a partnership proposal are key ingredients for success. InCubed will do that.”

With a budget of more than €35 million over the next four years, InCubed is now open for proposals from businesses in 13 participating states (Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom). They can ‘pitch their proposition’ through ESA’s Electronic Mailing Invitation to Tender System.

InCubed will, in most cases, co-fund up to 50% of a proposed venture. It can also provide access to ESA expertise and technical support. Proposals must be of sufficient technical readiness and market viability, meaning that the project would eventually be sustained by the market, without further public funding.

For more information or to submit a proposal, click here .

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18 September 2017. An app that uses satellite imagery to give flight travellers an interactive, bird’s-eye view of their routes took the top prize at this year’s Space App Camp at ESA’s centre in Frascati, Italy.


The winning team

In its sixth year, the App Camp offers access to the latest space data to app developers, who work to make the information accessible to a broad audience.

As Europe’s Copernicus programme continues to launch the Sentinel satellites, transforming their information into useful products poses both a challenge and an opportunity.

The week-long ‘camp’ culminated today with presentations of the six projects to a jury, including a brief address by ESA Director General Jan Woerner, who discussed the importance of ESA’s space activities for society.

“We are developing spacecraft and launching spacecraft […] but at the end of the day all of this is for the people on Earth,” he said.“Space is working beyond Earthly borders, and therefore your apps should work beyond Earthly borders. They should be accessible for each and every one.”

The winning AiR app displays an interactive projection of the world’s surface to airborne travellers from Copernicus Sentinel satellite imagery, letting them see information about the cities and landmarks they pass over during their flight, without the disruptions of clouds or the plane getting in the way.

Twenty-four developers from 14 countries attended this year’s App Camp.

Other apps developed included Puddle, which combines measurements on aerosol concentration from satellites and ground instruments to present the probability of severe rainstorms in a user-friendly map to help secure assets, manage risks and share accurate information when heavy rain occurs.

For mountain bikers, RideGreen combines satellite data such as information on vegetation from Sentinel-2 and air quality data from Sentinel-5P along with in-situ meteorological data to calculate and compare the greenness and cleanliness of biking routes.

Also for fitness enthusiasts, Track Champ combines Earth observation data with street maps to find the perfect time and place to stay active while tracking personal performance over time.

CARDpernicus is an educational card game that presents Earth-observation data in a beginner-friendly format.

The Spottitt app enables corporations to monitor their projects remotely and receive alerts when deforestation limits are exceeded. Users can also monitor areas of interest and even flag deforestation cases by sending photos through the App.

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By Kendall Russell | October 13, 2017

First Derivatives has signed a letter of intent with the European Space Agency (ESA) to foster the development of disruptive applications in the commercial space market, based on its Kx technology. Under the agreement, Kx and ESA’s Business Applications (formerly Integrated Applications) Program will work together to assist start-ups seeking to use Kx technology as a platform technology for big data analytics in the commercial space market.

ESA is making efforts to use satellite data to benefit European and global citizens and has identified support for key enabling technologies, such as analytics, as a priority to achieve its goals. According to ESA, Kx’s ability to analyze large volumes of historic and streaming data in real time makes it ideally suited as a platform for use cases ranging across sectors including transport, energy, safety, development and agriculture. The agreement with ESA follows recent announcements including a collaboration agreement with Airbus, and Earth Observation (EO) specialist 3DEO’s selection of Kx as its real-time analytics platform.

Kx and ESA have had preliminary discussions over multiple opportunities to work together, and with third parties, to address specific data challenges. Over the coming months Kx and ESA Business Applications will develop new applications based on Kx and seek to raise awareness of the technology within the commercial space market. Kx and ESA will also discuss opportunities to collaborate on EO analytics, where ESA provides multiple applications including disaster management to alert first responders on floods, major fires and natural disasters such as hurricanes.

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17 October 2017. ESA and Enterprise Ireland have signed an agreement that gives Ireland access to data from the Copernicus Sentinel satellites and helps Ireland to exploit these data to benefit their country.

The agreement was signed on 13 October at ESA in the Netherlands just before the Copernicus Sentinel-5P launch event.

Sentinel-5P, which will monitor air pollution, blasted off at 09:27 GMT from Russia. It joins five other Sentinel satellites in orbit that are already delivering a wealth of complementary imagery and data for the Copernicus services.

Led by the EC, the Copernicus programme was put in place to manage the environment and respond to the challenges of a changing world.

As part of the programme, ESA is responsible for the ‘space component’, which not only includes the Sentinel satellites, but also the network of receiving stations and processing centres through which data are made available for the range of Copernicus.

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Conferences, roundtables, training and information sessions, hackathons, accelerators and incubators. Sounds interesting, right? All these activities, and many more, will await you during one entire week at the European Space Week in Tallinn (EUSW2017), which is organised by the European Commission under the auspices of the Estonian Presidency of the Council of the EU.

From 3 to 9 November this year, experts, scientists, stakeholders and anyone interested in using Space technologies and applications is invited to discover cutting-edge potential of the two EU global flagship Space programmes, Galileo and Copernicus, to meet award-winning entrepreneurs, start-ups and visionaries, to interact with the Earth Observation (EO) and satellite navigation community, and to discuss the latest trends with decision makers, innovators and industry leaders.

The European Space Week features over 12 events, organised in two different cities, Tallinn and Tartu. But don’t feel burdened by having to make a choice! In order to facilitate your decision-making on which events to attend, we have rounded up an overview of all the events taking place. Of course they are all highly recommended and fall under the “can’t miss” category!

European Space Week’s website

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The ESA Invitation To Tender for the development of the on-line Marketplace for the EO service sector “eoMALL” led by the EARSC closed on 29th of September.

The Objective of this ITT is to develop an on-line Marketplace for the EO Service sector, as defined by EARSC study (MAEOS). Known as eoMALL, the platform will enable the interactive promotion of downstream EO-based products services focused on the needs of a global user-base. Specific attention will be given to 2 or 3 market segments with customer stakeholder involvement to ensure a use-oriented solution.

Offers will be reviewed in order to select the 3 companies which will participate to the phase one of this tender aiming to set-up a prototype.

More information on EARSC website

(26 September 2017 ) Thanks to a major effort to ensure full satellite coverage of the world’s forests, all countries now have the necessary data for annual forest monitoring for the first time ever.

Deforestation and forest degradation is the 2nd leading source of carbon emissions globally, and must be reduced significantly in order to meet global climate targets. Complete forest cover data is crucial for countries to be able to report on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in support of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

Full and open forest data is now available for all countries as a result of the open data policies and collaboration of a variety of national space agencies and coordinating bodies. This advance in satellite coverage was coordinated by the Group on Earth Observations through its space arm, the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), and through its flagship Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI).

The satellite data underpinning this effort comes primarily from the United States Landsat series (USGS), and the European Union Copernicus Programme Sentinel-1 radar series and optical Sentinel-2 series (EU/ESA). Additional contributions are provided by Japan (JAXA), Brazil (INPE), China (CRESDA), France (CNES), Italy (ASI), Canada (CSA), and Germany (DLR). Further datasets are anticipated next year from the space agencies of the UK (NovaSAR mission) and Argentina (SAOCOM mission).

Global coverage of forests through this collaboration will continue from 2017 until at least 2030, allowing countries to confidently apply satellite data in their national forest monitoring and reporting systems.

For more information please contact the CEOS Space Data Coordination Group at sdcg-exec@lists.ceos.org

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