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Bluesky aerial maps help investigation of structural damage to new homesLeicestershire, UK, 25 March 2008 – Aerial survey specialist Bluesky is supplying the UKs NHBC (National House-Building Council) with aerial photographs to assist in investigations of structural defects in new homes.

Bluesky aerial images provide a snapshot of land use prior to construction helping NHBC engineers identify possible causes of structural defects such as trees, standing water or previous ground workings. Bluesky identifies the appropriate images for NHBC based on the exact location of the claim property and the date construction commenced.

NHBC is the standard setting body and leading warranty and insurance provider for new and newly converted homes in the UK. Working with the house-building and wider construction industry they provide risk management services that raise the standards of new homes, and provides consumer protection to new homebuyers.
The Bluesky aerial imagery is a useful tool for investigating claims from homeowners, commented Clive Entwistle, Principal Engineer of NHBC. With compelling evidence of land use prior to construction we can identify possible causes of damage and non compliance with our Technical Requirements that may help to validate a claim.

The NHBC has approximately 20,500 house builders and developers on their Register, all of whom agree to comply with published Rules and Standards. More than 80% of the new homes built in the UK each year are registered with NHBC and benefit from their 10 year warranty and insurance policy _Buildmark_™. Around 1.7 million homeowners are currently covered by Buildmark policies and over the past 70 years NHBC has protected more than 30% of all houses in the UK.

The Bluesky imagery offers exceptional levels of detail clearly depicting a site and its surrounding area prior to construction, continued Entwistle. This allows us to establish possible causes of ground movement that may be responsible for structural damage. For example, we can pick out individual trees, ponds or evidence of made ground. The geographical coverage and age of imagery is crucial and Bluesky deliver the images we need.

Bluesky is a UK-based specialist in aerial imaging and remote sensing data collection and processing. An internationally recognised leader with projects extending around the globe, Bluesky has unrivalled expertise in the creation of seamless, digital aerial photography and 3D landscape/cityscape visualisations. Bluesky also runs a national mapping centre, providing digital maps, site plans, satellite imagery, aerial photography and ultra-high resolution imagery of cities and towns.

More at BLUESKY

Geo: International

Leica Geosystems Geospatial Imaging today announced that it has changed its name to ERDAS, Inc.

Recently making several acquisitions, the combined company is reintroducing the ERDAS name and will do business under this name moving forward. Building off an established brand in the industry, ERDAS is known for developing the most advanced geospatial technology and delivering reliable customer service and support worldwide. As the earth to business company, the new ERDAS’ product portfolio encompasses the entire geospatial information lifecycle of authoring, managing, connecting and delivering integrated business data.

ERDAS offers a depth and breadth of knowledge, enabling organizations to create value from large volumes of geospatial data captured from a variety of sources. In 2007, the division acquired Acquis, ER Mapper and IONIC, providing the company with new technology and strengthening its global presence. Broadening its offerings, the company’s portfolio not only appeals to existing geospatial customers, but also to those with larger web and enterprise needs. Building on a rich history and expertise in geospatial imaging, ERDAS has secured its position to be a leader in the broader geospatial information market.

“Across a broad range of industries, more organizations are using geospatial information to drive business decisions and processes,” said Bob Morris, President & CEO, ERDAS. “ERDAS is defining the systems that will put the information around our changing earth to work in business.”

ERDAS provides the most dynamic geospatial solutions to meet everyday business needs. ERDAS solutions meet the full spectrum of an organization’s requirements, transforming geospatial data into information useful for decision-making processes. By incorporating standards-based interoperability, ERDAS ensures that data is seamlessly integrated for desktop, enterprise, web-based and mobile clients. With Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) compliance, ERDAS develops standards-based solutions with the most advanced service-oriented platform available. By leveraging new and existing technologies, ERDAS incorporates existing technological strengths in image exploitation, processing, visualization and geospatial data management to meet a broader spectrum of customer needs in today’s enterprise environment.

“ERDAS is positioned to help organizations harness the information of the changing earth for greater advantage,” said Mladen Stojic, Senior Vice President, Product Management and Marketing, ERDAS. “With a growing portfolio, ERDAS delivers geospatial business systems that transform our earth’s data into business information.”

Moving forward, Leica Geosystems Geospatial Imaging is now ERDAS, Inc, effective April 3, 2008.

About ERDAS: ERDAS – The Earth to Business Company – helps organizations harness the information of the changing earth for greater advantage. ERDAS creates geospatial business systems that transform our earth’s data into business information, enabling individuals, businesses and public agencies to quickly access, manage, process and share that information from anywhere. Using secure geospatial information, ERDAS solutions improve employee, customer and partner visibility to information, enabling them to respond faster and collaborate better. It also means better decision-making, increased productivity and new revenue streams. Welcome to ERDAS: a trusted name, with a new energy, and a new vision. Earth to business starts here.

ERDAS is a part of the Hexagon Group, Sweden. For more information about ERDAS or its products and services, please call +1 770 776 3400, toll free +1 866 534 2286, or visit www.erdas.com.

Geo: International

BKS Surveys Ltd has recently been awarded a major contract by the Ministerie van Verkeer en Waterstaat, Rijkswaterstaat, Data-ICT-Dienst for the supply of AHN2 Digital Ground model for Parcel No.2 in the North of The Netherlands.

The contract is one of two Lots awarded under AHN2 Contract DI-5524 and involves BKS acquiring and processing low level LiDAR data of an area covering approximately 365,000 hectares. For the data acquisition, BKS will use Fugro’s FLI-MAP 400 helicopter mounted LiDAR system that combines an ultra-high frequency (150KHz) LiDAR with forward and nadir facing digital cameras and videos to capture high density (10pts per m2) point cloud data and associated imagery to survey flood defence assets.

Acquisition of the data began mid-January and will be completed by March. The raw collected data will then be filtered to produce a 50cm grid height model of the area with the entire project due for completion by November 2008.

BKS have considerable experience in the execution of LiDAR data collection and are the UK and Ireland agents for the FLI-MAP system of Fugro, employing it on various contracts including National LiDAR Framework agreement for the UK Highways Agency and the survey of river embankments for various regions of the Environment Agency.

More at BKS

Geo: International

The new direction of space geoinformatics started to progress in Russia and in the world, pertaining to the creation of geoportals and web-map services.

First Russian geoportals are Yandex.Maps and Kosmosnimki with satellite geolocated mosaics of largest cities and central administrative regions.

An important issue in a geoportal development is to fill it in with updated space images and to created mosaics from a set of satellite imagery. The solution can be the integration of geoportals and regional centers of operational RS data reception into a unified solid production mechanism.

On March 25-27 the St-Petersburg Central R&D Institute of Robotics and Technical Cybernetics partnered with ScanEx R&D Center to showcase the real-time processing and transfer of space images, acquired from RS satellites, via encoded Internet channels to the customers of the government committee of St-Petersburg.

Earth Remote Sensing Center at the St-Petersburg Central R&D Institute of Robotics and Technical Cybernetics, equipped with the Uniscan ground receiving station provided the RADARSAT-1, SPOT-2, SPOT-4, EROS-A and TERRA data reception.

Kosmosnimki geo-service of ScanEx Center was used as a prototype of the regional geoportal. Relevant committees of Leningrad Region and North-Western Federal District administrations can be the potential clients of such geoportal.

Special attention was paid to the possibility of near real-time data reception from the all-weather RADARSAT-1 radar satellite. One of the images of the city and of the dike was acquired on the evening of March 25 during the blizzard with wind blasts over St-Petersburg.

The demonstrated version of geoportal can be used as a catalog for quick search for geospatial data and a tool for assessment and analysis of ecological situation, nature use control and environmental and high risk areas monitoring.

More at: www.scanex.com

Geo: International


Start Date End Date Event Web Venue
08-apr-08 10-apr-08 Geo-evenement 2008 web Paris, France
09-apr-08 10-apr-08 GEO-8, GIS Innovations and World of Geomatics web Conventry, United Kingdom
14-apr-08 15-apr-08 ESA Investment Forum 2008 web Noordwijk, The Netherlands
14-apr-08 15-apr-08 PROGIS web Villach, Austria
14-apr-08 16-apr-08 2nd GEOSS – The Role of Earth Observations in Tackling Climate web Tokio, Japan
16-apr-08 18-apr-08 2nd International Conference Remote Sensing – the Synergy of High Technologies web Moscow Region, Russia
16-apr-08 18-apr-08 Disaster Management 2008 Exhibition & Conference web Maidan, India
16-apr-08 18-apr-08 II International, Remote Sensing – the Synergy of High Technologies web Moscow, Russia
21-apr-08 21-apr-08 AGI – British Antarctic Survey web Cambridge, UK
21-apr-08 22-apr-08 NAVOBS+ SMEs Workshop web Toulouse,
France
22-apr-08 25-apr-08 Toulouse Space Show web Toulouse,
France
22-apr-08 25-apr-08 NeoGeography XXI-2008 web Moscow, Russia
27-apr-08 02-may-08 ASPRS 2008 Annual Conference web Portland, OR,USA
29-apr-08 30-apr-08 AED-SICAD European Utility Forum 2008 web Vienna, Austria
29-apr-08 01-may-08 1Spatial 2008 Conference web Stansted Airport, UK
06-may-08 08-may-08 11th AGILE 2008 Conference on GI Science web Girona, Spain
12-may-08 16-may-08 SpaceOps 2008 web Heidelberg, Germany
13-may-08 22-may-08 GeoDATA web London, UK
14-may-08 14-may-08 AGI:shared services/data sharing web Belfast, Ireland
14-may-08 14-may-08 Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in the Public Sector web London, UK
14-may-08 16-may-08 GMES conference: “Bridging the gap”-TBC web Portrose, Germany
19-may-08 30-may-08 UN Convention on Biological Diversity – COP 9 web Bonn, Ireland
20-may-08 21-may-08 Innovation at the service of regional growth web Dublin, Ireland
20-may-08 22-may-08 5th EuroGOOS – Coastal to Global Operational Oceanography Achievements & Challenges web Exeter, UK
21-may-08 23-may-08 MapWorld 2008 web Las Vegas, U.S.A
22-may-08 27-may-08 Life in Space for Life on Earth web Angers, France
22-may-08 24-may-08 Advanced Neural Strategies for
Remote Sensing Images Processing Application
web Vietri sul Mare, Salerno,
Italy
26-may-08 30-may-08 Digital Photogrammetric Systems web Barcelona, Spain
27-may-08 27-may-08 30th ESA Antenna WK web Noordwijk, The Netherlands
02-jun-08 03-jun-08 GeoGathering 2008 web CO, U.S.A
02-jun-08 05-jun-08 Intergraph 2008 – Int’l Users Conference web Las Vegas, U.S.A
02-jun-08 06-jun-08 Sensor Orientation: Calibration and Block Adjustment. Integration GNSS and INS sensors web Barcelone, Spain
02-jun-08 06-jun-08 28th EARSeL Symposium and Workshops: “Remote Sensing for a Changing Europe” web Istanbul, Turkey
04-jun-08 05-jun-08 4th International Optech Terrestrial Laser Scanning- “Measuring new horizons” web Munich, Germany
04-jun-08 07-jun-08 Developing Countries in conjunction with GISDECO 8 web Istanbul, Turkey
10-jun-08 12-jun-08 GIS/SIT 2008 web Zurich, Switzerland
11-jun-08 11-jun-08 Centre for Earth Observation Instrumentation:Knowledge Exchange Conference web Leicester, UK
11-jun-08 13-jun-08 International Workshop E-learning 2008 web Enschede, The Netherlands
12-jun-08 12-jun-08 New sensors and perspectives in data policy web London, UK
15-jun-08 18-jun-08 International Training Course on satellite navigation and location based services web Ahmedabad, India
16-jun-08 19-jun-08 Evaluating Free and Open Source Sofware for Geoinformation (FOSS4G) for Environmental Applications web Warsaw,Poland
20-jun-08 21-jun-08 11th ICA Workshop on Map Generalisation and Multiple Representations web Montpellier, France
23-jun-08 25-jun-08 Spatial Data Handling Conference 2008 web Montpellier, France
24-jun-08 26-jun-08 INTERCARTOINTERGIS 14 web Saratov, Russia
28-jun-08 29-jun-08 Geoinformatics web Guangzhou, China
29-jun-08 01-jul-08 INTERCARTOINTERGIS 14 web Urumqi-Lhasa, China
30-jun-08 03-jul-08 International Workshop on Computational GeoInformatics – COMPGEO’08 web Perugia, Italy
01-jul-08 04-jul-08 GI Forum 2008 web Salzbug University, Austria
02-jul-08 04-jul-08 AGIT 2008 web Salzbug University, Austria
02-jul-08 02-jul-08 AGI Environmental Special Interest Group Annual Conference web Nottingham, UK
03-jul-08 11-jul-08 ISPRS 2008 web Beijing, China
04-jul-08 07-jul-08 4th Workshop of the EARSeL Special Interest Group on Developing Countries web Istanbul, Turkey
06-jul-08 11-jul-08 IGARSS 2008 web Boston, MA, USA
08-jul-08 11-jul-08 Polar Research Arctic & Antarctic Perspectives – SCAR/IASC IPY web San Petersburg, Russia
13-jul-08 20-jul-08 COSPAR 2008 web Montreal, Canada
21-jul-08 25-jul-08 GeoWeb 2008 web Vancouver, Canada
04-aug-08 07-aug-08 GEOBIA 2008 web Alberta, Canada
04-aug-08 08-aug-08 ESRI UC 2008 web San Diego, CA, USA
04-aug-08 14-aug-08 EO Summer School 2008 web Frascati, Italy
10-aug-08 14-aug-08 SPIE Optics + Photonics 2008 web San Diego, CA, USA
19-aug-08 21-aug-08 Map Asia 2008 web Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
25-aug-08 29-aug-08 URISA Fourth Caribbean GIS Conference web G. Cayman, Cayman Islands
25-aug-08 29-aug-08 International Disaster and Risk Conference web Davos, Switzerland
26-aug-08 28-aug-08 Map Africa 2008 web Cape Town, South Africa
08-sep-08 11-sep-08 SPIE´s Europe Remote Sensing Symposium web London, UK
08-sep-08 11-sep-08 10th International Symposium on High Mountain Remote Sensing Cartography web Kathmandu, Nepal
15-sep-08 17-sep-08 RSPSoc Annual Conference 2008 web Exeter, UK
15-sep-08 20-sep-08 Advanced Atmospheric Training Course web Oxford, UK
16-sep-08 18-sep-08 GMES conference “The operational phase”-TBC web Lille,
France
17-sep-08 19-sep-08 SilviLaser web Edinburg, UK
17-sep-08 19-sep-08 Congress of the European Surveyors web Strasbourg, Germany
17-sep-08 19-sep-08 GEO India 2008 web New Delhi, India
22-sep-08 24-sep-08 EARSeL: Remote Sensing Techniques in Disaster Management and Emergency Response in the Mediterranean Region web Zadar, Croatia
22-sep-08 26-sep-08 2nd MERIS/(A)ATSR User Workshop web Frascati, Esrin
23-sep-08 25-sep-08 AGI GeoCommunity ’08 web Stratford-upon-Avon, UK
29-sep-08 01-oct-08 14th Australasian Remote Sensing & Photogrammetry Conference web Darwin, Australia
29-sep-08 03-oct-08 Free and Open Source Geospatial 2008 (FOSS4G2008) web Cape Town, South Africa
30-sep-08 30-sep-08 5th ESA/EC joint Space Council-TBC web Brussels,
Belgium
30-sep-08 02-oct-08 Intergeo 2008 web Bremen, Germany
06-oct-08 10-oct-08 19th Ocean Optics Conference web Barga, Italy
07-oct-08 09-oct-08 EuNavTec, 1th International Specialist Trade Fair for Satelite Navigation web Dresden, Germany
07-oct-08 10-oct-08 The 46th Annual Conference of the Urband and Regional Information Systems Association web New Orleans, U.S.A.
21-oct-08 23-oct-08 3rd IAASS International Space Safety Conference AARSE)-2008 web Accra, Ghana
28-oct-08 30-oct-08 EMEA UC 2008, ‘GIS for Every Life’ web London, UK
03-nov-08 07-nov-08 ALOS 2008 Symposium web Rhodes, Greece
08-nov-08 09-nov-08 10th International Symposium on High Mountain Remote Sensing Cartography web Kathmandu, Nepal
16-nov-08 18-nov-08 Global Space Technology Forum web ADNEC, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
25-nov-08 26-nov-08 ESA Council meeting at ministerial level web The Hague,
Netherlands
01-dec-08 03-dec-08 The International Conference on Intelligent Systems (ICIS) 2008 web Bahrain, Bahrain
02-dec-08 04-dec-08 GEO Expo China web Shanghai, China

EO based businesses will still involve a lot of new knowledge acquisition. Hence, uncertainty will be rooted in the business plans since the process of “environmental” R&D cannot be split into neat pieces, and the knowledge in the various disciplines needed to solve business issues is very often tacit or intuitive, which makes collective learning very difficult….
…by Serge Galant,TECHNOFI. Paper EARSC Galant 07 04 08.pdf


1.Introduction

The advent of a European Space industry in the early 70’s was driven by the development of the ARIANE launcher and the needs for both Defence and civilian satellites:

Communications links were the prime movers, since Defence end-users needed to cover the whole earth, whereas communication links must be available on a 24/365 basis, in endangered areas
Observation systems came next, mixing both meteorological applications and observation needs (in the visible, infra-red and radar domain), involving defence, civilian and scientific applications.

Yet, over the past twenty years, the European Space industry, like the European aeronautic industry, has migrated from prominently defense-based investments and applications to an increasingly wider spectrum of commercial activities.

Innovative commercial services have been created using large scale space infrastructures: this is the case for earth observation-based services, resulting in major advances, for instance in meteorological forecasts, environmental monitoring or risk mitigation strategies after significant industrial or natural disasters have occurred.

The major challenge for the whole value chain of the resulting downstream service players remains to capture all or part of such application markets, leaning on robust business models that will remain attractive, whatever other competitive solutions may do.
However, both public decision makers involved in space infrastructure investments AND industrial players using such infrastructures are facing a dilema 1

On the one hand, the European Earth observation industry was born to meet strategic needs “of public interest”, including defense, security, environment monitoring, meteorology and even basic science. Investments in the critical space infrastructures are then based on very long decision making processes, requiring lengthy inter-governmental consultations: the life cycle of any new Earth Observation program development is a minimum of 15 years between idea inception and the end of the satellite infrastructure. Moreover, decisions are driven by technological excellence to make these infrastructures reliable, with performance requirements very often near the limits of the best available technologies.

On the other hand, the learning curves of the service industry involved in environmental activities, together with the growing demand for more service applications, drive these technologies towards standardized and open applications. These new application segments are regulated by much shorter life cycles (say 5 years) facing competition coming from other technologies, event though satellite infrastructures become affordable enough to capture part of some emerging service markets, often related to regional development. The business landscape may then change very rapidly, narrowing the satellite infrastructure capabilities to a small part of the whole value chain, since exhibiting lower performances than new ground based or air borne systems.

A major challenge for Europe will therefore be to link public interest, large scale infrastructure investments with the needs of regional, highly innovative, local services using such infrastructures.

In the USA, linking both markets relies significantly on the Defense application “driving belt”, where innovative companies:

• can “spin slow” on the public market side, which is well structured and receives more than five times the money that Europe is investing in R&D for Defense applications
• are able to “spin fast” on private markets since most of the critical R&D has been paid for by the public sector.

Europe must therefore invent another way of linking both wheels, through other support schemes to start-ups and SMEs that take into account specific European features:

• Within the “public interest” segment, the few remaining space players will continue operating with a technology push approach, since technology excellence remains a prerequisite. They will capitalize more and more on their satellite based knowledge to develop downstream applications on their own or with public support: the risk is that they can block the access to data since owning part of the IPR.
• Within the mass market segment, a significant number of SMEs will continue striving to develop innovative service activities based on a market pull approach. Many of them will not belong to the space community: their offer will target niche markets, with the possibility of missing clear interfaces with the upstream satellite data providers. They may even develop new services for their regional customers using US Earth Observation data, whereas European Earth Observation data exist for the same application, but are not formatted to be made accessible and affordable.

The GMES environment will need to bring dedicated answers to such SMEs, which will have to prove to be as efficient as the US environment has shown to be. The present paper aims at demonstrating that new business models will emerge in the coming years which will help the Earth Observation ecosystem of enterprises grow

2.Background: to-day’s EO/GMES ecosystem

The EO/GMES ecosystem is still an emerging industry characterised by:

*a significant number of university or public space agency- spawned start ups and SMEs* (mostly with less than 30 people), focusing on specific pieces of the R&D value chain (data processing, data interpretation, decision-making based on EO data)
*the combined role of entrepreneur’s personal equity and continuous public support to deliver services* that are not stabilised market-wise for a very long period of time (either due to knowledge improvement, as pure science generates applications, or due to customers’ evolving needs)
*a market developed know-how or knowledge that leans on earth observation data*, very often this know-how or knowledge has not been patented, and is very much dependent on the access to raw observation data (including timely availability and cost of acquisition over significant periods of time).

The industry is growing and accelerating 2 , as shown by the indicators provided below.

Estimated overall employment (2004) 2,900 employees
Average EO-specific revenue per employee €107k
Estimated total annual revenue for EO value adding activities (2002) 3 €285 million
Average Revenue growth (2000-2002) 19.4% CAGR
Profitability (2002 average gross margin) 10.3%

Basic indicators of EO service VA Industry

The estimated total annual revenue is split into 78% of income from sales (to public and private sectors) and 22% of income from development financing (from national and international agencies). The average industry revenue growth rate is ahead of several comparable industries. But concentrated in a few large companies: 77% of the industry’s growth came from just 6 companies, and almost half of that from just one company.

Overall, the industry profitability has improved, with an average gross margin of 10.3% in 2002 compared with just 1.8% in 2000: large VACs do not have higher gross margins (10.0% in 2002) than small VACs (10.7% in 2002), thus showing no direct link between profitability and scale.
A large part of the demand for EO services comes from the public sector. Public authorities and decision makers at all levels (regional, national, and international) are the primary users of EO services and products. Yet, the demand for EO services is still fragmented:

• decision makers at all levels are not yet convinced that services are reliable in terms of their quality and continuity;
• decision makers need to see from experience that those services will contribute to their organization’s objectives to justify meeting the cost of their long-term operation, maintenance and renewal 5.

The EO industry is characterised by sophisticated products, constant technological innovations and ever-changing demand as the market evolves. Although EO products exist at all maturity stages, the majority of products are experiencing a growth phase, i.e. sales are growing and expected to continue to do so. This indicates that the industry overall is in a healthy position. However, the percentage of products in a start up phase (approx. 10%) seems to be low for an innovative industry (see below).

The EO industry is highly competitive: only less than 10% of products and services have no competition or a single competitor. Competition exists between EO service providers as well as between traditional or non-EO alternatives. Moreover, it extends across world markets. In general, the European industry EO faces increasing competition from US companies 7 who are supported by large government contracts for national security needs (ClearView, NextView), and global institutional operators such as NOAA & USGS.

3.The future ecosystem: trends for winning business models

This section argues that the anatomy of the earth observation ecosystem as depicted above must evolve in order to attract more investments, in a way similar to what is proposed in a recent paper for the biotech industry 8 . Why?

Although the above ecosystem anatomy may look quite similar to the anatomy of the software or semi conductor industry, its specific R&D features make it quite different from what is known in the software or semiconductor industry. As a matter of fact, it is more similar to the anatomy of the biotechnology industry:

*uncertainty is rooted in the limited knowledge of large scale interacting systems* (for instance thermal currents in oceans, water vapour cycle in the atmosphere…): this is not the case in the IT or semiconductor sectors, where at the end of an innovation cycle, the product will function anyway (meeting more or less the expected performances). GMES-based development cycles are therefore more uncertain, ending up with prototype failures: the expected performances can then never be reached.
*the process of environmental R&D cannot be split into pieces*: it requires a wide range of disciplines working together in an integrated fashion.
*the knowledge in the various disciplines is very often tacit or intuitive* (since difficult to model): this makes collective learning very difficult.

This has indeed consequences on the evolution of EO/GMES markets:

*advances in modelling, space instrumentation have not significantly reduced the above uncertainty*. Under certain circumstances, it may have increased it because modelling results and measured data raise more questions than they give answers to the issues that EO is supposed to address (see for instance the Carbon cycle modelling),
*uncertainty translates into high, long-term risks*: in the biotech sector people have used patents to monetize intellectual property. This helps bridge the funding gap between basic R&D and the costs of developing a solution that reaches the market. However, public equity markets are not able to value firms on the basis of their ongoing R&D projects. Adequate information must be made (compulsorily) available to sophisticated valuation techniques (like real options) in order to be able to value the company. However, most biotech companies are reluctant to give away know-how to outsiders based on the disclosure of whether their R&D project works. This is exactly what happens in the EO industry. Most of the companies have built up internal know-how that cannot be patented. And overall, return on investments of these companies is still not in phase with what venture capitalist expect from other sectors. The system for monetizing intellectual property simply will not work in the GMES area.
*Integration is a prerequisite for application, in many industrial areas*: many issues must be addressed at once, and the solutions must work as a whole in fine.

There are two ways of achieving integration:
Use market-reliant networks: experts integrate knowledge through alliances, licensing and collaborative R&D. This is the biotech sector approach;
Use all the needed pieces of a puzzle (vertical integration): this is what large pharmaceutical companies do in the biotech sector.

For the first approach, strong IP protection is needed. In the EO sector, the IP regime is very complex and risky. And the knowledge is tacit, i.e. cannot be precisely described in writing. Hence, the pace of learning together is slow; this makes collaborative projects run out of money very easily.

*In the EO sector, what is known from R&D pales in comparison to what remains to be understood*. The ability to learn from past experience is still low because of the tacit nature of this knowledge. The learning of any SME active in EO is the aggregation of what individuals know and the insights shared by the teams. Very often this knowledge is not formalised and cannot be codified easily: sharing experiences in market-reliant networks takes time.
*Overall, the EO R&D process faces productivity issues*. This analysis suggests that, as shown by profitability growth, new anatomies must be searched to make EO services more productive:

new sales models (like two-sided network approach)
new organisations and alliances (to either package products faster or find clients with more recurrent needs)

Such anatomies will have to cope with the typical R&D uncertainty and related high risks of the EO sector, to allow interdependent problem solving and to harness the collective experience of several scientific and engineering disciplines.

4.Building future business plans in practice in the EO/GMES area

Building robust business plan always relies on convincing arguments that structure the five key pillars onto which any business model must be built:

VALUE (the WHAT?), which provides an overall view of a firm’s offering that represents a new, distinctive benefit or value for its customers;
CUSTOMERS (the WHO?), which refer to the market potential for that value and to how the company reaches its customers and keeps them with the proposed value;
MANAGEMENT (the HOW?), which refers to the management of the company’s resources necessary to deliver the firm’s value;
NETWORKING capability (the WITH WHOM?), which measures the management’s willingness to favour open rather than closed innovation;
FINANCIALS (the HOW MUCH?), which is the culminating point of a business model, which permits a focus on the specific components of a business model contributing to the company profitability (revenue/cost structure).

In the next section, several key invariant issues are addressed. The INVESAT project has shown that these issues will have to be faced in the next decade to strengthen each of the above five pillars. They all deal with a reinforcement of networking capabilities, very often indeed at worldwide level.

Focused long term co-operations

Existing and future EO players must emphasize focused long-term collaborations allowing the sharing of proprietary information, joint learning and more productive research. This leads to several approaches to catalyze cooperative growth:

o Engage in exclusive license agreements between public laboratories and start-ups especially when the newly-born company must build the full capability to sell the highly novel service (and this capability does not exist elsewhere);
o Support non-exclusive license agreements with public laboratories when the technologies involved have several development paths (yet uncertain);
o Focus R&D agreements between start-ups/SMEs and public research organisations that have two distinctive features to minimize R&D costs:
• Cross-disciplinary research teams to avoid fragmentation of the knowledge and faster integration to reach the market earlier,
• Translational research, where basic science can be easily translated into a specific service opportunity by the public R&D players.

Overall, EO R&D will require more and more integration of different highly interdependent disciplines. This integration is a prerequisite for industrial application. Hence, business models with more vertical integration in the R&D and in the business alliances will be favoured. Vertical integration 9 requires a degree of scale which implies that established large EO companies are well positioned to be integrators of R&D developed by small VACs .
There are signs of vertical integration coming from the success of virtual globes. Vertical integration can be anticipated to continue in the future as part of the satellite operators’ strategy.

Teaming with complementary service/data providers to create more value for the customer

In today’s EO VA industry, teaming with complementary service providers is used to a limited extent to mitigate the impact of the lack of highly skilled resources, which constrains operations and sales activities, especially in SMEs. Consolidation among these smaller VACs may be vital to the industry’s future health. They can develop new niche markets using collaborative approaches to reach novel horizons together at European, if not world, level. EO VACs could work together in order to strengthen individual EO offerings, and in particular, to collaborate with other service providers outside the EO industry to deliver more complete solutions. The development of the MASS (Multi-Application Support Service System) platform by SPACEBEL, under ESRIN funding, goes along that direction 10 .

Another key element of the GMES value network is data suppliers. Data supply is a key part of the VACs ability to deliver; companies must work in close co-ordination with their data suppliers to ensure this critical resource is optimised for them, securing access within appropriate agreements.

Network management

In value networks, interdependency between the network players is crucial: the performance of each GMES company increasingly depends on the influence it has over assets outside of its own boundaries. There are two main dimensions that structure the behaviours and attitudes of the network manager:
• the level of benefits that it gets from value integration
• the level of control it has on the network for pricing and making transactions happen.

Creating and capturing value requires very often a central firm exploring the potential to create value for customers in a radically new way and shaping the external environment. This central firm brings together players with different assets and competences.

As a general rule, attention must be paid with the governance rules of inter-organisational ties in the value network: they have to maximise the joint created value and assure that the created value is shared among the network participants, so that each of them is better off than when they would leave to be out of the network.

Value distribution

The viability of open business models is greatly dependent upon the generation of value not only for the customer, but also for the network of firms that collaborate to provide the product/service. Joint value creation is determined not only by the firm-level resources and aggregated competencies but also, and more important, on how effectively and efficiently resources are combined and governed at the network level. Therefore, favouring value appropriation by the different networks players is a critical part of the business plan execution.

Whereas major recent research studies have been focused on defining the determinants and measures of customer’s value, there is little known about the value that is expected and delivered to firms through their participation in inter-firm networks. The value created has to be distributed among different participants (including the targeted customers). Value appropriation has to be also considered jointly with value creating at network level: the quality of the collaboration of the participants and the value-sharing among them determine how much value the network as a whole can create.

Value networks rely on long-term incentive structures to motivate participants: by joining the network, participants find that they are able to improve rather than working on their own. A general rule is to check that all players necessary for the smooth working of the value network are better off than in competing business systems.

5.A new promising approach: business plans relying on two-sided markets

Many EO/GMES business models fall into the category of two-sided markets and networks, which link markets from different sides of their customer networks through platforms.

There are three key factors to be considered in designing business models in a two-sided market:

1. Pricing the platform, i.e. determining which side should be subsidised, the degree of subsidisation and how much of a premium and for how long the other side would be willing to pay in order to have access to it. A price for each side of the market has to be chosen considering the impact on the other side’s growth and its willingness to pay. As the number of “subsidy side” users is crucial to developing strong network effects, usually prices for this side are set below the level one would charge if the subsidy side were seen as an independent market. On the contrary, the money side pays more than it would if it were viewed as an independent market.
2. Managing the winner-take all dynamics: in some two-sided industries, only one company controls the platform (ex. eBay’s auctions); in others, multiple companies share the dominant platform (ex. the DVD standard). When a network industry is likely to be served by a single platform, one must decide whether to share the platform with competitors or fight for its control.
3. Facing the threat of envelopment by competitors: a response to this threat is to change the business model, for example by switching or changing its money side (see the Google Map case against Microsoft) or finding new allies.

6.An illustration: the SoDa Internet platform

Climate change studies, solar electricity production, and human health are just three vital research areas to benefit from SoDa, a new web service linking the world’s leading solar radiation databases. Better yet, this EU-funded project helped create new businesses, advanced web technology and is now turning in a profitable commercial exploitation.

It started in 1999 with a seemingly modest goal. The SoDa project sought simply to link, online, various databases about solar radiation, what is usually called sunshine, via one website. It was partly funded by the European Commission from 2000 to 2003. The consortium gathered universities and small enterprises from the European Union and Switzerland.

Yet, the project was far more fruitful than anyone expected. It helped develop new, technically challenging, web service tools. It spawned completely new businesses, and is leading to the optimal development of solar power stations. It helps researchers understand extreme climate events like the August 2003 heat wave in France. It provides a model, inspiration and the technical means for other projects to link publicly funded climate data.

The SoDa project cost €2.11m, with €1.19m from the EC, but its impact punches above, way above, its weight. At the end of the EC-funded project, the SoDa Service was set as an operational service by Ecole des Mines de Paris, in collaboration with former partners. SoDa links the world’s most important sunshine databases like NASA’s database, the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA) and the Ecole des Mines in France. There are over 20 other databases linked into the system, too. These databases use all sorts of high-tech technologies like satellite observation, ground monitoring and sophisticated modelling to calculate the amount of solar radiation reaching the world’s surface. Prior to the launching of SoDa all these data were dispersed across the world, in information banks, all sealed off from each other. SoDa’s innovation was to link those databases together, across the internet, and present the data in a unified, usable form.

The SoDa system is fast, thus permitting online applications to analyse the data. All this is done transparently, invisible to the user. Ease-of-use and quality of data has led to major growth of the service, up from 2,500 unique visitors in 2002, when the project ended, to a projected 27,500 professional users in 2007. Several services delivered by the SoDa Service are charged to the clients, others are for free.

The SoDa Service provides the very best quantity and quality of solar radiation data, with applications in areas as diverse as renewable energies, agriculture, building design, meteorology, materials science and even human health. It has also led to some new, innovative services, such as the monitoring of home panels for electricity production. But all these services are just the beginning. SoDa is extended with the help of the International Energy Agency and European Commission. Open source tools should be developed around common standards if the model is to be used in other services. This is a technical challenge, since open source standards can be amazingly complex.

7.Conclusion

EO based businesses will still involve a lot of new knowledge acquisition. Hence, uncertainty will be rooted in the business plans since the process of “environmental” R&D cannot be split into neat pieces, and the knowledge in the various disciplines needed to solve business issues is very often tacit or intuitive, which makes collective learning very difficult. This has two direct consequences for EO/GMES companies:
•uncertainty translates into high, long-term risks
•integration is a prerequisite for high quality applications in many industrial areas.
Achieving integration requires the use of market-reliant networks and a trend toward more vertical integration for the companies active in this market: this is what can be observed at EU level where public bodies have been encouraging the so-called integrated R&D projects to prepare the supply of high quality, processed satellite data for several field of applications (the so-called Core Services: Ocean, Atmosphere, Land).
End user wise, two sided markets/networks, like the Google Earth model, should be able to bring very rewarding ways of selling services based on Earth observation. It is expected that prototype applications will be created in the years ahead, especially in sectors that can use simultaneously several of the above core services to bring the appropriate added value: notably the renewable energy sector, water management, waste management, public health monitoring.

8.Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported in part by DG Enterprise under the INNOVA initiative (Contract N° 022513). The INVESAT consortium partners are thanked for participating in the stimulating discussions on shaping the future of several EO-based innovative business models all over Europe.

1 Ghiron F., European Parliament , ITRE Mini-Hearing on Space, 16 JULY 2007
2 “The State and Health of the European and Canadian EO Service Industry” Technical report, September 2004, ESA, Booz Allen Hamilton, VEGA
3 These revenues exclude primary sales of basic EO imagery (estimated at 25-30 million Euros per year).
4 Data normalized to the year 2000 = 100 points
5 EC Commission, GMES: From Concept to Reality , SEC1432
6 Five key stages of a product lifecycle are identified: start-up (the product is in its infancy); rising (sales are growing and expected to continue to do so); *mature* (sales have reached a steady state); *declining* (sales are reducing but still possible); *end of life* (sales have declined to a terminal point and effort is better directed elsewhere). The chart is based on a characterization of the EO products interpreted by the VEGA study team.
7 Three of the most important US companies involved in remote sensing are: Digitalglobe, OrbImage, and Space Imaging, Inc. These companies operate satellites, provide a range of products and tend to operate through worldwide partnerships.
8 GaryPisano “ Can Science be a business ? Lessons learnt from Biotech” Harvard Business Review, October 2006, page 114
9 Vertical integration describes a style of ownership and control. The degree to which a firm owns its upstream suppliers and its downstream buyers determines how vertically integrated it is. Vertically integrated companies are united through a hierarchy and share a common owner. Usually each member of the hierarchy produces a different product or service, and the products combine to satisfy a common need.
10 See http://services.eoportal.org/

Serge Galant is CEO and takes care of Technofi’s Business development in order to provide innovation management technique to the manufacturing and service companies. His main activities and responsibilities are to stay in charge of finding new sectors involving technology innovation as a vector of growth (both turnover and profits), reshaping new activities in the field of Consulting and Technical assistance and marketing and sales for the new growth sectors for the company: transportation.
He was involved in the development of many innovative technologies (energy, defence, telecommunication, transportation, aerospace, agro food, bio technology). From 1992 to 1998, he was Director for New Business Development of BERTIN and CEO of ORKIS, a subsidiary of BERTIN in image processing. In 1998, he joined Technofi as a Vice President for Business Development in the private sector. In 2001 he has been appointed as CEO and main shareholder of Technofi.
Serge Galant holds an Aeronautical Engineer degree from ENSMA, Poitiers, France (1971) and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA (1975).

Paper EARSC Galant 07 04 08.pdf

Add-On Modules – WorldView-1 and TerraSAR-X + PCI Geomatics webinars + Geomatica GeoRaster Loader

Geomatica v10.1.2 introduces two new exciting Add-On Modules – WorldView-1 and TerraSAR-X modules to orthorectify images to extremely high accuracies. Test results show that users can obtain ortho accuracies of up to 2 meters…with no ground control points utilizing WorldView-1 data. For more information, click here

PCI Geomatics webinars are now available for free download. For a listing of topics, click here

Available free of charge from PCI Geomatics – Geomatica GeoRaster Loader- a desktop product used to load image data and associated metadata into Oracle 10g and 11g. Geomatica GeoRaster Loader is a scaled down version of PCI Geomatics’ GeoRaster ETL loading technology. The Geomatica GeoRaster Loader application offers complete access to the GeoRaster storage options with no subsequent operations required. Click here for get your free download

More info at:
Iain MacInnes
Sales Manager Europe & Latin America
Tel: 44 (0) 131 338 6991
Fax: 44 (0) 131 338 6778
Email: macinnes@pcigeomatics.com
Website: www.pcigeomatics.com

EARSC´s MISSION is to foster the development of the European geo-information service industry.


EARSC´s MISSION is to foster the development of the European geo-information service industry.
Our VISION is a sustainable market for geo-information services, using remote sensing data, which is openly accessible. To achieve this we will focus on: – Customer awareness and acceptance of Earth observation and remote sensing – Improving Market access

EARSC Board is glad to welcome two new Members in our Association: INNOVA Consorzio per l’Informatica e la Telematica (IT) and Institut de Geomática (SP)

On EARSC behalf, we are certain that new members will contribute actively to the aims of EARSC enthusiastically involved in coordinating and strengthening the Earth-observation chain and promoting the European Earth observation industry in programmes such as GMES and GEOSS.

EARSC Membership is nowadays increasing which encourage us in the Board of Directors to continue to do our best to fulfill the tasks that you as members could expect of the association. On EARSC behalf, Welcome!

INNOVA Consorzio per l’Informatica e la Telematica
INNOVA has highly specialized know-how in Synthetic Aperture Radar technology, Infomobility systems, High Performance Computing, GRID and Geographical Information Systems. We are currently involved in several European projects that utilize satellite data such as COSMO-SkyMed, R.O.S.A., InterRisk and PRIMI. We firmly believe we can be a very strong partner in any of the above fields.
More information about the new INNOVA

Institut de Geomàtica
The IG was founded in 1997 as a public consortium, with own legal entity, composed of the Generalitat de Catalunya (local government of Catalonia) and the UPC.
Its mission is the development of geomatics through applied research and education in support of society, institutional and industry needs both at national and international levels. The IG is currently structured in two research departments and one educational area. The two research departments are focussed in Remote Sensing and in Geodesy and Navigation, respectively. Its members have a two decade experience in Earth Observation data/image processing/applications as well as in sensor data fusion.

The activities of the Remote Sensing unit are mainly in the area of SAR: image processing, Interferometric and differential SAR applications (DInSAR). Its aim is the development of tools for analysis and computation for land subsidence using DInSAR techniques and the subsequent generation of Digital Elevation Models (DEMs).

The second sector of activity is the thematic application of digital photogrammetry to areas as the water quality, forest and precision farming. Last activity area are the airborne SAR and LIDAR technologies. This unit also developes terrestrial active remote sensing activities as LIDAR in combination with ground-based SAR.

The areas deployed at the Geodesy and Navigation department are mainly sensor orientation by hybridation of INS and GNSS technologies applied to Photogrammetry and Earth Observation imaginery/data capture systems.

Educational area provides the knowledge transfer and trining based on the in-house knowledge in Earth Observation fields as LIDAR, SAR, information systems and LBSs.
Nowadays, the education area of the IG is carrying out (with UPC) the elaboration of the first Master in Geomatics in Catalonia in the scope of the European Higher Education Space. This formation programme is a challenge that involves other European universities, research centres and industrial and institutional stakeholders in various fields of Geomatics and remote sensing.
The IG is offering a modular executive training program in airborne photogrammetry and remote sensing as well as other activities as organization of workshops and conference to disseminate knowledge and innovation in remote sensing and in Geodesy&Navigation technologies/topics

More information about the Institut de Geomatica

EARSC Membership
EARSC membership represents the entire spectrum of the Earth Observation industry including all sector chain: providers, stakeholders and users. For our members, the annual membership dues are a cost-effective way to stay informed, promote their company, political and institutional representation, networking opportunities with industry players and help support the future of Earth Observation. Industry together could transform activities into meaningful action on behalf of our sector.
EARSC membership is composed by full members and observer members:
CORPORATE Any commercial European company or partnership offering and undertaking consulting and contracting services or supplying equipment in the field of remote sensing which is based in a European Country which contributes to the European Space Agency or which is a member of the European Community shall be eligible for membership.
OBSERVERS Companies from countries associated to European programs but not eligible for full membership. Any active representative organization, institution or association party in the field of Earth observation and not engaged in commercial or profit-making activities such as Public/Governmental Bodies, International Organisation, International Non Governmental Organisation (NGO), Private Non Profit Organisation/Foundation, Network/Association/Aggregation of Intermediaries(profit or non profit), Business Association, Universities, other?) with interest in Earth Observation.

More information on membership at EARSC

EADS Astrium, Europe’s leading space company, has entered into an agreement to acquire the innovative University of Surrey spin-out company Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL), which specialises in the design and manufacture of small and micro satellites.

This landmark deal provides the financial and industrial resources required for SSTL’s expansion and future development. Completion of the acquisition is subject to obtaining the relevant regulatory approval.

“In the UK we are renowned for our design and manufacture of telecommunications satellites, interplanetary spacecraft and satellite services provision. SSTL is one of the great success stories of the UK space industry and will be a substantial complement to what we can offer customers around the world with its expertise in small and micro satellites and their innovative approach to developing new markets for space,” said Colin Paynter, CEO of Astrium in the UK.

Professor Sir Martin Sweeting, Executive Chairman of SSTL, has been an active ambassador for the UK space industry for many years and considers the acquisition as essential: “SSTL operates in a highly competitive global market. If we are to continue changing the economics of space and provide the innovative solutions our customers demand we must expand and maintain our R&D investment. This acquisition strengthens SSTL enormously whilst preserving our unique approach to space.”

Professor Christopher Snowden, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Surrey commented: “This is a great move for both the University and SSTL. On completion, this will represent one of the largest cash spin-outs from any UK university. It will also allow the Company to realise its full potential as a rapidly growing and leading supplier of small and micro satellites, whilst the University retains the benefit of close interaction with SSTL and its new partner EADS Astrium. By retaining a small stake in SSTL the University shows its commitment to both the future of the Company and space research itself.”

SSTL is joining EADS Astrium following a decision by the University of Surrey to sell its majority stake of circa 80% in the small satellite manufacturer. SSTL will remain an independent UK company with its individual brand and unique approach to space following the agreement, whilst benefiting from access to the resources of a large corporation including design, manufacturing and test facilities. Astrium will benefit from enhanced links with the University of Surrey to support staff training and development, also leading to greater cooperation and increased research on space technology and systems.

Astrium is one of the world’s leaders for its expertise in space transportation, spacecraft and satellite services including prime contractor for Ariane 5, the Columbus space laboratory and the Automated Transfer Vehicle for the International Space Station, and its leading-edge large and complex geostationary telecommunications satellites, and the Skynet 5 secure communications system for the UK Ministry of Defence. SSTL will complement Astrium’s existing space capabilities that include space transportation, satellites and services.

Under the share purchase agreement, SSTL will be owned by EADS Astrium NV in the Netherlands. Completion of the transaction remains subject to approval by the relevant merger control authorities.

The agreement sees long-term research collaboration between the University of Surrey and EADS Astrium and will further advance the University’s cutting edge space research capacity. The collaboration will also allow Astrium to benefit from staff training and development opportunities afforded by the links with the University. The sale will support the already-strong presence that Guildford and the south-east have in the aeronautical and space industries, creating a centre of expertise for space technology. This will allow for the region to benefit from the Government’s commitment to invest in the UK space industry.

About Astrium

Astrium, a wholly owned subsidiary of EADS, is dedicated to providing civil and defence space systems and services. In 2007, Astrium had a turnover of €3.55 billion and 12,000 employees in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain and the Netherlands. Its three main areas of activity are Astrium Space Transportation for launchers and orbital infrastructure, and Astrium Satellites for spacecraft and ground segment, and its wholly owned subsidiary Astrium Services for the development and delivery of satellite services. In the UK, Astrium employs more than 2,500 space engineers, scientists and technicians.

EADS is a global leader in aerospace, defence and related services. In 2007, EADS generated revenues of €39.1 billion and employed a workforce of more than 116,000.

Source ASTRIUM.EADS

About SSTL

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) develops innovative technologies to change the economics of space, delivering cost effective satellite missions within rapid timescales. The Company is a recognized world leader in the design, manufacture and operation of high performance small satellites for the international market with experience gained over more than 25 years and 27 missions launched.

SSTL employs 270 staff working on LEO and interplanetary missions, turnkey satellite platforms and space-proven satellite subsystems and optical systems. The Company also provides know-how transfer and training programmes and consultancy services, and performs studies for ESA, NASA and commercial customers related to platform design, mission analysis and planning.

About the University of Surrey

The University of Surrey is one of the UK’s leading professional, scientific and technological universities with a world class research profile and a reputation for excellence in teaching and research. Ground-breaking research at the University is bringing direct benefit to all spheres of life – helping industry to maintain its competitive edge and creating improvements in the areas of health, medicine, space science, the environment, communications, defence and social policy. Programmes in science and technology have gained widespread recognition and it also boasts flourishing programmes in dance and music, social sciences, management and languages and law. In addition to the campus on 150 hectares just outside Guildford, Surrey, the University also owns and runs the Surrey Research Park, which provides facilities for 140 companies employing 2,700 staff.

The Sunday Times names Surrey as ‘The University for Jobs’ which underlines the university’s growing reputation for providing high quality, relevant degrees.

Supporting graphics for this press release can be downloaded from http://www.ballard.co.uk/sstl/

Audio comment from Sir Martin Sweeting can be downloaded from http://www.engineeringbritain.com/spaced_out/

Audio interview with Professor Christopher Snowden, Vice-Chancellor & Chief Executive of the University of Surrey is available from http://www.surrey.ac.uk/audio/sstl

EADS Astrium Media Contacts:
Jeremy Close (Astrium UK) Phone: +44 (0)1 438 77 3872
Matthieu Duvelleroy (Astrium FR) Phone: +33 (0) 1 77 75 80 32
Robert Klarner (Astrium GER) Phone: +49 (0) 89 607 29821

http://www.astrium.eads.net

SSTL Media Contacts:
Robin Wolstenholme Phone: +44 (0) 1 30 688 22 88
Stephen Ballard Phone: +44 (0) 1 30 688 22 88
http://www.sstl.co.uk

University of Surrey Contacts:
Nick Bishop Phone: +44-(0) 20 7438 4916, Phone: +44-(0) 77 36 067 190
Peter La Phone: +44 (0) 1 483 689191
http://www.surrey.ac.uk