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Finance is the fuel that allows business ideas to grow. Entrepreneurs need funds to turn great ideas into great products and services that add value to the society. A brand-new resource is made available by the European Commission for those businesses – detailed factsheets that help navigate the financial opportunities available. The factsheets are tailored for the Copernicus ecosystem and encompass financing for start-ups from the idea stage to commercialisation, up to expansion.

When starting your own business venture, there are a few things that need to be just right: the right idea, that is feasible and has a prospective market; the right time, as some innovations fade away just because they were ahead of their times; and the right people, a complementary team that will make this idea come true. And of course money. While there are many opinions on what a good idea is, or how one should recruit a dream-team, every entrepreneur will agree that finding money is difficult and time consuming.

To help start-ups and scale-ups with gathering funding, the European Commission developed brand new factsheets that help navigate the financial opportunities that the European Union provides. No matter what stage of your entrepreneurship journey you are at – there are instruments available. You will not need to read through hundreds of pages of documentation – this is your shortcut to understanding the available financing options and how to apply for them. Moreover, this material is tailored to the Copernicus ecosystem. The European Commission wants to make sure that the entrepreneurs wishing to take advantage of the full, free and open access to Copernicus Sentinel data and services will benefit from the tools available.

Read more here

(28 March 2017) IDS GeoRadar, the leading provider of slope monitoring radar systems (IBIS) worldwide, and TRE ALTAMIRA, the worldwide leader in ground monitoring services using satellite InSAR, are pleased to announce a new integrated monitoring service to mine companies, capitalizing on their expertise in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technologies. The integrated use of satellite and ground-based SAR enables mining professionals to extend the concept of safety monitoring in space and time.

TRE ALTAMIRA and IDS GeoRadar are committed to offering a comprehensive solution to fulfill all mine stability needs, ranging from monitoring large-scale mining operations over hundreds of square kilometers, to specific movements at the pit scale.

Thanks to the large spatial coverage of satellite data, TRE ALTAMIRA can identify unstable areas over wide areas, also with the ability to extend the analysis of deformation back in time, thanks to the availability of historical archives of satellite images. All mining assets can be monitored regularly and precisely for deformation.

Over the last 8 years, IDS GeoRadar IBIS radars have been installed in hundreds of mines across five continents, providing critical monitoring of fast movement, with a very-short timing response, enabling the implementation of early warning alarms and tracking of slow movement for long term risk mitigation.

Through the analysis of satellite data, mine operators can complement ground-based radar measurements to identify anomalous instability over large areas, to address and properly plan the best monitoring array. The two technologies are complementary, with satellite radars mostly sensitive to the vertical settlement of ground and IBIS to rock face movements of steep walls.

TRE ALTAMIRA , a CLS group company, is the largest group worldwide providing InSAR satellite data for ground deformation monitoring. The proprietary technology of TRE ALTAMIRA, developed over the last 20 years, allow the detection of ground displacements with millimeter accuracy. Using multi-temporal satellite radar data TRE ALTAMIRA offers a time saving and cost-effective solution for mapping ground displacement over wide areas.

IDS GeoRadar, part of Hexagon, is a leading provider of multi-frequency, multi-channel Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and Interferometric technology solutions worldwide. The company is committed to delivering best-in-class performance solutions and the pursuit of product excellence, through the creation of application-specific, innovative and cost efficient systems for a wide range of applications including mining, utility, civil engineering, geology and environment management.

To learn more: Download the press release here

(07 April 2017) DHI GRAS successfully demonstrated the integrated use of the new Sentinel 1 and Sentinel 2 satellites for Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in Denmark.

DHI GRAS has recently completed a pilot study together with the Danish Agrifish Agency on the integration of Sentinel 1 and Sentinel 2 data within the field of grass mowing and catch crop monitoring. Based on the analysis of Sentinel 1 and Sentinel 2’s time series data coupled with in situ data, we demonstrated how the timing of grass mowing can be detected using optical as well as SAR satellite data. The pilot project was supported by the Danish Agrifish Agency;

‘At Danish Agrifish Agency, we are very excited and optimistic about the increased opportunities that come with the Sentinel satellites. The possibilities for using EO data within the agricultural control are significantly increased and combined with the use of state-of-the-art methods and complex processing the applications are promising’,
– Sanne Eskesen, Project Manager at Danish Agrifish Agency

Within the control of catch crops, the timing of ploughing is relevant for the Paying Agencies. DHI GRAS demonstrated during autumn 2016 how Sentinel 1 data can be analysed to detect ploughing and the timing of ploughing in Denmark.

A continuation of the 2016 activities in close cooperation with the Danish authorities are ongoing, as DHI GRAS recently won a competitive ITT for nationwide CAP control in Denmark. This work is now moving on to demonstrate how the coupling of Sentinel 1/ Sentinel 2 / Landsat 8 data and machine learning algorithms can map crop types and screen for homogeneity within field parcels. The results of the crop classification will be used operationally as part of the control procedure in 2017. During autumn 2017, the work will continue with monitoring of catch crop as well as monitoring of agricultural practices such as harvesting and ploughing.


Time series of Sentinel 2A satellite imagery covering agricultural areas of Denmark.
© DHI GRAS, European Space Agency – ESA

GEO Secretariat helped the GEO community to organize and respond to the Call for Collaborative Data Innovations launched by the Global Partnership on Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD) and the World Bank last year.

Recently the result was announced. Ten projects were funded and DHI GRAS together with the University of Twente and the European Space Agency have been funded to develop a project on Wetlands Monitoring with Earth Observation Data. The Lead Organization is Ramsar Center for Eastern Africa and the location will be Uganda.

The objective of this activity is to explore the potential of earth observation (EO) satellite data for taking stock of and monitoring wetlands, a vital component of the global water resources ecosystem. This activity will pilot design and development of a user friendly digital system for use by the Ugandan Ministry of Water and Environment, to enable national authorities to generate spatial time series statistical data for taking inventory and monitoring national wetland resources train the government on its use and produce a roadmap for scaling to other countries of East Africa. This is a unique attempt to demonstrate the potential of satellite-derived EO data to provide a full national wetland inventory in Uganda, which has been a pilot country for monitoring of SDG Target 6.6.

Source: GEO secretariat and EO4SDGs Initiative.

The Copernicus Data Hub, referred as SWEA, is a system in Sweden for long-term storage and distribution of imagery from the Sentinel satellites of the European Copernicus programme for Earth Observation. Following the successful acceptance, Spacemetric is seeking new ways of introducing the Copernicus Data Hub in other countries as well as adapting it for the upcoming DIAS procurement from ESA.

The SWEA system is operated by Spacemetric and is deployed in a cloud environment provided by Interoute. It has a high availability and is scalable to meet both the growing volumes of Copernicus data and the expanding user community.

In accordance with the SWEA project plan, the delivery was achieved seven months from the contract start.

“Arguably, SWEA is the most functionally rich Collaborative Ground Segment yet implemented, and we are very pleased to have reached this acceptance with SNSB.” Mikael Stern, Spacemetric CEO

Source

The “Copernicus and Cultural Heritage workshop” will take place in Brussels on 24 April in the Breydel Auditorium, DG GROW from 09:00 to 17:30.

The workshop intends to assess the potential of Copernicus in support of Cultural Heritage preservation and management, and to provide inputs for further research and/or operational implementation.

The objectives of the workshop are:

  • To identify intermediate and end-users’ needs in the Cultural Heritage domain, and assess and characterise space-based applications in support of Cultural Heritage at EU and global level
  • To assess capabilities and outline requirements for Copernicus-based products/services in support of Cultural Heritage
  • To propose and assess implementation scenarios for a structured Copernicus-based approach for Cultural Heritage support

The workshop will aim at identifying the main user requirements for space-based applications associated to the preservation and management of cultural heritage assets in Europe and Worldwide. Opportunities for standardisation shall be analysed taking into account what is already done in some European Countries, with risk assessments associated to each Cultural asset subject to environmental risks. The main focus will however be on the characterisation and mapping of Copernicus capabilities and existing solutions over the identified user needs, and the identification of potential evolutions to effectively support cultural heritage needs.

Registration and agenda can be found at the event website

A new processing tool has been developed to bundle information contained in large amounts of satellite data, paving the way for the wealth of Copernicus Sentinel satellite data to be more easily incorporated into online environment-monitoring services.

ESA’s online Urban Thematic Exploitation Platform makes information from satellite data available for the non-expert user for urban environment monitoring.

To do this, it processes hundreds of terabytes of data gathered by Earth-observing satellites, and translates them into easy-to-use products for scientists, urban planners and decision-makers.

U-TEP reached a milestone recently with the integration of some 450 000 scenes from the US Landsat-8 mission acquired between 2013 and 2015. The 500 TB was reduced to about 25 TB thanks to the TimeScan processor developed by the DLR German Aerospace Center. The resulting TimeScan Landsat 2015 product is already available on the U-TEP geobrowser.

This novel tool that distils a single information product from a multitude of satellite scenes is a step towards more efficient access, processing and analysis of the massive amount of high-resolution image data provided by the latest satellites.

The Copernicus Sentinel satellites, for example, are supplying an unprecedented wealth of measurements. By the end of 2017, the operational Sentinel-1, -2 and -3 satellites alone will continuously collect a daily volume of about 20 TB of open and free satellite imagery.

In the past, users had to individually download and process data on their own computers. Now, mass data can be directly archived and processed at the point of reception for maximum speed and efficiency.

Within U-TEP, user algorithms are brought to the data where they run in cloud computing environments. This avoids the transfer of large amounts of input data and makes it unnecessary for the individual user to set up inhouse computing services.

In the near future, the TimeScan approach will be used by the U-TEP team to process both Landsat optical imagery and Sentinel-1 radar data to automatically map human settlements with unprecedented precision: 10 m resolution. This will help entities such as scientists, urban planners, environmental agencies or development banks to better understand urbanisation, as well as respond to the challenges posed by growing cities, population increase, climate change and loss of biodiversity.

The data processed by TimeScan will not only benefit urban monitoring, but also land use/land cover mapping, agriculture, forestry, the monitoring of polar and coastal regions, risk management and disaster prevention, or natural resource management.

The TimeScan processor is being used at the DLR, IT4Innovation and Brockmann Consult processing centres to create products based on Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2 and Landsat data.

U-TEP is one of six Thematic Exploitation Platforms developed by ESA to serve data user communities. These cloud-based platforms provide an online environment to access information, processing tools and computing resources for collaboration. TEPs allow knowledge to be extracted from large environmental datasets produced through Europe’s Copernicus programme and other Earth observation satellites.

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Planetek Italia is very glad to announce that is now an authorized distributor of Deimos Imaging, high-resolution world imagery solutions to customers in Italy.

Planetek Italia is an Italian SME company, with more than 20 years experience in the data processing, geo-information and systems development for geographic data management and Space missions.

With this agreement, Planetek Italia will enrich its capacity to offer remotely sensed satellite products and value added services, by adding DEIMOS-1 and DEIMOS-2 satellite data to its list of widely used imagery.

Deimos Imaging, subsidiary of UrtheCast Corp. (Canada), is a private Spanish company headquartered in Tres Cantos (Madrid) and with satellite control and processing facilities in Boecillo (Valladolid) and Puertollano (Ciudad Real).

Deimos Imaging owns and operates the DEIMOS-1 and DEIMOS-2 satellites with a 24/7 commercial service, thanks to three facilities in Spain and through its own network of ground stations in Canada, Sweden and Norway.

Moreover, Deimos Imaging also operates two sensors onboard the International Space Station: Theia – 5m, 50 km swath – and Iris, the world’s first full-color UHD video camera at 1m spatial resolution.

The DEIMOS Earth Observation system, owned and operated by Deimos Imaging, is currently composed of 2 satellites:

  • DEIMOS-1 provides 22m/pixel multispectral imagery with a very wide (650-km) swath, assuring very-high-frequency revisit on large areas, especially tailored for agriculture, forestry and monitoring applications in mind.
  • DEIMOS-2 is an agile satellite designed for cost-effective, dependable very-high-resolution EO applications. Providing 75-cm pan-sharpened images, it is the highest-resolution fully private satellite in Europe, and one of the very few privately owned submetric satellites in the world.
  • By contacting Planetek Italia sales dept., users can also ask for imagery from the satellites of the PanGeo Alliance, and multispectral imagery from Theia (5m resolution, 50 km swath) and videos collected in space from the Iris camera on the ISS. These 1m full-color videos from space provide unprecedented information useful for military intelligence and infrastructure monitoring on our planet

“We are excited to be an authorized distributor for Deimos Imaging.” said Giovanni Sylos Labini, CEO, Planetek Italia. “As provider of edge technologies for the European Space Agency (ESA), Italian Space Agency (ASI) and other leader research and development entities in Europe, Planetek Italia assure state of the art products to their customers. This agreement widens our geospatial distribution options, giving our current and reference customers more precise answers to their needs”.

About Planetek Italia
Planetek Italia is an Italian company specialised in geo-informatics, Space solutions and Earth observation. The company provides solutions to exploit the value of geospatial data through all phases of data life cycle from acquisition, storage, management up to analysis and sharing. Planetek Italia operates in many application areas ranging from environmental and land monitoring to open-government and smart cities, and including defence and security, as well as scientific missions and planetary exploration.
For more information visit www.planetek.it

About Deimos Imaging
Deimos Imaging, a subsidiary of UrtheCast Corp. (Canada), is a private Spanish company headquartered in Tres Cantos (Madrid) and with satellite control and processing facilities in Boecillo (Valladolid) and Puertollano (Ciudad Real).
Deimos Imaging owns and operates the DEIMOS-1 and DEIMOS-2 satellites with a 24/7 commercial service from three facilities in Spain and through own network of ground stations in Canada, Sweden and Norway. All the ground segment software, from mission planning to image processing, has been co-developed in-house, allowing a unique capacity to customise the service to best suite all customer needs. Deimos Imaging provides high-quality services to clients worldwide, including imagery from own constellation of satellites and from the satellites of partners like the PanGeo Alliance, and value-added applications in a wide range of fields.
For more information visit www.deimos-imaging.com

The 2017 edition of the Copernicus Masters – Europe’s leading innovation competition for Earth observation (EO) – presents the immense prize pool of more than EUR1.5 million. It aims to power the transformation of great business ideas into real ventures. In addition to this huge prize pool, the European Space Agency (ESA) is opening up the competition to upstream entries with its Sentinel Small Sat (S^3) Challenge.

But that is not all, the European Commission (EC) is hosting a total of six Challenges which enrich the overall Copernicus Masters prize portfolio. Moreover, the EO innovation competition is now even accompanied by dedicated Associated Regions which highlight its European regional dimension. To top it off, the Overall Winner will be invited to attend the satellite launch of ADM-Aeolus in Kourou, which is accompanied by a further cash prize.

Future-oriented teams and individuals from the realms of business, research, and higher education now have the chance to win their share of the tripled Copernicus Masters prize pool. The largest international competition in the commercial use of Earth observation data is in search of outstanding ideas, applications, and business concepts that make use of bespoke information in everyday life. Submissions are welcome from 1 April until 30 June 2017.

“We’re very proud to have seen the Copernicus Masters develop into one of the innovation drivers for Earth observation in the last years. The launches of additional Sentinel satellites will continuously boost the commercialisation of related services,” states Josef Aschbacher, Director of ESA’s Earth Observation Programmes.

ESA Makes the Copernicus Masters Go Upstream

ESA has annually provided an exciting Challenge ever since the competition’s initiation. The 2017 Challenge is the next level of growth. The winner of the Sentinel Small Sat (S^3) Challenge will be awarded EUR 1 Million for the design and development of the mission and shall be provided with a launch service free of charge. In addition, the winner will receive EUR 10,000 cash prize. The goal of this Challenge is to stimulate ground-breaking satellite design, testing and manufacturing solutions leading to small missions complementary, or providing added value to current Sentinel family missions.

Six Brand-new Additional EC Challenges

The EC is deeply involved in the Copernicus Masters with six new EC Challenges. Each Challenge has is topic-specific, covering the topics: Sustainable Development, Government, Big Data, B2B, Copernicus Services and -Security. The winner will be rewarded with a cash prize of EUR 5,000. Moreover, the winner will benefit from a substantial satellite data quota worth the same value. These new features powered by the EC, complement the EC programme Copernicus Accelerator. Thereby, the top 50 entrants of the Copernicus Masters have the opportunity to join the Copernicus Accelerator – an outstanding tailored business coaching service.

“The popularity of the Copernicus Accelerator programme results mainly from its unique characteristic: involving future-oriented entrepreneurs as mentees and high-level professionals as mentors. The perfect interaction between these two core assets of the tailored business coaching service is what makes this EC programme so unique.” underlines Philippe Brunet, Director of Aerospace, Maritime, Security and Defence Industries, EC.

Powerful Copernicus Masters Partner Network Supporting New Business Models

With support from its international network, the Copernicus Masters aids participants in realising their applications and business models. This year’s edition once again features Challenges and corresponding prizes to be awarded by a series of prominent partners, including ESA, the EC, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Stevenson Astrosat Ltd., CGI, and the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure. The University Challenge, meanwhile, is geared specifically towards students and research employees. The topics addressed by these Challenges will include innovative uses of Earth observation data in the fields of upstream services, energy, health and the environment, disaster management, sustainable living, big data, digital transportation, and smart cities.

The following significant startup, which experienced a major boost through winning the Copernicus Masters and being part of the Copernicus Accelerator 2016, impressively showcases how smart use of big data from space enables new types of business.

The Copernicus Masters Value Chain Boosts Sinergise to the Next Level

Before submitting their idea to the Copernicus Masters in 2016, the Sinergise team already had a working solution, but only very few users. “Becoming the Overall Winner of the competition and benefitting from the follow-up coaching service provided by Francesco Liucci from Catapult, within the Copernicus Accelerator framework, helped us to boost our idea even further and to gain confidence from experts worldwide.” says Grega Milcinski, CEO Sinergise. To mention some figures, the company’s newly released EO Browser has the impressive number of 1.1 million processed requests by nearly 12,000 users.

Europe’s Leading Earth Observation Innovation Competition

Since 2011, the Copernicus Masters competition has evolved into the leading innovation platform for promoting user uptake of Earth observation data in a commercial and societal context. “The Copernicus Masters scouts and showcases new ideas and trends each year. Put into figures, the competition already selected a total of 50 winners from among more than 1,200 entrants from 50 different countries, who have submitted over 900 cutting-edge business ideas.” explains Thorsten Rudolph, Managing Director AZO. He adds: “Each year, we are honoured to have Europe’s most renowned space stakeholders host their own prizes in topic-specific Challenges”. Along with cash prizes, the winners will receive access to a leading international network, corresponding data, startup funding, and other support valued at more than EUR 1.5 million in total.

For all of the details on this year’s prizes, partners, and terms of participation, please visit www.copernicus-masters.com
Additional information on the Copernicus programme and www.copernicus.eu.

International Kick-off Event in Brussels

The joint international kick-off event of the Copernicus Masters and the European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC) took place on 5 April 2017 in Brussels, kindly hosted by the Representation of the Free State of Bavaria to the EU. The regional dimension as a propulsion component of the EU Space Strategy and the innovation competitions skyrocketing growth and entrepreneurship across Europe were hot topics of the roundtable discussions. The event offered the perfect chance to interact with the European space community and experience first-hand how the partners of the innovation network drive space-related topics. Use your opportunity to become part of the network and register now to boost your business idea with prizes at www.copernicus-masters.com and www.esnc.eu.

Festive Awards Ceremony and Space Conference

The festive Awards Ceremony for Europe’s largest innovation competitions for commercial space applications – the Copernicus Masters and the European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC) – takes place in early November 2017. This exciting event brings together the important players of industry, politics, entrepreneurship and research to showcase the most disruptive space applications and discuss trendsetting developments in the satellite downstream sector and its various application fields.

AZO – an Experienced Organiser

Anwendungszentrum GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen (AZO) has been organising the Copernicus Masters competition on behalf of ESA since 2011. By leveraging its extensive experience as a specialist in building and maintaining global innovation networks and organising related competitions, AZO supports business innovations and the creation of new companies, primarily in the field of commercial aerospace applications. Next to the Copernicus Masters, AZO organises the European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC), the Space Exploration Masters, carries out the INNOspace Masters and manages the ESA Business Incubation Centre Bavaria.

Agricultural operations work on thin margins, and conventional field inspection methods are time consuming and inefficient.

Missing a small area of pest or insect infestation can result in a big loss when it comes to harvest, and over-fertilizing can be just as costly as using too little fertilizer over the long term. Analyzing airborne imagery from low cost unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) can hereby offer an efficient and cost-effective way to aid in the assessment of field health and the estimation of crop yields, particularly when it comes to critical information for high value specialty crops such as strawberries. The following case study hereby presents a remote sensing processing workflow from UAV data collection to automated image analytics for agriculture monitoring on the example of a strawberry field using ENVI Modules from Harris Geospatial Solutions.

The test site is located near Plant City / Florida / U.S.A. This place is known as the winter strawberry capital of the world and hosts the annual Florida strawberry festival. Data collection was employed by Highland Agriculture, a US provider of state-of-the-art precision agriculture tools, using a MicaSense RedEdge multispectral camera on board of a UAV. The five spectral bands of this camera are specially targeted to agricultural applications (blue, green, red, red edge, near IR), with high spatial (8 cm GSD at 120 m AGL), radiometric (12-bit) and temporal (1 capture / sec) resolutions.

Preprocessing of the collected UAV imagery included band-to-band alignment and stacking of the individual multispectral layers into one single MultiPage Tiff file, as well as creation of an additional GPS formatted file with the sensor locations and orientations during acquisition. Using the advanced photogrammetric algorithms of ENVI OneButton the UAV images were georeferenced, orthorectified and finally mosaicked. For the orthorectification, a Digital Elevation Model was derived from the overlapping UAV images. Postprocessing consisted of atmospherically correcting the UAV orthomosaic to relative surface reflectance by removing instrument effects, the solar irradiance curve and atmospheric effects from scattering and gas absorption.


Agricultural analysis with the ENVI Precision Agriculture Module was divided in three sections. First, the number, position, and size of the individual strawberry plants were extracted from the final UAV orthomosaic. For this purpose, the Sum Green Index (SGI, after Lobell et al. 2003) was calculated. In the resulting index image, plants could be clearly distinguished from the background soil. Secondly, based on this image and an estimate of the minimum and maximum crop size, strawberry plants were automatically counted using a crop counter tool. Finally, given the results from plant counting and the post-processed multispectral UAV orthomosaic, a specific crop health tool was used to investigate the relative and absolute health distribution of the individual plants based on the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI).

This precision agriculture workflow is suitable for diverse crops and provides farmers with a fast and accurate solution for tailored crop management to guide activity. The extracted metrics of the individual plants in the crop area help to predict yield and allow farmers to efficiently identify crop stress.

This workflow can be made turnkey for operational use and deployed to enterprise environments. For example, its analytics are implemented in Highland Hub, a web-based farm management system of Highland Precision Ag providing services and analytics for crop monitoring.

To find out more about Harris Geospatial Solution ’s precision agriculture tools, attend the company`s oral presentation at the Commercial UAV Expo and Conference Europe on 20-22 June in Brussels or visit the Harris stand (#427)