Category: Editorial

In this respect I was especially interested to see a new paper published by the National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC) – Landsat Advisory Group. This makes a statement on Landsat data use and charges with the overarching recommendation that Landsat data must continue to be distributed at no cost. It puts forward 9 reasons why Landsat data should continue to be freely available of which 7 of these are equally applicable to GMES as to Landsat.

The same group has also published another paper which addresses the second point by looking at the economic value of certain services enabled by Landsat. This shows between $178m and $235m savings to government departments through use of the data for 10 EO services. As we know this represents just a small fraction of the uses for which EO services may be applied and hence the total benefits that may be expected and the total annual economic value of Landsat data has been estimated separately as $1,7b.

At a time when Europe’s policy makers are yet again hesitating about the funding with arguments going back and forth about EU funding or intercommunity funding. They must not lose sight of the enormous benefits that GMES will bring to Europe. Firstly, the straightforward economic benefit is huge; up to €50b estimated by Booz & Co. Secondly, the growth in high-value jobs and the spin-off these provide into other sectors. Thirdly, and most importantly, foreign policy, industrial policy, security policy will all be enhanced by the availability of regular and timely information not to mention the regular observations that are essential to monitor the impacts of climate change and to determine many environmental policies.

There seems a risk that GMES will falter due to complex political negotiations surrounding EU budgets against inter-governmental ones, about priorities for economic growth versus austerity and even about priorities between research and operational data gathering. Understanding what is going on around the world is of vital importance to our decision makers. As the US report shows the economic benefits are high in many diverse policy-linked areas.

There are arguments being made about technology such as crowd-sourcing and local measurements such as aircraft or UAV’s replacing satellite observations. Whilst they may complement a satellite system, none can provide regular, reliable, global-scale observations that only a fleet of satellites can deliver. Other technologies are important but the Sentinel satellites are at the heart of GMES. I suggest that all EARSC members and supporters remind their national representatives that this is the case and to urge that GMES funding is approved urgently as a European Union programme.

Finally, just a brief word and reminder about the survey that we are about to launch – see elsewhere in the magazine. It is over 5 years since a comprehensive analysis has been made on the EO services industry. It is vital that we have up-to-date information on the industry in Europe. It is important for us and it is important for the decision makers. If you work for a company in Europe it is most likely that you will receive an invitation to participate in the next few weeks. Please let us know if you do not or in any case let us know that you do wish to participate and tell us who the company contact should be. We look forward to hearing from you.

Geoff Sawyer
EARSC Secretary General

(*) Ref. Landsat articles
NGAC Paper: Statement on Landsat Data Use and Charges
NGAC Paper: The Value Proposition for Ten Landsat Applications

This practise continues today in many domains; the most well-known to the EO community being meteorology. However, it is being challenged. In 2003, the EC produced legislation proposing that governments should not charge more than a marginal cost for data. Now this is being reviewed and it is anticipated that next year, further EC legislation will be issued stating that PSI should be made available at marginal cost except where there are very good reasons not to.

In preparation for this legislation the EC commissioned a study called POPSIS (Pricing of Public Sector Information Study). The results of this were published last year and make very interesting reading. POPSIS had 2 main results:

1. Where PSI had been opened up following the 2003 act, in most cases the increase in use of the PSI was dramatic.
2. Where PSB’s do impose charges, in most cases, the revenue generated is less than 1% of the body and barely covers the costs of selling the data.

The conclusion is clear, that opening PSI up for re-use has a dramatic effect. However, evidence is now building that not only is there a qualitative impact of a free and open policy but that also this can bring wider economic benefits.

The revenues collected by the PSB’s covers less than 1% of their costs and barely cover the cost of selling the data. By opening it up to many more users free of charge or at marginal cost, these users are then generating economic value. If we take one case that is highlighted, that of the Dutch meteorological service (KMI), when charging was ended in 2003, revenues from businesses went to €20m from €5m before the data was opened up. According to Eurostat, the average tax take in Europe is around 40% of GDP (value-added tax, social taxes, income tax ) which means the economy has gained €20m and the exchequer has gained an additional €6m in tax revenues (from €2m to €8m).

So what about EO in all this? I first became interested through formulating EARSC position on GMES. The downstream industry want access to free data convinced that this is the best way to develop the market. Intuitively it must be the case, as in the other instances, if more data (PSI) is used more economic value can be created and more PSI will be used if it is free. However, can we show that in addition to more use, more economic value will be generated?

We hope so and are planning just that through a study recently started sponsored by ESA. We are looking at examples from other domains and how to link them to EO activities. We shall look at both qualitative and quantitative benefits and we shall draw conclusions and make recommendations on policy. Our work will continue into the autumn when we shall publish results that will be presented in an open meeting in October.

As a first step, we took the opportunity of the EARSC AGM on 6th July to organise a workshop on the subject. We had a number of very interesting presentations and discussions on the European legislation, the impact of PSI re-use in some of the other domains and how this could translate into the EO domain, the relevance of Inspire and the experiences in the meteorological business area. I am looking for as many examples as possible where business has been generated using free data from satellites and if you have any that you know of I shall be very pleased to hear about them.

best wishes
Geoff Sawyer
EARSC Secretary General

Eomag_Editorial, Issue 30_Summer-2012.pdf
www.eomag.eu.pdf

The first instance came under the initiative with the Oil & Gas industries, OGEO, where representatives of the OGP (The International Oil and Gas Producers Association) are asking that certain products become industry recognised. For example, oil spill monitoring where, following the high profile Deepwater Horizon / Macondo disaster, several cross-industry projects are under way to assess how the O&G sector need to be able to react quickly when an emergency arises. The persons responsible for taking action need to quickly identify what services to call upon and have the confidence that these are qualified to respond to the crisis. EO service companies that are prepared with pre-qualified and recognised services will have an edge.

Secondly, when I was visiting recently with the World Bank, I learned that officers there have spent several days searching for companies that could supply certain product. The particular case was also in response to an emergency situation where time and effort was lost in searching rather than responding. The officers concerned needed a fast and reliable way to identify potential suppliers. This mandates a common language to define what products meet the customer requirements and a qualification process that gives the customer confidence that he will get what he expects.

The third example lies with the insurance industry sector. In a recent workshop that we organised with ESA, several companies were expressing their wish to have a single interface to help them find appropriate service providers. Here again companies want to be able to go straight to recognised and qualified suppliers of services. Whilst not necessarily an emergency, the time to respond is important in order that insurance companies can understand the situation and plan their actions.

All three examples are pointing to the need for the industry to express itself clearly using a common language and standard definitions. Once customers start asking for this then we should be ready to respond.

As a first step, we have produced a taxonomy for our market. We first felt the need for such a structured approach as we went to take eopages live. I have talked about eopages before and am excited about this tool to help potential customers find competent suppliers. We started to design eopages using lists of products and services coming from earlier studies. But we found that the market definitions coming from these earlier studies did not adequately represent the market as we know it. We therefore spent some time studying how other organisations and companies describe the EO Service market and generating a new breakdown and structure.

Since this must reflect both a client view and a supplier view we have generated both market and thematic structures and have linked them through the eo service. For example, an eo service to provide maps of floods would meet a number of client needs and therefore fits into several market sectors (insurance, emergency responders, etc). In a thematic view we include it under geohazards. This is not easy to describe in words and if you are interested to know more, please contact us for a copy of the document.

The taxonomy will not just be used for Eopages where eo service companies will present themselves, EARSC will shortly be starting to conduct a detailed survey into the geo-information services industry. In the next few months, we shall be contacting as many companies as we can identify to find out aspects of their business; revenues, employees, business model etc. One aspect will be to look at the business sectors they work in and the types of products they have to offer. We shall be using the taxonomy to structure these discussions and to present our findings.

In another project, EARSC has a working group looking at the problem of describing common products through a set of standards. A first step is to identify what already exists and much work has been done under the auspices of the ESA Value Adding element programme and the EC GMES programme. Various products and services have been developed and we seek to assemble the documents describing each of them into a single source. The basis for organising this is the taxonomy where we can take each of the services identified and place them into the market and thematic structures. We have designed and put in place the database. Now the group is working to assemble the documents.

Once we have this completed we can start to understand, with guidance from the customer in market segments, what needs to be done to ensure a common understanding that meets their needs.
This work will take some time. If you are interested, contact us. It is fundamental work, not in itself generating new business.

Nevertheless, it should provide a sound platform for the eo services sector by responding to our clients requests for recognised products and providing reassurance of an industry that is moving to meet operational needs.

Best wishes,
Geoff Sawyer,
EARSC Secretary General

Eomag_Editorial, Issue29_Spring-2012.pdf
Eomag!_Issue 29_Spring 2012.pdf

Hence, for some time now, SME’s have been recognised by policy makers as deserving of special support and I think now and for EARSC this is particularly true. For two reasons: the role of SME’s in generating employment growth is increasingly being recognised and the structure and dynamics of our sector where SME’s dominate.

The Kauffman institute recently published a paper (2) showing how new companies are responsible for most net job creation. The analysis, based on extensive data available in the US, looks at the age of companies (years of existence) relative to the net new jobs created between 1992 and 2005. It shows that, in the United States, on average 3million net, new jobs were created by companies in their first year of life against 350,000 net, new jobs for all other companies (ie more than 1 year old out to those centuries old). Of course there is in reality a large turnover of jobs and what it is showing is that older companies are shedding as many jobs as they are creating. Nevertheless, the importance of new-start-ups is striking and this finding is very significant for policy towards SME’s.

And of course, most companies in the EO sector are SME’s (ie less than 250 employees). From the last survey carried out in 2008, 90% of the companies have less than 60 employees. Indeed we see a very dynamic sector which is changing rapidly, with new companies entering all the time. It reflects a healthy situation where new start-ups are readily created to grow or to be acquired if successful. We very much hope to update these figures with a detailed survey during the course of 2012.

The Warsaw conference concluded that SME’s represent an important end-user community for satellite applications. However, lacking resources, they are often not aware of the potential coming from satellite applications and more is needed to raise awareness. Three concrete strategies were discussed in the round table:

• to encourage and facilitate the sharing of experience and the exchange of best practice,
• to highlight the business case through success stories, and
• to improve the dialogue between the end-user SME’s and the service providers.

The Warsaw workshop concluded on the importance of policy shaping to help SME’s. Frank Baumeister who is head of sector policies at the European Association of Craft, Small and Medium Enterprises, spoke about the importance of “understanding each other” and “speaking the same language”; a view repeated by Colin Hicks, President of Eurisy. This is a recurring theme; to raise awareness and to improve dialogue and is one key element of our strategy to develop links between different communities for example with the oil and gas community -OGEO. Here the goal is to help the EO services industries and the oil and gas companies to communicate better. I will return to this in a moment.

We have also recognised the importance of speaking the same language as we have started to open up the new marketplace tool – eopages (www.eopages.eu). The issue has been to adopt a common language so that potential customers seeking services are not bamboozled by a vast array of names for the same service offering from different suppliers. We are in the process of preparing a taxonomy which is being reviewed by the EARSC working group on Industry Best Practice. This will form the basis both for eopages and for the industry survey and we hope will make a valuable contribution to clarifying the EO services market.

For the EO services companies, note that Eopages is now being populated – if you wish to have your company listed then contact Monica – and is being promoted regularly. We shall do even more once the market and services structures are consolidated according to the taxonomy. For potential customers, take a look and bookmark the site. We hope it can be useful now; we believe it will be very useful in the near future.

The OGEO Portal is also coming alive. After the very successful 2nd Oil and Gas workshop held in Frascati in early December it is being progressively opened to more companies from both communities. As indicated earlier, the goal is to help improve understanding between the EO services sector and the Oil and Gas sector. If you want to know more then go to www.ogeo-portal.eu. The workshop had close to 250 people registered with around 180 attending. It brought together EO service providers and oil and gas experts as well as geologists – as it was organised within the annual Geological Remote Sensing Group meeting. Much of the richness of the meeting came from this unique combination of people able to exchange; a facility that was openly appreciated and welcomed by many attendees.

It is now just one year since I took over as Secretary General of EARSC. It has been an exciting year for me both professionally and personally. I have had no regrets at leaving the big company environment for an independent life. I am extremely pleased to be in a position to help the EO services sector develop. It is a critical time for GMES (how many times can we say that? I recall a similar story for Galileo nearly 10 years ago!). We shall continue to focus on new ideas and trying to create new opportunities for EARSC members. I am always pleased to meet with companies from the sector whether members or potential members 😉 and it only remains to wish everyone a happy and successful new year for 2012.

Geoff Sawyer
EARSC Secretary General

(1) Growth and Competitiveness using Satellite Applications – practical approaches for non-space SME’s ; Eurisy in partnership with Unicorn

(2) The Importance of Start-ups in Job Creation and Job Destruction, Tim Kane, Kauffman Foundation July2010

Eomag_Editorial, Issue28_Winter-2011-2012.pdf

This news could barely come at a worse time. Just as the first Sentinels will be completed and ready to be launched there will be no funding to operate them and deliver GMES products. Many services have reached already a significant level of maturity based on existing satellites or contributing missions . Continuity to the Users is of key importance.

What will happen to these satellites and all the investment that has gone into them and the services? Will Member States pick up the bill? It would seem unlikely. It seems more likely that they will be moth-balled until the funding is sorted out; but when could this be?

The main argument of the European Commission is that the EU budget cannot tolerate the uncertainty in funding needs which has been the case with Galileo and is even more so with ITER. Consequently, Member States should carry the financial risk by funding GMES outside the MFF. But essentially this is what has already happened up to now. The risk element of space programme comes with developing new technology and new satellites. The Sentinel funding (some €3b for this generation of satellites) has been made through ESA by its Member States and significant investments made into preparing the services.

From 2014 onwards, the EU budget would be funding the operations of the Sentinels (including repeat satellite purchase), the purchase of data from contributing missions (mostly MS investments), the in-situ elements and the downstream services. This contains no risk and there can be full confidence that the proposed €845m pa is a ceiling cost and that the operations and services, as well as future infrastructure, can be scaled to fit within it.

The arguments for funding GMES out of the Community budget to me seem overpowering since it is clearly a programme that offers benefits to Europe as a whole. The information from GMES will inform at all levels of administration (local, regional, national, European, global). It will enforce the implementation of European Regulations (environmental and others). It will provide European treaty negotiators with access to independent validation information without which they will be dependent on that coming from those across the table with whom they negotiate. It will provide local administrations information on the extent of flood risk or actual flood events. It will provide many other types of information be it for fisheries, disasters, natural resources, health, environment, climate or other policies whether to serve the Spaniard in Bilbao or the Slovak in Nitra.

GMES will also be a source of innovation and economic benefits. The geo-spatial sector is growing at around 10% per annum and is a strong lever towards innovative services; many delivered through smartphones, tablet pc’s and other new consumer platforms. Convergence between maps, street images and location based services becomes more apparent every day. GMES has promised to be a stimulus for industry not just in the provision of governmental services but also increasingly into the private sector. Furthermore, the services industry has already been investing in new services but this cannot continue whilst there is uncertainty as to whether data will become available or that the governmental market will develop.

As we described in our July position paper just after the news broke, whether GMES is now financed inside the MFF or not, the uncertainty created will undermine the uptake of these services which industry has been preparing over the last 5 years and more. Users expect and need sustainability. This alone places a question-mark over the future market. Thus we need to act rapidly to ensure that users convince policy makers that GMES is deserving of Community funding. That without it many public services will go un-developed. That the policies and operations of many of our European agencies (EEA, EMSA, Frontex etc ) are placed in jeopardy or else will cost more. Whilst for our sector a good business opportunity will be lost, the greater loss will be for the public sector users who could have access to timely and effective geo-spatial information. Over the next few months, we need to work together with our clients to explain to the European decision makers why GMES is critical to their mission.

It will be a long battle, but one we should win for user organisations, public and commercial customers, our industry and for Europe.

Geoff Sawyer,
EARSC Secretary General

Within the seminar on GMES and the future space policy, we heard from ESA regarding their proposals on data policy from Sentinels and then from the European Commission (Dg Clima and DG Enterprise) and from the European Parliament (Karl von Wogau) who all emphasised how important GMES would be towards meeting international obligations for environment and security as well as meeting internal European needs for geo-information.

These discussions took place the day after the EC had published its proposals for the next multi-annual financial framework (MFF) in which it put future operational funding for GMES outside of the proposed budget. The main concern seems to be the ability of EC budgets to cope with projects that overspend and overrun. In which case, it seems to be a particularly curious message to be sending that Galileo – after all its difficulties of funding and timescales – should be considered inside the MFF and yet GMES that is running to cost and to budget should be outside. What this means is more uncertainty for our industry until a firmer funding basis can be established because at the moment, there is no agreed funding for GMES beyond 2013. At a stroke, GMES has been placed into the same situation that has been so problematic in moving Galileo forward.

It also seems to cast doubt upon European ambitions in space policy. After years of striving to offer a stronger political dimension to space policy, the EC declines to take the lead by funding its 2nd flagship project preferring instead to throw the ball back to Member States. GMES is a project which is constructed on the basis of real, EU user’s needs but will we return to a situation where it is down to multi-international efforts funded through ESA? There should be some interesting discussions amongst ministers in December.

EARSC has a position paper on this subject that at the time of writing is still under review but which should be public by the time that eomag is published.

Onto lighter subjects, I am very pleased that Tony Bigio of the World Bank has accepted to provide the eomag interview this quarter. I met Tony when I visited Washington with ESA in April and I am sure there is a lot that EARSC and the WB can do together. Tony points to the strong potential for an uptake of product use within WB projects and that the 12 Eoworld projects launched by ESA in the spring can offer very valuable success stories. Eopages will provide a tool to promote these to the WB as well as other customers as well as giving potential users within the WB a tool to find their partners. We shall be looking to take this and other ideas further over the next 6 to 12 months.

Finally, I am pleased to welcome 2 new directors to the EARSC board. The board works hard on your behalf, giving me direction (and correction!) and representing members in key meetings, conferences, workshops etc. It is a very important role that they play on behalf of the industry sector and I wish Stephane Israel (Astrium Geo-information Services) and Noel Parmentier (Eurosense) every success. A word of thanks also to Michael Prechtel (Rapideye) who has taken on the challenging task as EARSC treasurer replacing Andre Jadot who has successfully managed the EARSC accounts for many years. We wish all great success in their new roles.

Wishing you a good summer!
Geoff Sawyer
EARSC Secretary General

PDF: articles-1566-editorial-summer-2011

I see this promotion as the first in many awareness raising ventures which are about more than just increasing knowledge of EO services and what they can offer. For me a strong element is to help those inside organisations who already know what can be done, to have an easier time when they wish to procure industry services. If we can raise awareness amongst the management and senior decision makers inside the organisations then even if they do not drive the use of EO services directly, they will be far more receptive when presented with project proposals for approval from those who are using and wish to use EO products and services.

For the visit with the World Bank I shall be showing examples supplied by a number of EARSC members. I thank you for your support and we shall no doubt be contacting you for other specific examples in the future. All the examples received have been put into eopages which will very soon be going live (I am hoping to demonstrate using it next week – we are that close). To recall, eopages is a yellow pages brokerage service for our industry. Once it is live, service providers will be invited to put examples of products and services into the database whereby any prospective users will be able to search and find if a particular service is available. They will then be able to get in touch with suppliers either directly or through eopages depending on the type of service and the brokerage selected.

The second focus of our activities with a strong emphasis on awareness-raising, is with the O&G industry. EARSC has taken on the secretariat of a working group that was established following the successful workshop held at ESRIN, Frascati last September. We are working with a number of senior oil & gas industry representatives to improve communication and to organise future events. We are also putting together some tools that will hopefully enable an exchange between our two communities. I cannot say more now but you can be sure I’ll report on progress next time when I am hopeful we shall have a prototype working.

I have also held many meetings over the last few weeks which should in time lead to new opportunities. For example, I met separately with both NEREUS and ERRIN in Brussels. Both organisations act as umbrella associations representing European regions which should become significant users of data coming from GMES. They are also involved in two projects (Graal and DorisNet) recently started by the European Commission under FP7, with the goal to enable the uptake of GMES services. I shall be following these closely and looking to see how we can ensure that they create opportunities for the EO services industry.

You may also have seen that I have prepared and issued a position paper on “Exploiting GMES Operational Services”. You will find this elsewhere in Eomag. It was quite a challenge to reach a position that all EARSC members could agree with; but we managed it and the paper has been welcomed by both ESA and the EC. It highlighted three issues that are critical for EO service companies and I expect that we shall continue to develop our views on all of them. In this respect, we are examining the possibility to set up a workshop to look in more detail at GMES data policy and how our recommendations can be implemented. If anyone is interested to join an EARSC working group looking at this topic please let the secretariat know.

Just a reminder that the EARSC AGM will take place on 30th June and as usual it will be held in Brussels. We hope to have a good line-up of speakers and an afternoon workshop looking at new markets. More details will be sent shortly and I hope to see you there.

Finally, this is the 25th edition of Eomag. Congratulations are due to Monica for having developed and run this so successfully to reach this milestone. Eomag is one of our primary communication tools and feedback I have received shows that it is very well appreciated. Well done Monica and I look forward to the next 25 issues with great interest.

Geoff Sawyer
EARSC Secretary General

www-eomag-eu_articles_1480_editorial-spring-2011_spb4fcam.pdf

I think therefore I have a good knowledge of this industry and the market and I am very excited to become the Secretary General at this important time. I have many ideas to take the industry forward – because it cannot be my objective just to develop the Association. This would be to put the cart before the horse since it is clear that EARSC exists to serve its members. If there is a strong EO industry then there can be a strong EARSC. But we need to present the arguments for the industry in the strongest possible way and this is where EARSC must act. We need to develop together and this will be my goal.

With the Board of Directors I have agreed a work plan and targets for 2011 which includes raising the awareness of the industry, developing links to other industries so opening new business opportunities, and to continue to focus the Eovox 2 study to support EO industry goals. During the year I hope to review the longer term goals and strategy for the Association and for this I should like your input.

This industry is like no other. It has a lot of very small and young companies operating in specialised fields alongside a few larger companies. Both are essential for a healthy sector. The small companies start from a clever idea, most likely in a very narrow and specialised domain. If the idea is successful, the company will grow to become a bigger operator or to be taken over by one of the bigger ones. This cycle can only refresh if the larger companies exist alongside the small ones. If there are no large companies then this would indicate that the market was no longer interesting. Meanwhile, new companies are constantly appearing.

Therefore it seems to me that the industry structure in EO shows a healthy sector, dynamic and looking to grow. EARSC can help that process. As I say, I have many ideas but I would welcome your ideas as well. I believe that we should focus as much on a commercial market as an institutional one. We cannot deny that governments are important to our industry – as they are important for the whole space industry – but recognise also that our industry is important to governments. Not only do we provide critical information to help policy development but we can also provide significant economic benefits.

One of the first things I should like is to hear what you want from me. If I haven’t called or talked with you already then I shall be doing so. But there is no need to wait! If you have specific ideas for where EARSC can add value for your company, then let me know. Please call or write as you prefer and I shall welcome the exchange. This message is not just for EARSC members. As I said a few lines up the page, the EO and geo-information industry is important for governments so I would welcome suggestions from other stakeholders if there are topics you believe that EARSC should address.

Monica and I shall seek to give a significant boost to EARSC in 2011. For the longer term we shall set out our plans and priorities for review and agreement with the Board. This has already started when the EARSC Board held a joint meeting with ESA just before Xmas where it was already clear that there are many initiatives to develop. But there are surely others that are missing and I really want to hear your ideas.

Have a healthy and successful new year,
Geoff

Geoff Sawyer
EARSC Secretary General

Eomag_Editorial, Issue 24_Winter 20102011.pdf

Satellite data has been used in EO services for the oil & gas industry for many years. Examples include exploration both on land and at sea, monitoring of sea state conditions for off-shore installations during both design and operations phases, monitoring of sea ice and icebergs for rig protection and of course most topically, monitoring of oil spills. In respect of the latter we heard a fascinating account of the operations conducted in the gulf to provide daily surveillance of the oil leaking from the Macondo well using up to 47 aircraft and several satellites. It was organised almost like a military operation.

Despite this long history of working together both oil and EO services industries experts were calling for a closer dialogue; oil industry was saying “tell us what you can do”, and the EO service providers were saying “tell us what you need”. And this was between two sectors which have already experience of working together.

I was also a few days later at the annual Security Research Conference. This event is organised in the autumn by the current EU presidency – so in this case it was held in Ostend in Belgium. It is the 5th such event and is generally focused on the activities surrounding the European Security Research programme (ESRP) funded under the EU Framework Programme 7.

Here, the sectors representing supply and users are far less familiar with each other and there are similar calls to understand better what each expects/needs/wants. Whilst users are often included in the teams for research projects as advisors, or sounding boards, this is not sufficient to develop sustainable products adapted to a European market. The lack of common requirements amongst the large number of users means that products become bespoke and not very competitive. A common theme is the lack of resources within users’ organizations to look ahead at the products that could help in their jobs.

In both cases one solution to me seems to be somewhat similar. That is to create fora whereby supply and demand can meet in a neutral arena. In so doing we can learn each others language and develop a far better mutual understanding in a non-competitive environment. At the same time participation of many players also avoids a narrow view and possibly restrictive solutions.

EARSC has a strong role to play in this respect as do other umbrella bodies on both sides of the business and hopefully, in the months to come, we can find ways to offer members the possibility to engage with one or more user communities.

Geoff Sawyer
EARSC Director

Eomag_Editorial, Issue 23_Autumn 2010.pdf.pdf

Taleb takes the example first espoused by Bertrand Russell of the chicken that after 1000 days of being fed is reconfirmed in his belief that he will receive food every day by being fed yet another day. However, the farmer, with a different view of the world knows that this natural order is about to change whilst to the chicken, the day of his slaughter comes as quite a shock – a black swan event.

When BP started drilling their well on the Macondo field in the Gulf of Mexico they were not expecting problems only pleasant surprises. They had risk systems in place, safety procedures well rehearsed and yet somehow the well failed, the deepwater horizon rig exploded and one of the greatest environmental disasters in history unfolded with the results still unknown. Every day that BP drilled without accident reassured them that their risk systems were working and yet on 20th April all this changed. This was a Black Swan event for BP.

That one single event can bring down a £200b company is itself a Black Swan and yet how many such possibilities exist in our companies? How good are our own risk systems, procedures? What could bring us down? Most probably for service companies that make up the majority of EARSC members risks are smaller but customers can fail, markets can change dramatically and quickly and we should all ensure that periodically we review what measures we have in place to protect us.

EARSC held its AGM in Brussels on 22nd June and the afternoon was devoted to a workshop on the insurance industry and Geo-spatial information. BP happens to be self-insured so they have their own fund set aside to deal with disasters yet this is rare and Fiona Shaw of Willis Analytics and Dr Haverkamp of MunichRe explained that they have significant needs for geo-spatial information to support their risk assessments for underwriting. This looks to be a market worth exploring further and EARSC will continue to act as a broker and mediator to create opportunities for its members.

The morning was devoted to the agm itself and a workshop looking at GMES. The agm proceeded smoothly; Han Wensink gave an upbeat report on the industry and the activities of the association. Importantly he reported that we are finally near to finding a Secretary General for the Association that will indeed be a major step forward once he or she is in place. The treasurer, Andre Jadot, reported that the finances of the Association remain sound – in no small way aided by the award of the eoVox2 study for which Logica is the prime contractor but which supports directly EARSC in its business.

On GMES, first Norbert Glante Member of the European Parliament and rapporteur of the recent opinion on the Initial services communication. Praised the progress being made by the EC on GMES and welcomed the voice of EARSC as a representative body with which to engage in shaping future legislation.

Then Mauro Facchini, deputy head of the GMES Bureau also welcomed the opportunity to exchange with EARSC and the position paper that we are preparing. This will help greatly in ensuring that the industry role is recognized and reflected in the future actions. He explained that now the initial operations has been approved the focus will turn to governance.

It remains to say that the EARSC board is very positive concerning the future of the industry and the role that EARSC can play to help all its members.

Geoff Sawyer
EARSC Director

www-eomag-eu_articles_1242_editorial-summer-2010_2l5okhrb.pdf