INTRODUCTION

Why has been decided the Lille Forum as a networking platform to present the new brand name for GMES “KOPERNIKUS”?

As we are all aware GMES is celebrating this year its tenth anniversary. I do not know if this represents the age of reason. However, what I know is that GMES has reached such a level development that it is currently at a crossroad. The consensus among interested parties is that GMES must now leave the research phase to move towards the operational stage by delivering sustainable services based on a well-coordinated and fully reliable Earth Observation system.

To mark this move to a new era the Commission considered that a new name should be adopted. The Lille Forum on GMES organised by the French Presidency last September was a timely opportunity to launch KOPERNIKUS.

How the European Commission is treating the communication aspects of KOPERNIKUS? Is there now a need of branding the new name among stakeholders?

I believe that it is clear to everyone that substituting GMES with KOPERNIKUS is much more than a matter of pure branding. Nevertheless, names play an important role in terms of perception. Something complex such as the global monitoring for environment and security is made easier to identify through a symbolic name.

The purpose of KOPERNIKUS is to go beyond what the acronym GMES implied so far. Ensuring both the preservation of environment and security of European citizens will obviously continue to be a matter of concern. Thanks to KOPERNIKUS we would like to add something tangible which speaks to everybody including remote sensing companies.

In our view, KOPERNIKUS must become as familiar as GALILEO is to a layman. To achieve this, the Commission will develop in the coming weeks appropriate external communication campaigns to increase the awareness of the initiative. It will also take every opportunity to promote KOPERNIKUS with the help of media. To illustrate this change, a specific logo has been elaborated.

GOVERNANCE, COOPERATION, PARTNERSHIP

What are your thoughts on the following KOPERNIKUS pillars? a.European public interest service for environment and security-related information? b.European public undertaking?c.for a buy its users? d.a European contribution to an international effort?

The Commission is preparing a Communication, which will set out its views on the future governance structure of KOPERNIKUS. More generally, the Commission intends to propose a specific European Programme taking the form of a legal instrument including both institutional and financial components.

Indeed, KOPERNIKUS is mainly a service provider delivering information based on Earth Observation. The services provided must meet the end-users needs since KOPERNIKUS is clearly a system driven by public demand. Of course, users will only be willing to use KOPERNIKUS services if they have the guaranty that the required information will be provided in the long run. User representatives have been involved since the beginning of this undertaking; this should be maintained and even increased in the future.

The data it provides are a public good. As a common good this information must be available free of charge to anybody regardless of its public or private nature who wants to use it. A return to investment can be expected through the creation of a large downstream service industry, which will flourish provided a steady state is attained with the availability of KOPERNIKUS data on a sustainable basis.

In essence, KOPERNIKUS infrastructures are owned either by European or national entities with their respective political and financial responsibility. KOPERNIKUS requires a partnership unlike GALILEO. As a result, a networking approach is necessary.

Although it might seem paradoxical at first sight, autonomy of knowledge requires international cooperation. Some KOPERNIKUS services rely on infrastructures that are located outside the European territory. To avoid the risk of loosing access to relevant information international cooperation should be established. At the same time, KOPERNIKUS’ infrastructure or general information may be made available to international endeavours such as, for example, in the frame of Climate Change. International cooperation can be established on bilateral dialogues or on multilateral initiatives as, for instance to the GEO process (Group of Earth Observation) or GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System) where the Commission could play a key role.

What kind of cooperative efforts between European Institutions and Industry will bring KOPERNIKUS? What type of dialogue mechanism could take place with the service industry?

KOPERNIKUS is a true partnership and requires the involvement of many actors. But as the overall endeavour depends on the contribution of each individual member, there is a need to formalise this partnership and the commitments of its members.

The role of the EU should go beyond its traditional role of implementation. That is why, in my view, the Commission should also ensure the overall coordination of partners at national and European levels.

The dialogue with industry is a prerequisite to ensure that KOPERNIKUS services and observation infrastructure respond to the needs of identified users. This condition is fundamental in order to ensure that the EU responds to public needs and that the sector industry is involved in a fruitful market with a lot of opportunities for downstream applications.

What is your idea for the KOPERNIKUS governance scheme?

In our view, the Commission should take the lead in this domain to make a decisive step forward and make KOPERNIKUS a reality. The Commission should ensure the overall coordination of partners at national and European levels.

Without prejudging the final decision of the Commission on KOPERNIKUS our intention is to propose that the Commission have the central programming responsibility as a Management authority. The Commission would be assisted by a Steering Body of Member States for its coordination tasks as well as a Programme Committee for the budget implementation.

In our view the ESA should act as a development and supplier agency. It should focus its activities on the overall coordination of the Space domain. EUMETSAT (the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites) could be involved in the observation of both the atmosphere and the oceans. Regarding in situ namely, air-, sea- and land-based infrastructures the European Environment Agency would be an excellent candidate for the consolidation of different partners input.

Public investment is crucial for SMEs so that investments already made by industry are secured that can be ready for competition. What are the biggest challenges the commercial Earth Observation Industry is facing in the coming years?What kind of downstream service industry would Europe benefit from?

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are at the heart of Europe’s economy. Creating more new firms and nurturing them is essential if Europe is to maintain its competitive position in the global economy and continue to make sure that its citizens benefit from an ever-improving quality of life. This is a credo within the Commission. Of course, this applies to any industrial sector including SMEs operating in the space domain, particularly companies dealing with remote sensing, which, I understand, represent approximately 65 % of your members.

Earth Observation SMEs are used to coping with many challenges. Provided KOPERNIKUS is on the right tracks, benefits for SMEs, in particular for the service providers’ sector are expected thanks to the availability of products provided by the KOPERNIKUS Core Services and by maintenance of the operational infrastructure, both financed by public funds. Moreover, any sector oriented action is likely to be supported by the Small Business Act, recently proposed by the Commission.

FUNDING

What will be the budget envelope and budget breakdown for the downstream services call?

KOPERNIKUS is a shared and distributed system. Consequently, it is and should continue to be co-financed at European, intergovernmental and national levels.

The EU contributes to its development through the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Development where 1.2 billion € is foreseen for KOPERNIKUS. Roughly 35% of this amount are planned for the development of services (core and downstream).

While the first call had foreseen financing for the continued development of core services, the current call (that will last until early December) concentrates on downstream market by investing some 30 to 35 million € in this activity. Additional financing to support development activities for both core services and the downstream sector are foreseen for next calls.

We also need to establish an operational budget line which will bridge the gap between the end of the preparatory action ending 2010 and the new financial perspectives. This will be essential for the continuity of KOPERNIKUS services which have mainly been to date co-financed by research funds.

Is the new downstream services call broad enough to support the launch of KOPERNIKUS operationality?

At Community level, KOPERNIKUS has been and still is funded through R&D Framework Programmes. The launch of the KOPERNIKUS operationality needs the specific EU funding that do not exist so far.

Given that “Operational services need operational budget” what is the corresponding planning and budgeting process?Is KOPERNIKUS now on the right track of funding?

Moving into a fully operational system means that services have to be provided on a daily basis and therefore KOPERNIKUS can no longer be funded solely as a research project. It is therefore essential that in due course an overall financing strategy is established providing for specific allocations to the services (both core and downstream), space and in situ components of KOPERNIKUS from the European Union and Member State sources.

The cost of KOPERNIKUS over time will depend on the scope of the services to be delivered, on the required observation infrastructure to be set up and on the degree of international cooperation, particularly the involvement of the EU Member States. KOPERNIKUS needs its proper funding and an appropriate structure at European level if it is to live up the challenge.

What are the minimum requirements to succeed with a downstream service?

Thanks to KOPERNIKUS, the EU offers tremendous opportunities for the downstream market: the availability of free information through KOPERNIKUS core services as well as the guarantee of a long term observation infrastructure are favourable conditions for a downstream market.

Downstream service providers are expected to be the layer filling the gap between multi purpose products generated by core services and the specific needs that could be identified by specific user communities or regional authorities. Given the vast range of applications, a flourishing market with a lot of opportunities will come up.

FUTURE, SOCIETY

In the light of the latest KOPERNIKUS developments what will be the task ahead? What is your vision of the future? How do you see the future steps for KOPERNIKUS? How do you see Europe’s autonomy in space in the coming years?

Any steps forward in the European construction require patience and pragmatism. I am confident of succeeding in our enterprise. KOPERNIKUS will reach a steady state sooner or latter.

Europe needs an effective space policy to enable it to exert global leadership in selected policy areas in accordance with European interests and values. To fulfil such roles the EU increasingly relies on autonomous decision-making, on space-based and communication systems.

Regarding the future stages of KOPERNIKUS, the finalisation of the legal instrument I mentioned earlier is in preparation. This will take the form of concrete proposals on the ways and means to set up the long term governance of KOPERNIKUS, its financial sustainability, the unrestricted access to the data and the international cooperation. It will be a tangible signal of the Commission’s commitment to a wide EU audience.

What are your expectations of Earth Observation development in the future for citizens?Which important benefits will be provided in the near future?

European citizens are often complaining about Europe and Brussels that in their view seem to be too remote from their daily reality.

At the Lille Forum we have had the opportunity to see a demonstration of the huge capabilities of products derived from Earth Observation core services in the fields of emergency response, land management and marine management that are currently at a pre-operational stage. The technical validation of these services at the operational level is at a final stage following which a plethora of service applications will be available.

For instance, citizens will soon have access to continuous flood forecast information based on satellite radar imagery directly from their home computer, thanks to KOPERNIKUS. This will change people’s life in areas that are frequently subject to flooding. This will not only benefit European residents but will also be available to those who are unfortunately living in places where natural disasters are a recurrent phenomenon. KOPERNIKUS would thus provide an effective instrument in support humanitarian aide.

Other examples such as air quality monitoring, measurement of UV radiation, extreme weather events forecasting or water quality assessment clearly demonstrate that KOPERNIKUS is directly linked to our day-life.

Mr. Weissenberg, thank you very much for your time, and for sharing your thoughts and comments with the EOmag readers

ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE

Could you please briefly describe the current responsibilities as Chief of the French Inter-Ministerial Task Force on GMES?
I am in charge of the national coordination of the French participation to GMES. The coordination is placed under the responsibility of the French Ministry for Research. All topics relating to GMES are concerned: GMES Core Services, GMES space component, GMES partnerships with national bodies, mobilization of the downstream sectors.

Could you comment on the process to get national views coordinated under the European Institutions?
In principle it is organized through GAC, which represents the Member States (EU and ESA). But in reality, the Commission is talking directly with Institutions, especially those for which a European coordination exists (Meteorology or cartography for example). By doing so, the results can be biased. Indeed, most of the concerned institutions are not known from the Commission which has been asked to use the national representation through GAC. The ISOWG is the first answer to this demand. This type of process must be generalized quickly to consolidate the necessary GMES partnerships at all levels.

DIALOGUE WITH EO INDUSTRY: COOPERATION & PARTNERSHIP

What is your idea for the governance scheme and the related business model to be adopted?
An overall GMES governance is necessary to ensure the coherence of the programme and that future investments, from EU and MP, will be used in an optimized manner. Furthermore, there is a lot of horizontal matters such as transparency, responsibility, security of information which must be treated centrally. The Central Governance will be also in charge to prioritize GMES evolutions in accordance with the GMES appropriations; at European and national levels (the GMES partnerships). At the level of the heart of GMES which are de core services, the objective is to help the development of an economic activities using information on the environment. It is therefore necessary to withdraw any restraints in the use of such information, notably by an adapted Core Services deliveries policy. The Commission is presently thinking to a free and open delivery to European stake holders, with exceptions such security on strategic matters. Such policy has a cost. The deliveries from the Core Services will have to be adapted to the available budgets: not all deliveries from GMES will be labelled GMES Service. Further more, it will be necessary to define general data and elaborated products procurement policy to help the Core Services to acquire the necessary data and products from bodies outside the GMES partnership. It is anticipated that the cost of downstream services, provided by SMEs, will be mainly based on the value added by these companies and will not contain any significant part of the up streams cost.

The sector is following the Lisbon agenda in terms of helping growth and jobs in Europe… but what do you think about benchmarking along some other industrial sectors?
It is certainly a good idea. It could help to understand how such markets are working. It is always necessary to build on others experiences.

What type of dialogue mechanism could take place with the service industry and national institutions? How could be integrated the cooperation of industry with other partners?
GMES is a user based programme. As such it is necessary to take care of the users demands for future evolution of the provided services. Consultation of all users may appear to be inefficient or even impossible; I am convinced that this dialogue must be based primarily with the service industry. Indeed, they are in strong interaction with the end users and they know perfectly what are their needs. Partnerships with research must be strengthening to ensure the service industry is still competitive by developing new services from GMES Core Services.

In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges the commercial earth observation industry is facing in the years to come? What kind of downstream service industry would Europe benefit from?
If by Earth Observation industry you mean the space industry, I guess that the biggest challenge is to change dramatically its business model to go from a state based industry to an industry driven by the market. The cost of the space infrastructures will have to adapt to the willingness and capacity to pay of the users. Europe will benefit from all industry related to services on the environment, but some sectors are more important than others: for example water resources, air quality are probably more important than many others.

Is the European Earth Observation on the right track?
It depends… But certainly Europe has been able to build something which is important with decisions on GMES related space programme and on the consolidation of the meteorological space observatories.

Data Policy establishment is a priority, how is that treated at the Inter Ministerial Task Force on GMES?
It is a difficult matter as it will certainly trigger significant changes in the business models on which are based European providers of data and products. All important national data and products providers are part of our national coordination. We have set up a national working group to mirror the ISOWG. The members are from all stakeholders, from national institutional bodies to NGO on the environment which are also contributing to the gathering of useful data.

DOWNSTREAM SERVICES CALL

How do you see the planning and the budgeting process in Earth Observation programmes?
Clearly now we must concentrate on the next budget cycle of the EU, eg beginning in 2014. At that moment a true and independent GMES will have to be financed. It is therefore important to work during the following months on the costs to provide GMES core services, including the necessity to maintain on the long run the provision of observation, from space or in situ, both at global and local scales. Trade off and prioritisations are not possible without a good knowledge on costs.

From your perspective, what are the minimum requirements to succeed with a downstream service?
Difficult to answer. We must work together in the following months and years to develop new types of Downstream services built on the Core Products which will be delivered by GMES. It is foreseen that this Core Information will enable the downstream companies to propose new and more efficient services to their clients.

How do you see the future steps for the GMES?
Next step will to set up an interim governance which will help in the building of a GMES programme to be operational at the horizon of 2014. It is also necessary to build on the FP 6 and 7 results to propose rapidly GMES core services on a preoperational basis. These services will be demonstrated on the occasion of the Lille GMES Forum. Hopefully, they will available to downstream sectors onward.

FUTURE & SOCIETY

At the end of the interview, here is the opportunity for your final thoughts on latest GMES developments, what do you see as the task ahead for GMES, and in general which is your vision for the future?
I am very impressed by the speed GMES has developed in the past few years. Just 8 years after the Council demand to develop GMES services, we are able to produce core services. We have also be able to develop a satellite systems, the GMES space component, which comprises not only the ESA Sentinels programme but also the Eumetsat space observatory and a wealth of national missions. When Europe is acting together, it can realize much more than other have done.

How do you see Europe’s autonomy in space in the years to come?
When we say “autonomy” we must understand the capacity of Europe to provide to its users reliable information on environment and security. For achieving this goal, Europe must be able to cooperate with other nations on an equal footing. It is therefore necessary to consolidate our positions in space based observation. We must be sure that we have the control of the strategic elements, but this does not mean that we must do everything. International cooperation is necessary. GEO and other existing initiatives such as what is done for meteorology from space through WMO for example must be used extensively to ensure Europe will be able to access to all necessary data, from space or in situ.

What are your expectations of EO development in the future for the citizen? And which important benefits will be provided in the near future?

EO observation from space is an important component of our capacity to manage the Environment for a sustainable development. In the near future I do expect that EO from space will become progressively a true market based activity. I am sure that the GMES Core Services will greatly help.

Thank you for your time, and for sharing your thoughts and comments with the EOmag readers

First of all, thank you very much for taking some time from your busy agenda and giving us the occasion to talk about some aspects relevant for the geo-information sector and venture capital.

ROLE

• Mr Horn first of all, could you briefly describe us your current responsibilities in your company?
As Managing Partner my responsibilities include mainly investor relations, operations, marketing and advise to start-ups

• What are the differences between a private equity firm and a venture capital firm?
Venture capital is often referred to as a sub-segment of private equity. The difference lies in the target companies. VC is predominantly focused on technology start-ups – especially early stage players like we. Other private equity players also invest in medium sized and large mature companies with succession or turnaround scenarios.

• What’s the idea behind a Venture Capital company?
Provide a financial resource and expertise (“smart capital”) to entrepreneurs – usually by taking a minority share for several years.

• What will the venture capital companies be offering, and doing?
SpaceTec Capital addresses the applications markets in the satellite information business, where information technology meets geo and satellite services like earth observation, navigation, SatCom and geo data.

MARKET STUDY

• From your perspective, how’s the venture activity and opportunity now in Europe within the geo-information sector? In your vision, what are the major trends in the EO industry?
There is a lively start-up activity emerging. These ideas are stimulated by several SatNav clusters, technology transfer initiatives, mass applications like Google Earth and TomTom. Most of the promising new applications brought to our attention represent a some fusion between geo-referenceable content like maps, geo data and images – and navigation.

• What form has your support for geo-information companies has taken?
We work with predominantly early stage start-ups in refining their business ideas, provide our business understanding, technology know-how and international network

• Can you explain why in your opinion companies are looking for new business models support?
Most applications require service elements of very dynamic service models in internet, mobile telephony and content management. Entrepreneurs often lack this know-how because they acquired their expertise in predominantly scientifically or industrially oriented environment.

• What kind of companies in the EO industry might make interesting investments?
We expect to see spin-offs from research institutes or larger companies. Service business models require a entrepreneurial freedom which is difficult to achieve in large hardware oriented firms or scientifically driven institutions.

LINKS WITH EO: COOPERATION & PARTNERSHIP

• How would you value an investment? How do you make your decisions and why?
Proposals enter a staged review process culminating in detailed due diligences. In early stage financing the key investment criteria are: Quality of management team, innovation, competitive strategy and market understanding, financials and potential exit options for the investor.

• When you evaluate a business plan, what’s the most critical element you look for?
Often the business plans is the key exercise for entrepreneurs to gain clarity about how their idea could find a market. After the investment it becomes an important instrument to guide discussions between the management team and the investors.

• Why do you feel a company want to work at a venture capital firm?
Firstly, desire to grow faster than with own means in very dynamic markets. Secondly, the need for professional support and an international network.

• Would you want to invest in companies geographically spread around Europe?
Yes, our targets are addressing European, if not global market. Our central location in Germany’s VC capital Munich we can get to most regions in in two hours. Still, the German language area is likely to be more heavily represented for proximity reasons.

• At geo-information sector, what investment areas do you find interesting?
The Google Earth /TomTom brought consumer applications into the limelight. We are already looking at commercial and industrial applications, like process automation and risk management

FUTURE

• Let’s take one step further away, what next for the geospatial marketplace? Where do you see the main opportunities for the EO industry in the years to come?
Humanity’s challenges in resource management, population growth and aging, climate change and civil security will create new business needs and require integrated solutions. The earth observation industry’s experience in serving public stakeholders will form a valuable base. Capabilities in integration of geo data content and systems need to be strengthened. Awareness of solving problems with geo-referenced solution will rise.

• There is a lot of interest both within the geospatial technology industry and the consumer side. How do you see this technology connecting and impacting the citizen?
Users who are getting infected with a Google Earth or TomTom virus (in a positive sense) are getting trained to think in geo terms and will naturally demand more geo-related services – just like few people dream back a cable to the cordless phone.

• Where do you see the industry in 5 years?
New technology elements like high resolution satellite imagery and Galileo will gradually get adopted. They will provide another turbo to the today’s service start-ups.

Thank you for your time, and for sharing your thoughts and comments with the EOmag readers.

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.

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.

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

ROLE OF GOOGLE EARTH

Mr Parsons, first of all, could you briefly describe us your current responsibilities in the Google Earth project?

I am the Geospatial Technologist for Google, a technology evangelism role focused on Europe, and the emerging markets for Google in the Middle East and Africa. Technology evangelism in this context is all about communicating our vision for information and in particular geospatial information and establishing relationships with organisations who could become potential partners who have useful information Google can help make accessible. I also have a role in the wider product management team at Google making sure that our products and services meet the needs of local markets, taking into account local social and legal conditions and user expectations.

Could you comment on the steps from Google to move forward geo-information?

Google as I’m sure you and your readers are aware is “new” to the Geospatial Information and Earth Observation Industries, although many of the people working on our Geo products, myself including, have considerable experience within the industry. I think Key to Google’s approach to Geo-information is to understand our overall goal, “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. In achieving this we see geo-information both as a type of information to organise, but also as an organising principle itself.

For a long time professionals in the management of geo-information have recognised the value of using geographic or geospatial information to help organise other types of information, however until relatively recently the ability to do this by having access to the appropriate framework data-sets and tools was prohibitively expense.

What Google, and the other large search companies have done is to lower the barrier to access these tools, so that today almost any user of the internet can finally access geospatial information using simple tools such as Google Earth, Google Maps and Google Maps for Mobile. This has come about because of technological advancements in information systems and devices, but also because of innovations in business models which allow users free access to global data-sets which are costly to collect and license.

MARKET STUDY

Google Earth is free online to the consumer, where is Google going with this product? Who funds the programme? How much does it cost? Which benefits do you get from the use? Is Google Earth a value for money?

Google Earth is a wonderful tool for exploring our planet and understanding the patterns and relationships of human activities with the natural environment. For the vast majority of users Google Earth is free to use, although there are options for use within organisations where there is a need for more control of the type of data used. For commercial reasons we do not disclose the operational costs of the system, although I’m sure your knowledgeable readers can appreciate the considerable costs involved.

What is the main purpose of Google Earth service? And what are the differences with your competitors?

Google Earth is both a tool to search, visualise and explore our planet and a tool to allow communities to create and share information that is important to them and that is related to particular locations. Many users start by finding their home, school or office and then explore the places they know, many may then add information that is important to them and may then share that information with other users using the many developing online communities. Many large multi-national organisations and universities use Google Earth as a tool to publish large complex data sets or to communicate the results of scientific research.

Many of us a Google are most proud of the use of Google Earth to highlight significant global issues and help explain them to a mass-market, issues including Global Climate Change and the Genocide in Darfur are of particular note I believe.

I think key to the success of Google Earth is its technical brilliance, which brings almost instant access to global data-sets and also its community of users who extend the capability of the system by adding their own information and sharing their ideas

LINKS WITH EO

Do you think that EO industry lacks awareness on capabilities of the sector? do you believe on strategies to gather the public and user awareness? What about branding ideas?

No, I think the EO industry clearing recognises the value of the “Mass-Market” and the importance of awareness of the capabilities of Earth Observation, in particular I think the focus of imagery companies on the branding of their products for use by the news media has been successful. I personally think more could be done to highlight the important contribution been made by Earth Observation to the Science of Climate Change.

Google earth certainly does some work on knitting the datasets together but for the most part, the company is not in the data creation business, how do you see the EO industry in Europe? Do you think in possible synergies within EO industry? How industry should be evolving? Maybe as providers?

Yes that is correct, Google tries to license data wherever possible to meet our data needs, as such we view the EO industry as a customer of it. As with most customers we are interested in increasing value for money!

Which could be the lessons learnt from Google that Earth Observation could implement?

Simplification !!

Simplification of the interfaces between the user and supplier both from a technology point of view but also in regards to business processes and licensing relationships.

DIALOGUE WITH EO INDUSTRY: COOPERATION & PARTNERSHIP

What is your opinion about Global Earth Observation System of Systems, GEOSS and Global monitoring environment and security, GMES? how can market for GMES should be created in Europe?

There can be no use of Earth Observation less important at the moment that monitoring the changing environmental conditions of our planet, and as such the original GEOSS mission of 2005 is laudable. Time will tell if this approach to co-ordinating activities to bring the necessary comprehensive view of the Earth is the correct one, whatever approach is adopted we recognise the importance of making the observations collected available to as wide a possible audience as quickly as possible as a key goal, and one which we hope to be able to assist.

FUTURE & SOCIETY

What are the main things you hope to see GOOGLE EARTH accomplish in the next 10 years?

That is an almost impossible questions to answer, we know we still have many challenges ahead of us if we are to achieve our goal of organising the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, we are only just scratching the surface of potential resource of geo-informational that exists, and there is still much more data to collect and organise as new missions and sensors become available. Parallel to increasing the amounts of information available, we need to continue to develop the tools that make this data as accessible as possible, when and wherever there is a user need for it.

Let’s take one step further away, what next for the geospatial marketplace? where do you see the main opportunities for the EO industry in the years to come?

I believe there are two challenges for the EO industry to really reach out to the mass-market commercial sector, imagery needs to be made available as frequently and reliably as possible, requiring a more frequent revisit capability, while at the same time reducing the cost of image acquisition. It will be interesting to see the impact on the industry of technological advances which overlay the capabilities of satellite based Earth observation with aircraft based sensors.

I see massive potential in Micro-Satellite based systems.

There is a lot of interest both within the geospatial technology industry and the consumer side. How do you see this technology connecting and impacting the citizen? How popular has the imagery layer been?

Google Earth and similar technologies have had a massive impact on increasing the awareness of citizens to the potential of Earth observation technologies, the result of more that 250 million people downloading Google Earth is that most of us no longer have to spend as much time explaining what we do. We need to be aware however that the level of understanding of the Science of Earth observations is limited.

How do you see EO and Geo-information sector in the years to come?

I think the professional / scientific sector of the industry will continue to mature and it will be supplemented by a new community of mainstream users who in many ways are already beginning to influence the expectations of the established industry in terms of user interface design and expectations of information accessibility.

CONTACT

-Ed Parsons, Geospatial Technologist, Google
-Cordy Griffiths, Communications and Public Affairs, Google

Belgrave House, 76 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 9TQ

First of all, thank you very much for taking some time from your busy agenda and giving us the occasion to talk about some aspects relevant for the Earth Observation sector.

A/ About your experience

View on the evolution of satellite-based Earth Observation from the 70s to today.

Satellite-based Earth observation has evolved tremendously from the 70s in the various fields of meteorology, ocean sciences, ice, land and vegetation monitoring, geodetic applications and survey of the gravity and magnetic fields, etc.
Operational satellites dedicated to meteorological observations are much more capable, as testified for example by the data collection capability of the MSG and EPS/Metop series in Europe. As an illustration, a quick look at the IASI data from Metop-1 shows that the impact on numerical weather forecasting should be significant.
Also, experimental satellites such as TRMM have demonstrated their capability to monitor and measure precipitations in the tropical areas, opening the way to operational monitoring of the water cycle between the atmosphere, the oceans and the land masses.
In ocean sciences, the Topex-Poseidon – Jason series of ocean topography satellites have far exceeded their performance targets and provide an invaluable flow of continuous data since 1992, contributing major observation sets to the monitoring of not only global ocean circulation but also the global warming affecting our planet.
Experimental spacecraft such as the European Envisat, the NASA Aqua, … , are delivering high quality data in atmospheric chemistry and ocean surface colour. It is too bad that an operational series of more compact and lower cost satellites are not taking over their excellent data collection capability!
In land monitoring, the Spot series of spacecraft continues, after more than 20 years, to provide excellent high resolution imagery on an operational basis and the continuous growth of Spot Image’s turnover is a good indicator that the market is indeed there. I expect that our friends from India have the same experience with the use of optical imagery from their IRS series. C-Band radar imagery from Radarsat-1 is also provided on an operational basis, and there are hopes that Radarsat-2 will finally get to orbit later this year. In addition, very high resolution optical imagers have been introduced with a very strong support from the US government, opening the way for a new range of GIS applications. Similarly, the recent launches of the first of the Cosmo-Skymed and TerraSar-X satellites, delivering high resolution X-band radar imagery, should boost the applications based on radar imagery, which are still today far behind those of optical imagery.
The area of geodesy has also much benefited from advances in satellite-based navigation technologies such as GPS, for examples for tectonic motions monitoring, and recent successes such as the GRACE twin satellites system, to be followed by the forthcoming ESA GOCE spacecraft, have produced terrific advances in Earth gravity field determination, including its temporal variations at regional and local levels, an indicator of shifting water bodies within the land masses.
Another phenomenon to note is of course the capabilities offered by small to very small observation spacecraft, thanks to major progresses made in many areas of satellite technology, which have opened the way for lower cost space-based Earth observation systems, thus making them accessible to less developed (and less rich) countries. The continuous interest for such satellite systems shown by many new entrants such as Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, Korea, Malaysia, Morocco, Nigeria, Thailand, Taiwan, etc. (and this list is increasing every month!) is a good indicator that Earth Observation from space is still in a growing phase. Indeed, my own prediction is that it will continue to grow for a very long time, if only because of the very wide spectrum of applications areas.

Is European observation on the right track?

Europe has historically played a very significant role in the development of Earth Observation systems and applications, but this role is not as visible as it should be. The introduction of the GMES initiative in the late 90s following the “Baveno declaration” in 1998, was meant to create a more formal and politically visible framework for the European efforts in this area. Unfortunately, the European Commission was rather slow in taking it up and in developing a concrete plan for its implementation. In addition, the EC did not understand that the role of the EU is to facilitate space policy making at European level, not to compete with ESA. To be fair, ESA was also a bit worried at any initiative coming from Brussels. This has led to a very slow build up of the GMES programme, which however seems now to be on track via a services approach.
But I feel that there is a continuous ambiguity about what the EU is expecting from ESA. ESA, on its part, continues to ignore national and industry initiatives and focuses only on its own Sentinel projects, which I believe is a major mistake. It seems that ESA has not learned any lessons from the history of Earth Observation in Europe, where it never managed to play a really leadership role, comparable for example to the very successful ESA space sciences programme. The setting up of the Living Planet programme about ten years ago was supposed to remedy this situation but its level of funding is too low, is has suffered from the failure of the launch of its first Explorer satellite (Cryosat) and its future is not entirely clear.
I believe that, outside meteorological observations which are very well taken care of by EUMETSAT, the Jason follow-ons, TerraSAR-X, Cosmo-Skymed, Pleiades and AstroTerra programmes, all of them initiated and managed outside the ESA framework, will provide the backbone of operational European capabilities in Earth Observation during the next decade or so.

Cooperation in space policy actions with third parties, cooperative efforts between agencies and industry

First of all, who are the third parties? If you refer to international partners such as NASA NOAA, JAXA, ISRO, etc., they are already well involved in various cooperative schemes with European Partners. I have seen the excellent CNES/NASA cooperation around Topex-Poseidon and Jason develop since the mid 80s and have drawn an interesting conclusion from this success: a successful cooperation between such agencies requires a good mix between a balanced and clear cooperation agreement for the proper management of the project and a highly competitive environment between the scientific teams who analyse the data, with good, real-time feedback from the scientific teams to the project teams. This, of course, is happening all the time in space science projects, but is not frequent enough in Earth observation programmes, maybe because they tend to hesitate between the constraints of an operational system and a more science driven management style.
Concerning the cooperative efforts between agencies and industry, I will say the following: first the primary role of agencies is to fund basic Research and Technology so that industry masters the tools to be competitive. But supporting R & T is not enough if it is not applied in concrete space projects. These can be 100% funded by government agencies as with traditional ESA projects, or be funded in partnership between agencies and industry if there is a sufficient estimated market potential, as in the TerraSAR-X arrangement between DLR and Astrium, or by other arrangements such as the one I experimented with the setting up of SPOT Image in the early 80s, whereby the agency bears the cost of the satellites and launches and the commercial operator concentrates on market development and covers operating costs initially, until the market has sufficiently developed for it to start supporting the space segment.
These various economic models have their advantages and their drawbacks but what need to be said is that Earth Observation from space is in a very awkward situation: one finds all kinds of economic models, from scientific research and meteorological observations which are considered public goods, leading to data being exchanged freely without charge, to high resolution imagery which is considered a commercial commodity, and yet remains under tight government control because of international foreign policy and security issues. In between, of course, you find a mix of both situations. That does not make it easy to define a clear and stable policy for data access, and yet such clear and stable policy is absolutely essential for industry to be able to invest in satellite-based Earth observation systems.

B/ Role of EO at COPUOS

Role of COPUOS in space policy

COPUOS is a Committee of the UN General Assembly established in 1959. It has currently 67 member states and more than 40 permanent observers, many of them international non government organizations. COPUOS developed the international legal framework for space activities from the very important founding text, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, to other international treaties dealing with state responsibility to recommendations and/or guidelines which have been developed over the years. For example, the most recent text is the Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines adopted earlier this year, very important to safeguard the space environment in near Earth orbits such as the heliosynchronous orbits where many EO satellites operate. More specifically, In the field of Earth Observation, the main text prepared by COPUOS was the UNGA Resolution number 41/65 of December 1986, mostly known under the title of the Principles on Remote Sensing. I was very much involved in its elaboration in the early 80s and believe that it still remains today a very adequate set of principles, although some countries such as Brazil are actively promoting a revision of this text.

The Space Applications Programme implemented by the UN OOSA

The COPUOS reviews and approves every year the Space Application Program of the United Nations, managed by the Office for Outer Space Affairs (OOSA), which is mostly aimed at capacity building in the developing countries.
A large part of the SAP is linked to EO applications to the needs of developing countries in areas such as land management, water resources, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, etc. Recently, a new UN program was approved, called SPIDER (United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response), which aims at facilitating space applications to support disaster management. The implementation of this new program is just starting in 2007 and more information can be found on the UN OOSA site at HYPERLINK “http://www.unooosa.org” www.unooosa.org.

Involvement in GMES and GEOSS

COPUOS is not directly involved in GMES, which is a purely European initiative and programme, nor in GEOSS which an international program supported by the “Group on Earth Observation” (GEO), established outside the UN framework.
However, because the states members of COPUOS are concerned that Space Technology must be exploited fully to support understanding and monitoring of climate and other global changes affecting our planet, I have actively pushed setting up a mechanism to facilitate exchange of information and views from the UN COPUOS to the GEO and back. This is easier said than done as the delegations to the two bodies are coming from different ministries within each country and the internal coordination is not always very good…
Also, many international organizations belonging to the UN system are members of GEO and are very actively involved in the GEOSS process, such as the World Meteorological Organisation, the International Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, the United Nations Environment Program. The UN OOSA is also a member of GEO.

C/ Links with Earth Observation

Future steps for GMES in Europe and under GEOSS

(Note: Brachet´s views here are not linked to the COPUOS discussions since COPUOS is not involved at all in GMES).

As stated in section A, I believe that GMES, after a rather slow start, is now on the right track and that the services approach taken by the EC is the right one. I am hopeful that the budgetary aspects of GMES in the EU will find a stable solution as it is clear that the GMES services cannot take off only on the basis of Research (FP7) funds, with 50% funding from Industry. After all, DG Tren had found a solution for a sustainable funding for the Galileo concession during the initial 2007-2013 period, I don’t see why DG Enterprise, maybe with the help of DG Agri., DG Env., DG Development and other DGs involved, could not convince the Council to do the same for the GMES services.
Also, Europe is in the forefront of international negotiations on global warming and biodiversity issues. GMES could become one of its principal tools for monitoring compliance with future treaties and conventions relating to environment protection and sustainable development. Therefore, the political visibility of GMES should be much higher than it is presently.
Do not forget also that GMES has an “S” at the end, which is supposed to mean that security issues are to be addressed by this programme. It is rather delicate in the European context because of institutional reluctance from Member States to see the EC dwelling in security matters, but I have observed that the situation is slowly evolving in a positive fashion.

GMES is also one of the main European contributions to GEOSS, together with large environment related research projects managed from DG Research and environment standards defined and monitored from DG Environment and the European Environment Agency (EEA). It would be good if the European Commission could set up an internal Steering Committee on GEOSS to facilitate coordination and consistency between all these entities. This would increase the European influence on GEOSS planning and implementation.

Lessons learnt from EO in the past years

In the past years, we have learnt that EO is an indispensable tool because it alone provides the global, near permanent view, on what is going on in our planet, but we have also learnt that EO from space cannot do everything, that some parameters are not accessible by remote measurements. As a consequence, a combination of “in situ” measurements and remotely collected observations is often essential to produce the right data sets that are needed to understand the physics and chemistry of the environment processes. Our friends from the Met offices and from Eumetsat know this very well, but I sometimes wonder if some space agencies have fully understood it.
Of course, we have learnt many other lessons, for example the need for EO experts to forget their technical “jargon” when they speak to the users in various application areas. I remember what I used to tell my sales staff at Spot Image in the 80s: “Forget about the satellite, forget about remote sensing, what our customers need is geo-referenced information of direct relevance to their process, provided in a format they can easily understand. We will have successfully developed the market when you will no longer need to mention where the data is coming from.”
This is where the successful EO service companies play a major role: they know their customers and their requirements and act as brokers between the raw data providers (space operators as well as in situ observation networks) and the end users.

Planning and budgeting process of EO programmes

I am not sure I want to comment on planning and budgeting of EO programmes in Europe.
I will only say that ESA has to realize that it is not alone in Europe. It would be better off if it recognized the efforts made by many of its member states and by European industry to develop and operate EO space systems. It could play more of a coordinating role instead of focusing only on its own projects, but I guess that it is too late to hope that ESA changes its behaviour.
Obviously, industry is now able to come up with its own solutions for the deployment of EO systems and will do so more frequently.

A success that has influenced the budget lines in the space industry?

I am not sure I get your question right. I will assume you mean a success that has influenced the revenue lines.
In my view, a major success has been the application of satellite imagery to agriculture in the EU, thanks in large part to the efforts of the European Commission (DG Agri and the JRC) and of service companies in the 1980s and 1990s. Both agriculture statistics at the European level and monitoring of the application of the CAP within each member states have benefited immensely from this technology. The total revenues generated by this application may not be extremely high, but they are significant. I believe the Farmstar programme initiated by Astrium is a good indicator of its present size and growth potential.
The other major success in Europe is the series of operational meteorological satellites managed by Eumetsat with technical assistance from ESA. It is so far the only case in the civilian world where the user community in Europe has gotten organized to fund the continuity of the operational observation satellites that it requires. It took place in the eighties and is a complete success. I believe this is an interesting lesson.

D/ Dialogue with the EO industry: cooperation and partnership

Here again, here I am not speaking as chairman of COPUOS but more as an observer of the EO industry over the last thirty years.

Private companies initiatives

As I said earlier, European industry is today capable of coming up with its own solutions for EO systems, although it is still a bit shy when taking the investment risk. Governments and the EC should take measures to encourage this evolution, for example by acting as a preferred customer, in a similar fashion to what the UK MoD did for the Skynet satellite telecom system.
It is true that the disaster that has become the Galileo concession process does not help. It could have been avoided if the EC had understood fully the challenges of the Galileo programme. As long as the bureaucrats, whether in the EC or in national governments, do not understand the specific risks associated with space ventures and want to treat them as ordinary infrastructure projects, the private space enterprises will have a hard time taking off.

Government agencies supporting private development

Government agencies should encourage private initiatives in deploying EO systems.
They can do it in many ways:
-Firstly, by supporting industry in basic Research & Technology and funding the development of very advanced experimental EO systems (satellites and payloads),
-Secondly, by encouraging public-private partnerships when the market potential is sufficiently established,
-Thirdly, by making sure that the legal and financial landscape is favourable: in many cases, issues such as government oversight (e.g. “shutter control”, etc.) and third party liabilities of the operator are too murky for the financial circles to give the green light. I believe that ESA , the EC and national space agencies must pay more attention to this problem.

Interaction with EO value-added industry

First of all, I do not like the expression “value-added industry”. Let us speak instead of the EO service industry. The service companies produce the information required by their customers, whether central or local governments, large or small private companies, whether on their domestic markets or on the export market. Very often, EO data are a small fraction of the data sets that they process. Their role is essential because they know (or are supposed to know) which EO data are needed, where to find these data, how to control their quality, and how to combine them with other data to feed the models that they use to produce the end-user information. In the GMES programme, where the services approach is adopted, the services are divided in “core services” which produce the core information in an operational mode and “downstream services”, which are closer to customer requirements. In both cases, the EO service industry in Europe has a beautiful opportunity to develop its business and expand its services outside the European market. Its ability to provide competitive services for GMES will be key to the success of the GMES programme.

E/ Future and Society

Future of EO within environment policies

Earth Observation should become more of an integral part of environment policies, at the global level, at the European and at the national level. It is not yet the case, as Earth Observation is often perceived by environment policymakers as a “technology looking for a customer”. In fact, even the teams working within the GEO need to be reminded that the overall objective of such grand schemes as GEOSS is to improve our collective environment policy-making ability, based on objective observations and on a proper understanding of what is affecting the planet and its resources. A lot more work is needed to convince decision makers that EO is an indispensable prerequisite for an intelligent policy making in environment matters.

Objectives for COPUOS in the next 10 years

I presented during the June 2007 session of COPUOS a series of proposals concerning the future role and activities of COPUOS.
Following the work done successfully the last few years to establish guidelines for Space Debris Mitigation, I believe the effort should go now towards developing some kind of “rules of the road” to maintain outer space, particularly near Earth outer space, a safe place top operate in. This is a sensitive subject because it implies that states would be ready to accept certain rules of behaviour in space even for space-based military activities.
There are many other priorities for COPUOS, such as helping GEOSS to be implemented, coordinating the various Global Satellite Navigation Systems (GNSS), assisting developing countries to take full advantage of space technology, encouraging the development within each nation of a clear and stable legal and regulatory framework for space activities, etc.

Future of Europe’s autonomy in space

Europe has full autonomy in space, thanks to its excellent industrial base and its autonomous launching capability, including its launch base infrastructure in French Guiana. The only exception to this autonomy is the area of manned space flights, where Europe is dependent on US and Russian launchers (and experience).
I do not believe Europe is ready to invest the large amounts of public money needed to become fully autonomous in manned space flights, simply because manned flights do not have any relevance to military, scientific or economic applications. The development of a European autonomous capability to fly humans in space could be justified only on political grounds, and that would require a degree of political consensus across Europe that is not foreseeable today.
Otherwise, European autonomous space capability will remain in good shape as long as governments continue to invest in R & T and in ambitious space projects, thus maintaining European industry at the world level. I believe this will be the case in the foreseeable future.

Lessons learnt from outside Europe

I have stated many times “Europe must be capable of defining its own vision and ambitions in space”. Looking at what China is doing today, at the Indian experience, event at the recent evolution of thinking in Japan, it is clear that a striving space programme takes place only within countries (or group of countries such as the EU) which have the necessary independence to think for themselves, to develop their own vision for space, whether it is for strategic, for economic or for scientific reasons. Europe should study carefully the reasons for the relatively large investments in space programmes by countries like China and by India. I am afraid the collective thinking in Europe is much too cautious and does not recognize the strategic and economic value of space systems. The Galileo decision was the exception, it is too bad its implementation has been so poorly managed.
In conclusion, the famous European Space Policy, still in its infancy, should set much more ambitious objectives than is presently the case. However, let us not be overly pessimistic, things are moving, slowly, in the right direction.

EO development for the citizen

Space technology has applications in the “public good” area as well as in the commercial applications.
Global navigation, meteorological observations, global change and climate research are good examples of public good applications.
Even in the commercial sector, the development of space-based telecommunications, direct to home broadcasting, worldwide mobile telecommunications have a strong impact on the citizen’s daily life and contribute to economic development everywhere, maybe more so in developing countries because they are less costly to deploy and maintain than ground-based telecom infrastructures.
Space-based Earth observation techniques will continue to develop to provide similar benefits to the citizen, be it on a “no exchange of funds” basis or for a fee, because it can provide useful information on a competitive fashion and is unique in its global reach.

Volunteers to help COPUOS?

I have received many calls from persons willing to assist and have had discussions with many space oriented colleagues who were interested in helping COPUOS. Many times, these were students of law or professional lawyers specializing in space law, while I am not a lawyer myself.
I don’t think we need more lawyers, but I believe strongly that we need more people able to explain the benefits of space technology in simple terms, accessible to the layman, and not requiring any technical background. We need good communicators who can help bridge the gap between the space community and the rest of mankind!