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© Geoff Sawyer Blog: We have been claiming for some time that it is essential to develop a formal dialogue between the industry and key decision makers; particularly those in the European Commission but also with ESA and Member States. Up to now, industry views have only been provided through specific meetings, corridor talk and only in an informal fashion.

We have been claiming for some time that it is essential to develop a formal dialogue between the industry and key decision makers; particularly those in the European Commission but also with ESA and Member States. Up to now, industry views have only been provided through specific meetings, corridor talk and only in an informal fashion.

Finally, the EC is prepared to establish a mechanism to engage with the industry and discussions have started about establishing a “structured dialogue” around space. As an input to the thinking on this we have developed some views on what are the key lines that need to be discussed. These are contained in our latest position paper on “Developing the Downstream EO Services Sector in Europe”. The paper can be downloaded here or from our web-site where all EARSC position papers can be found.

We have categorised the
1. Leverage Copernicus and improve the public-private interface
2. Research and Development
3. Market Structure and Uptake

Read more at Geoff´s Blog Developing the Downstream Sector

Download the position paper EARSC views on European Geospatial services: Developing the Private Sector Capability

We are pleased to announce the launch of the EARSC Certification scheme designed to help companies achieve management certification specifically adapted to the EO services industry.

The Scheme is intended as a catalyst to help companies offering services based on satellite Earth Observation data and provide confidence to their customers. It is applicable to all sizes of EO companies and allows the possibility of certification to scheme requirements without the need for full ISO9001 compliance.

Industry benefits will be focus on: – best practices for core processes – EARSC maintaining a list of appropriately trained and experienced certification bodies – exposure to potential customers by listing on the EARSC certified companies list – smaller companies are subject to less audit time certified to the EARSC Scheme than they do under ISO9001 – resulting in lower cost of entry into the market

Customers benefits will be focus on: – accessing to a list of companies successfully completing assessment – accessing a list of companies providing product information in a common format allowing comparison of like with like – continually maturing and improving EO Industry, increasing trust – future understanding on a common format for product specifications (DRD)

EARSC representes the Earth Observation geo-information services companies in Europe. Today EARSC has 75 members coming from more than 22 countries in Europe. Our members include both commercial operators of EO satellites, IT, downstream and value-adding companies. The sector plays a key role in providing value-added geo-spatial information to its customers in Europe and the world. In 2014, the revenue of the European EO services sector is estimated to be around €900m for approximatively 450 companies and giving work to over 6500 highly skilled employees. www.earsc.org

GAF AG has been presented with the EARSC Company Achievement Award during the occasion of the pre General Assembly cocktail, held on 16th June in Brussels.


left to right: Christian Hoffmann, Geoville (Winner 2014 EARSC achievement Award), G. Sawyer (EARSC Secretary General), Stefan Saradeth and Markus Probeck (GAF AG and Winner 2015 EARSC achievement Award) and Han Wensink (EARSC Chairman)

EARSC has thereby recognised GAF AG as the company to have made the most significant contribution to the development of the Earth Observation sector in Europe.

The criteria used for the selection of the winning company were:

  • Has successfully developed EO services for a target market (sector or geographic)
  • Has made a strong contribution to a defining European programme (eg. Copernicus, Inspire, ESA GSE
    projects, etc) 

  • Has exhibited good revenue and/or employment growth. 

    Nominations for the award were collected from EARSC members who then vote and the winner has been selected by an international, independent jury of EO sector representatives.

GAF AG is a leading geo-information company with an international reputation as a skilled provider of data, products and services in the fields of geo-information, spatial IT and consulting for private and public clients. As a result of a merger with its former subsidiary Euromap GmbH, GAF has become the exclusive supplier of optical Indian Remote Sensing data in Europe. The company’s archives contain systematic coverages of Europe and northern Africa from 1996 onwards, and include satellite raw data from the high and medium resolution IRS missions IRS1C, IRS-1D, Resourcesat-1, Resourcesat-2 and Cartosat-1. GAF is also specialised in the production of orthoimage mosaics and digital elevation models from different high and very-high resolution satellite missions. The company is part of the Telespazio Group, which belongs to Finmeccanica and Thales, two major European technology firms. www.gaf.de

EARSC represents the Earth Observation geo-information services companies in Europe. Today EARSC has 75 members coming from more than 22 countries in Europe. Our members include both commercial operators of EO satellites, IT, downstream and value-adding companies. The sector plays a key role in providing value-added geo- spatial information to its customers in Europe and the world. In 2014, the revenue of the European EO services sector is estimated to be around €900m for approximatively 450 companies and giving work to over 6500 highly skilled employees. www.earsc.org

The 7 edition of Ogezine has been launched. It brings two interesting success stories on Surface geological mapping: Gulf of Suez, Egypt and Oilfield performance study: Ghawar oilfield (Saudi Arabia)


OGEOzine7.pdf

Full text (ONLY for subscribers)

As we have announced previously, the Portal is being upgraded this week to bring new and better functionality to this Community tool.

The look and feel will remain the same although the editing interface will alter. We shall provide specific details once the upgrade is completed.

@ for registered users: If you find any pages which look a bit strange, then please let us know about them so that we can put them right. You can contact the administrator.

We apologise for any inconvenience

The European Association of Remote Sensing Companies (EARSC) is updating the survey to provide stakeholders with up-to-date information on the activities carried out by the EO sector and an assessment of its effectiveness

In 2012/2013 EARSC conducted a survey to map the state and health of the companies providing EO services in Europe. Results can be found at this link (http://earsc.org/library/). The study provided some essential lines to understand the complexity of the Earth Observation (EO) industry.

EUROPEAN COMPANIES: We are now updating the Industry Survey. The first part has been launched and companies should have received an invitation to complete the core survey through an on-line questionnaire. The survey has a real foundation and constructive goals for all the companies engaged in EO services.

Access the Industry survey

Last days to contribute

PUBLIC SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS: As part of the update, EARSC has also launched a dedicated survey to extend the coverage to understand wider employment in the sector to include public sector organisations (PSB’s) generating or using geospatial information products. This dedicated questions aim to complete the information which will help understand the full impact of the Copernicus programme.

Access the Public Sector organizations survey

Many public bodies have a responsibility to supply their governments with the appropriate information for policy decision­making. Given the considerable number of persons engaged in this activity throughout Europe, it is important to understand the scale and scope of the role. With a combined picture of the private and the public sector service providers, a better understanding of the impact Copernicus is having in Europe and how future policies may be implemented can be developed.

INTERNATIONAL COMPANIES: An understanding of the industry and how it operates is important in order to take the right policy decisions. Today, no information exists on the global industry. This survey will also address companies world-wide to try to understand how much they benefit from access to the Sentinel data.

Access the International Industry Survey

EARSC invites Companies and Public Sector Institutions to complete the questionnaire.
The survey will be on-line and controlled through survey monkey as we did in previous occasion. Open collectors will generate a dedicated link codes per entry. Once past the first page, organizations can go right through the survey and can return to complete the survey on several visits. For further information on both surveys (Industry & Public Sector Institutions), please contact Mrs. Mónica Miguel-Lago (EARSC executive secretary) at secretariat_at_earsc.org.

The individual results will be kept confidential and only collective, analysed results will be published. A full report will be generated and will be publicly available.

“EARSC is a non-profit-making organisation created in 1989 with the mission to foster the development of European Geo-Information Service Industry. Our main objective is to stimulate a sustainable market for geo-information services using EO data.”

extracted from Geoff´s Blog (06March2015)

The EP held a stakeholder meeting on Wednesday to gather views on the High Resolution directive which the EC has proposed. The EP rapporteurs had called the meeting to get a better understanding of what the directive would mean for the industry.

I guess most people are aware but the EC looks to introduce legislation to regulate the internal market for the dissemination of high resolution imagery in Europe. Each Member State is required to introduce a law in the case that a satellite operator is based in their country. The law is intended to bring transparency to the process when there are security controls on the distribution of data.

EARSC position has always been quite neutral in that we do not see a strong benefit from the legislation. It is true that transparency may be useful as could a common understanding in all MS as to where the security threshold will apply. In this respect, if Digital Globe are able to distribute 25cm without security controls then we feel that EU operators should be given the same opportunity. However, we have not had any company come to us saying that they think it will improve their business; rather a few are concerned it could have negative consequences.

Overall, we have said that it could be useful provided that there is no additional cost, nor additional delays in company’s ability to supply imagery and hence we consider this is more an issue for MS to discuss than industry since it touches on security issues. In general, from an industry perspective, we should like to remove as much legislation as possible to help companies do business. This can help if it sets the security limits lower and hence frees up imagery down to sub-metre resolutions to be disseminated freely (note NOT for free!!).

The MEP’s seem to be generally in favour of the proposal based on their understanding / belief that it will open up the internal market. The EC are already convinced and it remains for the Council ie Member States to decide. Here there has been a strong division of opinion with UK, NL and others strongly opposed, Germany in favour and others asking for more information on the consequences (ie Impact Assessment).

From our perspective, we feel that there are more important issues to spend energy on. We support the process and are providing detailed comments to the EP on which to base their opinion. But let us quickly move on to address the question of how to enable the EU industry to capitalise on the public investments made into Copernicus.

Source

extracted from Geoff´s Blog (14Feb2015)

Last Tuesday I was at a workshop on GEO in Washington. It was billed as A Roundtable Discussion on Advancements in Information Technology and the Next Ten Years of the Global Earth Observation System of System, but the main objective was to discuss the private sector participation in GEOSS.

Despite this, the majority of attendees were public sector representatives and, without counting, there would have been about 10 private sector people present out of around 40 in total of which we were 4 from Europe. A similar meeting called by the EC last September has attracted an audience of around 80 people with 25 from the private sector; none from the US.

Clearly, bringing private sector interests together into GEO/GEOSS will be a complex matter given the diversity of interest, the different understanding of what “private-sector” means and particularly its international nature. It is hard to imagine US companies traveling to Europe and vice versa or elsewhere in the world without a strong motivation.

It seemed that, amongst the US companies, there is a similar lack of understanding of what GEO is and what its objectives are, as had been the case for those in Europe at the EC meeting. There was a very patchy appreciation of how GEO could help the private sector and vice-versa. This was certainly picked up by the US-GEO organisers who concluded that GEO needs to employ some communication specialists.

Nevertheless, overall, many of the conclusions were the same;

  • Avoid competition between GEO and private companies
  • Reach out to users to understand what they want
  • Who are the “users” of GEOSS?
  • GEOSS can be a conduit from EO providers of data and information towards the public sector stakeholders.
  • Need to get more than just scientists involved in the service provision.

In discussion, we agreed that the users of GEOSS are the public sector stakeholders, but the world has changed greatly since GEO was founded (in 2003) and the impression remains that, today, its stakeholders have divergent ambitions for what it should become. As industry, we should start to become clearer in what we should like GEO to do and especially how the public and private sectors can engage in a global context.

Source

A survey of the global EO services industry which is being organised.

An understanding of the industry and how it operates is important in order to take the right policy decisions. Today, no information exists on the global industry and only the EARSC survey of the situation in Europe and Canada, published in 2013, provides a comprehensive view of any part of the industry (see “studies” at www.earsc.org/library).

EARSC shortly will be contacting all the companies which they have managed to identify globally. Some global partners have offered to help in the process so the questionnaire will be received directly by some companies.

If you are a company based outside Europe or Canada, we would appreciate your support in providing a response to the survey; even if you cannot complete all the questions it will still be very useful to have a preliminary response which can ensure that your company is at least included in the total statistics.

It should take no more than 5 minutes to provide basic information (name of company, location, type of activity) and about 15 minutes to complete the whole questionnaire; there are around 20 questions in total.

Please contact EARSC if you are interest to take part in the international survey

Data from the survey will be confidential, held by EARSC and will not be released. Compiled data and analyses will be available for instance for a particular country or a part of the industry. GEO will be pleased to provide you with the final results when they become available towards the middle of 2015

EARSC, in partnership with ESA, is updating the industry survey that we last conducted 2 years ago into the state and health of the EO services industry in Europe. The results of the previous survey can be found at http://earsc.org/library/ (studies). Our goal is to analyse the state of the EO Services Industry and to understand the issues that are important for its future.

A detailed understanding of the Earth Observation sector and the trends is essential to help stakeholders to plan their activities and to assess the effectiveness of their actions. Industry has a strong interest to ensure that accurate and up-to-date information is available. This will help inform ESA on the priorities for future EO value adding activities and pave the way for other stakeholder actions. It will provide critical data to help set budgets for EO research and development. It will enable EARSC to represent the industry in the most effective way.

A web-based questionnaire is being sent to all companies believed to be active in providing or using geo-information containing some satellite data. All European and Canadian EO service providers identified by the study team will receive an email notification from EARSC via Survey Monkey which will enable them to access the EO Survey.

The web-questionnaire will be followed by a limited number of phone interviews. Whilst the first is very focused on figures the second will be more subjective and opinion-oriented and we estimate will take 30 to 45 minutes. We would like as many companies as possible to complete both surveys and ask for your support in doing so.

Active participation by the EO service industry is critical to ensure that the survey can meet the objectives of furnishing a sufficiently comprehensive and accurate picture of the current industry status and health. These information will help also to identify priority issues, dominant opportunities, threats and other concerns facing the industry; therefore to have a clear picture about our sector!

Thank you very much for your active participation, EARSC secretariat.