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EARSC Position Paper March 2011

Introduction

As GMES moves to provide an operational service, a close relationship between the institutional stakeholders and the EO services industry is of paramount importance if Europe is to maximise the return from the investments already committed. This paper identifies three issues that the EO services industry considers need to be addressed if this goal is to be achieved.

Leveraging Public Investments

GMES is a European flagship programme aimed at ensuring access to key geo-information for governments and institutions. Such information will support decision making in many areas of policy at European and national levels e.g. environment, climate change, external affairs etc. Investments made by the public sector into the programme will bring significant socio-economic benefits to the whole European Community and Member States (1).

In addition, the GMES infrastructure developed for European public use could also offer significant opportunities to consolidate and expand the levels of existing commercial business already developed over the last 25 years by the European service industry with private and public sector clients both inside and outside of Europe. Through these capabilities and experiences, industry is best placed to be able to exploit such opportunities and to leverage the public investment to achieve broader economic benefit through employment and tax revenues. GMES opens up these opportunities by providing the basic essentials required for sustainable, commercial provision of EO-based information services; namely access to suitable data with global coverage, good quality and appropriate timeliness.

Industrial Role and Benefits

A strong European EO services industry is a pre-requisite to derive maximum benefit from the GMES programme. A strong satellite-based information services industry can:

• Exploit opportunities in commercial sectors such as oil & gas, insurance, energy, mining, agriculture/forestry, telecommunications, geohazards and disaster management, etc.
• Deliver products and services to national and international organisations outside of Europe. GMES products of proven value for EU policy makers can also be delivered to other public sector clients in export markets.
• Ensure efficient and effective delivery of products and services to the European public users.

Furthermore, industry and academia are the engines of innovation for EO services with industry taking the lead in customising and developing new capabilities to meet continually evolving customer needs within today’s changing world.

European EO service industry aims to achieve a leading position in operational EO-based downstream services generated as a result of GMES. Our goal is that by 2020 we should deliver to a wide market within and outside Europe and achieve at least 40% of the overall global revenues of EO-based downstream services.

Market Development

A number of factors drive or constrain the ability of industry to achieve this goal and hence the possibility to deliver the maximum economic benefit for Europe.

GMES products are being developed by partnerships of public and private sector actors where R&D know-how and expertise has been shared through collaborative projects. Industry has been investing alongside the public sector with the view to serve GMES users within Europe and to exploit GMES products and services in new markets. A pre-requisite is that products and services are first successfully introduced into the European Community and national public users to give confidence to other customers that the services are effective and sustainable.

Today, industry is concerned that the functioning of the future market in Europe for the GMES products is still unclear for a number of reasons:

• The future take-up of GMES products and services will largely rely on legislation and regulation coming from the EC and Member States and until the form and timing of this becomes clear it undermines the rationale for industrial investment.
• It is not clear today what defines a GMES product or service; those using some element of raw Sentinel data or all EO-based geo-information used by European policy makers or even geo-spatial products using only in-situ data and no EO component? A specific quality mark is required for GMES products and services which should be defined and monitored.
• Which policy makers will be recognised as users of GMES products and services? Will this include all public sector organisations and does this extend to partially-public agencies that may compete with industry? Does this include existing public users of geo-spatial data, currently not considered part of GMES such as those involved in agriculture monitoring programmes?
• Will GMES products and services be procured at national or European levels or both? Clarity in the market is essential.
• Where a mix of data sources is to be used, that may include data coming from commercial operators, the licence conditions under which GMES products and services will be made available should reflect the underlying data sources.
GMES products and services may be strongly stimulated by giving free and open access to the raw Sentinel data. Basic data products from the Sentinel’s and potentially the core services for GMES should be delivered to all European users free of charge.
• European private satellite operators have invested in satellite systems providing imagery on a commercial basis. In the future they face strong competition from US companies offering similar products on the world market. A future data policy should seek to ensure there is fair competition for data coming from EU private and public infrastructure and non EU service providers as well as for downstream products and services. Raw data from future GMES public infrastructure should not compete with that from the private operators (2).
• Continuity of service is essential for users to commit resources towards integrating new products into their operational procedures. Clear conditions must be put in place for long-term access to data from the European GMES infrastructure.
GMES services are being developed and could be delivered operationally by a mix of both private and public sector actors. In some cases, industry is concerned that it could face competition from some of the large governmental, national and multi-national agencies and R&D organisations. A fair tendering system should be mandatory as recommended in the EARSC position paper (3).
• Overall, it is recommended that the functioning of the market for GMES products and services should be reviewed on a regular basis once the initial infrastructure is in place and operating.

Only a stronger involvement and more visible and recognized position of industry will produce the full benefits for the GMES programme.

Recommendations:

The clear, first priority is to ensure financial support in the multi-annual European Budget to continue the GMES programme, including sufficient funding allocated to the GMES Services component.

In addition, EARSC recommends three steps to be taken to enable the European EO services industry to develop a strong international position on behalf of Europe.

1. Develop greater clarity over the GMES products and services and how these will be made available to the public sector. A stable and clearly identified legislative environment in which business can be built must be put in place to allow industry to invest and operate.

2. Establish a clear data policy, with appropriate procurement budgets for satellite data, core GMES services and GMES value-added, downstream services:
• Raw data from Sentinels should be free and open.
• Data from commercial satellite operators should be procured under appropriate license conditions.
• Core services to be freely and unconditionally available to all users and downstream partners.
• Downstream services should be procured commercially on a fair and competitive basis.
• A registration system for GMES users should be put in place to ensure that basic quality conditions are met and licensing conditions are respected as well as achieving fair competition on the international market.

3. Define a clearer boundary between the roles and responsibilities of the public and private sector service providers.

EARSC as the EO-services industry representative body is fully ready to support the EC, ESA and Member States in developing the appropriate policy lines in these critical but challenging areas and would welcome opportunities to present and discuss these views.

EARSC represents the Earth Observation geo-information services companies in Europe. Today EARSC has 70 members coming from 17 countries in Europe and including nearly 50% of the total number of European EO service companies. Over 60% of these are small or medium sized enterprises. Our members include both commercial operators of EO satellites and downstream, 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 2010, the revenue of EARSC members is estimated to be around €700m and giving work to around 2600 highly skilled employees. The industry is growing at around 10% per annum

***
(1) PwC report: Socio-economic Benefits and Impact of GMES, 2005.
(2) Cosmo-Skymed, Pleides, TerraSAR-X, Deimos, DMCii, Rapideye.
(3) EARSC Position Paper “Tendering Recommendations for Operational GMES Services”; May 2010.

Exploiting GMES Operational Services FINAL.pdf

EARSC members recalled the successful eoVox-1 study conducted in 2006 by EARSC, with ESA support (several of the outputs of that study helped to define the EARSC evolution strategy for 2007 and beyond )… eoVox2 kicked off!!


In 2010-11, a set of follow-on activities are being undertaken by EARSC, again with support from ESA

-These activities are designed to help EARSC strengthen and grow the European EO/RS value-adding sector, and continue EARSC’s evolution and growth strategy

eovox2 activities

-Horizon scanning taking a look at the ‘next big things’
-Industry position papers capturing the views of the industry
-Trade directory “eoPages” to promote the service providers and services
-Promotional packages targeted at specific market sectors
-Trade missions to talk to key customers in those sectors

In support of these activities, we warmly encourage all EARSC members and stakeholders to come up with fresh ideas and input for EARSC to take forward. The EARSC secretariat will keep you informed of ways to get engaged in the process. Your active participation will add value to the association and bring greater benefit to all of our members and the industry as a whole.
eoVox2 will be organising a consultations that you might be interested to look at and participate. For more information please do not hesitate to contact secretariat-at-earsc.org

Content for publication is welcomed and can be submitted at any time for consideration. Let us help you bring your article to the world


Please feel free to suggest any news, study and successful cases, events, projects, blogs or other geoinformation content items that you deem relevant for our community and interested stakeholders. This will enable us to share important knowledge and expertise networking among other experts who will exchange their know-how.

EOmag is released every three months, with focus articles on members, news in depth features, achievements, progress reports on programmes, communication and partnership with organisations and events.

The distribution of the Newsletter is based on our stakeholders database (Industry and relevant Institutions worldwide interested in geo-information domain).

The Newsletter is an excellent platform for companies and organizations to communicate on actions and programmes related to geo-information.

Articles:
We would be happy to publish all relevant articles for companies/institutions (max 1000-word articles, preferably with illustrations) for the next issues of the Newsletter

Events:
In order to improve the information offered about the activities of our stakeholders, we are collecting basic data concerning all the already scheduled events. For the purpose, we kindly ask companies and institutions to
provide the following information about each event:

Start Date
End Date
Title
Web
Place – City and Country

Please send this information to EARSC secretariat always stating [Events] as the beginning of your message description at the subject box, in order to help managing and archiving. Since it is intended to keep this list as much updated as possible, please remind to inform Secretariat every time a new event is scheduled.

Optional Information:
Theme
Description
Language
E-mail contact

Should you have any queries, please do not hesitate to “secretariat-at-earsc.org”:

Many thanks in advance
EARSC secretariat

EARSC is a non-profit-making organisation created in 1989. The mission of EARSC is 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, which is openly accessible to all members.

We all know quite well that it took many more years for the market itself to mature pushing many to forget some of their illusions on the way. However realizing that maturity and market expansion could only happen little by little in this complex domain EARSC has been sticking to its goal of helping develop the European remote sensing industry, reaching today 80 members, and being a recognized association worldwide. All the major European industrial actors of remote sensing are EARSC members and are involved in numerous ways to foster the development of the domain together with European institutions. Lately the EARSC strategy has evolved one step further to account for the geospatial information revolution of the 21st century.

EARSC is representing the European providers of geo-information services in its broadest sense creating a network between industry, decision makers and users. It is a crucial stage of maturing of the sector as nowadays Earth observation is used more frequently by society and adds positive value to our daily lives.

At the same time, an active participation from all of our members is the best guarantee that EARSC will play an important role on the European Earth observation and geo-information arena. For our members, the annual membership dues are a cost-effective way to stay informed, promote their company, political and institutional representation, networking opportunities with industry players and help to support the future of geo-information Industry: “industry stakeholders together could transform activities into meaningful action on behalf of our sector”.

Internally EARSC informs and involves its members though the website, newsletter, directorate and the organization of more numerous events. This will allow us to be more present on the European and International scene and to contribute more efficiently to the implementation of European programmes.

To get more information on EARSC membership, please contact us at

EARSC membership

EARSC membership represents the entire spectrum of the Earth Observation industry including all sector chain: providers, stakeholders and users. Membership of EARSC is currently 500 Euros per annum. For our members, the annual membership dues are a cost-effective way to stay informed, promote their company, political and institutional representation, networking opportunities with industry players and help support the future of Earth Observation. Industry together could transform activities into meaningful action on behalf of our sector

Full Members
Any commercial European company or partnership offering and undertaking consulting and contracting services or supplying equipment in the field of remote sensing which is based in a European Country which contributes to the European Space Agency or which is a member of the European Community shall be eligible for membership.

Observer Members
Companies from countries associated to European programs but not eligible for full membership. Any active representative organization, institution or association party in the field of Earth observation and not engaged in commercial or profit-making activities such as Public/Governmental Bodies, International Organisation, International Non Governmental Organisation (NGO), Private Non Profit Organisation/Foundation, Network/Association/Aggregation of Intermediaries(profit or non profit), Business Association, Universities, other?) with interest in Earth Observation.

(Source EARSC)

The European Association of Remote Sensing Companies (EARSC) is the European organization which – on a non-profit basis – coordinates and promotes activities of their members in the area of services based on the delivery of geo-information products on customer demand.


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

Nowadays, EARSC is embarking on a new strategy of Earth observation awareness and raising to industry the importance of working together for a better future. It is definitively becoming a real point of contact for Earth Observation Industry in Europe

Following a good year for EARSC, with significant achievements spreading the voice of the geo-information services industry, the Board of Directors is delighted to inform you that 2011 will start from a position of further strength: It is our great pleasure to announce the appointment of Mr. Geoff Sawyer as the new Secretary General of EARSC.

Geoff has recently taken an early retirement from industry, and now joins EARSC to embark upon a new challenge to drive forward the development of the geo-information services industry.

During his long and varied career, Geoff has held senior management positions in the space industry as well as numerous representative positions in the UK and Europe including 3 years as the chairman of EARSC (from 1991 to 1995) and as a member of several EU consultative bodies such as Spassec (for space and security) and the SecAG (Security Advisory Group). In addition to his extensive industrial experience, Geoff also spent 3 years working for the European Commission where he was responsible for supporting space policy and in particular the creation of the GMES initiative.

Geoff is very well known to many in the space and earth observation sectors and brings this deep wealth of experience and knowledge to support the ambitions of the geo-information industry that EARSC represents. Through his long and varied career, he has always been engaged in fostering innovative capabilities including some related to downstream applications markets.

The Board of Directors is very excited to have been able to appoint him as Secretary General and we really look forward to working with him in this new role.

EARSC Secretary General
Mr Geoff Sawyer
Contact: + 32 476737564
geoff.sawyer@earsc.org
www.earsc.org

EARSC Secretary General Press Release Jan2011.pdf

Content for publication is welcomed and can be submitted at any time for consideration. Let us help you bring your article to the world.


Please feel free to suggest any news, study and successful cases, events, projects, blogs or other geoinformation content items that you deem relevant for our community and interested stakeholders. This will enable us to share important knowledge and expertise networking among other experts who will exchange their know-how.

EOmag is released every three months, with focus articles on members, news in depth features, achievements, progress reports on programmes, communication and partnership with organisations and events.

The distribution of the Newsletter is based on our stakeholders database (Industry and relevant Institutions worldwide interested in geo-information domain).

The Newsletter is an excellent platform for companies and organizations to communicate on actions and programmes related to geo-information.

Articles:
We would be happy to publish all relevant articles for companies/institutions (max 1000-word articles, preferably with illustrations) for the next issues of the Newsletter

Events:
In order to improve the information offered about the activities of our stakeholders, we are collecting basic data concerning all the already scheduled events. For the purpose, we kindly ask companies and institutions to
provide the following information about each event:

Start Date
End Date
Title
Web
Place – City and Country

Please send this information to EARSC secretariat always stating [Events] as the beginning of your message description at the subject box, in order to help managing and archiving. Since it is intended to keep this list as much updated as possible, please remind to inform Secretariat every time a new event is scheduled.

Optional Information:
Theme
Description
Language
E-mail contact

Should you have any queries, please do not hesitate to “secretariat-at-earsc.org”:

Many thanks in advance
EARSC secretariat

EARSC is a non-profit-making organisation created in 1989. The mission of EARSC is 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, which is openly accessible to all members.

We all know quite well that it took many more years for the market itself to mature pushing many to forget some of their illusions on the way. However realizing that maturity and market expansion could only happen little by little in this complex domain EARSC has been sticking to its goal of helping develop the European remote sensing industry, reaching today 80 members, and being a recognized association worldwide. All the major European industrial actors of remote sensing are EARSC members and are involved in numerous ways to foster the development of the domain together with European institutions. Lately the EARSC strategy has evolved one step further to account for the geospatial information revolution of the 21st century.

EARSC is representing the European providers of geo-information services in its broadest sense creating a network between industry, decision makers and users. It is a crucial stage of maturing of the sector as nowadays Earth observation is used more frequently by society and adds positive value to our daily lives.

At the same time, an active participation from all of our members is the best guarantee that EARSC will play an important role on the European Earth observation and geo-information arena. For our members, the annual membership dues are a cost-effective way to stay informed, promote their company, political and institutional representation, networking opportunities with industry players and help to support the future of geo-information Industry: “industry stakeholders together could transform activities into meaningful action on behalf of our sector”.

Internally EARSC informs and involves its members though the website, newsletter, directorate and the organization of more numerous events. This will allow us to be more present on the European and International scene and to contribute more efficiently to the implementation of European programmes.

To get more information on EARSC membership, please contact us at

EARSC membership

EARSC membership represents the entire spectrum of the Earth Observation industry including all sector chain: providers, stakeholders and users. Membership of EARSC is currently 500 Euros per annum. For our members, the annual membership dues are a cost-effective way to stay informed, promote their company, political and institutional representation, networking opportunities with industry players and help support the future of Earth Observation. Industry together could transform activities into meaningful action on behalf of our sector

Full Members
Any commercial European company or partnership offering and undertaking consulting and contracting services or supplying equipment in the field of remote sensing which is based in a European Country which contributes to the European Space Agency or which is a member of the European Community shall be eligible for membership.

Observer Members
Companies from countries associated to European programs but not eligible for full membership. Any active representative organization, institution or association party in the field of Earth observation and not engaged in commercial or profit-making activities such as Public/Governmental Bodies, International Organisation, International Non Governmental Organisation (NGO), Private Non Profit Organisation/Foundation, Network/Association/Aggregation of Intermediaries(profit or non profit), Business Association, Universities, other?) with interest in Earth Observation.

(Source EARSC)

EARSC members will recall the successful eoVox-1 study conducted in 2006 by EARSC, with ESA support (Several of the outputs of that study helped to define the EARSC evolution strategy for 2007 and beyond )


In 2010-11, a set of follow-on activities is being undertaken by EARSC, again with support from ESA – this is eoVox-2
-Activities specified by EARSC and managed by the BoD
-These activities are designed to help EARSC strengthen and grow the European EO/RS value-adding sector, and continue EARSC’s evolution and growth strategy
-The activities are supported by funding from ESA, which enables EARSC to do things we couldn’t otherwise afford to do

eovox2 activities

-Horizon scanning taking a look at the ‘next big things’
-Industry position papers capturing the views of the industry
-Trade directory – “eoPages” to promote the service providers and services
-Promotional packages targeted at specific market sectors
-Trade missions to talk to key customers in those sectors

In support of these activities, we warmly encourage all EARSC members to come up with fresh ideas and input for EARSC to take forward. The EARSC secretariat will keep you informed of ways to get engaged in the process. Your active participation will add value to the association and bring greater benefit to all of our members and the industry as a whole.
eoVox2 will be organising a consultations that you might be interested to look at and participate. For more information please do not hesitate to contact secretariat-at-earsc.org

22 June 2010, Brussels

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

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

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

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

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