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EARSC is organising a Trade Mission to Australia, traveling with seven European companies.

EARSC organised a Trade Mission to Australia, traveling with seven European companies: AIRBUS , e-geos , Earth-i , Geospatial Enabling Technologies , GMV , and Planet Labs , Sinergise. The mission took place at Brisbane, Canberra and Sydney, between the 5th-9th of March, 2018

You can find here:

the mission summary.pdf

presentation summary.pdf

The goal of the mission was to connect with businesses, in order to form partnerships focused around EO Services. Attendees participated to an extensive program of networking events, briefings, introductions to EU remote sensing firms, investors and customers.

This mission has also allowed both European companies and Australian to build new market opportunities globally.

“It was my best experience in this kind of activities and I thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to be part of it.”

Engaged, enthusiastic, and effective organization. You could feel all the people in the meetings rowing in the same direction. – Antonio Tabasco Cabezas, Remote Sensing Applications and Services Division Manager at GMV

Great initiative: Meeting ‘old’ friends, making new ones and establishing future business connections; Europe and Australia need to work more closely – there is much in common. – Peter Hausknecht, Chief Scientist at Earth-i

This mission also coincides with a visit by Elżbieta Bieńkowska, EU Commissioner for the Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs. She oversaw the signing of a MoU between EARSC and the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information (CRCSI). For more information about the MoU click here

The first of our next series of studies into the benefits driven by Sentinel satellites is published. This looks at a service provided by start-up Fieldsense in Denmark using Sentinel 2 data to offer precision farming products.

We are always looking for new cases which must be “operational” ie in use by a customer organisation, use Sentinel data (essential), and open for detailed discussions and publication of reults.

See the case study

20 March 2018. EARSC publish today its position paper on Usage of Open Street Map versus National Data for CORINE Land Cover plus (CLC+) – “CLC Backbone.

In the context of the evolution of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS), the European Environment Agency (EEA) is preparing a major upgrade of the European Land Cover/Land Use (LC/LU) information basis: the “2nd generation CORINE Land Cover (CLC) product”. The EAGLE1 group has proposed a conceptual design based on four complementary elements2. The first one of these, the “CLC-Backbone” is foreseen as a spatially detailed, EEA-39 wide inventory in vector format, providing a geometric spatial structure for landscape features with limited, but robust EO-based land cover thematic detail on which to build further elements. The second element will be the “CLC Core”, a grid database repository populated with land cover/land use (LC/LU) and ancillary data. From the first two elements, a new LC/LU monitoring product shall be created as third element: the “CLC+”. As a forth element, the “CLC Legacy” shall ensure time series continuity of the current “traditional” CLC product. DG GROW has expressed that industry shall have an initial role in the production of the CLC-Backbone, and an Open Call for Tender is expected in 2018.

The EO services value-adding sector has a strong interest in the evolution of the CLMS. Therefore we welcome the proposed CLC upgrade towards an independent, high-resolution, cross border coherent, up-to-date information basis for the EEA-39 area, and expect industry to become a core actor for CLC-Backbone production and further activities towards CLC+. A wide range of new commercial as well as scientific and academic applications are expected to emerge from the availability of such state-of-the-art, free and open LC/LU dataset.

In particular, the CLC-Backbone will address a baseline object delineation, building upon and complementing the coverage of the already available CLMS Local Component products (currently 1/3 of EEA-39). CLC-Backbone will resemble persistent features (‘hard bones’, i.e. settlements or linear networks such as roads, railways and rivers) as well as a subdivision of more dynamic
features using multi-temporal Sentinel-2 data (‘soft bones’). By definition, in order to meet the standard requirements for the CLMS products (high thematic and geometric quality, comparability of spatial detail and thematic content across borders within EEA-39, temporal consistency in defined time steps), the selection of relevant input data for establishing the ‘hard bones’ is crucial.

In that sense, the usage of INSPIRE compliant Member States’ reference data for that purpose, as proposed by EuroGeographics in an open letter to the Director-Generals of the EC in December 2017, is seen critical, as the exact role and capabilities of such data remains unclear. It is acknowledged and very much welcomed that Member States made significant efforts to implement the INSPIRE Directive. In operational pan-European implementations of the CLMS so far, however, the actual use of national in-situ data has been limited to supporting the interpretation of difficult classes and for quality checks. Direct large-scale integration of national in-situ data into pan-European CLMS products has so far not been feasible, as Member States’ relevant reference data are often either not fully coherent across borders, have varying
recording times, are not regularly updated, show significant coverage gaps or have different thematic contents and spatial resolutions. Moreover, there are still issues in several countries in terms of free data accessibility and licensing conditions.

The above issues have been experienced by the EO value adding industry in the past years with national geodata made available via national geodata portals, and also with those being offered additionally via CORDA (Copernicus Reference Data Access). CORDA serves as a single-entry point for finding and accessing many international and national geospatial reference data across Europe specifically for Copernicus service implementation. Although these datasets have proven valuable for supporting several aspects of the CLMS production, most of the datasets listed on CORDA exhibit a high heterogeneity in terms of the above listed criteria and are not accessible on a full, free and open basis, preventing direct integration.

In order to make such reference data usable in a cost-efficient manner for CLMS productions, a European-wide data harmonization as foreseen when the INSPIRE implementation will be finalised, would be indispensable. We are convinced that only such pan European coordinated effort can ensure that technical specifications in terms of geometry, consistency and thematic content would match with the specifications of the CLMS products.

Operational production experience in previous CLMS mappings has confirmed that quick access to reliable data is key to support the mapping at various stages of the production process. Thus, in the current absence of coherent national data on a pan-European level, the use of proven production processes supported by alternative datasets that do fulfil key requirements, such as Open Street Map (OSM) data, is encouraged. Several studies have compared OSM data with authoritative datasets and showed that they are increasingly gaining in quality, especially in densely populated urban areas where a high number of contributors are active (see e.g. Brovelli et al. (2016); Ludwig et al. (2011), Zheng (2014)). OSM data are consistently available for all Member States with proven thematic quality at high spatial resolution under a fully open license (ODBL – Open DataBase License), are up-to-date and have a full-time history. Therefore it can be deduced that through integration of OSM with existing Copernicus data (CLMS products and Sentinel imagery), ‘hard bones’ can be efficiently established without leading to significant product inconsistencies along national borders.

*As a conclusion, the EO downstream sector strongly suggests for the next generation of European Land Monitoring products the use of proven production processes building upon the CLMS portfolio and any full European coverage ancillary data that are fit for purpose. On the short term, open source data fulfil this need, whereas it is expected that on the longer term (upon finalisation of INSPIRE) national in-situ data will become available and accessible as consistent pan-European coverages in appropriate quality. Therefore EARSC supports the approach as proposed by EAGLE in November 2017.

Source

Are you providing training courses related to Earth observation (EO) / Geoinformatics (GI)?
Are you working in the EO and/or GI sector (in a private, public or academic organization)?

You have 6 weeks to contribute with 5 minutes of your time to the development of an innovative strategy for skills development and capacity building in the Earth observation (EO) and Geoinformatics (GI) field, supporting Copernicus user uptake.

The Earth observation and Geoinformatics sectors are evolving rapidly. This requires the adaptation of EO/GI training for matching the demanded skills on the market.

EO4GEO invites all organizations operating in the space and geospatial sectors to participate in its surveys on supply and demand of education and training in EO/GI.

5 minutes to help define a long-term sector skills strategy for the near future!

SURVEY ON EO/GI TRAINING SUPPLY

EO4GEO wishes to:
analyze the existing and planned training educational offer in the sector
identify the organizations which can contribute to improving skills for the uptake of Copernicus data and services by new users.
The survey focuses on the supply of academic and Vocational Education and Training (VET) in Europe in the space and geospatial sectors.

SURVEY ON EO/GI SKILLS DEMAND

About eo4geo:
How to bridge the skills gap between supply and demand for education and training in the European space / geospatial sector? A hand to understand how to tackle the problem comes from the EO4GEO project, funded under the Erasmus + program, which includes 26 partners and 22 initial partners, including EARSC which will be leading the Skills strategy.

Source

Brussels, 7th March 2018: The European Association of Remote Sensing Companies (EARSC) and the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information (CRCSI) through Spatial Information Systems Research Ltd (SISR), signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). Representatives from the EARSC member companies AIRBUS, e-geos, Earth-i, Geospatial Enabling Technologies, GMV, Planet, and Sinergise attended the ceremony.

This MoU aims to establish a formal cooperation initiative between EARSC, responsible for promoting the use of Earth Observation (EO) technology and supporting companies in Europe which offer EO-related products and services, and SISR which is the management company for CRCSI, a collaborative R&D organisation which conducts user-driven interdisciplinary research in spatial sciences to accelerate industry growth, improve social wellbeing and build a more sustainable environment. The CRCSI has delivered measurable benefits across the health, defence and security, energy and utilities, urban development, agriculture, natural resources, and climate change sectors.

The main beneficiaries of this MoU should be organisations and firms located in Europe and Australia willing to develop partnerships and joint projects, and that are interested in benefitting from the sharing of best practices and exchange of experience, information, people and technologies related to EO which are not available in their home locations. This exchange should be supported by EARSC and SISR.

“We are really pleased to be able to work with CRCSI and Geoscience Australia to organise the first trade mission between European and Australian Earth Observation companies. Copernicus is an exceptional program offering fantastic opportunities to work together. We are looking forward to some successful partnerships emerging.” Stated Geoff Sawyer – Secretary General of EARSC.

“Missions such as these provide a fantastic opportunity to meet and build genuine collaborations, enhanced by mechanisms such as H2020 and facilitated by partnerships such as have been established via this MOU.” Stated Graeme Kernich – CEO of the CRCSI

About the European Association of Remote Sensing Companies (EARSC)
EARSC is a non-profit organisation aimed to promote the use of Earth-observation (EO) and European companies which offer EO-related products and services. Formed in 1989, the organisation has over 100-member companies from throughout Europe with a secretariat office in Brussels. EARSC is actively involved in coordinating and strengthening the EO chain and promoting the European geo-information industry, and also providing a unified voice on wider European and global issues of importance to the industrial sector.
For more information contact Natassa Antoniou: natassa.antoniou@earsc.org
Website: www.earsc.org
Twitter: @earsc
LinkedIn: EARSC

About the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information (CRCSI)
CRCSI is an international research and development centre set up in 2003 under the Australian Government Business Cooperative Research Centres Programme. CRCSI conducts user-driven research in spatial information that addresses issues of national importance in Australia and New Zealand. There partners include government agencies, universities and over 50 companies.
For more information contact Stephanie Pradier: spradier@crcsi.com.au
Website: www.crcsi.com.au
Twitter: @crcsi
LinkedIn: CRC for Spatial Information

On 15th February 2018, NEREUS together with Bremen Region, and GIZ. hosted a Working Breakfast Meeting aiming at presenting the project “Space for Development: What can Earth Observation do for Benin and Togo?” and facilitating the encounter with NEREUS members active in the field of Earth Observation, African embassies, and other stakeholder associations such as EARSC.

The African delegation, composed of experts working in research centers and public administrations from Togo and Benin, visited our office on 16th February where Ariane presented the different activities of our association, with a specific focus on Africa. More information

The eInfrastructure and Science Cloud unit of the European Commission organised an information session for proposers as a follow-up of the ICT Proposers’ Day 2017 and NCP sessions.

Hosted by the European Association of Remote Sensing Companies, this info session related to the eINFRAEOSC-01-2018 call (DG-CONNECT) aimed at offering an additional opportunity to discuss the procurement action of Earth Observation commercial services and build quality partnerships with researchers, private stakeholders, SMEs and Earth Observation actors from all over Europe, especially in the area of Copernicus/DIAS services to be procured.

Download the presentations given at the event:

For more information contact: emmanuel.pajot@earsc.org

Following the great success of the EARSC EO Product Award 2017 won by ‘Waste from Space’ a product developped by Air & Space Evidence, EARSC has decided to focus this year’s award on products supporting sustainable development and SDGs.

In 2015, countries adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. These include a broad range of sustainable development issues; ending poverty and hunger, improving health and education, making cities more sustainable, combating climate change, and protecting oceans and forests. The SDGs are being launched with an emphasis on collecting data that will be extensive and specific enough to serve these needs. They are designed to balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social and environmental. European EO industry can help achieve the SDGs by providing critical information on natural resources, government operations, public services, and population demographics.

As last year’s award recognised a product helping to support the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at national, regional and/or local levels, and the monitoring and reporting against the global indicator framework, EARSC has decided to align this year award with one of the strategic engagement priorities that addresses key global policy mandates such as the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Private sector is invited to submit entries on products supporting sustainable development and concretely SDGs.

The competition will run over a 3 month period (February 2018- April 2018) during which candidate companies may adapt an existing product, develop a new product or simply promote one they have already in their catalogue. Companies will be asked to provide a short summary of the results (report should not exceed 2 pages and a template will be facilitated) which will be used as statement for the jury.

This is your opportunity to follow in the steps of previous award winners and benefit from the prestige of winning an EARSC award!

Criteria: eligibility requirements & metrics

o Any commercial product which will support sustainable development
o Report on the findings (not exceed 2 pages):

  • Explain what type of product the company offers
  • Describe the challenge: What problem this product will solve/what solution will this provide? How will this product contribute to sustainable development?
  • Explanation of the circumstances surrounding the development of this product and the identification of the SDG which will support or the monitoring and reporting against the global indicator framework.
  • Expected impact to address

Timing

  • Expression of Interest: by 15th March 2018
  • Dead-line entries: 1st May 2018
  • Selection: the files will be judged by the jury to select the overall product winner (1st May- 31st May)
  • Announcement: EARSC annual cocktail June 2018 in Brussels where the winner of the EARSC “European Earth Observation company of the year” is also revealed.

Further to the eoMALL Invitation To Tender issued by ESA in 2017, Eversis, Geocento and GMV have been awarded for the first phase of the eoMALL competitive dialogue.

Thanks to the support of the ESA and the strong and valuable involvement of a dedicated EARSC working group composed of SMEs and Large companies, already members of the EARSC or joining to be part of the initiative, 2018 will be the year of the launch of the eoMALL!

The three winning consortia are:

  • led by Geocento, consortium includes Terradue and Catapult;
  • led by GMV Soluciones Globales Internet consortium includes GMV Aerospace and Defence and TMT Factory
  • led by Eversis consortium includes Airbus Defence & Space

The interaction between the working group, the three consotia and ESA is planned to start the beginning of February. Companies will have nine weeks to implement a prototype.

The objective is to develop an online Marketplace for the Earth Observation (EO) Service sector. Known as eoMALL, the platform will enable the interactive promotion of downstream EO-based products services focused on the needs of a global user-base.

In only 5 months, the beta release of the eoMALL will:

  • highlight top quality EO services and innovative European EO companies
  • enable companies in the actual small but fast-growing online market
  • improve the understanding of EO users needs in this specific market
  • engage with non-EO communities

2018 will be undoubtedly a challenging and interesting year!

The Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME) has approved the IDEEO project – « Internationalisation and Diversification of European Earth Observation ».

IDEEO is funded under the COSME Cluster Go International action and will run over fifteen months, starting from 1st January 2018. The consortium is coordinated by the European Association of Remote Sensing Companies – EARSC and composed of 2 sectorial clusters Pôle Mer Bretagne Atlantique (France) and Cluster Lucano di Bioeconomia (Italy). The NEREUS network is also involved as partners for dissemination and contact with the regions.

The overarching objective of the IDEEO project is the creation of a new European partnership which will promote internationally the use of European Earth Observation capability in different sectors such as marine, agriculture, energy etc. In order to meet the expected impacts specified by the Call, IDEEO has defined four specific objectives that will govern the respective activities carried out in the project to:

  • Analyse international market and policy aspects in order to define sectors with the highest export potential for the European Earth Observation based solution companies
  • Develop a joint cross-cluster and cross-sectorial internationalisation strategy in order to internationally promote the European Earth Observation sector in the selected sectors
  • Propose an implementation roadmap facilitating the internationalisation of the European SME´s
  • Maximise the impact of the activities through well-defined communication, dissemination, stakeholder engagement and exploitation strategies.

The project kicked-off on January 10th, 2018 at EARSC’s premises in Brussels. Two thematic workshops will be organised around the agriculture sector in Matera, Italy (end of April) and maritime sector in Brest, France (beginning of October) in order to create sinergies with the EO sector and better define internationalisation priorities.