More than 140 proposals were received in response to the first three Invitations To Tender issued in 2008 under the new program VAE (Value Adding Element). This confirms that issues of high interest for the EO service industry are being addressed in VAE.
VAE is an element of the ESA Earth Observation Envelope Program (EOEP-3). It follows on from its predecessor (EOMD) and maintains focus on the needs of the EO service industry. VAE is starting now its new activities over the financing period of the next 5 years (2008-12).
Out of the total pool of proposals, more than 40 have been evaluated as above good in quality and meriting contracts. This exceeds (by a factor 2) the level of activities originally foreseen in the 2008 work-plan for VAE. Currently, a first batch (BATCH1) of 22 contracts are in the negotiation and placing phase for a total value of 4 MEuros. In order to fully cover the most promising ideas submitted by industry, a second batch (BATCH2) of about 20 contracts is going to be started before summer for the remaining positively evaluated proposals.
The list of activities to be started now (BATCH1) is provided below.
AO5828 – INTEGRATE NEW TECHNIQUES/TECHNOLOGIES INTO CURRENT EO SERVICES
Ten contracts have been selected (note the prime contractor is indicated in brackets):
- PolSAR mapping services for Forestry (Dendron Resource Surveys)
- New polarimetric Detection for Marine applications (eOsphere)
- EO Jelly (starlab)
- Integration of ground photos and EO for risk reduction, disasters and climate change (AnsuR Technologies AS)
- EO services for CO2 Capture and Storage Facilities (SciSys)
- Renewable Energy Potential Mapping (Geoville)
- CO2 Capture and Storage for the Energy Industry using high-resolution SAR (InfoTerra Gmbh)
- EO for Legal Use (University College London)
- MERIS-based Chlorophyll and LAI products (InfoTerra Ltd)
- De-Forestation monitoring services (DMCii)
Companies have been contacted to provide a full proposal. The second batch will include 10-12 contracts.
AO5825 – ADDRESSING NEW AND EVOLVING INDUSTRY OPPORTUNITIES FOR EO BASED INFORMATION SERVICES
The first group of eight contracts to be started in first quarter of 2009 includes:
- Geo-Marketing (TeleAtlas)
- Geo-Marketing (GIM)
- Climate Change & Industry (Civil Engineering) (COWI)
- Climate Change & Industry (Carbon Trading) (Hatfield)
- Waste Management (Environmental)(ERA-MapTec)
- Waste Management (Mining) (ViaSat Geotechnologies)
- Insurance (Logica)
- Agro-Chemical (Spatial Business International)
8-10 contracts will be started in the second batch.
AO 5870 – GEOGRAPHIC EXPANSION FOR EUROPEAN AND CANADIAN EO SERVICES
The four selected contracts will all be starting in the first quarter of 2009:
- Persian Gulf States / Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and U.A.E. (Vega Group plc)
- South-East Asia / Indonesia and Vietnam (C-CORE)
- North-East Asia / China (InfoTerra Gmbh)
- North-Africa Mediterranean Coast / Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt(Indra)
There are no further contracts to be started for this ITT.
When all of these BATCH1 contracts have been successfully negotiated and started, summary information will be posted on the website.
Information on the contracts selected under BATCH2 (a further 20 contracts) will be posted here in May.
Information on the new opportunities for 2009 within the VAE program will be posted during April.