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Planetek Italia S.r.l.

Integrated Geographical Data Management Systems
Planetek Italia has been founded in 1994 positioning itself in the emerging market on the integration of satellite Earth Observation data within Geographical Information System. The company approach has always been a user centric one, fostering an alignment of the technology with the customer needs. In few years the company became a very well known brand within the European Research and Development arena, becoming an important contractor of the European Space Agency in the field of Earth Observation services development. More recently several opportunities in the field of Security and Natural Risk mitigation and management entered the scope of the company. A culture of organization, quality management and sound financial administration characterize the business model of Planetek Italia s.r.l.
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Planetek Italia has been established in Bari, southern Italy, by the actual stakeholders. Good experience of the present CEO of the company in the field of space activities suggested an approach to the emerging market of Earth Observation and GIS supported by the user pull, more than inclined to the technology push of other market player. This attitude was also supported by a cross fertilization between the actual customer needs and the capabilities descending from the European research activities with the European Union, in the Framework Research Programs, and even more with European Space Agency. The company growth intercepted the emerging claim for a “useful” research by the Agency, offering a natural test bed for space assets with real world user.
With the clear objective of building a problem solver company Planetek Italia searched a strategic relation with Users as well as the opportunity of procure state of the art technology by universities and research centres. But clear model business it’s not enough, to make successfully a company, also management and business administration are fundamental. Planetek Italia management was convinced that the strengths of the company was flexibility and human resources, for this reason a ERP program was developed and integrated with administration. The flow of each single project is monitored this way in compliance to the ISO 9001 2000 quality control system of the company. Also the company organization, trough flexible “Cluster” approach reflect the policy of the management. In the last three years Planetek Italia invested in R&D more then 1 M€, and each year more than 3% of total manpower is devoted to training and education.
In 2005 the company topped the 3 M€ revenue target and started a reverse value engineering process with two goals, prepare growth and preserve margins: Planetek Extended approach was ignited. The idea was to leverage on the good relation with university and at the same time benefit from the opportunities of new emerging geographical market, and new service and products. An extended company increase the capabilities to address a wider range of services, in this way the company capabilities become virtually unlimited, the only limits become the partner procurement and it’s management. As a later development of this approach we can site the establishment of a company spin-off called Geo-K, in Italy, and a sister company in Greece, called Planetek Hellas
Planetek Italia Technical Background
Photo Credits: ©ESA
Planetek Italia capabilities are based on mastering a set of enabling technologies integrated with supporting technologies. The role of system integration platform is normally played by GIS software development. These systems normally provide the software tools and primitives to handle geographic information, design powerful man machine interface, interact with geodatabase and naturally with more traditional alphanumerical database.
The increasing use of network based application, and their use of huge image (so called raster) data set require also a specific software integration platform that is provided by the image web server™ architecture, on witch Planetek Italia deliver it’s Carta@net™ solution for WebGIS applications.
The company has a wide experience as turnkey system integrator, software developer and solution provider. Planetek Italia is oriented to the solution rather than the technology; anyway it masters all the IT technology in order to offer state of the art solutions.
Transform data remotely sensed by satellite system into useful information call for special abilities. The information extraction, or value adding on this data involve competence on statistical image processing, signal processing, data mining. More than this a peculiar capability reside in the elicit of user need, transform this in structured requirements and from this define clear system specification. This activity is particularly complicated by the need of fusion of disparate data set originating from sources spanning from microwaves to ultraviolet, through visible and infrared.
As mentioned the Planetek Italia approach is founded on the use of GIS technology as data integration platform for data and applications. Even recently a vigorous effort have been produced in penance the capabilities of this systems in terms of user interface, flexibility, compliance to common standard, a non trivial activity of ad hoc personalization and interface with other tools, such as image processing tools, or flow control software should be deployed.
Furthermore new application and user requirements drive huge development, successfully mastered by Planetek Italia:
  1. The integration of physical networks and numerical models
  2. The data security issues
  3. The integration with navigational hardware like GPS terminals and telecommunication devices.
An example of this are the fleet management system solution provided by Planetek Italia where position information gathered by satellite navigation system is forwarded by GPRS wireless to GIS based control system that serves both back office requirements of the customer (fleet maintenance, security, service level monitoring, scheduling etc…) as well as passenger support services (schedule, display, reservation, etc.).
Application Fields
Planetek Italia deliverable consist in system and services that’s are instances of theirs capabilities with several application areas. Many are the international projects developed in cooperation with european partners in various non exclusive application fields such as Environmental monitoring, Civil Protection, Natural risks mitigation, Protection of waters and sealife, Agricultural and Forest monitoring, Technological Networks and Transport monitoring, European Security and Defence, Planetary Exploration. Details and documentation of international projects developed (e.g. SLAM Service, Kyoto-INV, GMES Urban Service Vampire, Forfait, Balu, Meduc, Lewis) can be found on Planetek Italia website at http://www.planetek.it .
The Company provides also some of the most known products used in land management application and supports its customer in implementing knowledge and capacity through its routine and customized education programs.
Products and support on EO data (Ikonos, Spot, IRS, EROS), Image processing (ER Mapper, IWS, ECW Compressor), Desktop mapping and GIS (ESRI ArcGIS), Web Publishing (Image Web Server, Cart@net ).
Developed by Planetek Italia, Cart@net is the solution for the management and consultation of large raster datasets, ideal to distribute on-line catalogs of cartographic data. For some example please visit:
- Atlante Italiano (Italian Ministry of Environment)
(Cart@net Tsunami demo site)
Planetek Italia is a founder member of AIPAS, Italian Small and Medium Aerospace Enterprises Association, and is a member of AIT, Italian Remote Sensing Association. Planetek Italia is also member of AZIMUTH Consortium wich was formed to exploit the opportunities related to the GALILEO navigation system.
Photo Credits: ©ESA
The company gives a special attention to the growth of its territorial context. Planetek Italia believes in a continuous cooperation with research centers and with local and national universities to realize training stages, graduation theses, PhDs and scholarships successfully. At the same time, it started communication to promote the use of modern satellite monitoring techniques, organizing conferences, workshops and providing a free way, on its own web site, for a free complete course on remote sensing.
Planetek Italia S.r.l. is currently managed by founders of the company, Dr. Giovanni Sylos Labini (CEO), Dr. Maria Pappalepore (CFO), Dr. Vincenzo Barbieri (CMO) and Dr. Sergio Samarelli (CTO).
“Cart@net is a trademark of Plenetek Italia S.r.l.. Satellite images are a copyright of European Space Agency. Other trademarks are the porperty of teh respective owners. Planetek Italia S.r.l. is not responsible for unauthorized or any abuse in using data and information of the present document. For any question please contact abuse@planetek.it“
Planetek Italia S.r.l.
Address: Via Massaua 12, I-70123 Bari (Italy)
Phone: +39 080 5343750
Fax: +39 080 5340280
Contact Person: Paolo Manunta