The ESA Φ-lab Newsletter #12 | March 2024

INVESTING IN INDUSTRIAL INNOVATION FOR A GREEN AND SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

Dear Φ-lab community,

In its Agenda 2025, ESA has set out strategies for growing Europe’s role in the space sector, including the objective of boosting space commercialisation for a green, sustainable and digital Europe. Innovative commercial space companies have a crucial role to play in moving the green agenda forward, particularly in Earth observation, and the value of AI-derived data analytics and knowledge-based services in achieving this cannot be underestimated.

Private investment in the EO sector in Europe, although significantly improved in recent years, continues to trail behind the US and China, making the mission of the ESA InCubed programme all the more important. Investing in Industrial Innovation (aka InCubed) stimulates and develops the European commercial Earth observation sector by providing investment opportunities, together with technical and business mentoring, for both start-ups and established companies. 2023 was once again a fruitful year for the programme, which now boasts a fund size of more than €200 million and a membership of 21 countries.

InCubed is fully aligned with the Agenda 2025 commercialisation strategy, and has a number of activities under its belt that dovetail perfectly with the green agenda. In this edition of the newsletter, we’re reporting on recently completed InCubed activities, and three of the six are directly related to a green and sustainable future, covering solutions for water management and the monitoring of pipelines and offshore wind farms.

With around 56 ongoing activities, 2024 is already shaping up to be another seminal year for InCubed and its contribution to European global competitiveness in EO.

The Φ-lab team

INCUBED SUCCESS STORIES

Here are some of the most recent InCubed activities that have passed their final review. Most are ready to add value in the market, and some are already generating revenue.

SuperVision Earth: SUPERVISION PIPELINE MONITORING (Germany)

SuperVision Pipeline Monitoring is a satellite-based risk detection system that uses AI to provide immediate pipeline reporting for the benefit of climate-change mitigation. After completing various pilot projects, SuperVision Earth has now secured a long-term contract for the product with a leading German gas pipeline operator.

InfoSequia-4CAST contributes to sustainability by providing actionable predictions on drought-induced crop yield and water supply failures. After piloting the tool with the World Food Programme in Mozambique and water management authorities in Spain, FutureWater is now implementing the product roll-out with international stakeholders.

Aimed at easing access to Copernicus Sentinel-1 data, KappaOne is a set of analysis-ready data layers that can be accessed by customers through a web interface or by downstream applications via an API. KappaOne has now entered its commercialisation phase

ReOrbit’s UKKO is a satellite software stack and avionics bundle for EO satellites. After completing its first phase with InCubed, ReOrbit is now looking to start the second phase, which will involve integrating the product into a platform and flying the entire package on an in-orbit demonstrator.

The BulletInSAR service supplies customers with mm-level ground deformation and change detection information based on interferometric SAR data. Following the successful completion of the pilot phase, BulletInSAR is now being actively marketed to clients in the mining sector.

SiteObserver is a green application that provides marine insight and analysis for the monitoring of offshore windfarms. Having completed the de-risking phase with InCubed, DHI is now well placed for the detailed development and subsequent market entry of the product.

ΦSAT-2 LAUNCH

June - Φ-lab has supported the development of ESA’s Φsat-2 satellite and its AI payload, and also organised the OrbitalAI Φsat-2 Challenge, with the winners having their AI apps run onboard during the mission.

15 February - Φ-lab’s multi-award-winning research on predicting dengue fever outbreaks, carried out in conjunction with UNICEF, received further recognition when a paper detailing the project was published in Nature.

27 February - Benedikt Soja, Assistant Professor for Space Geodesy at ETH Zurich, visited Φ-lab to give a presentation on how ML is transforming geodetic EO, comprising the three pillars of monitoring Earth's geometry, gravity field and orientation in space.

28 February - This event in Oslo brought together InCubed, NOSA and Norwegian industry. InCubed presented its mission and activities, and during the subsequent bilateral meetings, a number of promising, highly innovative activities were identified for possible InCubed support.

FROM OUR WEBSITE

Building ChatGPT-style tools with Earth observation

Along with various partners from the fields of space, computing and meteorology, ESA is currently developing an EO digital assistant that will understand human queries and respond with human-like answers.

ESA Φ-lab has launched Major TOM (Terrestrial Observation Metaset), a community-oriented project that allows researchers to share, use and combine large Earth observation (EO) datasets.

ESA is working with OroraTech, an InCubed-supported company, to demonstrate how data from its FOREST-2 satellite mission will contribute to Copernicus. OroraTech was one of nine firms selected as Emerging Copernicus Contributing Missions in June 2023.

8-12 April - Φ-lab is heavily involved in AI Week this year, an event dedicated to introducing entrepreneurs, managers and start-ups to the possibilities of AI in business. We’ll be presenting the work of Φ-lab in speeches, round-table discussions and networking sessions, along with a keynote, An ‘AI Symphony’ for the planet: AI solutions for Climate Change.

14-19 April - The EGU will be held at the Austria Center Vienna and online. Φ-lab will present our work on PhilEO and other foundation model initiatives, along with giving a talk on the Φ-lab-Giga Child Connectivity project.

7-10 May - Organised by Φ-lab and ECMWF, this workshop will explore the impact and challenges deriving from the fusion of traditional Earth System Observation and Prediction (ESOP) techniques with machine learning and deep learning.