FIbEO aims at helping product traceability by obtaining yield forecasts to use in verifying product origin and guaranteeing food quality. It also helps to monitor agricultural practices and compliancy with product specifications.
Customers and their Needs
Agri-food industry: checking compliancy of product consigned by outgrowers.
Consortiums: support their member demonstrating compliancy to specifications, improve brand awareness Control bodies: improve check capabilities, speed up compliance certifications.
Targeted customer/users countries
Producers Organization (Consortium), Growers Group-PO; Control bodies-CB, Agri-food industry-AGIND.
Product description
FIbEO makes use EO, field data and scheme rules to produce better yield estimates of raw materials and help cross-checking this information with real consignments. The service shall help creating trustworthy food supply chains and ensure integrity while tracing provenance.
Added Value
(PO) Avoid over consignments, improve growing and profitability for associates, Ensure the compliance to product specifications, Have a more transparent information flow, Improve perceived quality of the product, Enable immediate corrective actions, Track production lots, Reduce certification time; (CB) Reduce time during audits, Automated digital cross-checks; (AGIND) Full traceability, Brand recognition, Immediate corrective actions, Dissuaded misbehaviour, Avoid frauds, Centralised information system.
Current Status
The project has reached its last Milestone, with the pilot service being fully developed and functional. The historical data from wineries have been collected to train the coded models, which are now running and providing estimations nurturing FIbEO dashboards.
The platform access has been granted to partnering companies, receiving their feedbacks from real scenarios, tuning the product and refining the next commercial steps.
The final review has been held on May, 2023.
Concerning the commercial roll out; our main intent is to upsell to existing customers while on-boarding new ones, the values in the financial workbook are based on such average price and size: the sales are hectare-based and we foresee to cover/reach 100.000 hectares in the first commercial year, 200.000 for the second and 300.000 for the last one.
Existing customers of ABACO 4 grapes are potential customers of FIbEO service. The project has already been presented to some of them, gaining interest from another Consortium in Italy; it also received a positive feedback from a Producer Organization in the north, and other wineries in central Italy outside of the Chianti Classico area.
This means that the model will have to be trained following the specific area’s characteristics, but also that once the platform has been set up, it can deliver a useful service for viticulture in general and not only for the Chianti Classico area used as a case study.
Next steps: to acquire new customers we will create a solid value proposition per customer segment where we can use the current attention to supply chain traceability, resilience, origin of healthy food, quality assurance of high value products like wine and olive oil amongst others. , We expect an increased demand to our FIBEO proposition based on new more strict EU policies and laws: The EU Deforestation-Free Regulation (EUDR) and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
We will set-up targeted marketing campaigns for the different customer segments for different countries/markets in order to build new customer relationships.
The investment in EODDL is part of SENER Aeroespacial’s corporate strategy pillars of SENER roadmap for space communications. This decision is followed the relevant achievements reached in ESA science missions where SENER Aeroespacial is consistently delivering steerable antenna subsystems as well as RF equipment.
Customers and their Needs
During last decades, institutional and private European Space actors have contributed to create an important and growing Earth Observation (EO) sector. EO market is nowadays undertaking a rapid transformation towards large constellations and the use of next generation sensors and advanced payload.
This potential increment in the number of satellites to manage, the data volume to handle, together with the current congestion of the commonly allocated spectrum, are pushing to find frequency band alternatives and the use of new technologies to support higher data rates. In that context there is a trend encouraging the use of the 26 GHz spectrum (25500-27000 MHz) for payload data transmission in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) missions. Consequently, an evolution in the communication architecture of future planned EO satellites is required in order to deal with the expected big increase in the volume of data to be downloaded.
Thus, the shift to the 26 GHz band will provide 4 times more available bandwidth. However for its optimal use, especially at very low elevation angles, there is a need for highly directive (thus steerable) antennas and advanced coding and modulations schemes to cope with the highly variable atmospheric attenuation.
Taking advantage of that situation, SENER Aeroespacial is proposing the development of a full X and K-band EO Data Downlink System (EO-DDL). It is a robust high throughput downlink system for LEO satellites targeting data rates higher than 2.6 Gbps per channel.
Targeted customer/users countries
Earth Observation satellite missions. Worldwide.
Product description
Based on an unique reconfigurability within the baseband processing and operational frequency as well as the integration of a compact and steerable dual-band antenna, the system will maximize the average data throughput in every GS contact.
Additionally, the inhered interoperability due to the capability to operate in both X and K band will allow the contact with the majority of the current and future GS as long as there is still a limited deployed ground infrastructure available with 26 GHz capability.
In order to build the complete downlink system, SENER Aeroespacial is proposing a novel concept where two main on-board sub-systems are identified (Figure 1‑2):
Payload Data Transmitter (PDT) assembly, built around baseband modules as well as RF parts (e.g. the up-conversion and power amplification) suitable to support both X- and K-band signals.
Dual Band Steerable Antenna (DBSA) assembly, with the proper combination of dual-band units (e.g. reflector, feed), band-specific units (e.g. waveguides), pointing mechanism and pointing mechanism electronics.
EO-DDL simplified system context diagram
This concept, together with the consortium and the associated work plan are the result of a careful balance of reusable design and innovation aiming to develop an European, highly integrated, robust, reliable and flexible (dual-band) solution to enable the use of very high-rate sensors and payloads required for the upcoming Earth Observation (EO) missions.
Therefore, the key features and functionalities are:
Reconfigurable: with the capability to manage different frequency bands (operation in X/K), different bandwidths and several Coding & Modulation schemes in a flexible and reliable manner. In this way, it maximizes the number of applications and available GS to link towards as well as the average data throughput during a contact.
High speed: capable of internally managing extremely high data rates and transmit the data at high speed to the Ground (higher than 2.6 Gbit/s per channel).
Availability and robustness: ensuring high-speed data transmission from low elevation angles, independently of the GS location and weather conditions
Compactness: the implemented compact and scalable design will allow its implementation in different kind of missions, including small spacecraft’s.
Scalability: This concept can be scaled in a future development by integrating a PDT and a TTC transceiver in a single unit operating in K- and X-band respectively
The proposed development activities aim at achieving the TRL5 for the critical technologies identified in this proposal, within the time frame defined here as well (Q4-2021). The TRL status reached and the time window proposed are relevant since the second purpose of this activity is to allow reaching TRL-6 of the integrated critical technologies in a relevant environment, for late Q2-2022.
The proposed development is the continuation of a previous phase A already completed under ESA contract No. 4000124352/18/NL/FF/gp: “Feasibility of a full X and K-band EO Data Downlink System”. This project has been successfully completed.
The outputs of this project will be used as inputs for the proposed INCUBED activities, where it is foreseen to design, manufacture, assemble and test the Payload Data Transmitter (PDT) EM and detail the development plan for the different components of the system up to achievement of space qualification (EQM).
Added Value
EO-DDL maximizes the number of applications and available GS to link towards as well as the average data throughput during a contact.
Current Status
This Incubed activity has been completed on Q3 2023.
The use of solely Earth Observation, helps to derive actionable insights for many of the new business applications. With more and better EO-data by now we succeed in monitoring a very large number of outdoor objects and inform customers on relevant changes. However even when using the newest very high resolution optical and radar sensors, there is lack of validation or comments by a human. By assimilating existing quality checked (open) data like crowd sourced data and official texts (e.g. permits), we can add significant value to EO-derived information in e.g. urgency, context and implications. Through SINERGI we add value to the changes we detect on EO-data with information from Big data sources by using technology for semantic integration and object ontology standards.
Customers and their Needs
Everything changes continuously on this planet. So, information outdates quickly. Causing poor decisions and misfit actions. Our clients, who make the transition to data driven decision making and data driven business, need up-to-date, complete and reliable information to follow environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG). Many policy and businesses applications lack data and actionable insights to make the right decisions to follow ESG.
Targeted customer/users countries
The key customers segments targeted by our product are the value added service customers like Forest Law Enforcement (Nature Protection Law Enforcement), urban green and tree management, environmental Inspection Service and building Insurance.
Product description
In recent years, NEO developed the SignalEyes platform for Earth Observation (AO) based nationwide information services. The figure belo shows the SignalEyes method of information provision with EO data and its learning element.
In SINERGI we developed an ontology based method to use Big Data to add value to earth observation data and apply/test it to monitoring of trees, shrub, invasive plant species and buildings. The solutions rely on the existing SignalEyes infrastructure, a system that enables the monitoring of geographical objects using EO data for changes relevant for a wide range of applications.
The role of the SINERGI solutions in the context of the overall system of its target users is to provide the necessary insights on properties of objects on the Earth’s surface based on the most recent relevant data extracted from EO and non-EO data sources.
The components and component elements that will be developed in SINERGI provide the SignalEyes system access to a much wider range of data sources, allowing cross-checking of data-derived insights from multiple angles, leading to more reliable, more complete and more up-to-date information.
SINERGI method of information provision to a userOverall SINERGI architecture
Added Value
The semantic integration of Big data using ontologies is a step that is still new to the EO-services development. The added value of an EO product increases very significantly, when this integration is achieved successfully. In the described services, the value of the EO-service increases by an estimated factor of 3-5. The value of sales to our current customer base may multiply. Much of our services are limited to The Netherlands. However NEO is an EARTH observation services company, working on 4 continents and with an increasing focus on international markets.
Through SINERGI earth observation data will be more used in business applications. Data that is now by itself not directly fit to derive actionable insights for certain customers, become valuable when combined with other data. When competitors adopt similar working methods it is likely that EO-based services as a whole become more valuable leading to sustained or increased growth (as generally predicted for the value adding sector). In our data driven world, earth observation data, if combined with other data, will play a bigger role in providing better information resulting in better decisions for a better planet.
Current Status
The SINERGI activity started in September 2021. For SINERGI-derived SignalEyes services there are potentially hundreds of use cases and as many customer segments. In order to structure our activity, we selected 4 use cases, that illustrate the scope of services:
Mutation signals on buildings enriched with ‘building permit’ information from public sources for commercial and government customers
Enriching vegetation objects with species information from citizen science observations for urban green and nature management purposes
Mutation signals on trees enriched by ‘Tree Felling Permits’ from public sources for law enforcement
Mutation signals on rapid vegetation development in canals enriched with citizen science’ notifications on Invasive Exotic Species for water management authorities
We have successfully tested these use cases resulting in significant added value to EO-derived information. First contracts and cooperation have emerged from our activities. Many opportunities will be further developed in the coming years. We could not have achieved this so quickly without the support of the ESA InCubed program and support of the Netherlands Space Office.
Connecting satellites to additional ground station networks involves high integration costs in terms of time, personnel, and licensing. The market remains fragmented due to diverse providers, locations, and legal constraints, making real-time radio communication with satellites impossible. Meanwhile, some ground stations remain underutilised, and satellite integration remains complex.
The Aggregated Marketplace for Ground Station Services seamlessly integrates standalone ground stations, along with virtual and physical networks, into a unified ecosystem. It allows users to book services, manage contacts, and communicate with satellites within a single cross-network environment. Its role within the broader system of its target users is to serve as a satellite communications platform, leveraging ground station services from available providers while optimising operations based on user-defined constraints.
Gains for Satellite Operators:
Pre-integration with multiple ground station networks, reducing integration time
More communication sessions with satellites within the same mission budget
A single gateway for booking and scheduling satellite contacts across a combined network
Wider coverage and lower latency
Gains for Ground Stations:
Additional sales channel
Increased efficiency through reduced integration costs
Pre-integration with mission control platforms
Customers and their Needs
The Marketplace customers are satellite operators, manufacturers, mission owners, system integrators, academia.
Their needs are related with:
Reduced latency and expanded contact options
Reliable infrastructure
Simple integration and usage
Higher level of automatisation
Interoperability of different systems
Lower costs
Targeted customer/users countries
Worldwide
Product description
Features of the Aggregated Marketplace for Ground Station Services:
Cross-network connectivity
Aggregation of services and pricing from different providers
Contact management and booking across multiple ground stations
Optimised booking based on various criteria
Unified user interface for all key functions
Vision: Near real-time data transfer capability
Added Value
There is a shortage of single, one-point-of-entry ground communication solutions integrated with multiple ground station networks. The closest alternatives are virtual networks, which combine stand-alone ground stations rather than full networks and lack mission control and satellite operations simulation capabilities like those offered by the Spaceit software.
Spaceit’s solution unifies satellite operators and ground station networks into a single platform. It integrates both virtual and physical networks—comprising radio and optical ground stations—creating a cohesive ecosystem for ground station services. This platform enables users to book and manage contacts, as well as communicate with satellites, all within one environment.
Current Status
The activity was successfully completed, and the service has been operational since 2025. During the InCubed programme, Spaceit integrated the software platform with six ground station networks, developed additional platform features, and signed commercial customers. The most notable mission, OPS-SAT ORIOLE, set to launch in 2026, will demonstrate near real-time switching of high-speed radio communications across different ground stations, among other objectives.
Make a list of six Sentinel-1 analysis ready data (ARD) products that are very easy to use for both human visual and machine-readable form. The idea is either one-click or one Application programming Interface (API) command integration and use. Make the most of Sentinel-1 input data with state-of-the-art calibration, thermal-noise removal, and speckle suppression. The S1 ARD products are targeted for several governmental and business users to help them in certain use cases as a useful input for analysis or to provide an end-user service.
The goal under CCN3 was to enable users to seamlessly subscribe to the Synthetic Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (SNDVI) API services and begin using them without requiring any human intervention from KappaZeta’s side. The service should be designed to automatically scale in response to demand, ensuring that it can handle varying levels of usage efficiently. At the same time, the service should be optimised to keep storage and processing costs to a minimum, making it cost-effective for both KappaZeta and its customers. Additionally, a sandbox environment should be provided where customers can try out the services, allowing them to explore and test the capabilities of the product.
Customers and their Needs
Customers:
EO, ICT, and GIS companies as service providers for various end-user services,
governmental users,
farm management software (FMS) providers, .
agricultural enterprises and cooperatives,
stakeholders in carbon bio-sequestration (biological carbon sequestration, e.g., in agriculture, forests, peatlands, wetlands, and grasslands)
Needs:
To integrate and use satellite imagery and use value-added satellite products characterising vegetation dynamics quickly and easily.
The models serving an end-user require well-calibrated and high-quality SAR data
End-users require frequent updates about their areas of interest
End-users require imagery with high spatial resolution
Developing an accurate cloudless Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) requires well-calibrated and high-quality Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data.
Targeted customer/users countries
European, South and North American, and Asian countries
Product description
Sentinel-1 Analysis Ready Data (ARD) layers:
Time series of parcel-level statistics of VH and VV backscatter, VH/VV backscatter ratio, VH, and VV 6-day repeat pass coherence (parcel min, max, mean, median, standard deviation)
Calibrated high-resolution VH and VV coherence rasters
Calibrated high-resolution VH and VV backscatter and VH/VV ratio rasters
Multi-polarisation backscatter image for visual use as a WMS service
Synthetic Sentinel-2-like natural colours image based on Sentinel-1 data, using modern AI-modelling tools
Synthetic NDVI-like raster based on Sentinel-1 and -2 time series with AI-modelling
The idea is to make satellite image accessible with one click or one API command (e.g., switch on the satellite WMS/WCS layer in your web/desktop GIS and data mining, machine learning frameworks). All the data layers will have state-of-the-art calibration, thermal noise removal, and speckle suppression.
Under CCN3, the new product will offer the following features over the current sNDVI service:
Improved accuracies of sNDVI on 12D coherence (Sentinel-1) inputs
Automated sNDVI raster creation via API calls
sNDVI parcel statistics timeseries
Updated web map sandbox showcasing sNDVI for end-users and prospective customers
The image on the left displays a cloudy NDVI image over Estonia from 1 August 2024, while the image on the right shows the corresponding SNDVI for the same date and location.
Added Value
The pre-processing burden of SAR data is taken away. A lot of EO, GIS, and ICT companies and government institutions are not SAR experts, but they would benefit a lot from SAR data if it were provided in analysis ready format. In addition, utilising Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)-based biomass monitoring provides consistent and accurate data unaffected by cloud cover. This enables agricultural experts to navigate changing conditions with greater confidence and agility, regardless of weather patterns.
Current Status
KappaOne has three interactive demo environments deployed, where users can observe fresh and historical Sentinel-1 data layers together with parcel statistics and synthetic NDVI:
The provided raster images illustrate KappaZeta’s vision of high-quality, high-resolution Sentinel-1 images that are processed to be useable for visual interpretation as well as for machine learning input. Visual interpretation is helped by the highest reasonable resolution, 5m grid cell, state-of-the-art speckle filtering method “Refined Lee”, careful contrast enhancement, and a selection of composite images.
As an advanced feature, temporal averaging can be selected to show cleaner, more detailed images. Despite all the efforts, direct interpretation of Sentinel-1 images is still challenging for non-trivial cases, so we also provide a synthesis of Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 images, which can provide an NDVI-like vegetation index for cloudy days. As a third product, we can deliver parcel-based time series of Sentinel-1 data, which uses a special parcel level noise reduction mechanism and is able to give a better signal-noise ratio than simple polygon extraction from the raster. All these products can be ordered via an API, which allows registered users to define new areas of interest, time period, list of parameters, set up a web map, generate download links, etc.
Under CCN3, several improvements were made to the previous sNDVI service offered under KappaOne. Key updates include:
Enhanced sNDVI model accuracy based on 12-day coherence from Sentinel-1 data.
Development of an automated sNDVI raster creation process via API calls.
Availability of parcel-level sNDVI time series statistics accessible through the API.
In addition, a web map platform was deployed as a sandbox environment for end-users and potential customers to explore SNDVI capabilities. The platform is accessible via:
The web map provides sample SNDVI data for six countries—Brazil, Estonia, Colombia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, and France. Users can upload parcel geometries in GeoJSON format to explore SNDVI values and generate time series for regions with available precomputed data.
Climate change is adversly affecting our environment and global food security is challenged. The Hyperfield service provides global, daily and actionable near real-time data on ecological assets through spaceborne hyperspectral imaging and AI. This novel, small satellite-based solution enables creating a constellation of tens of satellites that are highly cost-effective, providing affordable insights for developed and developing countries.
Customers and their Needs
Hyperfield helps food producers, businesses and governments get better insight for making effective decisions towards sustainable agriculture, carbon capture and mitigation of climate change risks.
Targeted customer/users countries
The service is global and targets primarily agriculture, carbon trading, insurance, and finance sectors.
Product description
Hyperfield combines a constellation of hyperspectral small satellites, ground segment and advanced AI/ML-based analytics to provide actionable insights to customers and end users.
The first-generation satellite for the constellation is developed jointly in this project, by Kuva Space and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The 6U CubeSat carries a novel in-orbit tunable high-resolution hyperspectral imager covering visual to near-infrared wavelengths. Future satellite generations will cover short-wave infrared wavelengths by including additional imaging channels.
The mission operations are performed from Kuva Space’s mission control and ground-station in Espoo, Finland and through a third-party ground station network provider. The downlinked hyperspectral data is processed on ground to validate its usability to the selected customer and end-user applications. Advanced AI/ML-based hyperspectral data processing and analytics are developed concurrently with the project.
The eventual satellite constellation will be launched after the validation mission and consists of tens of small satellites providing up to daily re-visits to selected areas of interest. Kuva Space is working with customers and end users to deliver different kinds of data products ranging from L2 to L4, emphasising more on L4.
The service provides actionable insights based on continously updating hyperspectral data. The near real-time hyperspectral data acquisition enhances timely decision-making and unlocks new applications. Some of these applications include identifying and analysing crop types and health, predicting yields, detecting anomalies, estimating carbon sequestration, and various safety and security-related applications.
Current Status
The InCubed project’s satellite, Hyperfield-1B, is presently undergoing assembly, integration, and testing. It is scheduled for launch in early 2025, following the launch of the precursor satellite Hyperfield-1A, on 16 August 2024.
An advanced data processing chain and AI/ML-based analytics have been developed concurrently with the project and are ready to be utilised for the missions after launch.
Going further than just producing water quality data, the EOSmart solution is capable of transforming global water quality data into actionable information. This massively simplifies data access for water managers, allowing them to condense data to business-relevant information and integrate EO-based measurement in routine operations.
Customers and their Needs
Customers are starting to include data sources such as remote-sensing data, but need to manage the increasing data volumes up to analysis, and report it in a more efficient way.
An easy-to-use web interface allows the customers to quickly gain an overview of the water quality in their water bodies and areas of interest in coastal regions. Comparison to in-situ measurements and the fast information about thresholds being exceeded are crucial to react to unwanted developments in the respective water bodies. Statistical analysis tools for longer time series are needed to comply with reporting duties on the water quality of lakes and rivers.
Targeted customer/users’ countries
EOSmart is useful for customers all across the globe, as the smart analytics and services are location-independent.
A specific focus is set on:
Water authorities (e.g. bathing water monitoring and alert)
Water Industry (e.g. coastal construction)
Product description
The EOSmart product and services are tailored water quality information on a global scale, from novel very-high to high spatial and temporal resolutions, served in the most automated and customer-oriented way through a commercial online platform.
The provided services are
Baseline analysis: the satellite images range back years to decades and enable us to provide a sound analysis of long-term trends and seasonality
Monitoring: daily updates of the current state of any water body in the world
Alert: automatic notifications when user-defined thresholds are exceeded
Added Value
Water quality information at your fingertips – easy and super-fast access to global water quality information. Dashboards and analysis tools transform the data into actionable information and can support decision making (e.g., an environmental agency closing a lake due to high and rising cyanobacteria observations).
Current Status
The final product “eoApp AQUA” was launched in May 2024 and now serves customers around the world. A marketing campaign and sales forces are part of the ongoing go-to-market activities to grow the market share in the close future.
The objective of the GEMSTONE product is to apply our proprietary state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning algorithms on Copernicus’ Sentinel-1 & Sentinel-2 satellite imagery to provide our customers with actionable insights on various industries. All insights will be then displayed on a user-friendly online platform.
Customers and their Needs
The key customer segments targeted by our product are as follows: banks, hedge funds, insurance companies, governmental institutions, the automotive industry, and the energy sector companies. Since GEMSTONE is planned as a very universal product, there are the following three common problems shared by all customer segments. The first of our customers’ problems is, that they currently struggle to obtain actionable insights on particular segments in a timely manner. Utilizing satellite data, the time period from an observable phenomenon happening in a particular industry, to our customer having an actionable insight, shortens rapidly. The second problem of our customers’ problems is, that they cannot fully rely on the data they use for economic indices creation. The data can be easily biased by governments, industry companies, or any other stakeholders. On contrary, the satellite imagery is an unbiased information source by nature. The last of the major problems our customers face is the accessibility of actionable insights. Currently, analysts have to actively search for the information, using a wide spectrum of data sources. With GEMSTONE, all necessary information will be accessible on a single online platform.
Targeted customer/users countries
Targeted customer segments and their needs are described in the previous section. Product description. There are already existing customers using our GEMSTONE product that are providing valuable feedback to further development. To name a few: JP Morgan Economic Research Department, Credit Suisse, Bridgewater, Exxon, or Deloitte.
The nature of our product allows us to make the solution fully scalable and sell to customers anywhere on the planet Earth.
Product description
SpaceKnow’s GEMSTONE (Global Economy Monitoring System delivering Transparency and Online Expertise) aims to develop an easy-to-use and scalable platform providing insights on the performance of selected industries and commodities supply chains based on indices computed with state-of-art algorithmic solutions on satellite imagery. With our GEMSTONE the customer will be able to get instant access to both location-specific knowledge as well as country-wise or industry type aggregated information that allows users to query activity at a ‘topic’ level (coal facilities, oil wells, etc). Clients can also provide locations of interest (e.g. the points of a specific company or product supply chain) and SpaceKnow data can be accumulated at those locations.
The key customer segments targeted by our product are as follows: banks, hedge funds, insurance companies, governmental institutions, the automotive industry, and the energy sector companies. Despite the fact that GEMSTONE is a very universal product, there are the following three common problems shared by all customer segments. The first of our customers’ problems is that they currently struggle to obtain actionable insights on particular segments in a timely manner. Utilizing satellite data, the time period from an observable phenomenon happening in a particular industry, to our customer having an actionable insight, shortens rapidly. The second problem of our customers’ problems is that they cannot fully rely on the data they use for economic indices creation. The data can be easily biased by governments, industry companies, or any other stakeholders. On the contrary, satellite imagery is an unbiased information source by nature. The last of the major problems our customers face is the accessibility of actionable insights. Currently, analysts have to actively search for the information, using a wide spectrum of data sources. With GEMSTONE, all necessary information will be accessible on a single online platform.
Added Value
The added value of GEMSTONE is practically demonstrated on the three of our customers’ main problems and their solutions in one of the previous sections. The main added value is thus in the provision of unbiased and timely actionable insights, in a user-friendly manner.
Current Status
The GEMSTONE project has come to an end. SpaceKnow has finished the development of the machine learning-based economic indices derived from satellite data, mostly from European Sentinel satellites.
SpaceKnow is happy to announce that all defined objectives of the project have been met. The quality of the final product has been evaluated and approved by stakeholders from industry, who will be the users of the product. The evaluation of the final product was very positive and that is one of the reasons why the development of GEMSTONE will continue throughout the following months. Based on market research and the latest global developments, new features and indices will be added, for instance, an algorithm for detection of ships on Sentinel-2 imagery, which enables better supply chain monitoring, a critical feature for many due to the recent global supply chain crisis.
We combine EO data and AI tools in order to identify new business cases and develop customised solutions. The AI4EO Solution Factory is a knowledge base and module repository that allows us to reuse expertise and software throughout the development process.
Customers and their Needs
Potential customers are active in one of the many application areas of EO data, such as agriculture, forestry, fishery, natural disaster forecasting/monitoring and urban planning. They have a problem statement and are looking for solutions based on EO data and AI tools. Our team will develop a business case around this problem statement and develop a solution jointly with employees from the customer.
Targeted customer/users’ countries
Due to the geographical closeness, we focus on European customers, but are also open to customers from outside the EU.
Product description
The AI4EO Solution Factory is a collaborative environment between specialists from DFKI and domain experts from our customers. With the AI4EO Solution Factory we enhance the visibility of EO solutions and provide our AI and EO expertise to our customers, thereby enabling them to discover and exploit new business cases. The central mechanism for the products of the AI4EO Solution Factory is to combine the domain knowledge of our customers with our AI and EO expertise to develop AI-based algorithms for information extraction from satellite images. We develop custom-made solutions in close collaboration with our customers and then reuse the underlying building blocks for additional products of the AI4EO Solution Factory. This approach of reusing the underlying building blocks while providing specialised solutions for each of our customers enables us to provide AI4EO solutions for all kinds of business cases and small, medium and large companies, as well as public entities alike.
Added Value
The Solution Factory joins the latest cutting-edge AI technologies with EO data to tackle identified problems within different areas of commercial focus. The key innovation is our Transfer Lab approach, where we directly involve employees of our customers in the product development. This close collaboration ensures that the developed products are a perfect fit for the customer’s business case and helps to build trust with the customers.
Current Status
We are developing customised solutions for different Earth Observation use cases within the AI4EO Solution Factory initiative. In a joint project with our anchor customers BASF, John Deere and Munich Re, we have developed a product for agricultural yield prediction.
By collecting a large dataset of ground truth data from combined harvesters, we have successfully developed yield prediction models for Germany, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, India and the US. The product has been successfully deployed to our customers.
The next step is to expand our work to additional application domains with new customers.
The FIPC has been specifically designed to address the growing onboard data bottleneck of EO satellite missions from a complete end-to-end systems perspective.
This is achieved primarily through a state-of-the-art Applications Development Framework which enables a software defined onboard data processing pipeline. Onboard data processing increases overall satellite bandwidth and data timeliness through direct data reduction and increased onboard intelligence. The objective is to provide users with actionable information much faster than traditional means and in turn stimulate new remote sensing applications which benefit from greater efficiency in the collection and processing chain. The framework not only enables the use of SSTL processing IP but also custom and third-party IP.
Direct data reduction techniques include data calibration, compression and image thumbnailing. Onboard intelligence includes image classification, segmentation and object detection; these enable high level information extraction for new data products and autonomy.
Additionally, the bottleneck is also addressed through a new, intelligent, high throughput data downlink system which uses variable modulation schemes and coding rates to utilise excess positive margin to increase the overall downlink throughput by up to 100%.
Customers and their Needs
The Earth Observation (EO) sector is undergoing a paradigm shift where technology advancements & new innovative payload designs are producing data with increasing dimensionality, volume and rates. In this new “Big Data” era a prominent challenge surrounds efficient and timely information delivery to end-users. In recent years, advances in satellite downlink technologies alone have not been sufficient to offset the increase in EO payload data volumes, resulting in the formation of an onboard data bottleneck.
This data bottleneck has a range of negative impacts to the customers. Principally it causes an increased delay between data capture and delivery. This delay has a wide range of knock-on impacts up and down the complete value chain, whereby data end-users can see the value of information decreased where required for time sensitive applications. Satellite operators can see increased delays in operations tasking and decision making. Satellite manufacturers need to address increased power, storage and complexity requirements of the satellite platform itself.
The bottleneck therefore can also have knock on impacts to higher level customers’ needs such as a negative impact on the customers overall business case due to increased missions costs. Costs are often increased by a need for greater ground station infrastructure or passes, increased satellite CapEx cost incurred to provide the required data volumes, resolutions or revisits.
Eliminating the onboard data bottleneck and time delay is a clear and urgent EO industry-wide opportunity, which, if successfully addressed, can provide a significant competitive advantage and stimulate new, time-sensitive or data heavy applications.
Targeted customer/users countries
SSTL primarily addresses the small satellite market; the FIPC will be included as part of SSTL’s small satellite mission offerings. The FIPC provides a significant advantage across SSTL’s mission offerings from the low cost CARBONITE series to SSTLs High Performance mission propositions, such as “Precision” and “Wide Swath”. Where previously the data bottleneck presented a significant challenge, with the FIPC customers are able to download larger volumes of data without cost prohibitive ground segment solutions. By decreasing the cost of the ground network needed to support the spacecraft, commercial business cases will become much more attractive to a wider range of customers.
Craft Prospect Limited (CPL) and their onboard Autonomy-Enabling Components (AEC) toolbox will be promoted as part of a staged product offering. Within the small satellite market, CPL will partner with SSTL to promote software AECs to enable and augment onboard data processing for SSTL smallsat missions.
CPL will offer three main tiers of products within the nanosatellite and spinout markets: the first tier will comprise the software AECs as standalone or packaged applications which can be deployed on third-party hardware or used in ground applications. The second tier will comprise dedicated hardware offerings, comprising the AECs and additional data processing functions optimised and deployed on low-power NewSpace components such as FPGAs and VPUs. The third tier will take the form of a full Autonomous Mission offering.
The University of Surrey are actively researching “big data” problems found in the context of the wider EO industry. One such avenue of research applicable to the FIPC product is the innovative use of autoencoder algorithms. Such algorithms can be deployed onboard the FIPC to extract contextualized information from EO data far quicker than traditional supervised learning approaches. The University of Surrey will demonstrate their novel algorithm developments and the new machine learning enabled customer use-cases.
Product description
The FIPC product consists of the space hardware required for; payload interfacing, data capture, data storage, real-time and offline onboard data processing and also the satellite RF downlink. However, the FIPC is more than just space hardware; the software defined onboard pipeline & applications development framework are critical components which enable end-user tailored & high performance functionality.
Overall, using a number of innovative techniques, the product is designed to maximise the achievable satellite throughput towards increased timeliness and volumes of useful payload data delivered to EO data end-users, thereby increasing value for money to the customer.
Added Value
EO data customers are increasingly demanding faster, cheaper, higher quality and greater volumes of data – this is a key challenge for EO satellites which is primarily limited by the achievable downlink throughput of the satellite. The FIPC leverages several different technological advances to increase the capabilities of the space segment and these are used to addresses customer demands from several different angles.
Firstly, an adaptive high data throughput downlink sub-system is provided to maximize the raw data transmission rate of the satellite.
Secondly, a number of new and novel approaches to onboard data processing are implemented at the front end. These can be used to reduce the volume of data needing to be sent via the downlink. Thus overall the product increases the volume, quality and timeliness of payload data to customers, providing better value for money.
Onboard data processing offerings include IP designed by SSTL, CPL and the University of Surrey.
Thirdly, The FIPC Applications Development Framework will allow customers and other third-party developers to deploy their own custom onboard data processing IP onboard an SSTL satellite allowing for highly optimised solution of EO data end-users.
In addition, the product is scalable across the range of SSTL satellite platform classes from 10s of kg to 100s of kg, whereby the FIPC offers utility across many types of remote sensing mission.
