Reports

Eurisy, with the support of remote sensing and forestry experts, has produced an introduction highlighting the added value of satellite applications for forestry inventories and biomass assessments as part of sustainable energy strategies on a local and regional level. The report provides new ideas to local and regional authorities actively seeking to leverage innovation in their projects related to forestry and biomass. It includes recommendations for local and regional authorities considering such solutions.
The report is Eurisy’s contribution to a toolkit on innovative approaches and tools for improving local energy strategies – the final output of the INTERREG project MORE4NRG

There is currently a great opportunity for the diffusion of the use of satellite information and services. Potential users are keen to innovate and innovation is recognised as the key to economic recovery. Pioneering public and private organisations have already adopted satellite information and services. Rapid and sustainable measures are necessary to incentivise and support more end-users to follow suit. This will allow the formation of a well-developed core user pool with a critical size to trigger the emergence of a market for satellite services, and ensure Galileo and GMES services fully deliver the expected benefits to society.

Article published Space Policy Magazine, Vol. 25 Issue 4, November 2009. Go to Science Direct Website for Article. Copyright 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Satellite services benefit civil society by helping tackle challenges such as climate change, the digital divide, etc. They have the potential to deliver concrete benefits to European society through innovative services supporting economic, societal and environmental policies. However, this potential has yet to be achieved. The paper argues that technological bias, the diversity of interests and initiatives among stakeholders and their individual actions do not always serve their collective objective to ensure wide diffusion of satellite services.

This Paper argues that it is necessary to make efficient use of public investment in research and development by supporting the transition of the results into the final operational service/product.Recommended measures include ensuring a better transition between the 7th Framework Programmes and European Regional Policy Funds, by designing calls that take into consideration the R&D stage but also the operational use of the resulting services as an objective in itself. Such calls would make it compulsory to include end-users from the R&D stage, and a business case for these to use the resulting services.

The Paper outlined Eurisy’s User Programme objectives, methodology and results. It was presented at the IAF 2008 IAC conference in Glasgow (IAC-08-D1.1.01.)