Environmental analytics from satellites for cities and risk management

WEO

Founded in 2020, WEO is a company built on the conviction that timely, accurate analytics are essential to tackling major environmental challenges and driving sustainable decision-making. WEO focuses on delivering environmental intelligence that is affordable, frequently updated, and scalable across the globe. Specialised in strengthening urban resilience, optimising vegetation management, and reducing environmental risk, WEO transforms satellite imagery into advanced analytics and leverages AI to produce clear, actionable insights.

The challenge

Many communities still rely on outdated, project-based environmental data, meaning they miss regular updates that reflect changing risks. Accessing current, high-resolution data over large areas is often too expensive or technically difficult.

The satellite solution

Satellite data offers regular, objective, and consistent observations over time. This top-down regional perspective becomes truly actionable when enriched with local datasets and expert knowledge: for example, revealing how vegetation structure shapes fire propagation toward homes or critical infrastructure. Because it provides continuous, unbiased, and often freely accessible information, satellite data is a powerful and inclusive resource for communities. By combining multiple satellite datasets, it delivers a more complete and robust picture of environmental conditions.

However, the spatial resolution of open-source satellite imagery can be too coarse to directly support decisions at the community or asset scale: WEO overcomes this limitation by fusing open-source satellite data with high-resolution local datasets, enhancing its precision and generating detailed, actionable insights at the scale communities need. WEO also enables community participation, integrating local knowledge and documenting measures taken on the ground to ensure that insights reflect real-world conditions.

The results

WEO’s solution empowers communities to understand and anticipate climate-related risks, enabling them to plan with greater confidence and immediately explore suitable mitigation options when threats are identified.

For example, WEO helps communities manage climate risks by identifying heat retention patterns, seasonal hot spots, and the effectiveness of mitigation measures; assessing vegetation for wildfire prevention and guiding land management; and detecting flood-prone areas to plan protective infrastructure. It also supports up-to-date risk documentation, clear communication with residents, and planning of evacuation zones integrating multiple risk factors.