On this topic, earlier in December we got together representatives of the EC, of SME clusters and civil society to get a better understanding of their different views and expectations. Here is what we found out:

The geo-information train is moving very fast:”Big Data is almost old news” — Satellite data and applications are only emerging alongside more mainstream data sources.

Mr. Andreas Veispak, Deputy Head of the Space Data for Societal Challenges and Growth unit within the EC, acknowledged a number of obstacles to space data becoming more mainstream, such as lack of awareness among non-space integrators about data potential, availability and conditions for access. 

With regards to access, he mentioned the fragmentation of Sentinel data sources: several institutions are in charge of making data or services available, at both national and European levels. Compare that complexity, he urged, to the simplicity of an interface such as Google Earth.

Codrina Maria Ilie, one of the founders of geo-spatial.org – a Romanian network of geo-enthusiasts, confirmed that for such communities Big Data is old news. At the same time, she argued, the communities are not familiar with Copernicus or the Sentinels.

An opinion seconded by Hans de With from OVINTO, a Belgian SME, who said – only half jokingly – that for OVINTO Copernicus was only the name of a dead Polish scientist. Ovinto is a success story thanks to satellite applications all the same. The company developed a “Data as a Service” solution which relies on satcom and satnav to monitor train containers for dangerous goods.

Ovinto’s example demonstrated the potential of satellite-generated data, in contrast (but not in contradiction) with the “Big Data saturation” argument discussed before. It confirmed the economic potential of Big Data: their product is all about combining data sources with sector-specific commercial and technical intelligence, to turn them into a service.

The satellite generated data is a small but indispensable part of the service. Its accumulation will enable the company to build ever more services on top of the original one.

Mr Veispak confirmed the EC is working on Copernicus by taking into account the Big Data picture:

“To tackle these complex challenges, we will require a complete set of measures ranging from financial support to a greater coordination and dissemination effort at the European level”he declared, before enumerating the solutions the EC is planning, in seven neat points. 

We’ll develop the 7 points in a future blog post: stay tuned!

Missed the first part of this article? Access it here. 

The post Satellite-generated data and the Big Data squeeze (part 2 of 2) appeared first on Eurisy.

Copernicus is operational as of 2014, and Galileo is about to become so. But to produce the successful services everyone is hoping for, satellite data needs to be used alongside a profusion of other available non-space data sources – Big Data, that is. Successful satellite services also need to rely heavily on in-depth thematic knowledge. Competition in the Big Data landscape is harsh tough. The vast majority of non-space data sources are far less complex to exploit and access. For instance, many sources of data require no specialised processing from raw, unlike satellite data.

That means start-ups and SMEs are less likely to turn to satellite data, as opposed to many, more accessible, data sources.

To add to the competitive pressure, the value-added chain for the production of geo-information services is ever more complex. Compare space value-adding companies – those who process raw satellite data to turn it into geo-products – to start-ups and SMEs which integrate (non satellite) data to produce some kind of service or app. The latter two are abundant; just browse the App Store, you are bound to find some kind of satnav app, right at the fingertips of the users.

Traditional geo-information companies (not using satellite data) have the additional advantage of having an established customer base. They also offer an integrated GI solution, with many layers of different types of information. By contrast, space value-adding companies would usually focus on one aspect or another: monitoring illegal logging, or biodiversity hotspots etc.

Which is not to say there is no business case for specialised niche services. But such services need a critical mass of customers, often to be built from scratch (and often through public funding). These specialised satellite services also need to be highly compatible with the devices used by the customer. With phones, it’s easy; less so with desktops in an institutional setting.

In all this, satellite data is practically invisible for most final users. Final users use information, not data. Where data is coming from is irrelevant for them.

To try and get to the bottom of the Big Data conundrum, we got together representatives of the EC, SME clusters and civil society to get a better understanding of their different views and expectations.

Stay tuned for our next post, where we reveal the key messages coming out of this cross-sector debate!

Oh, and a happy and productive new year everyone!

The post Satellite-generated data and the Big Data squeeze (part 1 of 2) appeared first on Eurisy.

Non-commercial satellite images are the exception. Freely accessible and reusable, they have the characteristics that any data analyst dreams of! Earth observation data is usually available in standard formats, no matter the area covered. It is frequently updated, of great quality and a reliable source of information: the best conditions to build a sustainable business.

Just as the EC was discussing licencing conditions for Copernicus, a 2012 ESA study showed that an open access government policy for satellite data is beneficial in the medium to long term. We are talking about environmental benefits, but also economic, i.e. an estimated €30 billion market and tens of thousands of new jobs by 2030.

The Americans did it first, it must be said. The breakthrough arrived in 2008, when the US Geological Survey (USGS) decided to open its archive of Landsat satellite images collected over forty years.

Today Landsat 8 consistently acquires high quality pictures over the entire globe. The free and open data policy is confirmed for Landsat 9, to be launched in 8 years.

Copernicus, the European EO programme, is much more ambitious than the Landsat programme. Rather than a single satellite, Copernicus comes with several, to be launched over many years. In addition to data from the Sentinels, the programme delivers the so-called Core Services, that is, value-added geo-information products, or thematic maps on soils, seas, atmosphere, climate change, emergency management and security. The European Environment Agency, for instance, manages such a service: land.copernicus.eu. The output of the Core Services is generally available as open data too.

Open data policies when it comes to satellite data have come to be expected and welcome when it comes to public entities. However, a private satellite data provider adopting the same policy will make some noise and raise some eyebrows. Surely the very point of such companies is to make money from selling such data, not giving them away for free. And yet…I jumped from my seat on learning that Will Marshall, CEO of Planet Labs, announced, end September, that the company would open the access to some high resolution satellite data acquired by its constellation of microsatellites.

Marshall made the announcement at the UN Assembly, talking about how the data would contribute to the UN objectives for sustainable development. I naturally thought that the data licenced out by Planet Labs for free would concern poor regions in Africa or India; it would have been pretty generous already. But the cheeky imps took it yet a step further, opening access, on a beta platform, to satellite images of California! With a CC BY SA 4.0 open licence. In other words, Marshall says: you can use my data for free, but whatever you do, you must make it open in the same way. This applies to value-added products as well.

I don’t know for how long the data on California will be available in open access. But it’s certainly an excellent way of promoting the capacities and data characteristics of very high resolution images of Planet Labs.

This is both a major opportunity and the challenge of Copernicus: to generate enough interest in the development of useful, affordable downstream services beyond current capacities, services geared to meet demand.

With the caveat that such services should exploit not only satellite data, but also information and other data available, such as all the data published by governments, local authorities, private companies and even by individuals – just think of OpenStreetMap, the free and openly licensed map of the world created entirely by volunteers.

Massimo Zotti is the author of massimozotti.it – an insightful Italian blog about geo-information in the times of INSPIRE.  He is also a Sales and Marketing Manager for Geospatial products and services at Planetek Italia.

The post Free and open satellite data: private companies join in the game appeared first on Eurisy.

One example is the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR). The Commission helps Danube countries implement the Danube River Protection Convention, notably by collecting datasets submitted by national authorities and integrating them in a transnational information system. The shared information is used for emergency warning, water quality services, dam and structures and so on.

Is it worth (re)stating that satellite services could help managers tackle environment problems along the Danube – our area of interest during the round table?

We take that for granted: cross-border problem, cross-border solution.

The EU Danube Region Strategy agrees. So do the EU Water and Flood Directives. So does the Danube River Protection Convention. These prescriptive regulations already catalysed Big Data user networks.

Surprisingly, none of the data currently submitted by the countries is satellite-derived (though admittedly there is only empirical evidence to this effect). Is it a missed opportunity? We’ll let you be the judge of that. But read on, there’s hope!

In the private sector too there’s much room for improvement. Take Teamnet, a small Romanian GIS company. Teamnet, like many similar companies in Romania and elsewhere, make a successful business of geo-information products. They have an established client base, whose needs they know well. Teamnet already used (commercial) satellite images for the Danube Authority for the Protection of the Danube River (have a look what they did). All the same, Iurie Maxim, TeamNet GIS Manager argues, that it is easier for them to access data from international sources, than from their own country. Also Landsat was mentioned, of course. But also non-satellite data sources.

It is true, in our experience, the most realistic scenario of operational satellite services is that where the satellite component (data and/or satnav) is only a small part in the “black-box” tool. And so it should be. Satellite data is only one bit (pun intended) of Big Data.

And Big Data is about to become ever more abundant. The way we look at access to data is changing, under the influence of interest groups, European Directives, and not least, governments themselves.

Real-time flows of raw or processed open data are estimated to bring a 1.1 % GDP growth/per year to G20 countries alone by enabling new business opportunities. Governments are joining the bandwagon. In Romania too, “opening up the map” is the latest debate on everybody’s lips. Radu Puchiu, State Secretary for the Romanian Prime Minister’s Cabinet talked about the government’s initiative to set up an open data portal, following in the example of most countries around the globe (the Open Government Partnership’s membership grew from 8 to 65 countries in just 4 years).

The advantages of government open data portals are numerous and range from reinforcing civil society to giving businesses a gateway to new services to improving the government’s own services. Barriers to the opening up of public data persist though, as shows the Geoidea.ro project coordinated by Codrina Maria-Ilie, VP of Geo-spatial.org (do have a look at their surveys, they make for a fascinating read).

The obstacles and opportunities to the opening up of government data could make for a separate blog entry, so instead of going into that, let us get to the point: satellite data, or satellite data references, should be included in open data portals. They should be presented alongside other sources. Despite free access to Copernicus Sentinel data this is not happening sufficiently at the moment, i.e. the awareness raising exercise consisting of putting data at the users’ fingertips on those platforms they are familiar with.

Counterexamples exist, for instance JRC’s Danube Information and Service Infrastructure catalogues over 4000 sets of metadata, including on satellite sources. The JRC’s work with the ICPDR is also a good counter-example to the complaint that users and prescribers are not sufficiently accompanied. But more of this should be happening, and faster.

The post Navigating through Big Data challenges for the sustainable management of the Danube appeared first on Eurisy.