Meet our winners
Environmental Management
Polisensio has developed a mobile urban Air Quality Monitoring, data collection, analytics and visualization system dedicated to (smart) cities and businesses. The end product is environmental intelligence on Air Quality delivered on Polisensio’s web platform in several formats and/or through API. Using this system, the decision makers of a city can implement short-term quick response actions or long-term strategies, from basic traffic management/area closure, to policies on city landscape & road planning, investments in green vehicles and so on.
By integrating Copernicus Sentinel 5p data better forecasting & prediction models can be obtained. This is crucial, in order to identify the pollution generators regionally then have a deeper understanding on urban air pollution trends at a micro level.
With the support of Copernicus Incubation program, the team will grow with new members especially on the technical side to integrate the Sentinel 5p data but also bring the platform to full functionality.
CYBELE aims to provide evidential support in the form of satellite data for lawyers and activists collating dossiers on environmental cases. They support experts in the public and private sector, including law firms, insurance companies, states and civil society. CybELE Earth Observation (EO) investigation provides quick access to environmental crime reports for law firms and insurance companies. Saving time and money usually spent on research, the reports constitute crucial evidence of infringement of environmental laws and assess the cost of environmental damage.
With the Copernicus Incubation program, the team will now be able to develop strong proofs of concept and to prepare its future scale-up strategy.
Water is the source of life, but water is also unpredictable. Due to climate change, water resources are becoming discontinuous, creating hazardous situations. Based on mathematical modeling Italian start-up MobyGIS has developed a new technology that predicts snow presence and the availability of water resources at large scale. It processes different sources of data, ranging from ground sensors, satellite data and weather forecast. MobyGIS’ results can be applied in many sectors. In tourism for instance, MobyGIS has developed the application ‘Mysnowmaps’, which allows off-piste snow explorers to plan their detailed excursion. In civil protection, MobyGIS provides a service of high resolution snow monitoring to improve avalanche prevention. In hydro-power, MobyGIS predicts water inflow in production plants to improve energy trading.
MobyGIS applied to Copernicus Incubation to use Copernicus satellite data to improve the accuracy of their technology and to scale the system worldwide. They want to integrate Copernicus satellite data into their modeling scheme and eventually test the procedure to EU mountain chains, like the Pyrenees or the Carpathians, which would be the prelude to scale the system worldwide. MobyGIS will be incubated by Trentino Sviluppo.
Geomatic Ventures Limited is a British start-up operating in environmental safety and security. They possess a system that can identify and monitor very precise surface ground movements as an early warning system for industries like infrastructure management, natural environment, rail & road, mineral extraction and energy extraction and storage.
Geomatic Ventures wants to establish itself as a supplier of land-deformation data to the European rail industry. Copernicus Incubation Programme will support their market and business development. Geomatic Ventures wants to reach out to the European rail industry through the provision of funding to cover the traveling to meetings, the creation of marketing materials, the equipment for data processing and the support for producing legal agreements, accountant reports and contracts. GVL gets the support of the University of Nottingham.
Based in Italy, ColomboSky provides to aquaculture companies a novel solution to monitor water quality and to protect their farming sites from harmful water threats. Differently from standard in-water sensors, the combined use of the newest Copernicus satellite data (Sentinel 2 and 3) and Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service, enables a wider range of observation and the development of novel early detection algorithms. In addition to this, in-situ ground-truth and theoretical models are integrated to create daily risk maps of the presence of Harmful Algal Blooms, Jellyfishes and Oil spills. Presented on an online portal, called AquaX, they provide actionable insights to support the understanding of the water quality status on aquaculture farming locations.
With the Copernicus Incubation Programme, ColomboSky will further consolidate its modelling and forecasting capability, accelerating the product catalogue growth and the market reach. We will also expand our network, build strong key partnerships and grow the business with global scalability in mind. ESA BIC Lazio will incubate ColomboSky.
GMATICS applies the newest deep learning architectures and remote sensing techniques to automatically process massive amounts of Earth Observation satellites data and generate timely alerts and rich data visualization for large infrastructure operators. The NetMoA (Network Monitoring and Alert) service is conceived to be fully integrated within customers’ operational workflow to support their field workforce in managing planned maintenance and emergency situations.
Copernicus will be a key enabler of NetMoA and of its upscaling at world-wide level through high frequency free data, contributing mission data and “pay per use” DIAS services. The Copernicus Incubation Programme will speed up GMATICS activities for the integration and validation of the new service workflow as well as for marketing the service in Italy and in Europe. GMATICS is an Italian start-up incubated at ESA BIC Lazio, hosted by LAZIO INNOVA.
Terramonitor is the world’s most up-to-date and comprehensive map of the globe, which is created by Finnish start-up Satellio. Terramonitor makes space data maps reachable to anyone. Smart space data means that it is easy to use and access by anyone via browsing web interface or integration to any GIS (Geographic Information System). Their technology is based on artificial intelligence and machine learning processes, which combines satellite data to multi-source data. The processes use Copernicus data (Sentinel-2) as the primary satellite data source.
Copernicus satellites provide frequent data updates with high spatial and radiometric resolution, which is suitable for monitoring the forests. With the help of the Copernicus Incubation Programme they are able to develop their services further for forestry and scale the service globally. ESA BIC Finland will incubate Terramonitor.
Viridian Raven brings space to forestry. Using Sentinel-data and data from the forests, we aim to predict outbreaks of bark beetles, a destructive insect that lives inside trees. With this data, foresters in the field can take prevention measures in an early stage, to prevent large scale forest loss. This saves timber, and thus money, and helps keep the vital ecosystem balanced. In their online portal, customers can access the risk maps against these outbreaks. In these maps, they can see areas with either high or low risks for forest damage.
Copernicus-data, especially Sentinel-2, gives them a much higher resolution than other available data. The additional red-edge band enables them to observe changes in vegetation health. With the help of the Copernicus Incubation Programme they will improve their algorithms, decreasing inaccuracies around forest borders, provide accurate risk maps concerning storm damages, and completely atomize their application.
3Bee is an electronic industry based business that designs new IoT systems for precision agriculture in farming animals: from the beekeeping sector to the broiler one. 3Bee intends to reduce chemical and antibiotic treatments using data driven solutions. 3Bee Hive-Tech is an innovative IoT diagnostic system designed for monitoring beehives, which ensures the real time analysis of the main parameters of their life, from air quality to sound spectrum and weight that helps to identify the main causes of disease and anomalous behaviors. The aim is to create value for beekeepers, changing and improving the way in which hives are managed, and providing a simpler and non-invasive solution. Hive-Tech will help in reducing bee mortality of 32%, increasing production of 30%, decreasing logistic costs by 20% and reduce treatment use by nearly 40%.
Copernicus data and services are very valuable because 3Bee wants to further develop Hive-Tech involving the analysis of satellite images. With this tool, 3Bee will be able to identify the most interesting flowering zones and the areas where pesticides are widely applied. In this way, beekeepers can know exactly where bees can thrive and are mainly threatened by chemical agents. 3Bee gets the support of ComoNext Incubator.
DANTE TECHNOLOGIES is a startup located in Barcelona (Spain) which develops an effective and competitive solution for the early detection and emergency management of wildfires.
Climate change and human practices have meant wildfires a problem that is becoming increasingly violent, having a devastating impact on economy and environment. Fire management is a high volume global market, but current detection systems are either too slow or unaffordable to be deployed in extensive areas. DANTE is an early warning system which features advanced methods to report and manage operations to help rapidly extinguish a fire and goes further by providing all critical information required for an effective extinction operation.
The efficient use of in-situ and Copernicus datasets led DANTE’s team to be the winner of the Copernicus Masters Disaster Management Challenge (November 2017), among other recognitions such as ESNC 2017 Catalonia. The Copernicus Incubation programme and the support from ACCIO, Catalonia Trade & Invest are an excellent opportunity to accelerate the route to market, boosting the potential of DANTE using Copernicus data.
Orbital EOS is a Spanish company providing solutions based on satellite observation and artificial intelligence, originally created as a spin-off of the Spanish Coast Guard. Their recently launched digital platform ISMO, provides marine pollution geo-intelligence to the Offshore/Maritime Industry, addressing the prevention, monitoring and response to marine pollution events. Based on satellite surveillance, artificial intelligence and numerical modelling, ISMO optimizes situational awareness and decision making, guaranteeing a cost-efficient environmental performance to key players in the maritime domain. The Copernicus Incubation Programme and the democratization of space data enables a disruptive approach in the management of marine pollution events, fostering a proactive monitoring of offshore assets and maritime fleet with unprecedented coverage, redundancy and cost-efficiency.
The support of Copernicus Incubation will strengthen our scaling capabilities and enable a fast product market fit, demonstrating the value of EO data in disruptive innovation for a better planet.
Numer8’s Ofish product helps fisheries across the globe to become sustainable again by helping small-scale fishermen catch more in shallow waters, while controlling illegal fishing and overfishing by industrial deep sea trawlers. Numer8’s Ofish product has two components: a user-side app to be used by small scale fishers and a central supervision system to help governments supervise fishing activity. They use Copernicus Marine services data for analyzing fishing zones, marine pollution, vessel activities, weather forecasts, and other conditions for tracking fishing activity.
With the Copernicus Incubation Programme, Ofish will further develop their algorithms to analyze fishing conditions for fisheries globally. Ofish aims to build a complete inclusive application to help fishermen catch a better yield, be safe in the seas, sell for higher margins and access financial loan easily. Ofish aims to help government in tracking overfishing and illegal fishing and improve marine conditions. This will be made possible by integrating high-resolution, and real-time data sets from the Copernicus data and services with other remotely sensed and in-situ datasets machine learning algorithms. They are incubated in ESA BIC Prague.
Powered by EO and artificial intelligence, 3D EMS is a fast and efficient golf course executive management system. Their SaaS solution is a user-friendly single page app, which combines data from satellites, drones and IoT court sensors into meaningful insights in real-time. Golf course managers and operators can now monitor and optimise their course’s energy consumption, labour and equipment use. Both Copernicus and EGNSS services fuel their solution. Optimised irrigation and improved fire safety are achieved by deriving differentiated maps from Copernicus Sentinel-2 data to check the soil moisture, soil conditions, vegetation index and state. Copernicus Sentinel-1 time-series data are used to detect and monitor grasslands, while Sentinel-3 data are used for drought monitoring. In addition to this, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service is used to better support fire management and the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service supplies imagery and reference data.
The funding from the Copernicus programme and incubation services by Invento Capital Partners will take 3D EMS to the next level by facilitating the development of the of the following 3D EMS MVP components: Single Page App, Golf course Visual Recognition model, Tiger a Watson AI based virtual assistant with Convenience of a fully digitised golf course concierge service + embedded experience of a professional golf course manager virtual assistant, GSM/IoT tags for pace of play and maintenance workflow of optimization. The incubation will be topped off by solution testing and sales demos in Croatia, EU and beyond.
Hurricane Unwinder forecasts tropical cyclones using computer vision on satellite images and measures them using an IoT device that floats around with the winds. The Copernicus Incubation Programme allows for R&D and prototyping of advanced products utilizing the full resolution of Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 images.
UptoEarth is a Start-up founded in April 2019 with the goal of simplifying the monitoring process of carbon projects in agriculture to generate revenues for farmers that decide to implement practices for sequestrating carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
While nowadays the Soil Organic Carbon is measured by analysing soil samples which makes it difficult for agriculture to participate, using our system will guarantee a strong growth of agriculture related carbon projects and therefore a worldwide positive trend towards the achievements of Sustainable Development Goals.
Our system heavily relies on the EC Copernicus Programme, which provide various insides on soil and Soil Organic Carbon with the advantages of short revisit time, high coverage and high resolution.
The company is currently incubated at the Business Incubator Centre of the ESA in Darmstadt and is partly funded by the European Union through the EFRE Programme. The funding from the Copernicus Incubation programme will help us implementing a pilot for validating out system, which will allow us to be recognized and entering the market.