Welcome to another belated edition of ‘Last Week in Earth Observation’, containing a summary of major developments in EO from the last week and some exclusive analysis and insights from TerraWatch.
Four Curated Things
Major developments in EO from the past week
💰 Contractual Stuff: Funding, Contracts and Deals
Funding
- Renew Risk, a startup focused on risk modelling and analytics for renewable energy assets raised £5M in funding;
Contracts
- BlackSky won a six-figure contract from a new strategic international customer to provide imagery and analytics services;
M&A
- EarthDaily Analytics acquired SkyForest, an EO-based analytics firm focused on wildfire risk assessment and forestry.
This follows EarthDaily's verticalization strategy - building capabilities focused on specific market verticals - over the past couple of years. With this acquisition, along with forestry, EarthDaily now has specific products focusing on insurance and mining (through the acquisition of Descartes Labs), agriculture and commodities (thanks to the company's founding history with Geosys), as well as midstream platform capabilities with EarthPipeline.
📈 Strategic Stuff: Partnerships and Announcements
Announcements
- FADA, part of UAE's EDGE Group launched a new platform called TACTICA, that leverages multi-source data, including EO data along with open data sources to generate intelligence for the defense and security sectors;
Partnerships
- Helsing, a European defence technology company has partnered with Loft Orbital satellite infrastructure service provider, to launch a multi-sensor satellite constellation with edge computing capabilities;
- ICEYE and SAR-based analytics provider SATIM are teaming up to develop AI-powered products for automatic detection and classification of vessels, aircraft, and land vehicles;
- ESA and the International Committee of the Red Cross have signed a Memorandum of Intent to harness space technology for humanitarian assistance worldwide
- UAE's EDGE Group has partnered with ST Engineering, a global technology, defence, and engineering group, to develop sovereign SAR satellites.
🗞️ Interesting Stuff: More News
- Malaysia has announced the development of its national EO project, which is expected to be completed within two or three year’s time;
- UK-based SuperSharp, part of the Satlantis group, has selected NanoAvionics to integrate its high resolution thermal imaging instrument;
- The US administration is stripping away support for scientific research in the US and overseas that contains the word “climate;”
- Thailand's Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency reported data from the Suomi NPP satellite's VIIRS system and other satellite sources, revealing a total of 1,355 fire hotspots in Thailand.
🔗 Click-Worthy Stuff: Check These Out
- This deep dive from TerraWatch analysing EO investment trends in 2024;
- The last edition of Planet's Snapshots newsletter, which probably is one of the best collection of the most fascinating and beautiful satellite imagery ever;
- This research that uses data from several optical, radar, laser and gravimetry satellite missions to show estimate of global glacier melt, and how that would intensify freshwater loss and accelerating sea-level rise.
EO Summit: Call for End Users of EO
Are you a large enterprise or a non-profit organization or any group that is an end user of Earth observation? It doesn’t matter whether you have:
- a data strategy i.e. in-house teams that leverage open data sources such as Landsat, Sentinel, MODIS, ERA5 etc. or acquire commercial satellite data,
- a solution strategy i.e. partner with EO solution providers to acquire analytics and integrate it to your workflow.
If you would like to present your EO case study or participate in a EO-focused panel discussion at the EO Summit, then now is your chance to express your interest.
Please fill in this short form and we will be in touch, if it is a good fit.
One Discussion Point
Exclusive analysis and insights from TerraWatch
My biggest qualm about EO reports and initiatives
I find it strange that most reports, initiatives and conversations around the potential for EO and the need for increased adoption of EO tend to focus more on space and satellites, but not really dive deep into the sectors that will actually be impacted: insurance, finance, agriculture, forestry, energy, utilities, mining, climate, nature etc.
Just because terabytes of satellite data is available does not mean there is an actual need or a straightforward business case for EO to be adopted (directly or indirectly).
Based on our experience advising several large enterprises and Fortune 500 firms, I think, we need to skip the high-level hype and go deeper on the specifics:
- the use cases within those sectors that will benefit the most (certainly not everything),
- the maturity levels and feasibility of using an EO solution (not high for all solutions),
- the dependencies for a successful implementation of an EO solution (not all problems can be solved with EO only, need in-situ, drones and others),
- the trade-offs between the current/as-is scenario and the proposed to-be/solution based on EO (not all trade-offs favour an EO solution),
- the need for procuring commercial EO data vs leveraging open EO data (not every use case needs commercial),
- the various EO implementation strategies (build in-house vs buy off-the-shelf vs strategic partnerships vs outsourcing),
- the implications of change management (not a negligible amount)
.. and more.
Later this year, we plan to publish a report on the "State of EO Adoption: Challenges and Opportunities" following EO Summit, which will both contain end-user case studies presented at the conference and an in-depth analysis of the above-mentioned factors.
If you are an organization wondering about the value of EO for your business, the various technologies and companies in the market and how to integrate this into your workflow, get in touch!
ClimateTech Connect: EO and Climate Resilience
ClimateTech Connect is a conference mainly focusing on the insurance and risk sector and delving into the dynamic intersection of climate resilience and cutting-edge technology, taking place in Washington DC on April 15-16.
EO is a significant component of that technology stack and so TerraWatch is glad to be an official event partner. As part of our collaboration, I will be moderating a panel, titled "Harnessing Earth Observation for Climate Resilience" with professionals from the insurance and EO sectors. Join us!
Register for the conference and get a 20% discount using the code Terrawatch20!
Scene from Space
One visual leveraging EO
An incredible collection of satellite imagery
Planet's Snapshots, a weekly newsletter provided some of the most astonishing images of the planet based on a specific theme. As someone who loves looking at satellite imagery, I looked forward to seeing the images every week.
While it looks the newsletter is bidding farewell, I am hoping the images will continue to remain online. Go check them out!
Until next time,
Aravind.
