We had a great workshop on Thursday! Organised as a session during the Geospatial World Forum in Rotterdam our goal was to discuss the results of our study into the Economic Benefits of Copernicus Sentinel data. It was the first (and only?) time that we brought together key persons from each of the 3 cases we have studied and we had a really excellent exchange. We just felt sorry for all those who were not with us!

Whilst the attendance might have been disappointing the exchange was not. We have just finished our third case (Pipeline Infrastructure Monitoring in the Netherlands) and with us were Ivo Visser (Stedin) and Jos Maccabiani (SkyGeo) who were instrumental to the case. SkyGeo is the service provider which represents one characteristic of this case which differs from the previous ones where the service provider is working for a public organisation.

Erik Willen (Skogforsk) joined us for the Swedish Forestry case (Anders Persson the primary provider from the Swedish Forest Agency was unfortunately not able to be there) and Jarko Toivola (Finnish Transport Agency) joined us for the Finnish Winter Navigation case. Everyone participated to what was a lively discussion on the results and on the future; especially the need for Sentinel data.

We were able to discuss comparisons between the 3 cases and the different approaches which were used to analyse each one. ESA also gained some useful insights into the needs of these users for future Sentinel data. It was agreed that it would be useful to revisit each of the cases in a few years time to update them as each one has elements to it which could be developed further.

I doubt that we shall have any possibility to repeat this workshop as to bring all the case principals together into one gathering would prove a real challenge (it has to be in the summer for a start or the ice-breaking season in the Baltic would ensure one absence!). It provided a very nice codicil to our study work.

Note all the case reports can now be found through our web-site (under library/studies and/or library/presentations and a single summary will be published shortly.