Last Monday, I was at the information (half) day organised by ECMWF regarding the procurement of the atmosphere and climate services for Copernicus. I wish to thank them for organising this event and making the effort to promote and explain the procurement process.

Most will be aware that at EARSC, we have been promoting the necessity to involve industry as much as possible in the supply chain for the services. Today, the level varies widely between the Land services where there is a good industrial participation and others particularly the atmosphere, climate and marine where industry has not been really involved. Our goal is to change this recognising on the one hand that there are competences in industry that can and should be employed whilst there are capacities which only public bodies such as ECMWF can supply. This applies to all the Copernicus services and it is clear from the large number of meetings being planned already that we shall need a co-ordinated approach.

We seek to develop a partnership where the “optimum” arrangement can be deployed combining the strengths of industry with public bodies. Hence when ECMWF first contacted me at the end of last year, I was delighted to discuss with him how we could start to develop this arrangement. The information day was a very important first step and we now will work out how to establish a roadmap between the public and private sectors.

Mercator Ocean have also contacted me and I have now had 2 meetings with them to discuss the way forward. Their approach is different and a web-x presentation took place last Friday to start to explain their plans. Again we welcome this and the plans for future meeting s which bring transparency and opportunity to the process.

The discussions will not be limited to short term actions but must embrace planned R&D as well as promotional activities. The plan must show how to evolve from the current situation to one where a greater industry involvement becomes possible and perhaps even more importantly a stronger competitive landscape to ensure good value for the public sector and innovation in the private sector.

I very much hope that all the other EEE’s will follow a similar approach and look forward to discussing with them in the near future.

For the last 2 days I have been at the annual space policy conference in Brussels. As usual it has proven to be a very useful event to gather the thoughts of the political influencers and deciders but also to meet with so many friends in the space and Brussels communities. Several messages emerge for me which I wish to capture and share.

Firstly, some interesting details concerning H2020 and Copernicus where Philippe Brunet was very clear that projects can extend as far as in-orbit validation and demonstration of application capabilities. This should be very much welcomed and we need to develop more ideas on what that could mean for our sector.

On Copernicus, there were some commitments to ensuring that the data would be available to everyone on an equal basis no matter where they are in Europe. We have been asking for this on behalf of the industry but whilst there have been many good words, the funding to make this possible has not been available. We can only hope this may now change.

The dialogue between policy makers and industry will be developed further, initially in the context of H2020 to understand better industry needs. EARSC will be active in gathering and conveying the views and recommendations for the EO services industry.

In this respect, we need to raise the level of the debate which we engender. There are powerful trends influencing the sector at the moment and we must remain vigilant towards the development and positioning of the European industry. We have much to offer and many opportunities emerging but unless we adapt with the support of European policy makers in Brussels and in member states any competitive advantage risks to be lost. It should be an interesting period!

In our last industry survey in 2013, we found that around 65% of the European EO service companies were micro-enterprises ie employing less than 10 persons and that 95% were SME’s employing less than 50 persons. We found this a very interesting result and use it to argue that the sector is quite young and fragmented.

But looking recently at Europe-wide figures, maybe the sector is not so un-characteristic after all. Indeed the percentage of European micro enterprises and SME’s more generally are higher than we found in 2013. The latest SME report from the EC shows 99.8% companies in Europe are SME with less than 250 employees, whilst 92.4% are micro-enterprises compared to our 1% and 67% respectively (see table below).

We are just starting the new survey and we shall see what results this delivers. In 2013 we “found” a total of 319 companies in our sector. Already our database in 2015 contains around 50% more companies that we address with our survey and since we are more aware of the larger companies it is sure that a large proportion of the new additions are micro-sized. I expect we shall see results which are closer to the wider population of companies.

SME’s and especially the micro-enterprises are especially important in creating new jobs. At the launch of their report in 2012, the European Commission reported that 85% of net new jobs¹ in the EU between 2002 and 2010 were created by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). This figure is considerably higher than the 67%-share of SMEs in total employment. During this period, net employment in the EU's business economy rose substantially, by an average of 1.1 million new jobs each year. These are the main results of a study on the essential contribution of SMEs on job creation.

But in 2013, the number of SME’s fell by nearly 1% with the strongest decline in the micro category. So net creation of new enterprises fell below the rate at which earlier ones were failing. I hope, expect that in the EO services sector this is not the case and the numbers are still rising quite strongly. We have launched our 2015 survey and we ask that all companies respond and if by chance you have not received a request to do so, please let us know at secretariat@earsc.org.

How often have we (the older generation of which I am definitely part – a baby boomer) been accused of spending our children’s heritage; of using all the resources and polluting the earth on which we live? It seems to be a quite regular refrain but let us put it into perspective. I came across this delicious piece the other day written by Dennis Gartman and circulated by John Mauldin.

“Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older lady that she should bring her own grocery bags, because plastic bags are not good for the environment. The woman apologized to the young girl and explained, "We didn't have this 'green thing' back in my earlier days." The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations." The older lady said that she was right – her generation didn't have the "green thing" in its day. The older lady went on to explain: “Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the ‘green thing’ back in our day. Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we reused for numerous things. Most memorable besides household garbage bags was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But, too bad we didn't do the ‘green thing’ back then. We walked up stairs because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But you’re right, we didn't have the ‘green thing’ in our day. Back then we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220volts. Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in the early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothe s from their brothers or sisters (and cousins), not always brand-new clothing. But you’re right, young lady; we didn't have the ‘green thing’ back in our day. Back then we had one TV, or radio, in the house – not a TV in every room. And the TV had a screen the size of a handkerchief [remember them?], not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working, so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.” But you’re right; we didn't have the ‘green thing’ back then. We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blade in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the ‘green thing back then. Back then, people took the streetcar or the bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family's $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole house did before the ‘green thing.’ We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint. But, isn't it sad, how the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the ‘green thing’ back then?”

I have to say that I do recall many of these things myself. We also had the equivalent of the local recycling centre come round to us in the form of the rag and bone man with his horse drawn cart. I recall being sent out to collect the waste from the horse to fertilise the vegetables which my father grew; so recycling was complete!

I just wanted to share this with you.

Last Wednesday (20^th) we held our 2^nd workshop looking at the question of certification for the EO services industry. At the 1^st workshop in April 2013, we had agreed to take two steps:

1. To publish a document which gives a template for products specifications which any EO service provider or their customer can use.
2. To trial a low-cost scheme whereby companies can certify their management systems. The EARSC scheme would complement a more stringent ISO9001 certification.

As a result, we have published a DRD (Document Requirement Definition) which provides a template for product specifications and we have trialled the scheme through an open call to EARSC members. The first has been used and tested by the EO4OG projects in generating some 96 EO product sheets for the oil and gas industry.

At the 2^nd workshop we heard from the 4 companies which had responded to the call which we put out last year; Ansur, Flyby, Planetek and Stevenson Astrosat all reported their satisfaction at the trial and encouraged it to be implemented on a wider basis. Lloyds Register QA, an auditing body which had been following the trial and the scheme, reported that the scheme is viable and that they are interested to become the first certified auditors for the sector.

We had a useful discussion on their reports which led to the conclusion that we should now make it operational and run by EARSC which we shall now examine further over the next few months.

One issue which we have to look at is whether this scheme should be open only to European companies or whether we should also offer it globally. There are advantages and disadvantages both ways and I should not wish to presume a decision which hopefully will be taken early next year.

It was also agreed to take the first steps towards a scheme to offer some form of validation scheme for products. This is a complex subject but is also starting to be of more interest to customers. Meetings which I participated to either side of the Certification workshop both considered this topic.

The day before, a workshop took place at which the results of 4 studies were presented to representatives of the oil and gas industry. The EO4OG projects have produced the 96 EO product sheets which can help meet the challenges of the O&G sector. These can be picked up and used by any O&G company wishing to buy a service so a process which “validates” the capacity of the EO service provider to meet the specification would make procurement easier.

On the following day I was invited as an advisory board member to hear and comment on the progress of the MELODIES (Maximising the Exploitation of Linked Open Data in Enterprises and Science) project (an FP7 project). It is an interesting and unusual project in its structure which includes 8 different EO applications using data, and especially linked data, from open sources. Given the diversity of these sources the question of provenance of the data and algorithms and the validity of the processing is something being considered as a transversal issue to all 8 applications. I am hoping that the MELODIES work may help us get some insight regarding product validation for our work which is planned to be reported at a 3^rd workshop targeted for end 2015.

I was reading the other day about the how some of the new business models which are growing around the internet and it led me to think about the comparison with changes in the EO services sector. In a very general way, we are seeing low-cost businesses competing with full-priced, higher-performance ones and we are seeing individuals and businesses using existing, paid-for assets to supply their customers at marginal cost.

In two sectors this is very marked.

• The existing hotel business is being challenged by internet sites like Airbnb which allow anyone to make some money out of their spare room. Hence an asset, in this case the spare room, which has no direct cost is competing with hotels with a much higher cost base driven by legislation on insurance, health and safety etc.
• The taxi business is being challenged by Uber, Lyft and other sites which allow anyone to use their own car to pick up and depose passengers. Whilst there are some obligations, the individual does not have the legacy costs of a taxi business such as their licences or their invested time in “the knowledge”.

The likes of Uber, Airbnb are allowing individuals the freedom to make some money in their spare time using assets which they already own ie a house, a lease on an apartment, a car but this is threatening traditional business models. The story I read was about a small hotel, just outside a large town, that has seen its business drop by 35% in the last two years; they consider that this drop is due to Airbnb and similar sites which are creating more lodging in the town and hence taking away some of the marginal business that the small hotel gains. The hotel also uses airbnb but of course room rates are driven down. All good for the consumer of course.

The hotel has to adapt its business model but with fixed costs to cover they can only go so far unlike the house or car owner who already owns their asset and whose room rate is set essentially at marginal cost. But the playing field is not level because each of the professional businesses whether it be hotel or taxi have regulatory costs that the individual does not have as they are required to hold licenses to operate and to meet safety and insurance conditions. Uber drivers are obliged to hold adequate insurance but they are not licensed in the same way that traditional taxis are. Indeed, it is various regulatory measures from passing the knowledge in London to buying a license from the local authority which created barriers to entry that the new business entrants are breaking down.

In both cases, the competition is somewhat unfair but is good for the consumer as, in accordance with economic theory, prices are driven down towards the marginal cost. But the social cost may be high as the older businesses are forced to adapt or even fail since they cannot cover their legacy costs. Change will take time and transition away from the unfair situation should be ordered rather than purely “let the market decide”.

We are seeing something similar in the EO services market where, over the last 12 months especially have seen significant changes with three major trends:

• The move to much higher resolution in the commercial market with the opening up of (non) restrictions from US suppliers down to 25cm
• The advent of new business models bringing low-cost systems to the market offering what is still high resolution data at around 1m.
• The launch of Sentinels with a free and open data policy reducing data costs for moderate and low resolution data.

However, the market for hotels & taxis is predominantly a consumer market where cost is a first consideration and service, quality etc are secondary, whereas most EO services are sold to business or government customers where price is often a secondary consideration after the quality and reliability of the service. This is not to say that price is unimportant but that a professional customer will be concerned with the “specification” where most consumers are more taken with the “features”. This is a significant difference.

I think that in the consumer market, the wave cannot be stopped and that the drive to find cheaper and more democratic business models (Uber, Airbnb) is unstoppable. The consumer will benefit from lower prices for equivalent service and, through smart legislation to ensure a level playing field with more traditional businesses, we consumers shall get wider choice and better service. Overall, the market will be controlled by consumer protection laws.

In the business market the situation is different and is one reason why we are working to introduce a certification scheme. Rather than a legislative basis we would prefer an industry-led scheme in which the customer has the choice, allowing EO service providers to present themselves better to professional customers. Nevertheless, this should not create large barriers for new companies to enter the market and hence we consider it important to keep the costs of certification as low as possible. 

Last week I spent a very stimulating 2 days at the 8th Irish Earth Observation symposium (IEOS2014). I was impressed at the organisation and strength of the EO community over there. Tim McCarthy had done a great job to bring together around 120 experts from academia, research institutes and agencies, public users and, with the aid of Barry Fennel, from industry. I was told that it was by far the largest symposium which had been held. In addition there were trade exhibits from several organisations. Both Techworks Marine and Treematics impressed me with their business ideas,.

It is good to see this sort of meeting and maybe as EARSC we shall try to attend more. I am not aware of such community meetings in many countries so would be pleased to hear about any which you might be involved in. Whilst EARSC is a European organisation, where there is no local industry association we can stand in at the national level. We have recently played this role in the Netherlands and helped the local industry construct a new programme.

In Ireland, they would like to establish a Collaborative Ground Segment as part of the Copernicus programme. It seems to me that this is a useful step since access to the data is far from yet being assured. A national CGS acts as a focus for all the actors and whilst there is the enthusiasm in Ireland, they still search for the next step to take this forward into a national strategy since there is no level of political support. There is a strong academic interest but this maybe goes along with the fact that the Irish participation to ESA comes under the Ministry of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. Hence a CGS could help rally the various interests and provide a lever for growth on the back of Copernicus.

How to establish a national strategy was a key question addressed during the symposium. The largest panel to which I have ever participated - 37 people in total - discussed the question showing good buy-in from the whole community. It was agreed that a political interest must come first and hence the case must be developed. The ACEOBS concept proposed last year can form the hub of a strategy with a progressive approach to putting it in place. Given that Copernicus is designed to benefit the whole of Europe by providing crucial geo-spatial information to national administrations, we consider that an industrial policy is needed to go alongside the public investment. At EARSC we fully support the Irish industry and the wider EO community to establish a national strategy and are ready to work with any other national organisation which wishes to put a strategic plan in place, as one way of helping the industrial sector to grow.

The initial statistics of the first phase 2 SME call have just been announced (thanks to Steve Bradley via LinkedIn for the alert)..These show a total of 580 validated proposals were received of which 7 address the space theme. The country distribution is similar to phase 1; Italy (70), Spain (69), UK (61). Some 78% of the proposals came from single companies. Results of the awards will be made public next April.

Just to recall that phase 2 is for "Demonstration, Market Replication, R&D" and can lead to.€0.5m to €2.5m for a 1-2 years project.

In the meantime the 2nd call for Phase 1 has also closed. Phase 1 is for "Concept and Feasibility" with funding of 50k over 6 months to develop an initial business plan. A total of 1944 proposals were received of which 57 were within the space priority. A comparison of the 2 calls is given below. What stands out is the lack of success rate for space proposals; only 6.5% of those validated were successful compared to close to 50% across the whole programme.

This led me to look at the previous results and the proposals which were successful since the 155 awards have been announced also.

Of these 4, only 1 is in the domain of EO although I did find two others which could have an EO component.

Overall the results are very disappointing. Given the predominance of SME's working in the EO sector I would have expected to see a stronger showing. Are companies unaware, do they not need funding, or do they find their early funding elsewhere? We shall promote the H2020 SME opportunity more strongly (and we held our first EO focused research networking meeting recently) but with a 6.5% success rate it will not be easy to encourage companies to devote time to preparing proposals. I'll watch the outcome of future calls with interest.

It is almost 4 months since I last posted - apologies for the long wait!

Yesterday, I was at the Imagine 2014 conference organised by Eurogi. This year is their 20^th anniversary and for us it is 25 years since EARSC was formed. Over lunch, Eurogi had invited EARSC and 3 other organisations all celebrating an anniversary this year to make a short speech at their jubilee celebration. It was a simple but nice occasion. I spoke of the changes we have seen in the industry over the last 25 years and how all aspects of imagery (temporal resolution, spatial resolution, spectral resolution) have improved. Recently we have seen new initiatives being launched from Skybox, Planetlabs and others and new technology and new business models ar changing the sector completely; I wonder what it will look like in a further 25 years?

Afterwards I was member of a panel discussing the user uptake of Copernicus. The one really strong message that came out was about awareness. The GI experts attending the conference wondered where they could get data from Copernicus, what it looks like, what can be done with it? These are intermediate users with a knowledge of the sector including satellite data. If they are bemused about these questions then there really needs to be a massive awareness campaign about Copernicus and what it can offer. Reflecting on this afterwards with another expert, we discussed the fact that a commercial operator with a new satellite system in orbit would be sending out their sale-force to all their customers and executing a large and targeted marketing campaign. The EC should consider the same for Copernicus - but maybe using the value-adding community as the sales-force?

If we consider that companies could be doing this already then that probably would be the case except that they still have concerns about how much they can be involved (as addressed in our last position paper). Investment is needed in awareness raising. Industry would be doing this if they saw a clear business opportunity. Amid their doubts about their ability to really exploit Copernicus this cannot happen.

It is announced today that DigitalGlobe has been granted permission to sell its highest resolution imagery on the market. This means that 30x40cm imagery will be available immediately and after the launch of WorldView3 this will increase to 25cm. This comes after news last night that Google will acquire Skybox for $500m. We can add to this the recent (re)acquisition of Spatial Energy by DigitalGlobe.

The two companies are operating very different types of business model but what is clear is that the market is changing dramatically. The Economist this week published an article about the flood of nanosats which are being built and launched.with again very different types of satellite offering different capabilities and very different strategies and markets to DigitalGlobe and Skybox/Google.

This comes on the back of the launch of the first European Sentinel satellite of the Copernicus programme where the data collected from the publicly funded satellites will be available to all users on a free and open basis. As Miguel Bella Mora said recently, the arrival of this free data will require changes to existing business models.

I have written before of my regret at the lack of private initiatives on Europe and the lack of culture to encourage them. Europe can be proud of the enormous advances made with Copernicus as well as the solid base of satellite operators and value adding industry, but without some major changes and initiatives, with international competition hotting up, it risks being left behind. Truly we face an important moment in the development of the market and use of satellite applications globally.

Yesterday, we attended the press conference where the European Commission’s and the European Space Agency’s representatives proudly introduced the first images acquired by the radar instrument, providing the possibility of a day and night, all-weather, frequently revised world coverage. As a newcomer to the EO sector I found the imagery very impressive and the images shown gave just a glimpse of the 1.8 terabytes per day that will be collected by Sentinel 1. We recognise that it is a challenge for European institutions and industry to distribute and digest the huge amount of information they bring. Here’s the link for self-registration and download of Sentinel-1A available data provided: http://scihub.esa.int/.

Sentinel-1A, the first Copernicus’ environmental monitoring satellite, has been flying for just one month. It is still in the commissioning phase, but the expectation is so high that everybody is already working hard to show what the basic products coming from its data will look like.

The session was organised with 6 users showing radar applications in the domains of ice and ocean monitoring, maritime surveillance and environmental protection, emergency management and preparedness, climate change and innovative land cover analysis. Present stakeholders all praised especially the high coverage rate of this first EC – ESA radar satellite; which will be increased when Sentinel 1B will fly as well. Some also underlined how the objective of this mission is to provide a global continuous and consistent mapping of the whole planet: this is to complement other national, public or private missions with higher resolution and different characteristics.

The promise is to have a fully operational satellite after the summer 2014. First results open the way for a bright perspective that free and open data will deliver to value-adding companies and end users and some of the potential contribution to future scientific research. SMEs and start-ups, the engine of European growth, will be able to access and exploit this resource. EC and ESA are committed to keep on working for a smooth deployment of the rest of the Sentinel fleet and at EARSC we are also committed to continue to help the industry develop new business from this exciting new data source: the European Copernicus programme.

I participated yesterday to the Geospatial World Forum 2014 pre-conference session on "Geospatial Industry forging ties with GEOSS: A Value Proposition. It proved to be a useful forum with around 50 persons in attendance largely from the GEO community (secretariat and executive) and the EO services industry (data suppliers and value added). There was a good representation from around the world which led to an excellent discussion on the question of how GEO will engage with industry.

EARSC has been active for several years in saying that there needs to be a dialogue between GEO and industry  - in fact we first wrote to GEO saying this in 2005 - so we welcome the fact that the GEO stakeholders have now agreed that the GEO secretariat should develop this engagement. It seems obvious that in a sector where there is such an overlap between the public and private sectors that an organisation with the global mandate to encourage a GEOSS through co-ordinated actions must take into account what the private sector can offer. We see this as a two-way process whereby GEOSS can benefit by including private offerings and the private EO service companies can benefit increased exposure of their products and services. But more importantly society can benefit through improved organisation of the supply of EO services leading to economic and societal benefits.

The audience were mostly in line with this proposition. A number of questions emerged such as the role of licences in distributing the data, how to engage with the large number of SME's (through an association like EARSC), how to resolve offers from the private sector and public sector organisations and most importantly what role exactly should GEO play in this; from discoverability of data through to directly offering data. My presentation talked more about the role which we believe that GEO can play.

Over the next few months we shall seek to deepen the understanding and to find some very specific actions from which to build a co-operation. Yesterday was a good start towards establishing a framework for this effort.

Whilst we are all aware of the risk of an asteroid strike on our planet, maybe we are not so aware of the number of strikes that already take place. The B612 Foundation has published a video and The Economist this week published a map showing asteroid strikes on The Earth over the last decade. Happily all of them resulted in aerial explosions but with surprising force. The data comes from the B612 foundation which is raising funds to launch a "Sentinel" IR satellite to detect small asteroids earlier and hopefully to guard against one of these explosions taking place over a city where the damage could be enormous.

In a recent IEEE list of start-ups to watch in the EO domain, only 1 of the 9 ventures is based in Europe; Dauria Aerospace is based in Munich and whose business model is really quite traditional even if executed in a new way. I have remarked on many occasions recently concerning the lack of private European initiatives like Skybox Imaging, PlanetIQ and several others in the US and strongly regretted that Europe cannot develop more business initiatives. Only SSTL (now part of Airbus) and their services subsidiary DMCI have made a significant impact with a different business mode. l feel that this lack of European ventures is a result of a number of factors in the European environment (one of which is difficulty in accessing finance) and in the recent EC conference on Big Data I talked about the need to introduce an "Enterprise Culture" in part to draw attention to this lacuna.  However, I recently came across ISIS - Innovative Solutions in Space which is a company based in Delft, Netherlands offering cubesats which does seem to break this mould.

I confess to not knowing too much about them but will hope to learn more soon, but the recent news that the first QB50 satellites developed under an FP7 contract (already quite an achievement) struck me as being  a great success. I see the news from last November of the successful launch of 14 cubesats and whilst these are not (mainly) concerned with EO or imagery, the new QB50 satellites will perform a remote sensing mission so are not so far away from the core interests of EARSC. The business model today seems to be mainly focused on the construction of the satellites but there are signs that this could evolve. Already they operate the satellites and have ambitions to offer messaging services.

ISIS seems to be the type of company which I have been missing in Europe. I imagine there are others of which I am not aware (respond/comment if you know them). I look forward to learning more and will comment in due course.