Objectives of the service
Symbiose Parametric Forest-Cover addresses a clear gap in forest wildfire insurance and risk management: insurers, reinsurers, brokers, forestry experts and corporate risk users lack fast, objective and scalable tools to quantify wildfire exposure, assess forest-cover loss, generate post-event evidence and design reliable parametric insurance triggers.
The service will provide Earth Observation (EO)-based forest-risk intelligence using Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, very high-resolution imagery where needed, climate data, land-cover data, asset-location data and expert validation. These inputs will be processed into wildfire-risk indicators, asset-exposure maps, burn-area detection, economic loss indicators, evidence reports, Geographic Information System (GIS) exports, dashboards and Application Programming Interface (API) access.
The European Space Agency (ESA) Kick-Start activity has focused on turning this service concept into a pilot-ready solution.
Users and their needs
The service currently targets professional users in France, mainly actors involved in forest-risk management, insurance, brokerage, forestry advisory and corporate risk prevention.
The targeted user communities and their needs are:
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Insurers and reinsurers: objective wildfire-risk indicators, forest-loss estimates, post-event evidence and auditable trigger logic for underwriting, claims assessment and parametric insurance design.
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Insurance brokers and intermediaries: clear and explainable outputs to structure risk-transfer solutions and communicate wildfire exposure to clients.
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Forestry and wildfire-risk consultancies: operational maps, vegetation indicators, prevention-oriented insights and expert-ready reports aligned with field workflows.
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Forest-owner organisations and forestry advisors: practical tools to support risk awareness, prevention planning and forest asset protection.
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Corporate risk and prevention actors: asset-exposure analysis for buildings, infrastructure, industrial sites and forest-adjacent assets.
The main challenge for the project is to provide outputs that are accurate, rapidly available after wildfire events, auditable for insurance users, understandable for forestry experts, and scalable across larger areas through dashboards, reports, GIS exports and batch analysis.
Service/ system concept
When deployed, the service will give users a clear digital view of wildfire-related forest risk for a selected forest area, asset, municipality or portfolio. It will deliver risk maps, exposed-asset maps, burned-area detection, forest-cover loss indicators, post-event evidence packages, confidence scores, economic loss indicators, downloadable reports and map-data exports. Users will be able to compare areas, analyse several assets in batch, and use the results for underwriting, prevention planning, expert review, claims support and parametric insurance trigger design.
In simple terms, the user selects an area or uploads an asset list. The system gathers satellite images, weather and climate information, land-cover data, forest boundaries and asset locations. These inputs are checked, combined and converted into practical indicators showing where risk or damage is located, how severe it is, and which assets may be affected. Results are then delivered through dashboards, maps, reports and exports.
High-level architecture:
Data sources → Data preparation → Risk and loss indicators → Maps, reports and exports → User decisions
Space Added Value
The service uses Earth Observation data from Sentinel-2 optical imagery for vegetation condition, forest-cover mapping, burned-area delineation and severity classification. Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar supports rapid post-event assessment when optical imagery is limited by smoke or cloud cover. For high-value or insurance-grade cases, the service can also use commercial very-high-resolution satellite imagery such as Pléiades, Pléiades Neo, WorldView and SkySat. Spaceborne LiDAR missions such as GEDI and ICESat-2 provide forest structure, canopy-height and biomass information. Galileo GNSS with OSNMA can securely geo-reference field observations.
The added value comes from combining these space assets into a scalable, objective and auditable observation backbone. Compared with current or competing approaches based on field surveys, static hazard maps, aerial surveys, manual GIS work or purely meteorological models, space assets provide broader coverage, repeatable monitoring, lower marginal cost, faster post-event screening and stronger evidence for portfolio-level forest-risk analysis. This supports more reliable underwriting, claims support, prevention planning and parametric trigger design.
Current Status
The project is at Kick-Start Final Review stage. Completed work includes exchanges with primary insurers, reinsurers, brokers, forestry actors, wildfire-risk consultancies and corporate risk users; participation in a Deauville risk-management event that generated around 100 identified follow-ups; and testing of Earth Observation workflows for forest characterisation, burn-area detection, post-event assessment, asset-exposure analysis, economic loss indicators and parametric trigger logic.
The platform has been extended with wildfire-risk indicators, land-cover and loss-estimation capabilities, asset-exposure analysis, client-facing dashboards, APIs and scalable batch-analysis preparation.
Current work focuses on calibration, validation and operational hardening, including further testing on additional geographies, historical wildfire events, reference datasets and user-defined pilot areas. The next step is Demonstration preparation: define the pilot perimeter, confirm champion-user requirements and select test geographies.
