“Just a little gathering of 25,000 changemakers, including 4,000 startups and 2,000 investors on November 21–22, 2019,” is how Slush summed up the event where ESA BIC Finland put in a stand that gathered the Nordic partners from across the ESA Business Application and Space Solutions (BASS) network together with the ESA BASS team and ESA Earth Observation Programme (EOP). 

Slush 2019 with its whopping 25 000 attendees was possibly the biggest start-up event (ever) and one where sustainability, deep tech and investment were the themes ‘du jour’.

Slush according to Slush 

Slush has grown from a 300-person assembly to a community of true global magnitude. Slush began as a student-driven, not-for-profit movement created to support the next generation of ground-breaking entrepreneurs. Stellar success and global interest has turned the two-day event in Helsinki into a weeklong affair with multiple side events focused on start-ups, scale ups, investors and founders.

ESA BIC Finland organised the ESA stand in collaboration with ESA BASS, ESA EOP and the Nordic ESA BICs. The state-of-the-art über-interactive stand included AR/VR demos, one from EOP Phi Lab showcasing the capabilities of EO and its relevance to start-ups. 

The stand also benefitted from Astronaut in training Matthias Maurer who provided the buzz and drew in crowds with demos of some of the innovation technologies (Matthias was so taken with the Ntention glove that he couldn’t resist a quick tweet.) 

The ESA BICs in residence also brought along their stellar incubates, including:  Awake.AI, Aurora Propulsion Technologies, Arctic Astronautics, Arctic Space Technologies AB, Centropy AB, Mooringo AB and Eningo AB Gilytics, ClearSpace, ANYbotics, Golbriak Space OÜ.

The ESA BASS team also attended one of the side events organised by an ESA BIC Finland’s alumni Collective Crunch. The workshop introduced the topic of Digital Forestry. Participants could meet ‘cool, calm and hassle-free’ Linda, their AI platform and witness Collective Crunch’s trajectory from the ESA BIC to BA seeing first-hand the ‘Slush effect’ as well as the entire supply chain in the forestry sector. Themes of Carbon Capture and Storage were palpable in the workshop as emerging new trends. 

Slush as a large-scale event offered a multitude of matchmaking and networking opportunities as well as flagging up hot topics such as ocean tech and everyday environmentalism. 

Sustainability was also the start and end note for the event. Slush was founded with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals as their foundation, so they make sure this is reflected at all levels of their operations – meticulously analysing the impact of their global events. (Slush Helsinki is an EkoKompassi/ EcoCompass certified event, using only biodegradable disposables, partnering with environmentally–friendly suppliers, serving only tap water, and using recycled or reused materials.)  

So what was the ESA BASS takeaway message? 

Space technology is the future for business formation whether start-up or scale-up in a sustainable – in all its forms (business and environment-wide) – way.  

See you in Helsinki on the 19-20 November for Slush 2020 …

Read more about the Sustainable Development Goals in Space as a Superpower

A new forestry programme integrating the use of space assets is revolutionising the way that logging operations are carried out in Poland. The service, developed by Krakow-based company, SmallGIS, with the support of ESA’s Business Applications programme, is helping forestry make the switch to remote sensing technologies.

In the last few years forest regulation in Poland has remained focused on the use of field measurement methods. Logging plans have been labour-intensive revolving around lengthy field work – walking through target areas and evaluating timber stock and laboriously defining logging site boundaries.

SmallGIS’s goal for the forest community was to provide a modern web-based platform that provided fast and relevant access to data such as maps, images and analyses for authorised forest users – as an effective cost and time saving tool to support the logging plans management operations.

Working with ESA, SmallGIS has developed TIKKA, a service based on state-of-the-art remote sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS) methods. TIKKA provides timely andaccurate geo-referenced information about the forest environment and its surrounding topography. It helps rapidly identify the most economically valuable areas of timberland and to devise detailed logging plans – with data accessible via a web portal.

The technology behind TIKKA involves a combination of remote sensing – SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar), LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging – a remote sensing method that uses a pulsed laser to generate precise, 3D information) Earth Observation (EO), and GNSS to create a comprehensive service that replaces the long and expensive field inspections.

Piera di Vito, Technical Officer of the project at ESA explains: “LiDAR with its field map databases and spatial datasets of environmental and ecological information, provides an optimal means to obtain baseline forest inventory information on tree height, tree diameter and stem volume.“This baseline can be used to produce a highly accurate and detailed Digital Terrain Model and timber inventory which is complemented by space-borne data (spectral or Very High Resolution imagery) to keep it current and provide more detail such as the tree species or broadleaf versus conifer, for example.”

Maps generated by the service can be used for navigation in the forest, for finding harvestable timber and to plan forest thinning work and delineating the logging area.

“A pilot demonstration was supported and validated by representatives of the Regional State Forest in Szczecin. They found a reduction in costs for preparing the logging plan as well as an improvement of the current quality level of logging plans. They are also delighted that users could access this information in their own GIS system without the need of additional IT projects,”says Bartosz Kulawik, Project Manager, SmallGIS.

Trading in-field measurement for remote sensing technologies

Today, as a result of TIKKA and its potential success nationally, the Polish forestry regulations – which have not been revised since the 1960s – will take into account the opportunity to exploit modern technologies.

“The coming years will bring deregulation and changing of forest law – more advanced technologies will be recommended and may even become obligatory. The main players that form the target users of this service already exist and already have the necessary GIS tools in place,” says Bartosz Kulawik, Project Manager, SmallGIS.

 “When we started with first project, we had two people working in remote sensing. Now we have more than ten! Business Applications gave us the template and encouraged us to think about implementation. Before that we were just focusing on the technical side – ESA helped us make a business plan, to finish the product and market it.”

TIKKA technology is now also being used to fight forest fires – see article