Projects that have achieved outstanding results in the areas of agriculture and infrastructure monitoring were presented at ECSAT on the Harwell campus this month, as ESA hosted the Business Applications Final Presentation day. Six companies showcased ‘sustainable solutions for the future’ – projects which all had co-funding and support as part of ESA’s Business Applications programme;  and which pointed to a future where space technology will play a critical role in addressing global issues.

During the event companies highlighted the services they had developed, and their plans for exploitation. The agricultural projects in the morning session illustrated the ways in which advanced technologies are supporting farmers in their daily life. HiVaCroM showed how they are bridging the gap between crop potential and actual yield. Project KORE  explained the success of their subscription-based service, which has had worldwide interest and sales with numerous UK customers.

“We had a lot of help and really sound thinking from ESA, we redesigned things dramatically, it made commercial sense and stimulated a whole year of R&D work to prove radar capabilities. We then reignited the process with ESA to move into demonstration phase.” Andrew Groom, Consulting Expert at CGI (HiVaCroM’s prime contractor)

AgSpace Agriculture demonstrated with their GroWise project the importance of gaining a farmer’s trust – notoriously difficult to achieve. This project now has 900,000 hectares signing up to the system in the UK and trades with eight African countries (where volatile weather means getting credit can present an enormous challenge as banks have no visibility on how they are performing). AgSpace said: “We get past the farm gate, every farm on this planet needs credit to survive. And what happens in Africa today will determine what happens to all of us. Farmers need access to finance, they need to be connected. The satellite data and platforms we’ve developed have helped.” 

Shamal Mohammed from Agri-EPI in his keynote speech summed up the importance of finding the right partners, customers and clients when employing space technology in agriculture as well as its role with pressing global issues: 

“We need more food, water, more energy…and we are dealing with climate change. The population will reach 9 billion by 2050…Space technology plays an important role in making better decisions. GPS has changed the way we collect data in agriculture, with enhanced temporal and spatial frequency we are helping farmers better monitor their crops and the performance of the business. Improved resolution has helped farmers greatly in last few years.” 

The afternoon session focused on infrastructure monitoring and the four projects successfully demonstrated their ability to provide valuable information on potential hazards potential and responses. PLIMM, which looks at ground movement across London, has racked up contracts with three blue chip customers, launched a multinational in the US and numerous partnering agreements. They are now extending their service to preserving Scottish historic sites from climate change.  

GeoSHM gave updates about progress since they appeared a few months ago as one of ESA’s success stories.

 “It’s the same quest for data in structural monitoring. The technology is going to get ‘smarter’ - GeoSHM now involves very high frequencies, picking up spatial movement in minutes and seconds. We are now picking up movements in underlying ground in days. Sensors come with a cost, so we’re finding those critical control places that you really need to monitor. Everything is being refined.” Jon Collett, University of Nottingham

Project GIRP deals with subsidence issues resulting from clay shrinkage – the largest ground instability issue affecting residential property in the UK. With this issue responsible for 75% of all valid insurance claims this is clearly a project with a future, and banks are particularly interested in GIRP’s climate change model. DAMMINGS, the final project to be presented  and the subject of a success story now live on the Business Applications web site) uses space-based solutions for dam monitoring – augmenting or replacing conventional monitoring techniques and is now in the process of rolling out the system commercially.

Nick Appleyard, Head of Downstream Business Applications at ESA, closed the event saying: “The attraction of customers, the sales and the expanding market opportunities have been well-characterised. All these projects are not only very promising but have a significant contribution in making the world a safer, more productive place, a more pleasant place to live in.”

 “Housing IS the business cycle” stated Professor of Economics, Edward E Learner, in his well-known paper on the subject*. Even if patterns have shifted slightly since the crisis in 2008, housing is still perceived as being a ‘robust forward indicator’ to cyclical economic swings. So, having accurate, up-to-date information on what’s happening in the construction industry plays a vital role in economic forecasting.

Enter ConsTrack, conceived and co-developed by ESA and GeoVille – an Austrian global leader in satellite-based land monitoring.  ConsTrack is an innovative, automatic system that offers very precise status reports and images of large-scale construction from Space covering substantial areas; enriching and adding value to the array of business cycle indicators available.

While satellite-based remote sensing has a relatively long track record in areas such as agriculture and climate, its arrival on the economics scene is quite novel.

Maria Lemper, Project Manager at GeoVille, says: “Until now we’ve only had statistical information – without spatial coverage. ConsTrack gathers reliable and consistent spatial data in near real-time and transforms them into meaningful, objective statistical information.”

Roberta Mugellesi-Dow, Technical Officer at ESA  explains: “ConsTrack’s IT information system uses big-data processing of the data streams of Sentinel-2 (one of the satellites from the EC’s Copernicus programme, developed and operated by ESA), covering the whole of Europe on a weekly basis. As a result we have  a complete overview of construction activities on a national and European level.” 

ConsTrack can provide insights such as when construction starts, the size of the site (i.e. in km²) as well as the type of construction. In this way, the system enables regional and commercial banks to monitor and report on construction activities in a standardised way.

Traditionally, conventional indicators such as building permits have been used to monitor developments in the construction industry. But surveys can be compromised by human interference, insufficient coverage, or delays in their availability, as well as being affected by bias. Building permits also only indicate the wish or desire to build, whereas ConsTrack expresses the actual construction activity.

“ConsTrack provides a satellite-based indicator that can significantly increase the relevance, accuracy and timeliness of economic observations which have an immediate impact on stock and credit markets.”
Maria Lemper, GeoVille

 “We have the final algorithm ready and the system is operational,” continues Lemper; “It’s a very exciting time for GeoVille, we already have the first interested customers on board and are looking forward to future cooperation.”

* Leamer, Edward. (2007). Housing Is the Business Cycle. International Economic Review Proceedings. 46. 149-233. 10.1016/B978-0-12-397874-5.00047-6.