ESA Copernicus 4.0 Challenge

The ESA Copernicus 4.0 Challenge was looking for solutions that reflect the upcoming “golden era” in Earth Observation by demonstrating how new trends in EO can work together with the traditional EO satellites.

Finalists

Those are the TOP 3 submissions to the ESA Copernicus 4.0 Challenge. Congratulations to the winning solution!

ConstellR – Taking Our Planet’s Temperature During Climate Change
This high-resolution temperature monitoring service from space will answer the market’s need for granular land surface temperature data. It will also enable a massive reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and drastically improve humankind’s capability to respond quickly to environmental threats in the age of climate change.
For atmospheric corrections, ConstellR use aerosol and cloud cover data from Sentinel-5P and water vapour products from Sentinel-3.
In response monitoring, ConstellR data will enable global irrigation optimisation at the single-field level. Main benefits are the massive potential to conserve water which will take pressure off farmers, secure food production and mitigate CO₂ emissions.

Submitted by Max Gulde

SpaceSea – Remote Monitoring of Seaweed Farms
SpaceSea is a monitoring solution for seaweed farms. It enables farms to scale up efficiently by reducing the cost of monitoring while increasing seaweed yield and quality.
To successfully monitor seaweed farms remotely, the solution relies on data from Sentinel-3 and GHRSST.
SpaceSea provides:

Remote farm monitoring of key parameters (Reduces the cost of farm monitoring)
A farm management tool (saves hours of manual administration)
Prediction services (including on expected yields and warnings for conditions that impair crop quality)

Submitted by Sven Arends

The Challenge

Copernicus 4.0 will rely on a combination of large and traditional satellites with SmallSats. Constellations of NanoSats, HAPS (High Altitude Platform Stations) and drones are certain to become important contributors of EO data, complementing the more traditional fleet of the Copernicus Sentinels and Contributing Missions. In addition, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Analytics, Internet of Things, Machine Learning and Cloud Computing will become the new challenge in software tools, indispensable when handling and analysing the massive flow of data coming from this new generation of EO sensors. The most compelling solutions to this challenge will clearly demonstrate the benefits for user communities and the technical challenges.

Submissions are welcome in any application field, including:

Smart Cities
Transport and Mobility
Health
Tourism/Leisure
Agriculture
Security

The ESA Copernicus 4.0 Challenge aims to increase the exposure and understanding of Earth observation data in the software domain (AI, IoT and Machine Learning, Cloud Computing and Data Analytics), as well as the hardware domain (HAPS, nanosats, smallsats). Those tasked with evaluating the submissions to this challenge will therefore focus on the potential for technological feasibility, rather than its maturity.

Prizes

CASH PRIZE

EUR 10,000

SATELLITE DATA

Possibility to access EUR 10,000 worth of commercial datasets from the Copernicus Contributing Missions in the Copernicus Data Warehouse (financial support by EC)

Criteria

Submissions to ESA Copernicus 4.0 Challenge will be assessed against the following criteria:

Innovation

How innovative is the idea and its proposed expansion within the market?

Relevance

Does the addition of Copernicus data provide the solution with a point of difference over similar solutions?

Technological feasibility

Does the technical implementation of Earth observation data allow for future scalability that will answer business needs?

Commercial viability

Does the solution have real market potential?

About ESA

The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. To contribute to the success of Copernicus ESA is exploiting its 35 years of expertise in space programme development and management. While the Copernicus programme is politically led by the European Union (EU), ESA is the overall coordinator of the Copernicus Space Component and will, inter alia, ensure the uninterrupted delivery of data from the Copernicus Sentinel satellites and from an important number of Copernicus Contributing Missions at national, European and international level. Following the launch of Sentinel-1A on 4 April 2014 the Copernicus programme has entered its operational phase, serving users with an ever-increasing mix of satellite imagery and other data.