San Francisco, Berlin, London…Frascati? When you think of the world’s leading tech hubs, you might not immediately think of the picturesque city just 20km out of Rome — but possibly this is about to change. After all, it’s home to just one of the European Space Agency’s many campuses.
The six startups enrolled on our IoT and space programme met there on July 11-12 for our intermediary session. The plan? For participants to gain hands-on Earth Observation experience, report on their progress and meet ESA mentors and staff. We spoke to those who attended to get the low down.
Want to see it as well as read about it? We’ve got you covered: scroll down for our video recap instead.
The introductions to data discovery and how to carry out data processing with SAR and optical/thermal were very helpful. They meant startups could understand the range of tech available which could help improve their products.
Besides this, I enjoyed the presentation about Earth Observation and IoT for security uses. These delivered useful insights for participants. They provided details on the opportunities in EO4 Society Open Call and and its new activities. These included: Crimes Against Humanity; Terrorism and Organized Crimes; Environmental Crimes and Illicit Trafficking; Cross Cutting Elements. These seem especially topical in the context of the conflict in Ukraine and terrorism happening in Europe.
This seems like a really fruitful collaboration between the European Space Agency and Deutsche Telekom. Some of our projects are similar, we have access to different but complementary data. Besides this, both have experts in data science, cloud, connectivity, security, AI etc. I can see us collaborating in the future — especially with a focus on ESG, the environment, climate change and CSRD.
I thought the matchmaking session the Internal ESA Research Fellows was very successful. These are the young remote sensing professionals and data scientists who will mentor the startups by giving practical advice about their prototypes.
Overall, I thought the intellectual atmosphere was great. It confirmed that by coming together, the European Space Agency and Deutsche Telekom can do much more than they can alone.
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