Ó Fiontraíocht Éireann; An Roinn Fiontar, Trádála agus Fostaíochta
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Minister of State for Business, Employment and Retail at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Damien English, has welcomed the news that 2 Irish companies, Davra and Treemetrics, have been awarded co-funding under the European Space Agency’s Earth Observation programme, with a total value of over €3 million.
The companies secured co-funding through Ireland’s investment in the InCubed programme, which supports industry to develop new commercial Earth Observation based products by providing rapid co-funding. InCubed focuses on developing innovative and commercially viable products and services that exploit the value of Earth observation imagery and datasets.
The news was announced as 10 Enterprise Ireland supported companies visited ESRIN, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Centre for Earth Observation. Head of ESRIN, Simonetta Cheli welcomed Enterprise Ireland’s Joe Healy and the delegation. The visit focused on maximising business opportunities for Irish companies and driving greater awareness of the Earth Observation programme, and the opportunities it presents. Engagement with these programmes is in line with the vision of National Space Strategy for Enterprise to develop an economically sustainable and expanding space-active industry in Ireland.
Minister English congratulated the companies on their success, saying:
"Ireland has a strong tradition of entrepreneurship in many sectors and, as our industry representatives in Italy show today, New Space is no exception. We continue to be impressed by the work that Φ-lab and its InCubed programme are doing in nurturing private-sector Research and Development in Earth observation. It is enabling Irish companies to realise their potential by accelerating the commercialisation of their products and services which is a key deliverable highlighted in Ireland’s National Space Strategy for Enterprise."
He added:
"I encourage relevant companies in Ireland to identify potential opportunities for collaboration with public sector partners, and moreover, to work together to show that satellite derived data can provide timely information, important for supporting the delivery of many public service monitoring and control activities."
Niall Bolger, Enterprise Ireland Programme Manager for Earth Observation Programmes, said:
"A growing number of Irish companies and research teams are now actively involved in space-related activities, many of which provide leading-edge solutions that are critical to ESA’s mission. This trade mission focuses on the opportunities that ESA’s Earth Observation programme presents. Enterprise Ireland’s client companies have huge potential to support this, providing expertise in advanced data analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and advanced sensor technologies. There is a growing opportunity for Irish innovators and researchers to play a significant role in this vibrant and exciting sector."
Davra has secured a contract through ESA to demonstrate the feasibility of combining data captured through their IoT solution with Earth Observation data sets captured by Sentinels 1 and 2 to be used as a basis for monitoring mine tailings. Within the global mining Industry, there is no single management platform that provides on-site operational control of critical systems and processes. By integrating key satellite, industrial IoT, LIDAR and weather data, the opportunity exists to develop a global application enablement platform to address this commercial opportunity.
Treemetrics was awarded a 2-year ESA contract, that will see them utilising satellite imaging, data analytics and its advanced forest measurement technology to provide more accurate forest carbon credit estimates. The global demand for forest carbon credits is growing larger every year, having nearly quadrupled in 2021, driven by an increasing desire from companies and individuals to reduce their carbon footprint. Many organisations across the globe are voluntarily committing to this and investors are demanding the utilisation of high quality carbon projects.
Ireland’s investment and participation in ESA’s Earth Observation programmes affords Irish industry and public bodies with the opportunity to seize commercial opportunities in market areas such as smart agriculture and planning; develop capabilities in strategic skill sets such as Big Data analytics; and to contribute to the development of solutions to global challenges, such as climate change mitigation and food security.
The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. ESA is an intergovernmental organisation, created in 1975, with the mission to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space delivers benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. ESA develops the launchers, spacecraft and ground facilities needed to keep Europe at the forefront of global space activities. Today it launches satellites for Earth observation, navigation, telecommunications and astronomy, sends probes to the far reaches of the Solar System and cooperates in the human exploration of space.
ESRIN, known as the ESA Centre for Earth Observation, is 1 of the 5 ESA specialised centres situated in Europe. Located in Frascati, a small town 20 km south of Rome in Italy, ESRIN was established in 1966 and first began acquiring data from environmental satellites in the 1970s.
Ireland’s Membership of the European Space Agency Irish membership of the European Space Agency ESA is funded through an annual subscription that allows Irish companies and researchers to competitively bid for ESA tenders. The value of the resulting contracts is commensurate with Ireland’s contribution to the overall ESA budget. Enterprise Ireland co-ordinates Ireland’s industrial and research participation in the programmes of ESA in collaboration with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. The total value of ESA contracts to Ireland in 2021 was over €25 million.
The purpose of Ireland’s membership of ESA is to participate in European space programmes with a focus on facilitating innovative Irish operations to develop leading edge space technologies and to commercially exploit their ESA participation in global space and non-space markets, leading to increased export sales and employment.
Enterprise Ireland’s role in relation to ESA is to assist Irish operations to successfully bid for ESA contracts, providing expertise for Irish operations and researchers in developing and executing space strategies, as well as being a point of reference for the international space industry when they want to identify relevant sources of space-related expertise within Ireland. Irish industrial and research participation in ESA covers a range of sectors and technology areas including; software, precision mechanical engineering, telecommunications, electronics, optoelectronics and advanced materials and extending to end user equipment, services and applications.
Enterprise Ireland client companies taking part in the trade mission are as follows.
Davra is an Industrial Internet of Things company, operating across smart cities, logistics, transportation and manufacturing. Leveraging its expertise in satellite operations, Davra provides a complete industrial loT platform. This allows system integrators, product builders, OEMs, cities and end customers to define, build and rapidly bring to market industrial-grade loT applications. Davra delivers in-depth analytics, advanced visualisations, and complete management and platform integration to customers.
Treemetrics Ltd was founded in 2005. This innovative company has developed a new technology, including use of Earth Observation data and field measurements to replace the traditional forestry methods which have been in place for over 100 years. Nowadays Treemetrics provides pioneering solutions to the global forest industry in over 40 countries.
AAT (Applied Aerial Technology) specialises in the use of Earth Observation data for sustainable management of natural resources such as forest, marine and peatland. It uses a combination of space-based and UAV platforms to provide clients with a source of transparent objective data. AAT facilitates the use of EO for natural resource stakeholders through educational workshops to show how EO sources, like Sentinel-2, can provide added insight for sustainable management.
Compass Informatics is a long-established GIS / IT and analytics company, creating analytics and systems across natural resources and agriculture, environment and biodiversity, planning, utilities, and transportation applications. It uses a combination of space-based and UAV platforms to provide clients with a source of transparent objective data. AAT facilitates the use of EO for natural resource stakeholders through educational workshops to show how EO sources, like Sentinel-2, can provide added insight for sustainable management.
Icon Geo specialises in the application of earth observation to agricultural and environmental applications, with expertise in agri payments compliance under the Common Agricultural Policy – including control with remote sensing for Ireland. As a sister company of Compass Informatics, Icon Geo enhances the EO expertise within the integrated companies. Both Compass and Icon Geo are particularly interested in area monitoring and systems collaboration, among other opportunities.
InnaLabs is a European, high technology SME company built on decades of proven and practical experience in the field of inertial sensors technology, renowned for its expertise in space, aerospace, land, marine and emerging technology markets. Its high-performance accelerometers, gyroscopes and systems are designed and qualified to meet the stringent customer requirements for precision guidance, stabilisation, navigation and orientation applications.
Oblivious is a Dublin-based company building privacy-enhancing software. It offers tools for developers in organisations that need to use process-sensitive data and collaborate internally or externally without revealing private information. Oblivious offers secure and simple deployment of applications to secure enclaves, a new technology that guarantees how data is processed. Our product is fast, language and framework agnostic and does not require you to rewrite your code from scratch.
Réaltra is dedicated to developing and supplying leading-edge electronics to the space sector. The company’s COTS technology offering includes AI acceleration boards for CubeSats, integrated launcher telemetry systems and equipment, in-orbit HD video telemetry systems, and micro-gravity measurement telemetry systems. Réaltra has also designed rad-hard/hi-rel mission-critical avionics for deep space science applications (PLATO).
Techworks Marine provides marine data solutions, specialising in the integration of real-time marine monitoring equipment and meteorological and oceanographic sensors and instrumentation. Its services include data acquisition systems, EO, Metaocean, Data Buoys and the CoastEye Data Platform, offering solutions to sectors like ports, offshore renewable energy, water and utilities, coastal engineering and research.
Ubotica Technologies provides technical expertise in the areas of computer vision and machine learning in embedded systems at the Edge. It has developed computer vision and machine learning algorithms for several different market segments, including space, IoT, industry 4.0 and biomedical. Its applications pipeline includes FDIR (satellite health), earth observation, space debris, computational storage, star tracking, visual navigation, satellite navigation, and a visual monitoring camera.