Innovation challenges

The aim of this action was to launch 4 business challenges per year where a sponsor expresses a challenge to be solved by the use of space data, and especially Copernicus based products. SMEs had the opportunity to propose innovative ideas and concepts in answer to the business challenge expressed by the sponsor. The best concept was then rewarded with prize money, which was to be used for the development of the concept. The objective of organizing such contests is twofold: encourage the adoption of space data by new end users and fostering new business collaborations around Copernicus data.

4 thematics have been defined according to market maturity, pre-identified needs and the potential use of Copernicus data. These 4 thematices were: climate (modified for environment), communities, water and agriculture.

22 challenges have been proposed and the following 4 have been selected:

• Communities: “Detection of illegal gold mining in Ivory Coast” sponsored by the CURAT (University Centre of research and application of remote sensing technology in Ivory Coast)
• Environment: “Automated mapping of mudbank in French Guyana” sponsored by the DGTM, the French Directorate general of territories and sea
• Agriculture: “Elaboration of an indicator to measure harvested areas compared to seeded areas in the United States of America” sponsored by Descartes Underwriting, a French Insurtech SME that specializes in climate risk modeling and data-driven risk transfer
• Water: “Optimisation of water leak detection according to urban, geological, environmental and climate context of the territory” sponsored by Suez, a private entreprise, expert in the water and waste sectors

A total of 26 projects were submitted by SMEs for the application to the 4 challenges. The winners were the following:

• Communities: PIXSTART, a company that brings together science and digital, which are key expertise in Geo-intelligence services.
• Environment: I-SEA, an innovative company that develops and markets monitoring services for aquatic and coastal environments.
• Agriculture: TerraNIS, a small company specialized in the design, development and marketing of geoinformation services using satellite imagery in the fields of agriculture, environment and land use planning.
• Water: HUPI, a company in the field of artificial intelligence and the development of virtual assistants adapted for many needs of clients.

All companies achieved at least a functional prototype of TRL level 4. The services developed for the “environment” and “community” challenges are now operational. For the challenges of “water” and “agriculture”, some more work needs to be done to achieve an operational service.

All results of this action have been presented at an event organized in March 2022. A second, improved version of this action will be conducted under the FPA Work Programme 2020.