EO Summit

This slide from my opening note at EO Summit summarises the evolution of the commercial Earth observation sector over the past decade and a half. While the number of EO satellite companies has risen from a handful in the early 2010s to over three dozen today, we can see some common themes and trends in how the industry has evolved. Not including the longstanding industry giants such as Maxar and Airbus, I describe the growth of the commercial EO sector, or the so-called NewSpace EO as an evolution that happened in three waves: the horizontal pioneers, the vertical-focused innovators and the backward integrators. ➡️ Horizontal Pioneers from the early 2010s had to be vertically integrated as the NewSpace era had just started and few services or components were available to buy off-the-shelf. Since they were mainly pioneers in EO, they had to go with a horizontal approach to selling data to several market verticals. However, gradually they have expanded down the value chain with many of them recently starting to sell analytics. ➡️ The Vertical-Focused Innovators, thanks to the advancements in the satellite and space industries, leveraged the off-the-shelf products and the increasingly available ‘as-a-service’ models. They also had the opportunity to learn from the businesses of the horizontal pioneers that may have led them to build EO satellites to acquire data relevant to specific use cases (vs a purely horizontal approach). Given that many of these companies validated what their customers want and how they want it, they started to directly offer analytics services (vs data). ➡️ The Backward Integrators, in the meantime, started appearing in the market towards the start of the 2020s, and they came from a completely different angle. Many of these firms were analytics providers actively delivering solutions to their customers, but as a result of their strong understanding of user needs and perhaps, because they found the current crop of EO satellite companies to not answer to their needs, they pivoted to launching their own satellites, almost always with proprietary sensors and satellite architecture, designed specifically to their requirements. And, all this, while the major space agencies of the world continued to launch scientifically significant and technologically advanced EO satellites. P.S.: Yes. You might find that there are several anomalies in the market today that do not fit into any of these categories. You might even find that the vertical integration model is slowly coming back, in some companies. This is not a comprehensive market landscape, but simply a framework to understand the evolution of EO.

Following some feedback from EO Summit, we are thinking about the idea of organizing a small-scale "EO Summit: Government Edition" in Europe, mainly aimed at bringing together the government users of Earth observation with the EO industry to discuss the civilian (non-defense) applications of EO in agriculture, forestry, climate and disaster management. Just like EO Summit, the core principle of the event is to be user-focused, specifically stakeholders from different ministries and departments across Europe. The goal of "EO Summit: Gov Edition" will be for institutional users to share how EO is being used for policy monitoring and public services in their countries and for the industry to have an opportunity to hear from the government users on their needs, challenges and outlook for the use of EO. I am looking for some feedback on the concept from some relevant folks, especially whether such a government user-focused conference is of interest. Leave your thoughts below or send me a message to discuss!

Financing is tough at the moment for Earth observation companies. Finance, insurance, and EO leaders from Barclays, Citi, Descartes Underwriting, Floodbase, and Earth Daily Analytics take the pulse of a changing market from in this feature. https://lnkd.in/eeHKJssb

If you missed the keynote at EO Summit from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Dalia Kirschbaum, here is a good summary. Extremely fortunate to have had Dalia at the conference and hear her thoughts on NASA's role in the evolving Earth observation sector. https://lnkd.in/e3KEmR9j

Great recap by Mark Holmes & Via Satellite on the Inaugural EO Summit where there was great dialogue on what needs to happen for the EO market to evolve. Eric von Eckartsberg as part of panel comprised of representatives from Pixxel, Kuva and Planet commented. “EarthDaily built our sensors, our satellites based on buying consistent imagery, to overcome false positives. Our goal is to feed machines with data. We are looking for changes, anomalies, patterns. We have taken an integrated approach. If we move into additional analytics, that will inform our approach. Flexibility is key,” he says. “There is a lot of great free data out there. It has trained a lot of users in the value of this. It challenges the commercial community to come up with value-added capabilities. A lot of the value is the full system. You look at sectors like agriculture, and they need a full season to test data. They can’t switch on a dime to new types of analytics.” Click below to read The EO Revolution https://lnkd.in/gnarHEeM

We had a fantastic time last week at the Earth Observation Summit in London! TerraWatch Space and Aravind Ravichandran organized a stellar event. Thank you to our experts, Lidia Lelechenko, Sales Executive, Julia Marianova, Account Management Team Lead, and Lina Yarysh, Sales and Marketing Operations Lead, for their willingness to share the latest data about EOS SAT-1, an optical Earth observation satellite equipped with two high-resolution DragonEye cameras developed by Dragonfly Aerospace for EOS Data Analytics. Engaging with industry leaders, experts, and satellite data users was inspiring. The insightful discussions on the applications of satellite data were incredibly enriching. A key highlight of our event was the significance of satellite data in supporting various industries, from agriculture and environmental projects to government initiatives and infrastructure monitoring. Your work in this field is crucial, and we look forward to continuing our observations together! Dive deeper into our findings after this fantastic event: https://bit.ly/45KmbR7

Today, I received the photos from the #EOSummit organized by TerraWatch Space, and I'm still thrilled about participating in such a fantastic event. A big thanks and congratulations to Aravind Ravichandran for organizing this successful event and providing students like me with the opportunity to dive deeper into the Earth Observation sector and make valuable connections. The conference brought together industry leaders and end-users, teaching us about EO technological- and market trends, applications of EO, and the diverse range of EO end-users. Among the many takeaways, the emphasis on sustainable practices and leveraging EO data to support environmental initiatives stood out the most. Earth observation first attracted me due to its potential for positive impact, and seeing these initiatives makes me excited about the future. Grateful for the experience and eager to see the EO sector further develop! 🛰

A big thank you to the generous sponsors, the amazing speakers, the thoughtful moderators and all the 375 attendees who made the event a grand success. EO Summit will be back, better and bigger in 2025. Stay tuned and follow this page for updates!

We came back from the EO Summit with lots of insights, connections and reflections. 💫 🌎 TerraWatch Space put together a resourceful event that got us conversing with stakeholders outside the Earth observation industry. It was also great to meet colleagues in our domain. Well done Aravind Ravichandran! 🤝 We take this opportunity give a big shout out to Tom Osborne from Skyline Partners who joined Oumayma Dakhch from our team on stage to present our solutions and collaboration. Skyline have taken ARLAS® into the parametric insurance world to create their geo data-driven index insurance product, INSDEX. 💯 There were many takeaways from the discussions. In one, Aravind gave a great summary of the problems plying EO data adoption: 1. Usual problems 2. Black box problems 3. Boring problems. Our team enjoys providing solution to the "Boring problems". Like backstage technicians in theatre, we get the show rolling: Shine light on the insights drawn from EO data. Make the data easily accessible, visible and explorable. 🛰 We also would like to thank all who made time to pass by our booth! With Sylvain Gaudan, Oumayma Dakhch, Dolphine E. #Earthobservation #Geospatialintelligence #Networking

That’s a wrap on the #EO Summit! 🎬🌎 The Spire Space Services and Spire Weather & Climate teams had a very productive time! Connor McKissick had a blast presenting ‘Bring Your Own Big Idea (BYOB): Custom Constellations for Advanced EO Capabilities’ during the Agriculture and Forestry Solutions Showcase Track. He highlighted the importance of #Satellite constellations in improving #Earth Observation and discussed Spire’s capabilities in this field. 🛰️💡 Our team also had the opportunity to meet with like-minded individuals and organizations, creating valuable connections during the summit.  🤝 We hope to see you next year for another inspiring event! Huge thanks to TerraWatch Space for organizing this event and providing a platform for innovative companies to come together! Did you attend Tom and Connor’s presentation? Share your thoughts on their discussion with us below and connect with us through [email protected] #EOSummit #SpaceIndustry #SpaceTech