ESA Phi-week 2021: Three innovative projects on Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Satellite data awarded by OVHcloud and Serco

OVHcloud and Serco Europe, a space industry leader with over 40 years’ experience in supporting the space sector, have awarded three prizes to start-ups as part of their annual Hackathon organised together with ESA.

As in previous years, the European Space Agency (ESA) has held its Phi-week which looks at accelerating the future of Earth Observation (EO) and explores recent trends and developments in EO Open Science and markets. The event gathered hundreds of aerospace experts, ICT specialists, start-ups, researchers and students who have been comparing the latest Artificial Intelligence-related Platform as a Service applications , with the aim of identifying the most appropriate technologies for extracting information from enormous amount of satellite images. Serco Europe and OVHcloud are proud to have contributed to the event with the organisation of a hackathon, which focused on developing innovative cloud services and big data applications for the New Space Economy.

More than 20 teams registered to the Hackathon and were able to gain first-hand knowledge of cloud technologies to better manage the data provided by the ESA’s Copernicus satellite constellation on ONDA DIAS, Serco’s cloud platform for Earth Observation hosted on OVHcloud’s Public Cloud Storage. Later, they were called upon to develop a demo application, which would allow the realisation of innovative services and new business models for the New Space Economy, as well as expanding the number of Copernicus users who benefit from the latest technologies.

A jury of experts from ESA, Serco, OVHcloud and ESA BIC Lazio (Lazio Innova) selected six finalist projects and awarded GISKY, Planetgissky and LOKY teams, who won the opportunity to use ONDA-DIAS and OVHcloud services free of charge.

Three winning projects

GISKY presented a project that aims at combining different technologies (Earth observation, Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things for dynamic and static monitoring of bridges and viaducts, to create a Digital Twin of critical highway infrastructure.

Planetgissky proposed a GIS-based platform aimed at monitoring change detections of broad territorial assets and technological infrastructure such as railways, pipelines, highways.

LOKY focused on innovative soil monitoring systems that can provide local PAs with a terrain forecast in relation to global climate change.

“Space Economy has experienced exponential growth in recent years, and we are confident that it will continue to do so in the coming years," said Alessandro Di Felice, Key Account Manager at OVHcloud. "But to make the most of this potential, innovative ideas must be linked virtually to the right enabling technologies. That's why we've got to engage an ecosystem of experts, young entrepreneurs, students in this fascinating challenge, which has seen the presentation of many valuable projects.”.

Guido Vingione, Serco Space Business Development Director says - “We would like to thank ESA and all participants for this successful Hackathon. It is exciting to see the increasing participation of Startups and small industries in this type of event. We are committed to ease access to satellite data and integrate new technologies to enable the exploitation of space information and contribute to the creation of an ecosystem of players in the new space economy.” He adds “our strategic partnership with OVHcloud has allowed Serco to integrate Artificial Intelligence technologies into our ONDA- DIAS offering.”