The International Astronautical Congress (IAC) is the largest global space forum where, once a year, space stakeholders come together to discuss the latest trends and developments and to shape the future of the sector. Every year, the Congress switches location and theme.

IAC2022 has been inaugurated as “Space for @ll”, to highlight the tremendous change experienced by the sector in the lasts decades transforming it from a closed sector accessible only to a handful of engineers into a transversal, multidisciplinary industry enabling highly innovative services that nowadays are a crucial part of our daily lives, hence capable of setting in motion virtuous processes of sustainable socio-economic development.

From the 18^th to the 22^nd of September, Paris welcomed about 9300 delegates from 110 countries including seasoned experts as well as students and young professionals representing this year 45% of the overall participants demonstrating the increasing interest of young generations for this domain. The 73^rd edition of the IAC has been a record edition not just for the unprecedented number of delegates attending the event, but especially owing to the 3000 papers presented, among which 800 interactive presentations, 25 Global Networking Forum (GNF) sessions and 19 Special Sessions.

Such extraordinary success became tangible during the public day, when the IAC opens its doors to the general public. This edition welcomed around 2,200 people including space enthusiasts, universities, high school students, and families. A day entirely dedicated to space’s discovery and the future of the space exploration illustrated through the inspiring tales of Europe’s astronauts: Alexander Gerst, Matthias Maurer, Luca Parmitano and Thomas Pesquet.

This year, Eurisy team has been hosted at the European Space Agency (ESA) booth. This was the occasion to showcase the latest Eurisy publication “Satellites Going Local- Maritime Edition”. A booklet collecting case studies of satellite applications in the maritime domain. Eurisy was engaged in multiple initiatives on different areas related to the work carried out throughout the year. On September 19th Eurisy participated in a Special Session focused on “Building bridges between established and emerging space industry” organised by the Slovak Space Office. Member of Eurisy since June 2021, the Slovak Space Office the space industry branch of the Slovak Investment and Trade Development Agency (SARIO) in charge of developing the Slovak space ecosystem and establishing international professional cooperation of domestic companies  with relevant actors.

The session organised during this past IAC is part of a broader set of initiatives to support emerging space nations to share best practices and boost their entrepreneurial ecosystem fulfilling the United Nations’ Sustainable Development goals. The panel counted on the expert views of Allison Areias-Vogel from United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), Jonathan Hung from Singapore Space and Technology Ltd, Raycho Raychev of Endurosat, Temidayo Oniosun from Space in Africa, Matias Campos from Sideralis Foundation, Veronica La Regina from Nanoracks Europe, and Annalisa Donati from Eurisy. During the session, Annalisa illustrated how Eurisy creates and manages platforms to share experiences and best practices among its members, to forge partnerships thus favoring cooperation to develop national space programmes tailored on the strengths of the individual countries. Through its activities, Eurisy enhances the reach of national space initiatives providing international recognition and smoothing the path for stories of success like the signature of the Associated Membership Agreement between Slovakia and the European Space Agency. For those interested in the content of the discussion additional information are available here.

Eurisy also presented two technical papers as outcome of selected activities performed throughout the year. Since early 2022, Eurisy has been actively investigating into challenges and opportunities to use satellite based solution for Disaster Risk Management through a series of activities, culminating in the conference “Satellite-based Services for Disaster Risk Management”, held in Athens on May 25th and co-organised with the European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) and the Greek Ministry Climate Crisis and Civil Protection.

The paper “Integrating Satellite Applications in Disaster Risk Management”. builds on this work shedding light on the potential for space-based solutions to contribute into the different phases of the disaster management cycle. The paper describes European and international mechanisms to access and share  these information as well as the obstacles in their integration experienced from actual users in Greece, used as case study. The research also pursued to deepen the disaster risk management community among European states with regard to the integration of satellite applications, also through several recent case studies on the use of satellite-based services during disasters and extreme weather events.

Another great opportunity for Eurisy was the presentation of the paper “GIS4SCHOOLS – Paving the Way For The School Of Tomorrow: Leveraging On Space Technology To Stimulate Steam Learning And Teaching”. Shortlisted as the best interactive presentation of IAC2022 for the Space and Society section out of more than 800 presentations, the aim of the paper was to present the latest development of the Erasmus+ GIS4Schools project. Underpinning the in-depth interviews with the schools’ representatives involved in the project and the data collected through the Digital Diaries, an open source mobile application to collect students’ feedback, the presentation provided an overview of the skills acquired by the teachers and pupils through the project. The paper also showcases the suit of freely accessible products developed by experts including the Training Handbook, available in 5 different languages, the e-leaning platform and the use cases.

And that’s not all: Eurisy’s week was packed with additional important engagements such as the session dedicated to the Copernicus and Me project. With the support of the European Space Agency – which hosted us thoughout the week – Eurisy organised a session dedicated to the project, whose objective is to bring to non-space communities hands-on examples of what can be achieved by using data and services from the Copernicus satellite constellations. The session was the opportunity to showcase three video key case studies: VIDA: Supporting access to electricity in Sierra Leone, Mitigating the effects of climate change at public transport stops in Prague, and Safeguarding cultural heritage in Rhodes. The videos put the users on the spotlight to explain to their peers the befits they enjoyed by integrating those applications as well as the process for the development of tailor-made solutions addressing their specific needs.

IAC was also the moment to celebrate the 10th edition of its very own Hubert Curien Award. The Hubert Curien Award is a historic biennial Eurisy award to the legacy of its founding father, Hubert Curien. It recognises the efforts to help society benefit from space. Every two years, a high-level international jury selects a winner among a list of nominated candidates among any person or organisation that demonstrated dedication in the field of international cooperation in space science and technology, or in the promotion of space applications and their benefits to society. This last edition was special not just because was the 10th anniversary of such a prestigious award, but also because it awarded Amalia Ercoli Finzi’s lifelong commitment and work in space exploration.

Visit our dedicated webpage to visit our dedicated webpage to learn more about the highlights of the 10th HCA and the acceptance video of this year’s winner.

IAC 2022 brings with it a great deal of satisfaction for the achievements recognised by other colleagues and space actors and allow us to look to the future with confidence and with new relationships to cultivate. Until the next IAC!

With a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural population of about two million people, the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina occupies the northernmost part of Serbia. Novi Sad, its administrative centre, is the second largest city in the country.

While Novi Sad is heading towards recognition as a regional leader in the IT industry, Vojvodina’s economy mainly relies on agriculture and agribusiness.

The challenge

The Vojvodina Province is particularly affected by the phenomenon of stubble burning, a common practice in cultivated fields in Serbia, which threatens the health and safety of the territory.

In 2019, around 19.000 open fires were recorded in Serbia. 14 people died because of them and 40 were injured. The fires burned low vegetation, but also damaged forests, meadows, orchards, cereals, and vineyards.

To discourage farmers from burning the remains of their crops, the province’s public authorities need precise and reliable information on the location of this practice.

The satellite solution

With the support of the BıoSense Instıtute, UNDP Serbia created a web GIS portal to detect open fıres usıng data from Sentınel-2 satellites.

By comparing two consecutive images, one before the fire occurrence and the other after the fire, an algorithm detects the areas where fires happened and the potentially burned areas. These spots are visualised on an interactive web map that is made openly and freely available to the public: the Portal for Mapping Harvest Residues (www.dim.rs/#/dashboard).

The map was funded by UNDP Serbia through the “Challenge call for innovative solutions to reduce air pollution in Serbia and improve air quality”.

The results

The portal is used by the UNDP, research institutes and local administrations to raise the awareness of people, farmers in the first place, about the threats posed by stubble burning. Moreover, the portal allows the government to detect stubble burning and to undertake evidence-based actions against this practice.

In the Vojvodina Province, the methodology used to develop the portal was tested during three months (from September to November 2020), spotting over 9.000 parcels that were subject to crop residue burning.

On dim.rs, fires are classified according to the dates on which they occurred and cadastral information. The webGIS portal also contains statistics on fire occurrence history that is available for download, and information for citizens on how to report illegal burnings.

Users can know which areas are the most affected by crop residue burning and in which periods of the year. Altogether, this information enables local administrations (such as police forces, firefighters and forest authorities, among others) to be better prepared to the occurrence of stubble burning, to target awareness raising campaigns, to better plan in-situ inspections, and to sustain law enforcement.

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Ekodenge is a Turkish SME with a team of sustainability experts, providing consultancy, engineering, architecture, and software solution services.

Created in 1996, Ekodenge is headquartered in Ankara, at the Hacettepe Technopark research and business centre. The company can count on a multi-disciplinary team of 40 people, including architects, chemical, environmental and mechanical engineers.

The challenge

Climate change is exposing historical and cultural sites to threats such as floods, wildfires and heatwaves, among others. Data on land cover is critical to understand these hazards, as well as to monitor changes around cultural heritage sites.

Even though spatial information becomes more and more abundant thanks to global Earth Observation (EO) systems, spatial data collected by different entities for different regions of the world still lack standardisation and harmonisation.

Since 2019 Ekodenge is part of the Consortium implementing the Horizon 2020 SHELTER project (Sustainable Historic Environments holistic reconstruction through Technological Enhancement and community-based Resilience). The project involves 23 partners from 10 countries.

SHELTER includes five test beds, representing the main climatic and environmental challenges in Europe and different heritage’s typologies.

Ekodenge is responsible for creating a risk assessment tool visualised on a Geographic Information System (GIS), containing information on land use, that can used to foresee resilience and threats to the heritage and to plan recovery measures. To do this, Ekodenge needs accurate information on land cover in the sites targeted by the project.

The satellite solution

To build the platform for disaster risk management in the areas targeted by the project, Ekodenge uses data on land cover and climate and historical data from the Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellites of the Copernicus programme.

The historical data allow them to retrace soil movements, changes in landcover, and weather events, such as heatwaves and floods, that damaged the cultural heritage sites in the past. These data are integrated in the datadriven platform for disasters risk management produced within the project.

The Copernicus data is particularly useful for this kind of assessments, since the data are freely available across Europe and accessible in the same format. This means that the data acquired through Copernicus allow Ekodenge to calibrate all different and site-specific data to be used into the same platform. Moreover, the information contained in the platform for each site can be easily compared and updated.

The results

Thanks to Copernicus data, Ekodenge can acquire data on land cover for the five different areas targeted in the open labs in a harmonised and standardised format.

The platform not only includes information relevant for safeguarding cultural heritage, but also for protecting natural heritage and human settlements from natural disasters and climate change at the regional level.

The GIS platform developed by the partners of the SHELTER project will contribute to building a model to improve the resilience of cultural heritage sites through better decision-making processes and policies applicable at local and regional levels.

All data will be made available on an IT platform after the project ends in 2023. Based on the information regrouped in the platform, the project partners will propose measures to increase the resilience of cultural heritage sites and make recommendations on “building back better” techniques.

The platform is intended to be used by all the stakeholders operating in the sites targeted by the SHELTER project, such as policymakers, fire brigades, construction companies, and research institutes.

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QuantCube Technology is a fintech company that provides high quality financial performance indicators to its clients.

Founded in 2013 by two entrepreneurs with strong expertise in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data, the company counts today in its portfolio of clients financial institutions such as Moody’s, the World Bank, Banque de France, Ardian, and Union Bancaire Privée (UBP).

The challenge

Financial forecasting is the process by which companies think about and prepare for the future. Forecasting involves assessing historical and current data concerning macroeconomics, environmental, social and governance factors.

While plenty of official economic data exists, these are often published with a lag of three or four months and for some areas of the world such data is difficult to access. As an example, up-to-date information on urban growth or maritime traffic, which can be linked to economic growth, is not available for many geographic areas, and it needs to be retrieved from sources other than official reports.

The satellite solution

Copernicus data are used by QuantCube to collect real-time information on four wide sectors of activity that are crucial to economic growth.

Agriculture: Sentinel-2 images, as well as meteorological data, are used to calculate real-time estimates of the crop yield per region and country, allowing for better tracking of agricultural activities.

Pollution: Sentinel-5p satellite images allow QuantCube to estimate the level of pollution per region and per country, focusing on the industrialised areas. Assessing the level of pollution (and in particular of NO2 emissions), allows for the tracking of industrial production.

Urban growth: Sentinel-2 images are used to measure and monitor urbanised surfaces and their yearly evolution. This helps QuantCube to track how cities change over time.

Water stress: Sentinel-2 satellite images allow for the montoring of water sources. Monitoring the fluctuation of water surfaces enables QuantCube to foresee droughts, which have a noticeable impact on water-intensive economic sectors.

To obtain the best possible accuracy, QuantCube Technology couples information extracted from satellite imagery with other data sources, such as job offers, sentiment data from social media, or logistics flows data.

The results of the analyses are delivered in real-time via the QuantCube Macroeconomic Intelligence Platform. The platform offers users different levels of granularity, ranging from sector data to country-level macroeconomic indices.

The results

The use of Copernicus-based data adds a significant value-adding layer to QuantCube’s offer of macro smart data, providing  information on regions where official statistics and indicators are difficult to obtain or are made available with some delay. In addition, the satellite images also allow for the monitoring of changes in a specific region or country over time to detect unusual trends.

In 2021, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub and the Bank of Italy placed QuantCube among the finalists for the G20 green and sustainable financial challenge, which was launched during the Italian G20 presidency.

“As climate change is increasingly affecting economic growth, environmental parameters are becoming more and more important for financial predictions. Hence, the use of satellite data will continue to play a crucial role in enabling companies to produce reliable financial and macroeconomic forecasts”. Alice Froidevaux, Lead Data Scientist, QuantCube Technology

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DSE-Data Science Experts is a company created in 2020 and focused on building products and solutions based on Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Based in Grenoble, France, the company today employs 11 people. The team’s vision is to help insurance companies to better support the agriculture sector in times of natural disasters.

The challenge

According to the World Meteorological Organization’s Atlas of Mortality and Economic Losses from Weather, Climate and Water Extremes, the number of disasters related to a weather, climate or water hazard has increased by a factor of five between 1970 and 2019 globally. Agrıculture is among the sectors that are affected the most by climate-related disasters.

To establish mechanisms, and in particular insurance schemes, to support the recovery of agricultural activities affected by disasters, there is a growing need for data and information to foresee and assess such damages.

The satellite solution

AIperion is a system, developed by DSE, that estimates the damage affecting agricultural fields, identifies the boundaries of flooded and burned areas, and detects the extent, impact and duration of droughts based on extreme weather events or natural disasters.

The system is based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) applied to Earth observation images to identify and detect the boundaries of flooded and burned areas. It integrates meteorological data from the MSG mission (Meteosat Second Generation satellites) to detect the intensity and duration of extreme weather events.

AIPerion relies on data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 missions to calculate vegetation indices and estimate agricultural damage.

These analyses are combined to produce an assessment of the level of damage to the crops and of its causes. The results are provided to customers through a dashboard, in the form of maps and figures.

The results

By integrating Copernicus data into their software, DSE can provide precise information on the crops’ health and determine if the damage to crop reported by farmers is a consequence of natural disasters and not of fraud attempts.

Moreover, based on the information provided by DSE, insurance companies can determine the premium to be paid for crop losses caused by natural disasters.

Under the request of one insurance company, using this system DSE was able to map 80% of cultivated fields on the French territory to detect the growth status of vegetation. That was made possible thanks to the high temporal resolution of the Copernicus data and could not have been done by using in-situ surveying techniques.

Using free and open Copernicus data, DSE can provide its services at a much lower cost than the price that they would ask if they used other paying satellite data. As a result, after only one year of existence, the company can count some of the world’s biggest insurance companies among their customers.

In 2020, the AIPeiron system has been awarded the Copernicus Masters Prize for France.

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The Environmental Protection Department of the City of Prague approves and implements the Climate Change Adaptation Strategy and its Implementation Plans.

The Department designs, manages and finances adaptation projects and analyses of some selected data. For these tasks the Department is supported, among others, by the Prague Institute for Planning and Development, which manages the Prague Geoportal, making available a number of maps of Prague.

The challenge

Considering the conspicuous presence of paved spaces, built areas and industrial infrastructure, Prague is particularly vulnerable to extreme heat events.

To implement adaptive measures, the Environmental Protection Department sought to visualise heat vulnerability and the areas that are affected the most in Prague, especially nearby public transport stops, where two-thirds of the city’s population spend a considerable amount of time.

The satellite solution

To assess the effects of climate change on transport stops, the Department asked for the support of ECOTEN Urban Comfort, a local start-up specialised in urban and environmental engineering.

As a first step, the company defined the indices to be taken into account for a heat assessment.

Among such indices, thermal exposure, which indicates the distribution of heat over the city, was calculated by identifying the warmest areas of the city during the days in which temperatures exceeded 30 °C. These data were extracted from images acquired by the Landsat 8 satellite in the summers between 2015 and 2019.

Adaptive capacity, which is the ability of the urban ecosystem to be resilient to heat events, was assessed by mapping greeneries and water bodies around public transport stops. This index was calculated by summing up the Advanced Vegetation Index and the Normalised Differential Water Index, both measured through data from the European Sentinel-2A satellite.

Combing all the indices, ECOTEN was able to produce the Urban Heat Vulnerability Map of the City of Prague.

The results

The Map classifies bus and tram stops in five categories, according to their degree of vulnerability to high temperatures.

Based on the information provided by the map, the Environmental Protection Department is taking measures to make transport stops more resilient to heatwaves and hence more comfortable for residents and tourists.

For example, green lawns were placed on the roofs of the most affected stops, together with misting devices and drinkable water fountains.

“Thanks to the Copernicus satellites, we have reliable, objective and shareable data to act against climate change”. Tereza Líbová, Climate change adaptation specialist, Department of Environmental Protection, City of Prague

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The Cyprus Audit Office

The Cyprus Audit Office is an independent State Authority of the Republic of Cyprus. It is responsible for auditing the accounts of the central government, ministries, local administrations, and national public organisations. The mission of the Office is to conduct quality financial, performance and compliance audits in the wider public sector for the purpose of public reporting, thus enhancing transparency and accountability. The Office contributes to the efficient and effective management of public resources, reducing the mismanagement of public funds and corruption.

The challenge

Cypriot coastline and beaches are the habitats of many animal and vegetal species, some of which are considered as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Every year, beaches bring millions of tourists to Cyprus. Indeed, tourism represents a vital source for the country’s economy, but its substantial increase, with the creation of new touristic infrastructures, could also pose threats to the island’s biodiversity.

In 2016, to ensure effective coastal management, the Office conducted an audit to evaluate the measures implemented by the competent authorities to protect the coastline and contain the effects of the potential threats related to mass tourism and illegal activities. The audit’s goal was to understand how coastal protection measures are implemented, to identify illegal structures in the national Coastal Protected Zone, and to detect activities that do not comply with the National Beach Usage Plan. To do this, the Audit Office needed reliable data that could help them in picturing the evolution of the coastline and assess the effects of tourism and man-made activities on the island.

The satellite solution

To realise the Audit, the Office submitted questionnaires to local authorities, realised visits to collect in-situ data, and interviewed public officers and non-governmental organisations. Moreover, the Cyprus Audit Office relied on GIS technology to obtain information on land ownership and protected coastal zones. This information was needed to assess the potential effects of illegal buildings and mass tourism on coastal erosion.

Satellite imagery from multiple sources, including Sentinel-2 images, Google Earth and orthophotos from the Department of Lands and Surveys, was used to map the entire island and to draw a temporal perspective of the evolution of the coastline. The satellite images used by the Audit Office were retrieved by the digitised cadastral maps developed by the Cyprus Department of Lands and Surveys and made freely available online through a dedicated portal.

The results

Thanks to the GIS technology, the Audit Office was able to assess the evolution of coastal erosion and of illegal building sprawl during         the  last years, and to estimate the potential economic impacts on the long run.

The use of satellite data provided the Audit Office with a broad vision of the geographic area surrounding the island, allowing it to perform a broad inspection of the coastline, while drastically reducing the time and costs dedicated to the audit. Indeed, in-situ observations were only necessary to validate contrasting data and information.

Vake

Vake is a Norwegian company specialised in maritime safety and vessel traffic. The company was founded in 2019. It supports governmental agencies to monitor and survey national waters, offshore asset owners to detect dark vessels and reduce potential infrastructure threats and ship insurers to validate and verify the true chain of events.

The challenge

Back in 2008, the European Commission defined maritime domain awareness as the understanding of the activities associated with the maritime area that could impact the safety, security, economy and environment of the European Union and Member States. Acquiring a complete understanding of what happens at sea is relevant today due to the increased maritime traffic and activities in our oceans that are generating multiple threats to core sectors of the economy and to the breaching national security of coastal countries.

Illegal fishing, smuggling, and environmental crimes are the main challenges to be overcome. Detecting and identifying potential criminal vessels is key to filling information gaps and preventing illegal behaviours at sea. Technology already supports governmental authorities and businesses in spotting illicit activities, via drones, airborne sensors, and cameras, but satellite data can help in monitoring wide areas validating the in-situ measurements.

The satellite solution

To support governmental authorities and maritime economic actors, VAKE developed a dashboard that combines two core features: area monitoring and vessel tracking. The platform allows users to detect ships by using data from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites and machine learning, cross-referenced with other vessel monitoring solutions, such as the Automatic Identification System (AIS) signal, that relies on GNSS technology.

The dashboard allows users to select their area of interest and a temporal frame to obtain data on the ships there located, such as their size and direction. Users can access the images and information in the form of an interactive web report or download the data as a report file. In addition, the dashboard allows for the detection of dark and potentially illegal ships. Users can monitor their area of interest to verify if suspicious vessels are sailing with their AIS signal off, which can be an indicator for potentially illegal activities. By highlighting when this happens, it is possible to prevent these actions or retrace the route of criminals to determine if an action just happened or is it going to happen.

The results

VAKE’s dashboard is helping national authorities to improve sea monitoring, especially for the implementation of fishing analysis, and to prevent and prosecute environmental crimes. The algorithms that power the VAKE platform can also find additional applications to detect human trafficking, smuggling and seawater emissions.

Currently, VAKE is working with the Netherlands Coast Guard to complement and improve their maritime situational awareness. The collaboration with Vake allows the Coast Guard to extract insights on maritime activities from satellite data covering a wider portion of sea than the area they currently monitor. In the next future, VAKE and the Netherlands Coast Guard will combine automating alerts and collection of insights across multiple types of sensors, that will be key assets for maritime authorities.

VAKE is also working on expanding their geographical reach, including North and South America, and Australia. Furthermore, to provide users with night images, VAKE is currently developing products that include SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite imagery.

The Tanzania Fisheries Research Institute

The Tanzania Fisheries Research Institute (TAFIRI) was established in 1980s to promote, coordinate, and conduct research on fisheries in Tanzania. TAFIRI operates under the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries.

TAFIRI is one of the partners of the East Africa Marine Consortium, created within the GMES and Africa initiative. The consortium is led by the Mauritius Oceanographic Institute (MOI) and it includes the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute, the Institute of Fisheries and Marine Sciences of Madagascar, the Seychelles Meteorological Authority, and the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association. The project implemented by the consortium aims at seizing the biological and physical state and dynamics of the ocean, fishing grounds, marine ecosystems for the regional seas, coastal vulnerability, and sea state forecasts, to support marine and coastal management activities and adaptation measures in the East Africa Region.

The challenge

A quarter of Tanzania’s population heavily depends on fishery for economic purposes and food. Fishery contributes for about 1.4% of the national GDP and represents an important source of work, employing over 180,000 people, and 19,000 in fish farming.

Due to climate change-related effects and overfishing, coastal fishery is slowly declining, threatening local communities and the economy. Furthermore, pelagic fish stocks are mostly unexploited, due to very limited means and tools, and to a lack of knowledge on how to locate fishing grounds in offshore waters. Artisanal fishers are mostly dependent on inshore fishing grounds and would need support to access profitable fishing areas offshore.

The satellite solution

Within the framework of the GMES and Africa programme, TAFIRI started a collaboration with local fishing communities in the areas of Fundo (Pemba), Nungwi (Zanzibar), Kipumbwi (Tanga), and Kilindoni (Mafia). The aim was to raise awareness on the uses of EO and GNSS data to identify profitable fishing areas, with the final objective of helping local communities to optimise their resources.

TAFIRI, together with local fishery authorities, trained more than 100 ring-net fishers on the use of satellite navigation to track local fishing grounds and develop new safe fishing techniques. Fishermen were given mobile phones with a dedicated app to collect fisheries information. The app includes an SMS alert system, thanks to which the fishermen receive the coordinates of potential fishing zones, as well as data on water quality and temperature derived from Copernicus Sentinel-2. Once leaving the coast, fishermen activate the GNSS signal and check on the app the vessel’s course to reach the identified fishing station. During the trip, fishermen can also include new information, thus validating the satellite data and including additional information collected during their navigation.

The results

The use of satellite data to improve fishery techniques and to guarantee a sustainable fishery is bringing a series of benefits to local fishermen and responsible authorities. The information captured is used by the government to improve fisheries management plans for small and medium species (e.g., sardines) along with large pelagic fish (Tuna and tuna like species) in the coastal waters of Tanzania. The system based on EO and GNSS data helps reducing fishing pressure on inshore waters and provides reliable information to fishermen.

Also, the system is encouraging artisanal fishermen to adopt innovative techniques that could reduce fishing costs and make fishery a safer job. Indeed, the app guarantees to the fishermen the possibility of working without risking their lives due to outdated maps or inadequate data on water and weather conditions. The use of satellite technology to optimise fishery is preserving the marine ecosystem and is helping to implement new policies and fishing strategies for the development of the country, while improving the livelihood of the fishers.

The Andalusian Aquaculture Technology Centre

The Andalusian Aquaculture Technology Centre (CTAQUA) is a non-for-profit private foundation based in Cádiz, Spain. Ever since it was founded in 2007, CTAQUA has developed multiple research projects and training in the field of aquaculture, addressing both the research community and the private sector. CTAQUA facilitates collaboration between aquaculture farmers, feed companies and other industry-related enterprises, academia and regional governmental institutions engaged in aquaculture activities.

The challenge

The south-western Iberian coastal area, shared between Portugal and Spain, has a common background and tradition in aquaculture. Being aquaculture a major growing economic activity in the region, overexploitation of coastal waters is a tangible risk. The consequence is that aquaculture directly endangers biodiversity. Planning aquaculture activities in advance is fundamental to improve the conservation status of coastal areas and their profitability, while promoting and implementing sustainable production methodologies and systems for a more efficient management of harvesting areas. Aquaculture planning involves multiple stakeholders, such as researchers, NGOs, regional and local fishery authorities, and other economic actors. Finding the right tool to set up ad hoc policies and favour the dialogue among all these actors represents a need and a challenge at the same time.

The satellite solution

Between 2017 and 2020, CTAQUA, the Andalusian Agricultural and Fisheries Management Agency (AGAPA), the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) and the Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA) are working together to identify the interactions between aquaculture and the environment in the South-Western Iberian coast, specifically in the Alentejo-Algarve-Andalusia area.

Within the framework of the Interreg project AQUA&AMBI, that aims at strengthening cross-border mechanisms for the maintenance and recovery of biodiversity and ecosystem services, the three organisations developed a geographic information system (GIS) to monitor saline and aquaculture production areas. The GIS portal integrates multiple data, including Copernicus Sentinel-2 multispectral data on water temperature provided by the Spanish and Portuguese National Geographic Institutes, and in-situ data. The portal includes a cartographic map created by the project partners that functions as a zoning and regulatory instrument for entrepreneurs and administrations in the planning of economic activities within the aquaculture sector.

The results

Spatial planning based on satellite data provided an understanding of the south-western Iberian territory. It allowed for the identification of different administrative uses of the coastal zones for aquaculture activities, the assessment of suitable spaces for aquaculture development, and the compatibility with other sustainable economic activities in protected natural areas.

One of the users at local level of the GIS tool was the Andalusian authority for agriculture and fishery, responsible for the planning of aquaculture activities in the protected area in the Bay of Cadiz. The spatial planning through GIS allowed the identification of the different uses of the Bay to assess which zones should be dedicated to aquaculture and how to build synergies with other activities taking place in the bay, such as salt extractions, environmental protection initiatives and tourism.