The Sociedad de Salvamento y Seguridad Maritima- SASEMAR

The Sociedad de Salvamento y Seguridad Marítima- SASEMAR (the Maritime Safety and Rescue Agency) is a Spanish public authority working under the Spanish Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda through the Directorate of Merchant Marine. Created in 1992 by the Law of State Ports and the Merchant Marine, SASEMAR became operative in 1993.

Its mission is to ensure the protection of human life at sea, as well as the pollution prevention and response, being also in charge of maritime traffic control and training.

The challenge

Spain has about 8,000 kilometres coastline and a rescue area that extends up to three times the size of its national territory. It is divided into four zones: Atlantic, Strait, Mediterranean and Canary Islands.

One of the major threats for coastal regions is represented by oil spills and illegal discharges from ships. The consequences of these incidents on marine environment could be catastrophic, endangering aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity for long periods. In fact, due to the composition of most oil pollutants, oil spills tend to remain on water surface while spreading in large areas carried by currents reaching, sometimes, coasts with significant impacts on economic sectors such as fishery and tourism.

The Prestige oil spill incident occurred in November 2002 off Galicia’s coasts, underlined the importance of a fast response to a pollution-related incident to contain the contamination and the potential damages both at environmental and economic level.

Figure 1. Prestige Oil Spill Incident. Source: European Space Agency (ESA)

The satellite solution

SASEMAR developed a preparedness and response system that combines marine, and air unites to map the incident’s area. SAR operators run trajectory models to predict the drift induced by the effect of ocean currents, waves, and winds and to define the search area. The accuracy of a drift prediction is highly dependent on met-ocean forecast’s data used to predict the trajectory model. Therefore, SAR operators need reliable methods to assess, within the shortest possible time, which model is likely to provide the most accurate prediction.

The IBISAR service simulates the trajectories using available forecast models in a specific time and location. The simulated trajectories are then compared with the real drifters and the ocean models are scored based on their performance.

Figure 2. Snapshot of the IBISAR service – How it works? Source: IBISAR. IBISAR service is generated using E.U. Copernicus Marine Service Information

IBISAR relies on multiple datasets including satellite-tracked surface drifters, high-frequency radar data combined with ocean models from the Copernicus Marine Service and complementary databases, that provide information on the surface currents at high spatial-temporal resolution in coastal areas. In addition to real-time satellite tracking for the surface drifters, satellite technology is used to assess and improve the ocean models integrated in the service. IBISAR consists of a web-based platform composed of a database; the OceansMap Viewer, a customisable GIS-based graphical user interface; and the Skills Assessment functionality that helps the user in verifying the models’ accuracy.

The IBISAR Skill Assessment service allows the visualization, comparison, and evaluation of model performance in the Iberia-Biscay-Ireland (IBI) regional seas. It is a science and satellite-based downstream service launched in 2019 coordinated by the Balearic Island Coastal Observing and Forecasting System (SOCIB) in partnership with AZTI and RPS Ocean Science and with the collaboration of the Spanish Port System. IBISAR provides user-oriented skill metrics to evaluate the accuracy of Search and Rescue models, helping coastal authorities, to identify the most accurate ocean current dataset in a specific area and period of interest improving search and rescue and pollution control operations.

The results

SASEMAR though the introduction of IBISAR achieved its goal to increase the preparedness and reaction in case of an emergency at sea of its operators. By selecting the most accurate data, SASEMAR optimises its response’s time to maritime emergencies, benefiting from a single access point to multiple datasets served in a user-friendly platform.

IBISAR supports SASEMAR and emergency responders to improve SAR and pollution control operations, by minimizing its response time, optimizing the search area planning, while contributing to a cleaner and safer seas and coasts.

Hans Hack is a sata visualiser, mapmaker and artist with a background in Heritage Conservation. Hans works with JavaScript, open data sources and whatever might come handy to tell stories. Based in Berlin, he works for museums, foundations, newspapers, NGOs, graphic design studios, and artists.

The satellite solution

Maps are quite a powerful tool to communicate on research findings to the general public. Satellite Imagery can serve as a basis for data visualisation, challenge our perspectives and stimulate reflection on our world. Hans Hack uses aerial or satellite images as a first layer for many of his artistic or graphic projects. As an example, in the Alpen project, he took satellite images of cities that are mainly flat, like Berlin, London, Hamburg, and Brussels, and then modified them to exaggerate their heights. In these 3D city maps, all elevation data has been hugely increased in scale to give users the perception of how their cities would look like on hills or mountains.

An exaggerated view of London heights

The initiative “Reprojected Destruction”

“Reprojected Destruction” is a data visualisation project realised by Hans that relies on satellite imagery to sensitise the public to the damages suffered by the city of Alepo. For this project, the artist found inspiration in a satellite-based map published by the United Nations Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT) of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). The satellite-based map of Aleppo was created between November 2010 and September 2016. The images in the map showed the percentage of buildings damaged in the area since the beginning of the Syrian war. In six years, more than 40%, a total of 33.521 structures, have been damaged as an outcome of the war. As a geographical reference point, Hans superposed the Citadel of Aleppo on that of the Museum Island in Berlin and the Tower of London. He then showcased the re-projected percentage of destruction on some randomly selected buildings.
In Hans’ London map, the Tower of London, the City Hall, the Palace of Westminster, Buckingham Palace, the Olympic Stadium, King’s Cross station, and Tate Modern were razed, while Camden, Islington, Dalston and Hampstead were decimated.

The Reprojected Destruction Map of Aleppo in London 

Future developments

In the future Hans Hack plans to continue using satellite imagery for data visualisation projects, while he is also getting interested in the possibilities offered by artificial intelligence and machine learning.

“What is important to me is to use technology to sensitise people on issues that I believe are relevant to understand today’s world” (Hans Hack)

Around 75% of the European external trade transits through European ports. According to the EU Blue Economy Report 2020, in 2018 the established sectors of the EU Blue Economy[1] directly employed about 5 million people and generated around €750 billion in turnover and €218 billion in gross value added.

The cooperation between the space and maritime sector dates back to more than 30 years ago. Satellite data historically provided relevant near-real-time information on weather conditions to improve maritime safety or facilitated communication at sea. Today, thanks to the most recent technological developments, a wide range of activities are starting to rely more on satellite data and services: from meteorology and communications to aquaculture, fisheries, disaster management, and safety and security.

The Blue World Task Force

Over the years, ESA has enlarged its portfolio of collaborative programmes. A holistic approach has been implemented through its Regional Initiatives where relevant space systems and data are bundled together to provide the best possible service or to tackle challenges either at regional level or for a specific community or topic.

The Blue World Task Force (BWTF) covers the principal maritime geographic areas in Europe, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, passing through the North Sea, the High North and the Black Sea and it has been officially kicked-off in October 2019 as part of this initiatives. A brief concept note providing additional details on the BTWF is available here.

The objective of the newly established task force is to support the definition of future ESA programmes addressing the interests of the Member States. To map how space is used today, to identify existing technological gaps and to collect needs, challenges and opportunities of maritime users’ communities the BWTF launched at the beginning of February a stakeholders’ available online for a month.

A large number of maritime operators from fishing communities to ship owners, port authorities, coastguards, insurance companies, economic and research centres dealing with the blue economy, or involved in studies on the preservation and exploitation of ocean biodiversity, are invited to take this questionnaire available here:

“The challenges of the Blue World” webinar series

To complement the consultation online and to stimulate the dialogue between the space and maritime communities, ESA joined forces with Eurisy to organise “The challenges of the blue world” webinar series.

The series will discuss the existing challenges maritime stakeholders face and how satellite-based solutions respond to their emerging needs. Each webinar will gather around a virtual table local authority, NGOs, research centres, and industrial clusters from space and maritime domains.

Three webinars will be organised during the month of February 2021 addressing three main topics:

• Marine Resources Exploitation. The first webinar will take place Thursday February 18th and will focus on three identified subsectors: aquaculture, fishery and illegal fishing;

Marine resources are threatened by a series of stressors, among which climate change, overexploitation of the natural resources and illegal fishing. Such effects can negatively impact on the sustainable exploitation of the marine living and non-living resources. An example is the over and aggressing fishing. The FAO recently warned that more than a third of the fish stocks are being overfished. The overfishing phenomena reduces fish stocks at a rate that the species cannot replenish leading to lower fish populations and reduced future production.

The first webinar of the series will focus on relevant challenges such as how to ensure a sustainable marine food production and aquaculture, and how prevent the illegal fishing in European waters with the contribution of space technology. The technology perspective and solutions will be provided by a selected European cluster that will provide the participants with up-to-date solutions for the challenges identified.

• Secure Transports and Communication. The second webinar is scheduled for Monday, February 22nd and will highlight the main challenges and issues faced by stakeholders in the field of marine communications, autonomous shipping, and logistics, with insights from shipowners;

Maritime transport and logistics constitute a large component of the blue economy. Shipping, maritime safety and security, as well as the broad range of maritime logistic services, are embracing innovative solutions to optimise their work and to collect reliable and timely information of what happens at sea. Technology is accelerating the process of modernisation of the whole sector, but still a series of challenges will be faced in the upcoming years by maritime operators: improved marine communications, logistics, autonomous shipping are under the lens to understand how to optimise their work them without impacting on the environment and marine world.

The second webinar of the series move the focus on three of the main issues faced by the maritime end- users’ communities: the optimisation of the vessels’ communication among them and with other means of transports, and how to ensure the safety of autonomous vessels. In addition to this, this second webinar will bring the audience the experience of shipowners’ confederation and their needs. As in the first webinar, a European cluster will provide the participants with the existing solutions to respond to their everyday challenges.

• Maritime Spatial Planning. The last webinar of the series will be on Thursday 25th February. It will present the experience of end-users involved in the Maritime Spatial Planning process, such as coastal protection, renewable energy, and port development.

Maritime Spatial Planning is necessary to ensure a sustainable management of oceans and seas. In the era of blue growth multiple users need to take informed decision on how to use sustainably marine resources. Multiple actors are involved in the Maritime Spatial Planning process, from energy actors, to environmental entities, development agencies, but also regional policy and decision makers, are called to consider how to minimize the impacts of their activities on the same sea area. The opportunities that technology offers today can help sea and ocean users to define a coordinated and sustainable approach towards the use of marine resources, preserving the marine ecosystems and biodiversity.

The last webinar of the series will present the needs of three of the main industries involved in Maritime Spatial Planning process, to provide the participants with the experience of policy actors involved in the definition of coastal protection policies; how renewable energy relies on satellite data to manage sea resources; and finally, how the port systems are improving and what challenges exist for the operators. Another European technology cluster will provide the stakeholders and the audience with the useful information to consider the adoption of satellite-based solutions for their needs.

The results of the ESA stakeholder consultation will be available in the second quarter of 2021. The outcomes of the webinar series will, instead, be available on the Eurisy website and social media channels. 

[1] Marine Living and Non-Living Resources, Marine Renewable Energy, Port Activities, Shipbuilding and Repair, Marine Transport, and Coastal Tourism.

The MIH’s mandate is to engage and support students and early startup founders in implementing proof-of-concept projects which they would then use as a launchpad to specialise and start a tech business. It does this partly by organising an App Challenge every year. The challenge is organised by defining a problem and then giving it to startups to address through an app.

This year, the challenge was going to be a bit different than usual. The Malta (satellite) App Challenge started with an unexpected call from Teodora Secara a year ago: through a common contact she had heard about our yearly calls for start-ups. What better event than the 12th November Satellite Solutions for Smart Islands Conference hosted by the Malta Council for Science and Technology (MCST) to challenge startups to use satellite-data as part of the solution?

By the time we got near the launch date, we agreed on a two-strand app challenge: one strand — the MCST/MEPA Environment app challenge targeted individuals interested in using earth observation data to address challenges encountered by the Malta Planning and Environment Authority (MEPA); the other strand, branded startAPP 2.0, targeted startup founders willing to identify and define market problems that could be solved using geo-spatial data through a proof-of-concept. The latter would eventually become their vehicle of specialisation in satellite-data, validated learning and entrepreneurial discovery.

Combined prizes and grants for the App Challenge totaled almost €40,000, not including in-kind benefits for applicants, such as training courses in the use of EO data, delivered by experts from the European Space Agency and Airbus Defense and Space.

Fast-forward to 12th March 2016, which was when 13 startups should have made it to pitch their business ideas on how they would use satellite-data to develop their innovative idea into a testable, deployable and demonstrable solution.

That day was the culmination of a 12-week voyage peppered with events and checkpoints which stimulated, supported and encouraged the candidates: an info and networking social event to explain the call, three intensive Design Thinking workshops, a user needs scoping session, an ad hoc training workshop by ESA and Airbus D&S experts on how to download and transform satellite datasets, and one- to-one meetings with the startups to discuss their idea and help them formulate a quality proposal.

After launching the call we immediately became concerned that the nature of the call was perhaps too challenging and complex for the Maltese start-up community when compared to previous calls. In startAPP 2.0 we left it up to the startups to define the problem, rather than defining it ourselves, as done usually. We now thought that the range of datasets seemed just too wide, the datasets themselves too raw, and the range of potential applications somewhat too close to market failure.

In the end the risk paid off. Eight startups made it to pitch well articulated proposals in diverse areas before a panel of judges from MITA, MCST and PwC – a panel that was also backed by expert feedback provided by ESA and Eurisy.

The ideas covered solutions to improve agriculture management, modelling urban planning impact on solar panels, negotiating traffic congestion, finding bus routes, retrieving lost property, transforming raw satellite data into usable information and measuring land subsidence for preventive road maintenance. Two startups were awarded the pre-seed investment of €22,000, with a third one given the investment for a potentially disruptive idea. These were respectively Ludoi with their traffic congestion and air quality monitoring app, AgriStat with their SaaS solution for winegrowers and the Find&Seek lost property platform.

These startups have now entered the second more intensive phase of the MIH accelerator programme during which they will design, develop and test their prototype with the local market as a testbed. In parallel the startup founders will be trained, coached and mentored by tech entrepreneurs and business experts on how to go commercial, ideally globally.

While the MEPA/MCST Environmental challenge is still underway, the startAPP 2.0 programme is really only now starting its ‘build’ phase. However, even at this stage we can already pinpoint a number of learning points from this interesting experience.

1. Success should not only be measured by how much investment start-ups manage to clinch

No doubt, the callous statistics about startup success are what they are: only the few will make it to achieve a million euro exit. But by the time startup founders have conceived, pitched and implemented their business idea based on earth observation and geo-spatial data, they have gained a new specialisation in data science and more specifically in the growing niche that satellite-data applications are.  So even if the startup founders do not advance to become the Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerbergs of tomorrow, they will surely take their newly found expertise, experience and entrepreneurial talent with them to their new pastures. And literature on startups already tells us that startup founders are more likely to succeed if they have at least two or three failed attempts behind them.

2. Ideation is sometimes a mix of recklessness and ingenuity

When we accepted to include Sentinel data in our App Challenge, we were not held back by the fact that this was the first time we, and especially our start-ups, had heard about the EU’s Sentinels. Only later would we find out that using satellite data is not as straightforward as using a picture, or a .csv file. But going for it all the same has allowed our startups to diverge and eventually explore new ideas and recombine existing ones. Past experience gives us insight and foresight, but sometimes it can act as an inhibitor of new ideas as we begin to challenge their feasibility and viability. In this regard the skill, young talent and ‘can do’ ingenuity of the startups, combined with the support network of ‘veterans’ we created to converge everything together to make business sense, has definitely made a difference.

3. Unless it’s readily accessible, people would not usually go through the pain of figuring out where the data is, how to download it, and understand what to do with it

In the Malta App Challenge, several face-to-face contacts with the startup founders, perhaps typical of the small community that Malta is, was instrumental in helping the startups make sense of the huge volume of data available from the Copernicus Project, visualise the myriads of good practices available, and build sufficient confidence that help is ready at hand.

4. Public sector entities should be open to (test) disruption

Ideation does not and cannot thrive in mechanistic organisations caught in procedure, process and form as they are caught up in the daily business of executing their core public function. Being open to startups with their open-minded outlook, building trust relationships with them, and helping them test their vision is a good way to bring in new knowledge, creativity and talent, and contemplate new models on how to solve today’s and possibly even tomorrow’s problems. Startups are in many ways the buckskin-draped wild scouts one sees in Hollywood films trotting around an organised formation of uniformed cavalry. They are the ones with the visibility and the agility that can anticipate, inform and ensure readiness of the organised formation. It was encouraging to acknowledge that the Malta Environment Agency has agreed to participate, as have other user organisations in our previous editions.

 5. Public sector entities must learn to break out of their silos to mutually  profit from innovation

Innovation thrives when disciplines, expertise and know-how are pooled together. Public sector organisations and large companies are sometimes genetically designed to want to do everything themselves in isolation, to question and even to be suspicious of all ideas that come from the exterior — the adage “if it ain’t mine it ain’t good” comes to mind. This silo mentality can sometimes repress cross-  pollination of ideas. In this particular case, the Challenge was organised as a result of  an agreement that was reached between four organisations to bring together the best of respective capacities: Eurisy as a facilitator, MITA as a digital startup incubation specialist, MCST and ESA as the space experts. Take out any of these organisations, and the challenge would not have achieved half the response that was achieved.

6. When it comes to innovation, public sector entities must sometimes accept to play it by ear

The MITA-MCST-MEPA-EURISY partnership was all very informal, all very bottom-up with few strings attached, allowing some degree of improvisation to cope with sudden changes. The decision to reach out and discuss outline ideas with the startups, or the rescheduling of Design Thinking sessions and ESA training to better accommodate the process of discovery and ideation by the startups, are just two examples of improvisation. The lack of a rigid structure is what permitted this flexibility.

7. Incremental steps are better for innovation than a complex Master Plan

In their quest to assure delivery of service, public sector organisations tend to adopt project management methodologies that assume linear predictability. This means that they will put in place a series of risk mitigation measures to reduce risk to project delivery. That is all very well for mission critical, but routine, projects. But in innovation projects, those same risk mitigation measures can actually inhibit creativity and agility.

The chaos one finds in very small organisations like startups is often what breeds new ideas and new possibilities in the resolution of problems. Plenty of learning takes place, and because the investment made is relatively small, they can afford the luxury of flexibility and pivoting to new course of actions based on what they have learnt and tested iteratively.

8. Among the digital community, there is still much to be learned about the potential of satellite data

For some reason, most technologists conceive data as something humans generate from the ground up using a device or computer, rather than as imagery captured by satellites orbiting the earth. We often complain about our national and regional governments not generating enough open data, when there is a veritable goldmine of data above our heads that does not just satisfy our narrow domestic market needs, but global ones too.

9. It’s a learning process for end-user public entities too

End-users often associate satellites with whatever provides them with cable TV and the weather bulletin (or the Moon). In a way, that’s fine too, end-users don’t need to become satellite experts. As long as they receive the information they need, they needn’t care where it’s coming from. All the same, Copernicus is a public European infrastructure. So that App Challenge has also been an opportunity to let public entities know that these infrastructures, paid with the tax payers’ money, should benefit them.

10. The triple challenge lying ahead

First, is raising awareness about what satellite data are available through the Copernicus programme. Second is investing in the right tools and support structures to help the IT-savvy user base that can add value to the data. Third, getting the end-user involved in the process, like we did with MEPA and other user organisations in the past.

The Malta App Challenge will surely reserve more lessons learnt once the second part of the cycle is complete. Which is when the startups will have tested and deployed their solutions. We hope that one of these lessons will be that once the right amount and mix of resources and focus are committed— both human and financial— the return on investment is rewarding enough to make satellite data a recurrent theme of all future requests for startups organised by the MIH accelerator programme.

Non-commercial satellite images are the exception. Freely accessible and reusable, they have the characteristics that any data analyst dreams of! Earth observation data is usually available in standard formats, no matter the area covered. It is frequently updated, of great quality and a reliable source of information: the best conditions to build a sustainable business.

Just as the EC was discussing licencing conditions for Copernicus, a 2012 ESA study showed that an open access government policy for satellite data is beneficial in the medium to long term. We are talking about environmental benefits, but also economic, i.e. an estimated €30 billion market and tens of thousands of new jobs by 2030.

The Americans did it first, it must be said. The breakthrough arrived in 2008, when the US Geological Survey (USGS) decided to open its archive of Landsat satellite images collected over forty years.

Today Landsat 8 consistently acquires high quality pictures over the entire globe. The free and open data policy is confirmed for Landsat 9, to be launched in 8 years.

Copernicus, the European EO programme, is much more ambitious than the Landsat programme. Rather than a single satellite, Copernicus comes with several, to be launched over many years. In addition to data from the Sentinels, the programme delivers the so-called Core Services, that is, value-added geo-information products, or thematic maps on soils, seas, atmosphere, climate change, emergency management and security. The European Environment Agency, for instance, manages such a service: land.copernicus.eu. The output of the Core Services is generally available as open data too.

Open data policies when it comes to satellite data have come to be expected and welcome when it comes to public entities. However, a private satellite data provider adopting the same policy will make some noise and raise some eyebrows. Surely the very point of such companies is to make money from selling such data, not giving them away for free. And yet…I jumped from my seat on learning that Will Marshall, CEO of Planet Labs, announced, end September, that the company would open the access to some high resolution satellite data acquired by its constellation of microsatellites.

Marshall made the announcement at the UN Assembly, talking about how the data would contribute to the UN objectives for sustainable development. I naturally thought that the data licenced out by Planet Labs for free would concern poor regions in Africa or India; it would have been pretty generous already. But the cheeky imps took it yet a step further, opening access, on a beta platform, to satellite images of California! With a CC BY SA 4.0 open licence. In other words, Marshall says: you can use my data for free, but whatever you do, you must make it open in the same way. This applies to value-added products as well.

I don’t know for how long the data on California will be available in open access. But it’s certainly an excellent way of promoting the capacities and data characteristics of very high resolution images of Planet Labs.

This is both a major opportunity and the challenge of Copernicus: to generate enough interest in the development of useful, affordable downstream services beyond current capacities, services geared to meet demand.

With the caveat that such services should exploit not only satellite data, but also information and other data available, such as all the data published by governments, local authorities, private companies and even by individuals – just think of OpenStreetMap, the free and openly licensed map of the world created entirely by volunteers.

Massimo Zotti is the author of massimozotti.it – an insightful Italian blog about geo-information in the times of INSPIRE.  He is also a Sales and Marketing Manager for Geospatial products and services at Planetek Italia.