Second Earth Observation Use Case Ideas Competition for the Private Sector is now open

The call to participate in the second edition of the Earth Observation Use Case Ideas Competition for the Private Sector is now open. The initiative seeks to obtain innovative proposals for Earth observation use cases that the NewSpace ecosystem can offer to the Catalan private business sector in the form of services based on information obtained from satellites. This call, coordinated by the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), is part of the NewSpace Strategy of Catalonia promoted by the Government of Catalonia with the participation of the IEEC, the Cartographic and Geological Institute of Catalonia (ICGC) and the i2CAT Foundation.

The competition will choose and finance three Earth observation use cases applicable to the Catalan territory to promote the use of satellite data. To this end, data from the first Catalan Earth observation nanosatellite, Menut, will be offered for demonstration purposes, in order to give visibility to the benefits that companies can obtain by incorporating this type of data into their operations.

The purpose of the call is to improve the competitiveness of private sector companies through the incorporation of satellite data technology, fostering the development of solutions and business for the NewSpace sector companies.

In this second edition, and as a new feature, the winning use cases will be part of ESA Phi-LabNET Spain’s project portfolio. ESA Phi-LabNET Spain, co-funded by the Government of Catalonia through the NewSpace Strategy and coordinated by a consortium led by IEEC, is framed within the ScaleUp Program of the European Space Agency (ESA). Focused on promoting research and transfer to the market of space solutions that improve climate resilience and sustainability, its main mission is to accelerate the future of the space sector, both upstream and downstream, through innovative projects with high commercial potential.

Deadlines

The deadline to apply for this call is Monday 24 February 2025 at 2.00 p.m.

Funding

The three chosen use cases will be awarded a financial prize of 2,500 euros and will be eligible for a subsequent service contract of 47,500 euros each.

Participation

To participate it is required to submit a technical report in PDF format which clearly sets out: the definition of the challenge and the goals of the proposed use case; the working methodology; an implementation schedule; the working team organisation; the targeted users and their degree of involvement in the proposal. Each tenderer may submit more than one proposal.

Eligibility requirements

To be considered eligible, submitted proposals must fulfil the following requirements:

• They must be aligned with ESA Phi-LabNET Spain’s topic: Space Technology for Climate Resilience.
• They must be NewSpace-based.
• They must be based on Earth observation satellite data, ensuring their feasibility, and they must include data from the Catalan nanosatellite Menut as a demonstrator.
• They must be targeted towards the private sector.
• The tendering company must have, at the time of submitting the proposal, a technical office centre, with specialised technicians, located within a maximum radius of 200 km around the IEEC headquarters.
• They must be intended for use within the Catalan territory.
• They must be operational within six months of the contract signature. The start date of the project may be different from the contract signature date in case the use case needs to be executed on specific dates during the year.
• They must present an active end-user involvement.
• They must be innovative use cases. Those proposals presenting solutions based on a new product and those based on an existing product but incorporating enough changes and adjustments to configure an innovative solution or one adapted to the use case in question will be considered eligible.
• Both the tenderer and the end user agree to participate in different communicative actions during the 3 months following the end of the project execution.

The winning projects will be included in the ESA Phi-LabNET Spain portfolio, where they will be presented as services / projects / solutions with information of the developing company, facilitating contact, collaboration and contracting.

The project duration will be 9 months distributed as follows: 6 months of project execution (design, validation and implementation works) and 3 months of dissemination (implementation of the communicative actions plan previously validated by the IEEC and the Generalitat de Catalunya).

Evaluation criteria

Among all eligible solutions, the jury will choose the three use cases which will be awarded. The evaluation criteria will be based on:

• Alignment of the challenge with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It will be positively assessed whether the challenge can be useful for a large number of final users.
• Alignment of the proposal with the goals of the call, the technological feasibility, the degree of closeness to becoming a service, the degree of innovation and the use of Menut data as a demonstrator. As a new feature in this call, the use of advanced data processing technologies / algorithms (e.g. Artificial Intelligence) and data fusion (combination of data from different instruments) will also be taken into account.
• Working methodology, timetable and working team organisation.
• Type of end user to whom the solution is addressed according to the impact it may have in Catalonia, and their degree of involvement in the proposal.

It will be an asset if the participating company is a member of the DCA-NewSpace.

You can consult all the documentation of the project tender by clicking on the button below.