Airbus subsidiary UP42 has been making waves as a geospatial developer platform and marketplace since 2019 when it was founded. The company offers a horizontal platform that enables parties who need data to build solutions or to deliver consulting projects to their customers. “UP42 goes beyond just satellite imagery to bring in more complementary data,” says Sean Wiid, CEO, UP42.
Teaming up with parent company Airbus, UP42 is gearing up for the Copernicus Masters Challenge. The most prestigious Earth Observation (EO) annual competition in the world, the challenge aims to foster innovative applications of remotely sensed data that address Earth’s pressing environmental, social, and business problems. UP42’s Sustainable Urban Planning Challenge focuses on remote sensing for better decision making.
The European Commission and other international public entities have established several urban planning development projects to address critical issues connected to sprawl, such as unemployment, segregation, and poverty. UP42 and Airbus are now calling on developers and researchers worldwide to create algorithms and analyses that can provide decision makers with better quantitative information, with special emphasis on ecology.
“We are on a mission to democratize Earth observation data and insights,” said Wiid. “We want to offer urban planning experts and decision makers easier access to data to develop and scale solutions more rapidly, removing technical and commercial barriers that can slow down progress in making cities and communities greener and more livable by 2030,” he added.
Over the last few years, the Copernicus Programme — the European Union’s own EO program — has expanded by leaps and bounds. The information services that the program provides are free and openly accessible. “The economic value that has been generated on top of that data by companies that are building solutions or providing consulting services is enormous,” Wiid told Geospatial World in August 2021. Not only has it proved to be a boon for commercial and private users, it has also benefited the scientific community, policy makers, and researchers.
Remote sensing is a critical tool for performing an in-depth analysis at scale in effectively making cities more sustainable by considering a city’s entire ecosystem. Nevertheless, literature shows us that the level of integration between remote sensing, urban planning, and ecology still has scope for improvement.
Developers who take on the UP42 Airbus Challenge have a significant opportunity to design solutions that will have a tangible impact on the race to sustainability by 2030. Matthieu Lys, Head of Innovation Management, Airbus Defence and Space, said, “We are excited to once again take part in this new edition of the Copernicus Masters. Sustainable Urban Planning is key to facing the evolutions of climate change, and we are eager to find creative partners to develop innovative solutions which will have a positive impact on the environment and society through this new challenge.”
The UP42 Airbus Copernicus Masters Challenge on Sustainable Urban Planning aims to develop algorithms or methodologies that use remote sensing to quantify critical issues emerging from the expansion of historic centers toward modern suburbs.
UP42 encourages participants to make use of their key data on the increasing number of structures that have an impact on non-renewable resources (water, vegetation, land); uneven distribution of green sites; and wasted spaces to be repurposed as green or residential areas. Further, the participants can make use of other data provided by the company for their use cases. More information on the challenge can be found here.
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