Earth Observation ClimLab is an international project of the European Space Agency (ESA) that is coming to life thanks to a partnership between Polish, Romanian and Czech companies. The purpose of the consortium is to create a Data Analytics Platform for climate resilience, preparing the economy of various countries to climate changes.
The project will create an IT platform that will be collect climate data ESA satellites and other sources and a portal that will teach people how to use the data.
The goal of the project is to create a collaborative environment for rapid prototyping of innovative Earth Observation products and services and to popularize the use of data from satellites by creating applications in Romania, Poland and the Czech Republic and supporting them to develop commercial applications using these data.
And yes, that means supporting local startups ready to take on this challenge. In this stage of the project, there will be several hackathons organized in the 3 countries, where local entrepreneurs that would like to build companies in areas like farming/agtech, climate, earth satellite imagery, health, risk management, infrastructure maintenance, education, will be assisted and will get infrastructure and financial support.
Basically, the EO ClimLab can be seen as kind of “Fablab” environment providing entrepreneurs and developers with the data, tools and knowledge needed to develop new products and services to enhance climate resilience.