Ticinum Aerospace builds on satellite and ground data to slash risk uncertainty

In the “Big Data” age, the enormous amount of data created every day, including “space data”, is a resource for several applications. The core business of Ticinum Aerospace (TA) [1], a spin-off company of the University of Pavia, Italy, is to provide risk-related services based on the analysis of remotely sensed data by means of innovative algorithms. The company was founded in year 2014 as an “innovative startup” under the Italian law, with a plan to tackle uncertainty in risk assessment and agriculture by developing two innovative services: CountFloors and Saturnalia. CountFloorstackles the exposure factor of risk computation, in urban areas and on a large scale. Risk modelers can narrow down uncertainty in exposure estimation when buildings are described by several risk-relevant features, such as number of floors, occupancy type, age, shape regularity, materials, etc. Whereas satellite images are used for thematically rough classification of human settlements, street-level pictures are largely under-exploited, despite they allow zooming deeply into building features. Several companies are collecting these in-situ data globally, increasing their amount practically every day. TA has developed a new breakthrough framework combining satellite and street-level pictures to map exposure proxies [2]. The implemented system is capable of automatically retrieving satellite and in-situ pictures, extracting risk-relevant features, to then attach feature ‘tags’ (like e.g. number of floors or occupancy type) to each polygon in a GIS layer. The European Space Agency is in the process of awarding an ESA Kick-Start Activity project to assess commercial viability of this service under the “Space for Municipalities” call [3]. Saturnalia [4] instead provides early knowledge about the quality of fine wine traded in an investment perspective. Saturnalia offers quantitative and objective prediction of wine quality before bottling, based on satellite and meteorological data acquired on vineyards. Quality proxies will be issued before production, based on the history of all the parameters collected during the current and past growing seasons. The user can access wine quality estimates preceding the release of reviews. These insights will support better-informed decisions and give the chance to save money by reducing the uncertainty in discounted advance purchases. Saturnalia includes a tool for automatic retrieval and analysis of satellite and meteorological data over the areas of interest, which are then used by the prediction block. Saturnalia was sparked by a winning idea at the “Space App Camp” contest organised by the European Space Agency (ESA) in Frascati, Italy, September 2016. The idea has won the "Big Data, Big Business" challenge by CGI at the 2017 edition of the Copernicus Masters initiative, and is currently being furthered under the ESA KickStart Activity funding scheme, “Food Security” call (contract No. 4000122245/17/NL/NR). [1] Ticinum Aerospace web site. Available online at: http://www.ticinumaerospace.com/ [2] Iannelli, G. C., & Dell’Acqua, F. (2017). Extensive Exposure Mapping in Urban Areas through Deep Analysis of Street-Level Pictures for Floor Count Determination. Urban Science, 1(2), 16. [3] ESA AO8872. Publicly available description of call at https://business.esa.int/funding/invitation-totender/space-for-municipalities [4] Web site of the Saturnalia project. Available online at: http://saturnalia.tech/