'Platforms in space' to help businesses

Leicester leads the way in UK to exploit earth observation technology for entrepreneurial application

Space researchers and enterprise experts from the University of Leicester have teamed up to offer a new business facing service that harnesses space technology for earth-bound benefits.

A Space Technology Exchange Partnership –G-STEP- has been established in order to support business and public sector organisations use state-of-the-art Earth Observation information technology.

The Partnership will be launched on 19th June 2009 at the University of Leicester by the head of the EU GMES bureau Dr Valere Moutarlier, Dr Steven Briggs, Head of Earth Observation, Applications and Future Technologies at the European Space Agency and Dr. David Williams head of the British National Space Centre. The knowledge-exchange hub is co-funded at £1.86 million by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), EMDA (East Midlands Development Agency), the Leicestershire Economic Partnership (LSEP) and the University of Leicester.

Researchers from the University's Chemistry, Geography and Physics and Astronomy departments have teamed up with the University's enterprise and business development office to provide the new service.

Professor Paul Monks, Director of G-STEP, said: "The exploitation of this technology is expected to have a major impact on business operations and competitiveness. We are being pro-active and going-out to the business community and saying, what are the issues you would like solving, then using a model of innovating, partnering or brokering the solution from our knowledge base. In practical terms, we will work with business partners to develop value-added services that exploit environmental data from the GMES system. In this way, we will be promoting EO businesses rather than competing with them"

He went on to say "A practical example of this is using space data as part of an air pollution forecast system, similar to a weather forecast, to deliver vulnerable people messages to their mobile phones reminding them to take their medication with them. This helps people particularly those suffering from asthma as well as having the potential to reduce hospital admissions."

G-STEP will exploit innovation opportunities made available by the flagship 1.4 billion Euro EC/ESA Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme. The GMES programme applies data from satellite, aerial and ground-based earth observation to information and decision-making products and services.