Nominate your favourite EO organisations for the EARSC Awards 2022

Every year, the European Association of Remote Sensing Companies (EARSC) recognises companies’ performance, partnerships and outstanding products for their exemplary contribution to the European Earth Observation ecosystem through the EARSC Awards campaign. The awards are drawn from various categories and will be judged by renowned international experts

The awards’ results are usually announced during the EARSC EXPANDEO annual cocktail in June. The winners will be announced on our website and social media and they will receive their gifts personally or by post. Second and third place positions will also have public recognition.

The awards come in several different categories, each of which are now open for your nominations! Who do you think deserve our special appreciation in the European Earth Observation industry in 2022?

EO Company Award 2022

The first and longest-running award is the Company Award where we recognize the company considered in that year to have made a significant contribution to the development of the EO Services sector in Europe (deadline 30th of April).

Candidates for this award will be judged against the following criteria:

• Has successfully developed EO services for a target market (sector or geographic),
• Has made a strong contribution to a defining European programme or political agendas (eg. Copernicus, Green Deal framework, ESA projects, etc),
• Has exhibited good revenue and/or employment growth.

EO Product Award 2022

The Product Award recognises the most innovative commercial product which supports sustainable development projects with the focus on services delivering to the Green Deal agenda (deadline 30th of April).

The EARSC EO product award for 2022 will specifically recognise a product that will support the Green Deal Agenda.

The European Commission is demonstrating unprecedented leadership with the Green Deal flagship to tackle climate change and will require an abundance of resources, including viable data and information which will allow governments to identify risks, tailor policy response and resource allocation, monitor progress and identify trends. 

The green transition must be complemented by the continued use and improvement of new datasets. Combining satellite data with measurements from ground-based instruments and exploiting deep technological approaches (e.g. artificial intelligence and machine learning) makes it possible to have a wide range of operational applications and services contributing to the Green Deal.

European EO industry can help achieve the Green deal set of policies by providing critical information to the Green Deal actions on climate, energy, agriculture, transport or environment.

Criteria for this award include:

• What problem this product will solve/what solution will this provide?
• How will this product contribute to the monitoring of a particular area on sustainable development with the Green Deal policy focus?
• What are the circumstances surrounding the development of this product and the identification of the policy area which supports
• What will be the expected impact of this product? 

EO Partnership Award 2022

The Partnership Award is granted for an outstanding collaboration “from Research to Market”. It is a reward for outstanding collaboration for the EO user uptake. (deadline 30th of April).

Partnerships are encouraged to submit a proposal for cooperation or present an already established collaboration achievement “from Research to Market”. The winning partnership will be recognized and promoted by EARSC in their network.

Criteria for the Partnership Award in 2022 include:

• Partnerships: teams should include at least one European company and one user of the product/service.
• Value creation (business growth, new markets, export opportunities): evidence of value creation regarding a product or service with potential users. Demonstrated forward thinking cooperation bringing research product into operational procedures (i.e, validated methodology from research & innovation to commercialisation). Collaboration has potential for scaling up through the Technology Readiness Levels (TRL), business growth, new markets, export opportunities or incorporating new concepts in the research/academy.
• Sound sustainability plan: sustainability plan supporting the “must go beyond financial support” (i.e, validated sustainability approach aspects: technical, financial, legal, organizational, operational and scheduling)
• Internal procedures of engagement: basis of evidence for successful partnership collaboration. For example, incorporating the case story into an organization’s planning (collaboration with private sector) and goal-setting processes (i.e., validated internal procedures of engagement, seek to extend partnerships, etc)
• Outreach & marketing: emphasize the promotion to users/customers. i.e., For academia it will evaluate the contribution to the overall advancement of teaching and learning of EO concepts including EO application & services. For other partners such industry, validating how to present and communicate the case to final users (building the awareness case to market practices).

European EO Startup Award 2022

The Start-up Award recognizes the company considered in that year to have made a significant impact and a new business model in the EO Services sector in Europe (deadline 30th of April).

The EARSC Secretariat is rewarding a start-up that is less than 5 years old, showing growth in revenues and/or personnel growth and a good and coherent promotion of the company and its products.

How can I nominate my favourite award candidates?

There are nomination forms for each of the four categories, that can be found on the EARSC Awards category webpages here:

• Company Award 2022
• Product Award 2022
• Partnership Award 2022
• Startup Award 2022

Previous EARSC Award Winners

Just to give you an idea of the caliber of some of the EARSC Awards winners in previous years, here are the winners of the two previous editions in 2019 and 2021:

• Iceye (Company Award 2021)
• Planet (Company Award 2019)
• Industrial Methane Monitoring by GHGSat (Product Award 2021)
• Agriculture Index Insurance by EARS/ELeaf (Product Award 2019)
• Humanitarian Downstream Service by Spatial Services GmbH and University of Salzburg (Partnership Award 2021)
• Orbital EOS, SeaPulse, Valencia University and GoHub (Partnership Award 2019)
• LiveEO GmbH (Startup Award 2021)
• Maptailor (Startup Award 2019)

Read More

There are several competitions that support Earth Observation initiatives in Europe. Read more about what competitions were held in the past (and will be held again in the near future!)

Also keep an eye out for competitions on our events page!