Review of the North East Satellite Applications Centre of Excellence, Annual Conference 2017
Kirsten Fletcher and I hugely enjoyed our day attending and exhibiting at the Annual Conference of the North East Satellite Applications Centre of Excellence, which took place last week at the Hilton Hotel in Gateshead.
Simon Campbell, Head of Gravity and Magnetic Solutions describing how Getech converts satellite measurements to oil industry exploration data.
The current interest and excitement that exists throughout the UK space industry – both in telecommunications and earth observation – was clear and it was great to see so many excellent presentations in one place.
Those companies presenting included; Uber, Nexus, Telespazio VEGA, EarthSense Systems, Sterling Geo, DroneOps and the Environment Agency.
Each presented solution (including our own) was the product of a huge amount of technical innovation and a constant thread that emerged throughout was that careful analysis and enterprise-wide use of the vast amounts of data being produced, can benefit us all.
The commitment of the UK Government, cross-border agencies and the private sector to support this innovative work in satellite applications was reinforced through presentations by the UK Space Agency, Innovate UK, ESA, the Satellite Applications Catapult and Seraphim Capital.
Getech Senior Geophysicist, Kirsten Fletcher demonstrating the satellite micro-levelling process by way of hand signals.
The funding options on offer create a number of opportunities for companies such as ours since Getech has been developing methods to convert satellite altimetry measurements into datasets that are used in the natural resources industries. There will be many more potential users of both these data and the techniques we have developed.
We enjoyed giving our presentation and what we had to say was well received. In addition, the exhibition space proved to be a great forum for meeting new contacts, finding out more about the interesting projects people are undertaking and discussing areas of synergy.
We come away from the conference with an enhanced understanding of the various initiatives in the UK space sector and, having meet so many people engaged in the earth observations domain, we are looking forward to exploring the potential of collaborative projects.
Our thanks to the North East Satellite Applications Centre of Excellence, the numerous groups who supported the conference and all the staff involved for organising an excellent event.
