Eurisy’s SMEs Support Initiative will be inaugurated by a high-level  conference in Rome. The event will gather representatives of user-SME associations, of the space community, as well as European and national policy makers, with the objective of consolidating political support for an increased access of SMEs to satellite information and services, in order to stimulate SME competitiveness in sectors such as transport, building, utilities, energy, and others.

In particular, the event aims to create political consensus on a roadmap of concrete actions to enable SMEs from sectors different from space to use satellite information and service, and thus profit from European investments in space.

The event is co-organised with the Italian Space Agency (ASI), in partnership with the European Confederation of Associations of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (CEA-PME) and with the support of the European Commission and the European Space Agency.


First Announcement and outline programme

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Eurisy was invited to contribute to the inaugural meeting of an initiative by the Campania Region (IT) – to create a European network for the diffusion of good practices among local and regional authorities, in the areas of environment, local development, scientific knowledge and innovation.

The conference was attended by close to 200 participants from Italy and elsewhere in Europe, in particular from the main partners of the network (the West Midlands (UK), Wallonia (BE), Valencia (ES), the county councils of Giurgiu and Timis (RO), the National Union of Romanian County Councils, the city of Dobrich (BG), Invest in Bulgaria, and the European Urban Knowledge Network) and the main associations of local and regional authorities.

Eurisy contributed a presentation on good practices with regards to efficient coastal management during the first conference day. Furthermore, Eurisy invited Mr Nicolas Daurensan, from the Compagnie d’Aménagement des Coteaux de Gascogne, to share his experience in the use of satellite information for the management of river basins in Acquitaine and Midi-Pyrénnées.

In line with Eurisy’s mission, it will continue to support the Networks’ initiative, as it aims to:
- analyse and identify good practice in Europe
- promote good practice from the Campania region
- involve European regions and the European Commission
- inventory and catalogue good practices
- implementation of innovative practices

Download coastal management presentation
Download water management presentation

Although satellite services have already demonstrated their added-value for contributing to development in Africa regarding water management, food security, climate change and many other fields, their use and potential still remains largely underexploited.  Two ways of improving this situation could be on the one hand, at the operational level, furthering cooperation and calibration between decision-makers, prospective and experienced users and service providers.  On the other hand, at the strategic level, consolidating a comprehensive approach, coherent coordination and conducting thorough consultation of European and African stakeholders.

Eurisy and ESPI have therefore decided to tackle these issues by providing a forum for all relevant and interested actors from Europe and Africa in the course of which a wide range of common activities will be organized in 2010 and 2011 (see calendar below and joint brochure).

A first phase will focus on policy aspects and develop objectives which will be presented to the public in July 2010 as a first milestone of the project on the occasion of the start of the Belgian EU Council Presidency.  The second phase will enable user consultations, stimulate cooperation among actors on the operational level and gather bottom-up feed back for joint recommendations to decision-makers on how to improve the suboptimal exploitation of satellite applications.

The Eurisy-led regional Conferences will therefore put special emphasis on identifying and disseminating good practice examples regarding the use of satellite services in Africa, and on developing the dialogue between potential and experienced users of satellite services and services providers.  By the same token the identification of satellite service providers’ requirements towards space infrastructure stakeholders to better respond to user needs will play a vital role, as will the identification of methods, mechanisms and means to ensure capacity transfer between the more and the less experienced users.

The following activities have already been scheduled:
• 10 February 2010: Euro-African Roundtable (on the occasion of the UNCOPUOS Scientific-Technical Subcommittee meeting) at ESPI in Vienna
• 26 May 2010: Workshop on drafting policy perspectives (strategy and coordination) at ESPI in Vienna
• July 2010: Presentation of the policy perspectives to the EU Council Presidency in Brussels
• 14-15 October 2010: Conference “Development and cooperation in the Mediterranean region using satellite services”, Rabat (Morocco), led by Eurisy
• April 2011: Conference, Central Africa, led by Eurisy
• October 2011: Conference, organised by Eurisy, ESPI and IAF, during the IAC 2011 taking place in Cape Town (South Africa)

See www.espi.or.at for complementary information.

On 6 November, the newly composed Eurisy Council met in Paris.

Photo: back row from left to right: L. Clemens, Eurisy Treasurer; F. Jaskolla, Infoterra; C. Hicks, Eurisy President; J.P. Malingreau, European Commission; K. Kreuzberg, ESA; D. Darricau, EADS.

Front row from left to right: R. Lowson, European Environment Agency; N. Ribeiro, CNES (France); D. El Hadani, Royal Centre for Remote Sensing (Morocco); J. Bruston, Eurisy Secretary General; M. Fouassier, Eurisy Deputy Secretary General; A. Fiumara, ASI (Italy).

Absent from the picutre: C. Riess, German Aerospace Centre (DLR), J. Ortner, Vice-President of Eurisy, R. Hill, Northern Ireland Space Office,

As partner of the Assembly of European Regions (AER), Eurisy was invited to contribute to the AER General Assembly, which this year focused on energy and climate change.

For its third participation in the Committee of the Regions’ Open Days, Eurisy organised  the workshop Bringing economic stimulus to regions through satellite information and services. The event was organised in cooperation with the Assembly of European Regions (AER), the European Association of Satellite Operators (ESOA), the European Space Agency (ESA) and a Consortium of Regions (Békés County Government Office, County of Karlovac, Gorj County Council, Lycksele Municipality and Norrbotten County Council).

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Click here for the workshop programme and presentations.

The Workshop « Innovation at the service of regions and cities implementing sustainable energy strategies » was held in The Hague, on 22-23 June 2009 to bring together and establish a dialogue between the actors from regional and local authorities and those from the space community on how innovative satellite services, in particular, can support sustainable energy strategies.

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Click here to download the workshop presentations and list of participants.
Download conclusions and recommendations here.

On 7 May 2009 the Croatian regions hosted a joint Eurisy-AER workshop at the House of Interregional Cooperation, informing regions of how they can profit from the recent €1 billion funding initiative under the European Economic Recovery Plan to implement broadband, with the help of satellite infrastructure.

Good practices from the region of Piedmont, from Scotland and Cyprus demonstrated that regional authorities can use satellites as an effective alternative to terrestrial infrastructure, with the advantage that they are much faster to implement and do not necessitate any ground work.

Download workshop presentations here.

Image: Eurisy President, Dr C. Hicks and AER Secretary General, Mr K. Klipp

Last 6-7 May, the MORE4NRG Monitoring Board, composed of the politicians representing the MORE4NRG Regions, met for the first time in Valencia, Spain. The Steering Committee of the project, i.e. the regional project coordinators, presented the progress made so far. Eurisy introduced the conclusions of the analysis of the regional needs and objectives in the field of energy, with respect to the potential of satellite solutions to support them.

Image: Anne Bliek de Jong, MORE4NRG Monitoring Board Chair, and Jean Bruston, Eurisy Secretary General, sign case-study intention letter in the presence of the regional consortium.

On the invitation of the Assembly of European Regions (AER) Eurisy contributed to the conference “Regional answers to climate change” through presentations in the workshops “Spatial planning, vulnerability assessments and risk prevention: climate change policies for spatial planning” and “Forest resource management: our forests – real victims of climate change?”.  The conference was organised by AER, the region of Limousin and UNDP and supported by the European Environment Agency and Eurisy.  The plenary session was attended by around 100 participants and the different workshops by 30-40.

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-Programme
-Presentation of Satellite Services for Risk Management
-Presentation on Satellite Information and Services for Natural Resource Protection
-Best practice presentation

In order to cope with numerous societal challenges that Europe will be facing in the future, knowledge and innovation are our main tools.  The European space sector is a particular important player in this regard since it contributes considerably to fostering the European knowledge, innovation and competitiveness potential.  However, in order to be able to continue contributing to enhance this potential, the current danger of lacking future engineers and scientists has to be addressed. 
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Image, left to right: V.Ruzicka, Czech Vice-Minister of Education, C. Hicks, Eurisy President, and P. Šlegr, Czech Deputy Minister of Transport

In the framework of the international kick off meeting for the European Satellite Navigation Competition 2009, Eurisy followed the kind invitation of the organizers, Anwendungszentrum Oberpfaffenhofen and Comunidad de Madrid, to give a presentation on how service providers can learn more about the needs of user communities such as regions, cities and non-space SMEs in terms of how these user groups can benefit from satellite information and services.

The European Satellite Navigation Competition Galileo Masters aims at creating innovative ideas in the field of GNSS which have the potential of becoming operational applications in the future by using the Galileo infrastructure.  In this context of technology push it was essential to introduce a bottom-up user pull perspective which takes into consideration the concerns, motivations and specificities of final users in order to facilitate their appropriation of these innovative applications in the future.

This year’s competition will be open from 1 May through 31 July 2009.

The Working Breakfast in the European Parliament which was co-organised by the SME Union of the EPP and Eurisy dealt with the subject of “Boosting the Competitiveness of European SMEs – The Benefits of Satellite Information and Services”.

It was chaired and moderated by the Member of the European Parliament Malcolm Harbour whose introduction was followed by a keynote speech from Eurisy President Dr Colin Hicks.  Dr Hicks gave concrete examples on how SMEs can profit from satellite applications to improve their competitiveness and profitability and he explained Eurisy’s support initiative for SMEs.  Mr Nonneman, Head of Space policy and coordination unit, DG Enterprise and Industry, outlined the importance of reliable space infrastructure for the provision of reliable services from which SMEs can benefit.  These presentations were followed by a best practice presentation from Hyotypaperi, a small Finnish company which recycles forest residues for energy production, using satellite applications to improve all levels of the supply chain. Mr Hovi pointed out the considerable economic advantages obtained through the use of these innovative satellite tools.  Mr Christian Rovsing, Member of the European Parliament, wrapped up the session by summarising the importance of satellite information and services for the competitiveness of SMEs.

During the discussion the participants agreed that further work needs to be done to facilitate the access of SMEs to the important benefits they can receive from already existing satellite information and services and those which are yet under development. The audience underlined the importance of supporting the transition from R&D to readily available services for SMEs, and of providing them with training and capacity building mechanisms.

Dr Colin Hicks, the President of Eurisy, on the invitation of the European Commission’s Directorate General for Regional Policy, gave a presentation on the benefits of satellite information and services during the workshop “European Regions Reaching for the Sky – Satellite information systems for risk management”.

The workshop was held in the framework of the two day conference “Regions for Economic Change: Networking for Results”, which aimed to highlight how regions working together can achieve more for their sustainable development.

Image: Eurisy President, Dr Colin Hicks

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On the evening of 25 January 2009 Eurisy had the pleasure of signing a Letter of Agreement with NSAU on the organisation of the next Eurisy International Cooperation Programme Conference on 12-13 November 2009 in Kiev.

Photo: Mr Oleksandr Valkovskyi, NSAU and Dr Jean Bruston, Eurisy

Member of the European Parliament Ms. Etelka Barsi-Pataky, ESA Director General Mr Jean-Jacques Dordain, Directors of most European space agencies and many distinguished representatives from industry and institutions related to space met on 26 and 27 January 2009 in Budapest to reflect on how to best structure national and European space governance.  The Conference was organised in cooperation with ESPI and the Hungarian Space Office and enjoyed the support of ASI, CNES, DLR and ESA.

The objective of the Conference was to ensure that European space programmes optimally benefit from the different assets of all European states, and to help them in finding the most appropriate way to engage in such programmes according to their national specificities.

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Download Programme and Presentations here.
Download Conference Report here.

Eurisy was invited to attend the first meeting of the MORE4NRG Regions’ Consortium in Lulea, on the 20th of November, following the acceptance of the project application by the INTERREG Joint Technical Committee. On this occasion, the collaboration between the Consortium and Eurisy was formalised, following a vote of the MORE4NRG Consortium Steering Committee.

The MORE4NRG INTERREG project aims at improving energy efficiency in all 11 participating regions: Abruzzo (IT), Flevoland (NL), Gabrovo (BG), Lazio (IT), Maramures (RO), Noord-Brabant (NL), Norrbotten (SE), Valencia (ES), Västernorrland (SE), and Western Greece (GK). The Assembly of the European Regions (AER), with whom Eurisy has collaborated intensively in the past year, is also part of the project.

The case-study initiated with the MORE4NRG Consortium will evaluate the value-added of satellite information and serviced to the concrete needs of the 11 Regions, and will facilite regions’ access to the relevant innovative satellite-based tools.

In order to do this, a team of experts partnering with Eurisy (from EARSC, ESA, ESOA, Euroteleserv, and SFERA) will analyse the needs of the regions and will make recommendations on how to go about implementing best-value satellite solutions, that is, those services that have a maximum positive impact on the largest number of regions, with a minimum investment.

More than just technical recommendations, the group of experts will analyse and make recommendations concerning economics (cost, financing mechanisms, regulatory framework) and organisational issues (decision-making process, human ressource management, management of change etc). The transferability of the implementation model is also a major focus of the case-study, with the stake of allowing the largest number of regions to adapt and use it for their own benefit.

During the Lulea meeting a preliminary calendar of exchanges between the experts and the regions was agreed on, to coincide with the project state-of-the-art seminars in February, March and April 2009.

In the framework of the European Week of Cities and Region 2008, Eurisy organised this workshop during which representatives from local and regional authorities shared their experiences on how innovative satellite information and services can effectively contribute to mitigating and adapting to climate change in the fields of new building compliance, road traffic management and forest fire protection.

Download Programme and Presentations here

This conference, organised by Eurisy and hosted by the Committee of the Regions, presented the mid-term findings of Eurisy’s Programme for European Local and Regional Authorities (LRA) in order to stimulate the political debate on how to increase the benefits LRAs obtain from satellite information and services (SIS).

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Programme, Presentations and List of Participants

German Version

The workshop “Innovation at the Service of Regional Growth: The Competitive Advantages of Satellite Information and Services”, organised in Dublin on 20-21 May 2008, successfully continued the series of thematic workshops of Eurisy’s programme for Local and Regional Authorities.

80 professionals from over 10 different countries attended the workshop to learn how satellite information and services contribute to sustainable economic development of the regions. The participants represented Local and Regional Authorities (LRAs), the satellite service chain as well as national and European institutions.

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124 participants from 19 countries were welcomed in Sinaia, Romania, for the Eurisy workshop “Regional Risk Management – Integrated Use of Satellite Information and Services”, last 10-11 March 2008.

Mr G. Stahl, Secretary General of the Committee of the Regions, took the opportunity to reaffirm the strategic role Regions have to play in the protection of their citizens, of the environment, property and local economy. He equally emphasized the importance of innovation and territorial co-operation in risk management by Regions confronted with similar risks, and underlined the relevance of satellite information and services as tools for the Regions in dealing with risks.
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Key players from the European and Turkish space communities met on 22 and 23 October for the Eurisy conference “Areas and Mechanisms for Collaboration between Turkish and European Actors in Space Activities”. It was hosted by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) in its premises in the town of Gebze, near Istanbul. The Conference was co-organised with TÜBITAK and ESA, and supported by DLR and UNOOSA. 

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The workshop “Efficient Management of Coastal Regions and Cities” was held in Tallinn, Estonia, on 17-18 September, with the kind contribution of Enterprise Estonia and the City of Tallinn which helped organise the event.

The Tallinn workshop was the second event of Eurisy’s programme dedicated to Local and Regional Authorities.
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