From space to the territory: meet the three winning projects of the 2nd Earth Observation Use Case Ideas Competition for the Private Sector

Earth Observation is a field with multiple applications, as demonstrated by the winning projects of the second edition of the ‘Earth Observation Use Case Ideas Competition for the Private Sector’. The initiative is promoted by the Government of Catalonia within the framework of the Catalonia Space 2030 Strategy and coordinated by the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), in collaboration with the Cartographic and Geological Institute of Catalonia (ICGC).

The three winning projects, developed and tested over the past year, offer solutions in various fields. The REMOT project aims to use Earth observation technologies to optimise vineyard irrigation; SAPIC has developed a viewer with an indicator to report wildfire risk in any area selected by the user; and, lastly, TIAFA is a project for the automated detection of water leaks in underground and open-air canals.

All three cases have used data from Menut, the first Earth observation satellite mission promoted by the Government of Catalonia and managed by the IEEC, with technical support from the ICGC. These data have added value to each project by complementing the data obtained from other satellite constellations.

In this second edition of the call, the use cases have also been incorporated into the project portfolio of ESA Phi-Lab Spain. Phi-Lab Spain, co-funded by the Government of Catalonia and coordinated by a consortium led by the IEEC, is part of the European Space Agency‘s (ESA’s) ScaleUp Programme.

The three projects (REMOT, SAPIC, and TIAFA) establish themselves as successful examples of how climate and space intelligence can offer real, cost-effective, and data-driven solutions to climate challenges. Below you will find a description of each of them.

The REMOT project, led by the company Spascat, involved Codorniu and AgroPixel as end-users. REMOT consists of the development of a precision irrigation tool to optimise agricultural irrigation across large expanses of land. This solution is based on artificial intelligence and the use of multispectral satellite imagery from the European Copernicus constellation, Planet, and Menut.

The effectiveness of this irrigation tool was successfully validated thanks to the collaboration of the end-user companies, AgroPixel and Codorniu, using real records from the 2025 campaign at the Raimat estate—the largest vineyard plot in Europe, located in the region of Segrià (Lleida). The results demonstrated the quality of the irrigation plans proposed automatically by the algorithm, showing that, besides being realistic, they offer more efficient proposals than traditional methods.

Thanks to the success of this use case, Spascat has integrated this new feature as an additional module within its web and mobile platform, REMOT.app. This platform was originally developed based on the experience of the previous use case (MOT), carried out within the framework of the first edition of the Earth Observation Use Case Ideas Competition for the Private Sector. With this addition, the platform has evolved into an all-in-one agricultural management tool that centralises crop condition monitoring for fruit and wine-growing sectors, field inspection scheduling, and optimised irrigation planning.

The SAPIC project (‘Advanced Wildfire Prevention Service in Catalonia’), developed by the climate intelligence company Lobelia Earth, has presented an innovative tool for the improved prevention and mitigation of wildfires. SAPIC represents a paradigm shift, transforming traditional risk management from a reactive to a preventive approach. Through an interactive viewer, the system offers continuous monitoring of potential fire severity, generating regular maps that make it possible to identify precisely which areas of the territory are most vulnerable and what intensity a fire could reach at a specific point.

SAPIC has a very extensive potential market, considering that regions such as Southern Europe, California, Australia, or Chile have large forested areas and are exposed to an increase in the frequency and severity of large fires. In Catalonia alone, there are 655,700 monitorable hectares of woodland, and up to 2,600,000 hectares across Spain. Mitigation tasks guided by SAPIC can prevent or reduce the recovery costs of a major wildfire, which, in the most severe cases, can exceed €40,000 per hectare.

The TIAFA project, developed by the company MOAI Analytics, has transformed a theoretical risk model into an operational system for the automated detection of water leaks in hydroelectric canals. The system has successfully achieved the validation phase in a real environment, having been implemented on canals located in the province of Lleida. This pilot environment presents a high topographic, environmental, and operational diversity, making it a representative scenario for evaluating the system’s performance. During the inspection campaign, carried out across 112 kilometres of the company Endesa‘s network, the tool confirmed several real breaches and identified other critical cases that should be kept under observation.

TIAFA is a comprehensive and scalable system that integrates capabilities for the automatic acquisition of very-high-resolution multispectral satellite imagery, advanced spectral analysis, automated image preprocessing, the integration of ancillary data to improve accuracy, and temporal analysis to enhance the reliability of detections. The system functions as a pre-selection and prioritisation tool, which classifies suspect cases by levels (green–yellow–red), making it possible to optimise resources and direct field inspections to the points where they are truly needed.

The trials have also served to evaluate the system’s scalability potential through the use of public medium-resolution satellites, such as the Menut mission. The research has led to the design of a mixed methodology that combines these public satellites for broad territorial screening with commercial high-resolution imagery for finer validation.

With the completion of this project, TIAFA establishes itself as an operational tool to support the management and maintenance of hydraulic infrastructure, with a direct impact on efficiency, risk reduction, and resource optimisation. The results obtained demonstrate the technical soundness of the solution and consolidate a new line of operational activity focused on the early detection of failures in critical infrastructure through Earth observation.