Infrastructure, most definitely. SAR data, integrated with BIM, CIM, and other data such as land survey data or base maps can be used in every step of the infrastructure value chain, from assessment to the design and engineering, construction and maintenance including disaster response and mitigation. One of our clients, a big construction company, uses our land displacement monitoring solution to detect sinkhole or landslide risks at its construction sites. The data provided by our small SAR satellite “StriX” constellation can also apply to their daily operations. Our flood damage assessment solution can be used for disaster mitigation and even for regular maintenance processes, for example, for the maintenance of a large dam or pipeline network or another similar type of infrastructure. SAR data integration can provide new value to users in each of the infrastructure phases. As a result, the entire value chain can be connected and visualized.
What is the role of partnerships in strengthening your customer engagement in the market? Data fusion is very important in generating solutions from SAR data. Therefore, we need to work with partners who have the industrial know-how on the actual user requirements and potential use cases of our data. We can provide SAR data, land survey data, or land deformation data, but solutions are developed through discussions with experts
in construction, engineering consultancy, and insurance companies.
area, which helps to calculate CO2 emission more accurately for CO2 credit or trading.
We can provide data that identifies a flood area and the estimated depth of the flood. However, in order to measure damage from the flood for insurance purposes, we need to fuse the data with appropriate statistical data owned by the insurance company. In this case, partnerships with insurance companies and consulting companies are very important for us.
Another potential use case is in offshore wind farm assessment. Wind speed can be estimated by measuring the wave fluctuation on the sea. SAR satellites can generate this data.
How do you foresee business expansion within and beyond the infrastructure, construction and insurance markets? The SAR market is still in its development phase. The early adopters in each of the industries that are already testing SAR are very good partners for us. We look forward to expanding our business with them, either directly or through our resellers. So infrastructure development, construction and insurance companies are promising customers. In addition, I can see that the traditional defense and intelligence sector will be a big customer of SAR data. We can make the base revenue through data business with them and gradually start creating solutions. It has great potential to scale up and become a very important business for us. We are also eyeing business opportunities for climate-related applications and clean-tech sectors. For example, forest monitoring. Traditional forest monitoring only covers forest areas. But with SAR satellites, we can identify the volume of biomass in the forest
Synspective recently launched StriX-1, its third satellite after the success of StriX-α and β. What is your expectation from this launch? Synspective has been developing techniques and accumulating know-how regarding multiple operations with two satellites already in orbit. With the addition of the first commercial satellite, StriX-1, we will gain experience in the manufacturing process and increase the amount of data we collect, accelerating business expansion. We have also signed several significant contracts with governmental and industrial customers with verified solutions. With StriX-1 in orbit, we can scale up the customers’ needs in terms of data volume. In this sense, Strix-1 will demonstrate the scalability of our commercialization from a production point of view as well as from a business point of view.
The number of commercial SAR satellites in orbit is growing exponentially – all with varying sizes, tasking speeds revisit rates and image resolution. How will this impact the larger Earth Observation ecosystem? From several conferences that I’ve attended in recent years, I noticed that the number of analytics compa-
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