Institution name: Telespazio UK

Acronym: TPZUK

Partner coordinator: Maria de Farago Botella

Website: https://telespazio.co.uk/en/

About

Telespazio UK Ltd is a consulting, technology and engineering services business with over 40 years of experience. They provide services to satellite operators and manufacturers worldwide, along with expertise in satellite systems and applications, geo information data, satellite operations, earth observation and climate, and network and connectivity.

Telespazio UK latest relevant achievements for this project includes the following:

EU H2020 FORESEE: key contributor to the EU H2020 Future Proofing Strategies for Resilient Transport Networks Against Extreme Events (FORESEE) project. A critical component of the project was furthering the development of its Satellite Structural Health Monitoring (S-SHM) tool to detect structural deformation. Using big data analytics, S-SHM enabled characterisation of assets and their potential structural vulnerabilities, delivering increased situational awareness.

Road-DL: Development of a Road Pavement Condition. Telespazio UK built and tested an approach driven by Deep Learning (DL) to provide road condition assessment to UK’s National Highways (NH). The project used multitemporal SAR Sentinel-1 satellite data and NH collected road condition parameters to train a neural network to identify damaged and degraded roads in the UK strategic road network. 

ESA Global Development Assistance (GDA) ESA GDA Climate Resilience initiative aims to leverage the full potential of EO satellite technology for accelerating the impact of international development assistance efforts. Telespazio UK carried out climate data provision and tool development in close collaboration with International Financial Institutions such as the World Bank and Asian Develop.

WASCIA: delivery of high-quality Water Stress and Climate Indices through an easy-to-use web interface to help the management of drought and water stress in Africa.

Telespazio UK is currently focusing on Climate Services; Sustainability projects; and Government data deliver and platform development.

Climate Risk Index for Industry (CRII): development of a tool enabling analysis of the changing climate and extreme weather events, supporting climate mitigation and adaptation activities in addition to supporting companies in making climate risk assessments and disclosures.

EOCIS AIP Wildfire Risk: build on the already well-established Fire Weather Index (FWI), providing users with additional information on fire event intensity and emissions using EO data, identifying future high-risk areas for appropriate action in their future planning.

Data Service platform (DSP3) for the Department of Environment, Framing and Rural Affairs (DEFRA):

The DSP is a national service, internationally accessed which makes data from environmental, animal and plant health, farming, biosecurity to live flood data from Defra group organisations, available to the public. Supports the UK government’s National Data Strategy and implements the Data Standards Authority best practice by providing standard compliant discovery metadata for environmental data.

Telespazio’s new DSP service, has moved Defra into the most sustainable data centres internationally, with the best reliability and security credentials and ensures Defra group are providing a scalable service which supports the volume of consumers in a sustainable way.

Role in project 

Telespazio UK main responsibilities are further development of proprietary Earth Observation products for critical infrastructures health monitoring and delivery of EO based datasets to assess the structural health of assets and surrounding environment, contributing to decision making for Nature Based Solutions (NbS) in selected areas of interest in Europe.

Telespazio UK brings expertise in InSAR interferometry through Satellite Structural Health Monitoring (S-SHM) and monitoring of linear infrastructures to assess critical infrastructures for the project's purpose. TPZ-UK leads Task 2.4, while also providing contributions to WP3, WP4, and WP6.

Telespazio UK engages with other partners through periodical meetings, workshops and contribution with knowledge and data analysis expertise in Earth Observation approaches for critical infrastructure monitoring before and after NbS are put in place for mitigation and adaptation to climate change.

The team

Maria de Farago Botella

Current Position: Senior Consultant, Project and Technical manager
Educational Background: Geologist (Bsc) specialised in Geological Mapping (Msc), Earth Observation (Msc) and Sustainability and Adaptation (Msc). More than 25 years working in the Earth Observation sector mas a technical and business development leader
Responsibilities in the project: Project manager and contributions to WP6

Erlinda Biescas

Current Position: Senior consultant
Educational Background: Mathematics degree at Universitat de Barcelona; MPhil/DEA in Aerospace Science and Technology at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya; PRINCE2 Foundation and Practitioner in Project Management.
Relevant work experience: Mathematician with twenty years’ experience in the satellite radar geo-information sector; working in a Research Institute focused on algorithm for InSAR processing and eleven years working in industry as leader in InSAR products
Responsibilities in the project: Technical manager coordinating further development of Satellite Structural Health Monitoring (S-SHM) for the asset level and the linear infrastructure monitoring in the regional level with InSAR datasets

Frauke Diehl

Current Position: Head of GI sales and marketing
Educational Background: Msc in Environmental Remote Sensing and Bsc Environmental science
Relevant work experience: 20 years’ experience in business development for Geospatial and Imagery markets, serving commercial, defence, government and educational sector
Responsibilities in the project: Business development lead contributing to the UK market knowledge