SAP and ESA have done this by combining Hana with ESA‘s accurate, timely, and easily accessible Earth observation data, especially from the Copernicus program.
At TechEd Barcelona, reinsurance company Munich Re showcases its use of the Earth Observation Analysis service for gaining insights and predicting potential future impact from historic and current data.
“Every year, wildfires affect nature, people, their homes and businesses,” said Andreas Siebert, Head of Geospatial Solutions, Munich Re. “While the progress of a fire itself is hard to predict, this new service from SAP, leveraging satellite data from ESA allows us to accurately calculate costs and risks related to wildfires and even gain insights into the future probability of wildfires. This will help us to keep costs down for our clients.”
Focusing on speed and ease of use
The Earth Observation Analysis service provides a standardized interface for quick, easy consumption of detailed analytics and clusters them according to customer needs. Government agencies and companies active in all industries, from insurance and reinsurance to mill products, mining, utilities, and retail, can leverage the application programming interface (API) delivered through the Earth Observation Analysis service.
Based on continuous access to historical and real-time satellite data from around the world, they can make improved business decisions concerning elementary industry-specific questions. Questions may include where to place new power lines, where to build a new store or when to harvest crops. Ultimately, the service helps business users and data scientists reduce the complexity of obtaining reliable insights.
“Our partnership with ESA paves the way to a new field of geospatial business applications, making it possible to close the gap between traditional Earth observation and a digitalized business world,” said Dr. Carsten Linz, Business Development Officer and Global Head, Center for Digital Leadership, SAP. “That opens a bright future for space-related applications, such as digital farming, gas pipeline management, and the improved planning of smart cities.”
Josef Aschbacher, Director, Earth Observation, ESA, said, “The European Sentinel satellites are the largest providers of Earth observation data worldwide. A major challenge is to convert this fantastic data into customer-specific information.”
ESA will benefit from the in-memory computing power of the Hana platform to make Earth observation data consumable both through the newly available Earth Observation Analysis service as well as in urban and environmental use cases or even beyond in the future.
Free Testing through December 2016
The Earth Observation Analysis service can be tested at no cost in a nonproductive environment here from Nov. 8 until Dec. 31, 2016. The service is planned to be generally available in the first quarter of 2017. It will then be offered with a consumption-based pricing model that depends on the number of API calls.
A set of related microservices, also powered by Hana, will help entrepreneurs, partners, customers and businesses augment and build highly flexible solutions based on Hana and Earth observation data from ESA in the future. SAP and ESA intend to continue their collaboration in developing solutions and technologies based on SAP technology that leverages geospatial information.
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