Market shares related to the various existing applications - Product and service

From INVESaTWIKI

DATA SOURCES

Source data is a primary defining characteristic of an EO product or service. There are a limited number of instruments available, and each supplies data to different technical specifications and against different commercial arrangements. The extent to which the EO products and services incorporate these data is discussed in the following sections.

Instrument type

Figure 1 illustrates the repartition of marketable EO services in the European market across data types.

Fig.1 Overall repartition of marketable EO services in the European market

Referring to this figure, the optical data services are expected to be more mature, and comprise a larger sector of the EO market than SAR based services, with the Very High Resolution Optical (VHRO) and High Resolution Optical (HRO) data taking the largest market share overall. For the purposes of the survey the instruments were split into three types:

• Optical
• Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)
• Others (e.g. atmospheric sensors)

Optical data sources were further broken down into:

• Very High Resolution Optical (VHRO) (<5m),
• High Resolution Optical (HRO) (<50m)
• Medium Resolution Optical (MRO) (>50m).

Examples of missions offering the data sources are given in table Table 1. This list is by no means exhaustive and serves only to illustrate the data sources available from ESA and from other agencies.

Table 1 Example data sources

For each of their declared products or services, the VACs (Value-Adding Company) were asked to identify the main instrument sources from which they use data. It was possible for the VACs to declare the use of more than one source for each offering. Figure 2 shows the number of products and services that use each instrument type Class 1 added-value products only.

Fig.2 Instrument sources

Before to proceed, it is necessary to isolate added-value products and services from the other activities carried out by the VAC community. This will allow analysis to be carried out consistently for a common group of products and services for which valid comparisons and consistency checks can be made.
Six service types were offered to the respondents. The companies then chose which applied to their service. More than one type could be selected. The types are shown in Table 2

Table 2 Service type descriptions

This distribution is used to distinguish the ‘true’ value-added services from other complementary offerings. Extracting those offered as “customised”, “integrated/turnkey” or “standard” isolates those products or services that have a significant value added component. Products and services that include one or more of these three value-adding service types are focused on for the purposes of the following investigations. These value-added services will be referred to as Class 1 from hereon. The basic services that do not include at least one of these service types will be referred to as Class 2.

• Class 1 products – Those that include one or more of the “customised”, “integrated” or “standard” service types as part of their definition. Number of Class 1 products in survey – 162.
• Class 2 products – Those that do not include any of the above service types, i.e. services including one or several of “data”, “software” and “training”, but none of the the “customised”, “integrated” or “standard” service types. Number of Class 2 products in survey – 27.

Now, the single/multiple instrument sources are broken down into three categories (see Figure 3):

• Single instrument type: Only one data range was selected.
• >1 instrument within type: Services that use only optical, only SAR or only ‘other’ data, but use more than one of the instrument ranges or sources listed, i.e. combinations of ‘VHRO and MRO’ or ‘SAR ESA and SAR non-ESA’.
• >1 type in combination: Multiple optical, SAR or other instruments’ data in a single offering were declared, e.g. ‘MRO and SAR’ or ‘SAR and Other’.

Fig.3 Class 1 instrument source breakdown

Observations

• • Majority of products and services utilise a range of data sources. Only 17% use just one instrument source.
  • Approximately half of the declared products combine data from different instrument families.

Of the 162 Class 1 products and services declared, 76 make some use of SAR data:

• • 18 of these used SAR data as their sole source
  • a further 10 utilised SAR and ‘other’ data sources
  • another 48 utilised both optical and SAR data.

What percentage of data do VACs use from the different suppliers? The responses are analysed against the companies’ EO revenues, to estimate differences in absolute values and allow cross-comparison, and the results are shown in Figure 4.

Fig.4 Data usage by source

Observations

• • ESA missions were chosen as a data source 163 times out of 435 selections (37%) yet when considered in terms of volume, ESA missions account for just 20% of data used.

Finally, for each service it was asked whether alternative instruments were available to provide data in the event of supply failure. This would allow us to identify whether supply side issues are likely to be a problem with respect to service availability (see Figure 5).

Fig.5 Availability of alternative EO instruments

Observations

• • Nearly a third of products and services have no alternative source of data, so are reliant on the availability of data from a particular instrument.

Analysis and interpretation

This analysis has shown that optical data is the majority source for current EO products and services. Even for those products using SAR data, two thirds combine this with optical data in the creation of the end-user deliverable. Resolution of optical data is improving and sub 50m resolution is available from a number of suppliers, whilst ESA is not currently active in this field.
The fact that the majority of products and services use data from multiple sources suggests that the VACs must contribute value by combining disparate data into a credible single deliverable. It also suggests that they are having to deal with many data providers and so their supply chain is becoming more complex.
Analysis in Figure 4 Data usage by source, tells us that whilst ESA data makes a valued contribution to EO products, volume data is being purchased from other commercial operators, with SpotImage being the largest supplier identified in this sample.
On average, each product draws data from three sources. Whilst we expect the final deliverable to be presented in a way that is easily used by the end customer, there is either a lot of effort and/or sophistication involved in producing the product. So although a delivered product may not be seen as complex, the work done to get to that stage is.
The more complex a product’s supply chain and production methods, the more vulnerable the product becomes to failures in the process. With respect to data supply, this is clearly shown in Figure 5 where almost a third of products have no alternative if one of their data supplies fails. This is a risk which the VACs have little or no influence over. [1]

References

[1] P.Curtis, F.Knops
"The state & health of the european and canadian EO service industry".