In Finland, there is a significant interest in, and usage of Copernicus data and services. Especially, large institutes such as the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) and the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) are actively using Copernicus services and provide new services to the Finnish community and make them available internationally.

Current usage of data and services are for:

  • Development of Earth Observation (EO) methods
  • Development of new operational EO services
  • National Satellite Data Centre providing satellite ground segment and data processing services
  • Copernicus European Space Agency (ESA) Sentinel Collaborative Ground Station

Development of new operational EO services

  • Snow and Ice services in Arctic (Atmospheric phenomena and their interaction with biosphere and cryosphere, Snow covered area, Snow water equivalent, Seasonal frost / thaw, Permafrost, Sea ice cover, Hydrology)
    • Copernicus Global Land Service Cryosphere products
    • BALTIC Sea Ice Monitoring
    • Flood Monitoring
  • Copernicus Land monitoring services in Finland
  • Air Quality
  • Forestry
  • Real Estate
  • Smart City
  • Smart Mobility
  • UV-Radiation and Forecasting
  • Climate services
  • Environmental services
  • Providing satellite image services
  • Analysis Ready Data services.

Main areas of interest of the potential users of EO services in Finland

On basis of the research conducted in the BalticSatApps project, there were 27 different domains of interests identified in Finland in terms of EO usage. Most of the users were interested in Land (127), then Marine (48), Climate (34) and Environment (27) applications. From those interested in Land, 28 were from Institutes. Potential startups were mostly interested in Environment (4) and Mapping (3). The need and service demand of their interests are grouped as follows:

  • Redistribute of Copernicus services
  • Provide value added services to a third party
  • Own use for project, work, research etc.
  • For a specific application or use case
  • Learn about Copernicus programme as no / very little knowledge (approximately – % 20).

Future usage of EO data and services in Finland

In the future, it most likely that the potential usage of data and services will continue the current usage listed above, as it already covers quite wide area of applications. There will more demand on using Copernicus data and services in future, and as a result of this demand, there will be more service providers with new innovative EO methods. We will also see more usage on Analysis Ready Data Services as users do not have competencies of Remote Sensing. We also see more future usage on areas like agriculture, energy, tourism, natural hazards and extreme weather events.

Validity of results

In order to achieve the results we conducted the following tasks:

  • Gathered end-user needs from EO industry
  • Categorised and sort gathered needs
  • Assessed needs and made a gap analysis
  • Listed existing EO services with their categorization and potential sectors / domains where EO services needed
  • Provided all knowledge as EO innovations challenges to be developed within the BalticSatApps project.

We prepared two surveys with questions to gather end-user needs from EO industry. We collected the answers to the surveys via (1) online forms (2) hard copy forms from the events organized or participated. The Finnish survey respondents represented different user categories as follows:

  • Company – 72 users
  • Institutes (mostly research) – 171 users
  • Municipality – 6 users
  • Startups – 6 users
  • Potential startups – 13 users.