The European Space Agency (ESA) has launched the EO Clinic (Earth Observation Clinic), a rapid-response mechanism for small-scale and exploratory uses of satellite EO information in support of a wide range of projects and activities specific to International Development. The EO Clinic consists of “on-call” technically pre-qualified teams of EO service suppliers and satellite remote sensing experts in ESA member states. They are ready to help development projects with a comprehensive range of skills and experience in terms of geospatial product generation and analysis, based on a large variety of satellite data.
This activity is also an opportunity to explore more innovative EO products related to developing or improving methodologies for deriving socio-economic and environmental parameters and indicators.
Since March 2019 and until at least end-2022, the EO Clinic is open to support requests by key development banks and agencies. The support teams are ready to meet the short delivery timescales often required by the development sector, targeting a maximum of 3 months from request to solution.
Are you an International Development professional considering a request for support from the EO Clinic? Send us a message to express your interest. Also, download our EO Clinic Requester Questionnaire!
Thematic Areas Covered
The EO Clinic support is provided in any of the following thematic areas:
- Agriculture
- Climate Change
- Coastal Zone Management
- Disaster Risk Management
- Energy and Natural Resources
- Forestry
- Marine Environment Management
- Transport
- Urban
- Water Resources Management
- Non-EO Information and Analytics (innovative/speculative higher-level products testing the combination of EO and non-EO data, e.g. in-situ, socio-economic etc.)
How It Works
- Interested development banks and agencies fill in the Requester Questionnaire and send it to eo_clinic@esa.int.
- Incoming requests are scrutinised by ESA. A decision is made if worth pursuing, based on the following criteria:
- degree to which the project covers key areas of international development and the stakeholders’ long-term programmatic interests
- potential for follow-on activities and expansion of the usage of EO information inside the requesting institution and their clients
- balance and diversity of the thematic areas and their geographic coverage
- volume of required work and cost of the necessary EO input data, in light of the available budget (typically no more than 40 k€ per request, including labour and data costs)
- suitability of European space assets and EO missions to meet the requirements of the Bank request.
- Based on the questionnaire and further discussions with the requester ESA drafts a Request for Proposals (RFP) and releases it to the pre-qualified teams. The teams submit short proposals to address the requester’s issues, with a submission deadline that can be as short as 3 weeks.
- ESA selects the best proposal (based on predefined criteria and general ESA procurement rules) and if necessary, negotiations are done.
- ESA releases a formal WO (Work Order) to the winner team and work starts against a set deadline (typically 6 weeks).
- Team delivers the results including documentation to ESA and requester.
- Requesters evaluate the delivered material together with the team during the 3 months following delivery.
Institutions We Work With
Recent EO Clinic Activations
Our Service Providers
