May 2018

Recently, Sat-Drones, a women minority-owned business, with a mission to develop innovative geospatial satellite-drone products for the improvement of human welfare, partnered with Esri® as an Emerging Business partner in the Esri Startup Program. Esri, the global market leader in geographic information system (GIS) software , selected the company into the three-year program to support Sat-Drones in bringing new and innovative products to Esri customers.

Amid the competitive drone evolution, in 2016, Dr. Lucia Lovison-Golob, a world-renowned geospatial expert, launched Sat-Drones, an innovative software engineering company to develop tools to foster geospatial data and services acquisition; harmonization; and analysis among several data from space, air, land, water, ocean, and society in general. In today’s drone and sensor technological evolution and environmental change, there is a constant need for faster and improved accurate data solution providers. Sat-Drones strives to provide timely and precise data, through innovative technology by integrating imagery coming from satellites and drones with other observations. Sat-Drones arose from the need of managing and analyzing data and imagery. The company provides customized software to integrate satellite, drone, and statistical data. With their proprietary algorithm, they provide higher quality and metadata and offer geospatial analytics that will allow end users to execute accurate, real-time, and cost-effective decisions. The partnership between Sat-Drones and Esri will help support better geospatial services and data.

The market currently provides data from drones, and/or geospatial data, but no company provides comprehensive and/or tailored solutions to the specific end-user for seamless cost-effective decisions. Oftentimes, the end user does not have the resources to quickly interpret and analyze data to make the best-informed decision. Sat-Drones, with the partnership of Esri, aims to provide timely, custom-driven software solutions.

• In today’s drone and sensor technological evolution and environmental change, there is a constant need for faster and improved accurate data solution providers.
• Sat-Drones arose from the need of managing and analyzing data and imagery.
• Sat-Drones with Esri’s partnership will be a one-stop shop solution.

Sat-Drones has expertise in:

• Geospatial analysis and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) design.
• Web GIS, data services integration, remote sensing, and related topics.
• Algorithm development on data interoperability within satellite systems and drones.
• Experience in satellite system engineering supporting missions at different space agencies.

Sat-Drones is engaged in the application of drone and satellite technology for agriculture management, disaster response, environmental monitoring, energy monitoring, STEM/STEAM programs, mining management, and human trafficking. In all these areas, Esri has vast experience, therefore Sat-Drones believes that the collaboration will create effective synergies and benefit both companies as well as everyone involved in these fields.

Dr. Lovison-Golob states, “Thanks to the Esri partnership, our products and services will have a proprietary algorithm that is more integrated and will be customizable to each user and needs, providing a one-stop shop solution. Some competitors provide only drone data, others lack data collection through drones, and others lack data integration with other data sources for comprehensive analysis. Most of their products require connectivity and cloud storage, whereas we are integrating space, time, and statistical data from in situ observations, satellites’ optical, lidar, and/or radar data, striving to get higher quality and metadata for every data.”

Dr. Lucia Lovison-Golob’s journey and expertise has crossed continents from Europe and Africa, to the Americas in Chile. She spans from geospatial development to disaster management and risk reduction across different private and public entities. Among awards and recognition are the ‘Medal for Excellence in Geographic Information Science’, granted by Esri in 2002, and the first woman explorer in Italy in 2010 by the Association of Pioneers and Veterans of ENI (Italian National Energy Company). Her achievements have not only been economically beneficially to private enterprises, such as Agip Spa, where she identified gas fields now in production in the Adriatic Sea, but in humanitarian efforts, where she evaluated seismic risk of a major earthquake-stricken area in 1976 in Northeastern Italy.

About Esri

Esri, the global market leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, offers the most powerful mapping and spatial analytics technology available. Since 1969, Esri has helped customers unlock the full potential of data to improve operational and business results. Today, Esri software is deployed in more than 350,000 organizations including the world’s largest cities, most national governments, 75 percent of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri engineers the most advanced solutions for digital transformation, the Internet of Things (IoT), and location analytics to inform the most authoritative maps in the world. Visit us at esri.com

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