ALAPPUZHA: The Global Earth Observation Centre of Excellence (GECOE) coming up in Kerala will revolutionise weather data gathering system and boost sectors such as aviation, agriculture and research.
Santhosh Kurup, the CEO of ICT Academy and special officer of the Space Park project, said the Orbital Micro System (OMS), which inked an MoU last week, had agreed to discounted pricing for Kerala startups and free services to government in emergency and post-disaster scenario. “The GECOE is expected to start functioning in a couple of months,” he told DC.
OMS is a world leader in the field of weather data aggregation and advanced instrumentation for small satellite missions and analysis-ready earth data intelligence platforms. It’s developed widespread primary as well as secondary sources to accumulate data in connection with precipitation, humidity and temperature.
It has developed EO technology that has proven to deliver highly accurate and well-defined weather data. The EO technology is expected to be a game changer in the system of Kerala’s weather data gathering especially in the era of climate change.
Proving the ability of the technology, the company recently opened International Centre for Earth Data (ICED) in Edinburgh, UK, which processes data from numerous private and public EO sources, making it ready for analysis by customers often within minutes of observation.
GECOE will have access to OMS data scientists and analysis-ready data-sets through the ICED platform, giving entities operating in the SpacePark a strong foundation for building competitive offerings.
OMS, Mr Kurup says, will ensure that the sources are continuously monitored and quality checked to make the high quality of data available. This data will also be provided to startups and any other data analytics organisation. It could be for insurance or marketing companies or government for weather based inputs for issuing timely alerts.
According to William Hosack, the CEO of OMS, the main aim of the company is to make available infrastructure to access a whole lot of data in various fields as the developing countries lack such a system.
"The GECOE will carry out extensive research in the field of agriculture gathering first-hand information from local farmers and like-minded people since OMS provides inputs for farming and transportation," says Mr Hosack.
The MoU comes after recently-concluded 'Huddle Kerala 2019', one of Asia's largest congregations of startups organised by the Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM). The GECOE will be set up with the support of KSUM at the Technopark in Thiruvananthapuram.
