29 May 2024 – London – Earth-i is pleased to announce ESA has agreed to extend their support of the GAINS contract. The original GAINS project, part-funded by ESA, was successfully completed in Q2 2023, and the GAINS service then entered its commercial operations phase. In October 2023, Earth-i was awarded the present contract extension, again part-funded by ESA, to add three specific evolutions that customers were very keen to see added to the baseline GAINS service add-ons including:
- monitoring of scrap steel stockpiles
- monitoring of pollution caused by steel production
- providing a more granular level of information on activity at each steel smelting site
Current users of GAINS include the owners and operators of steel mills; physical traders of steel and derived products; commodity and equity traders; investment banks and funds involved in financing the sector; companies in the steel supply chain including scrap steel recyclers; market research firms; government departments and industry regulators involved in monitoring the steel industry and its environmental impact. Each group of users has different needs and priorities, but the key ones are summarised here.
- Timely access to global steel supply chain information, at reasonable cost
- Access to raw material stockpile information that is not publicly available
- Understanding of steel production levels in order to understand market price movement
- Ability to assess whether a site is actively producing steel or not
- Understanding of the environmental impact of the steel production industry
- Ability to verify industrial impact claims made by steel smelter operators
The GAINS service focuses on providing high-frequency activity indicators in the steel supply chain by proactively monitoring and tracking the inferred levels of activity at numerous globally distributed industrial sites and supply chain locations. The inferred activity levels are correlated with complementary data sources such as market trading data and available published data on production from each site, as well as publicly accessible information such as news feeds, company press releases and trading statements. The specific information made available to customers is a temporal graphical plot of the level of activity detected at each industrial site that can be aggregated up at a province, country, regional or global level.
GAINS Data Fusion Platform
GAINS implements a mix of very-high, high, medium and low resolution Earth Observation data. The initial service is based predominantly on optical satellites and their datasets, and will then be expanded using additional satellite data sources such as high-resolution radar, thermal and hyperspectral as these become more widely and cheaply available.
The advantage of using satellite data is that it is not subject to the censorship or bias of national governments or the commercial companies operating the steel mills or involved in the steel supply chain. GAINS is therefore able to offer an independent, verifiable source of information based on satellite remote sensing. This is particularly valuable in geographies where other sources of information are limited.
About Earth-i:
Earth-i is a geospatial intelligence company using machine learning, artificial intelligence and Earth Observation data to provide unique and relevant insights, derived from diverse geospatial data, that deliver clear decision advantage for businesses, governments and other organisations.
Earth-i provides advanced analytics using automated interpretation of a range of geospatial Earth Observation data sources including colour imagery, colour video, infra-red and radar from a range of sources including satellite, drone, aerial and ground-based sensors. This data is fused with additional data sources to extract factual understanding and generate predictive insights across a range of markets such as commodities, supply chain, agriculture, infrastructure and defence.
For more information visit:
Email: info@earthi.co.uk / Website: www.earthi.space / LinkedIn: Earth-i
