Inside BlockStart programme – a look back from Latitudo 40

Latitudo 40 has created the easiest and fastest platform to turn satellite imagery into geospatial information to support everyday decisions.

As part of their journey on BlockStart’s Acceleration Programme, as an SME adopter, they were looking for new opportunities for collaboration with technology providers of DLT/blockchain solutions that could improve their business. This is the testimonial of their experience in our programme.

In one paragraph, what is Latitudo 40?

Latitudo40 is a space startup that uses automation, new machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms to analyse the earth through satellite images. We have developed a Unified Data Analytics platform that merges satellite data with data from sensors and processes to create a powerful decision support tool. Our goal is to bring the use of space images and technologies into the application domain of not-space-users.

What is Latitudo 40 passionate about achieving?

We started from an idea and a vision, that of making the use of remote sensing in everyday business processes quick and easy. Over the past two years we have worked hard, with a team of 8 people in addition to the founder, to simplify the complexity. Today we can say that we have partially achieved our result, we have acquired large and small clients in Italy and Europe. The next step is scalability in the international market and a new adventure in sustainable and resilient cities. In 2020 we launched the Urbalytics project to create a dashboard at the service of cities and citizens to monitor the quality of life in cities through an index of our own design. By combining data on urbanization, greenery, pollution and heat bubbles, we want to give a new tool to plan urban investments and to allow citizens to better know the territory in which they live.

Can you tell us why you have decided to apply to BlockStart’s Call for end-user SMEs?

When we looked at the Blockstart call, we thought this could be a great opportunity for us. For some time now, our team has been thinking about how to integrate DLT solutions into our process to offer an innovative solution for specific markets (agriculture and insurance). Through this call we had the opportunity to learn about very innovative solutions in terms of applying blockchain and DLT to business processes. Applying as an SME end-user has allowed us to overcome technological and knowledge barriers and to start a new relationship with Rexs.io

Innovation through DLT in Earth observations (EO) make possible #exible, low-cost and distributed ownership of satellites and the data they produce by non-pro!t community groups, NGOs, and individuals. This new economic model could provide much more accessible, fast and low cost remote sensing data, universal broadband communications, and remote machines: a space-based, shared infrastructure connecting physical, digital and biological spheres for the 4th industrial revolution on a truly global scale. The application of DLT could remove some barriers relating to access to data by improving e”ciency in data handling, and improving the ability to manage voluminous transactions, potentially leading to cost reductions in various areas. The combination of crowd-funded space-based broadband access and blockchain technologies could also allow stakeholders in areas with weak banking, universal broadband communication and/or legal infrastructures to participate in global markets.

What major challenges have you faced during the implementation/testing of BlockStart’s blockchain-based solution?

The use of a ready-made and validated solution, such as the one integrated with the support of Rexs.io, has allowed us to accelerate the integration process, reducing development time and overcoming our barriers of knowledge and familiarity with the technology. We believe that a company, and even more so a startup, does not have to work hard to develop everything in-house, but must be able to find the most appropriate and flexible solutions to achieve business and technological objectives. Our team is focused on developing image and data analysis algorithms and optimizing the performance of neural networks, and to integrate blockchain solutions we had to expand the team with new professionals. The collaboration with Rexs.io has been very positive and fruitful, their technology has allowed us to integrate blockchain into our processing process very quickly and with a very limited effort. The next step is to build a strategic commercial agreement with Rexs.io.

What kind of impact do you think it may bring to your company?

Distributed ledgers are not yet considered to be immediately applicable to space systems operations and EO data exploitation. However this perspective may change rapidly as the technology matures and new examples of the added value of DLTs are progressively revealed. For the EO community the game-changing technologies have thus far been: AI, cloud infrastructure and Big Data applications and analytics. These advances in information technology (IT) have facilitated the paradigm shift in EO known as Space 4.0. There is a questions related to the distributed data access and new digital data standards come into play. The ongoing W3C standardization efforts aim to facilitate the conditions to manage, access, and share these data streams effectively. They could help unlock opportunities from EO integration with IoT and M2M, such as the development of solutions for interoperable data identity structures, the ability to query data, to verify provenance and immutability (proof that data have not been tampered with).

In the future, such new data standards may also enable better handling of decentralised digital identities (DIDs), and may ultimately be a key enabler for the Verifiable Claims Data Model based on blockchain.

At the moment, through access to BlockStart, Latitudo40 could move as a first-mover in this sector, tracing the line for the adoption of technology in the sector, improving competitive positioning and gaining competitive advantage over competitors.

Where do you see your company in 5 years?

This is a fantastic question! Latitudo40 was born from a vision, that of creating something tremendously new with a consolidated technology such as remote sensing. We are trying to innovate the business model, using cloud and artificial intelligence technology to make remote sensing a fundamental tool for any business process. If I have to keep dreaming, I can say that in five years Latitudo40 will be the new Shopify in earth observation.

Want to know more about the blockchain-based solution adopted by Latituto 40?

Visit Rexs.io‘s webspage or watch the video below to learn more about the “Rexs.io” solution implemented by Latitudo 40 in the scope of BlokStart’s 1st Acceleration Programme.

Applications for SME adopters are now closed but a 2nd cut-off will be launched soon

The 1st cut-off of the 2nd Open Call for SME adopters closed on the 2nd of November at 5pm CET (Brussels Time). However, if you are an SME operating in the fields of fintech, ICT and retail and willing to implement DLT/blockchain pilot solutions together with DLT/blockchain startups, that have gone through the BlockStart Acceleration Programme, you can still apply for the 2nd cut-off that we will be launching early next year.

Don’t miss this change and benefit from up to €3,000 equity-free grants for participating in the Pilot stage of our 2nd Acceleration Programme.

Read the Guidelines for Application and our FAQ to ensure you know everything there is to know about BlockStart before applying!