GSA Space for Being Safe & Healthy Challenge

In the last few weeks, the COVID-19 virus outbreak has gone global and poses a serious threat to world’s health. Therefore, GSA is looking for solutions using downstream space data (e.g. Galileo/EGNOS and/or Copernicus) as key enablers to develop innovative applications that will help stem the spread of the novel COVID-19 virus.

Finalists

Stay tuned! One of these finalists will become the GSA Space for Being Safe & Healthy Challenge winner!

Seamless Positioning in GNSS & GNSS-denied environments
When firefighters arrive at a burning building, they gear up and go in in spite of the uncertainty regarding their positions once they are inside. To give first responders the lifeline they deserve, Epic Blue has developed a highly reliable, AI-based positioning wearable called Shyn. Shyn is a next-generation indoor-outdoor positioning solution whose design has been driven by first responders themselves.
It performs positioning without imposing a fixed and costly localisation infrastructure. The Shyn wearable is fit for purpose for the harshest settings and has thus attracted growing interest from mining operations, police departments, and security experts who also face GNSS-denied environments.
Moreover, Shyn is also compatible with broader markets. It revolutionises how industry can ensure personnel safety and health while also driving the digital transformation of professional tasks.
The accuracy and robustness of Galileo plays a crucial role in this solution. The Shyn engine needs good positioning reference points, in particular when a person is entering GNSS-denied environments. In the initial versions of the product, the Galileo Open Service will be used.

Michael Ilsbroux

Panda for Diabetes
Around 463 million people worldwide live with diabetes – that’s one in every 11 adults. On top of that, 1.1 million children and adolescents are affected by type-1 diabetes, and that number is expected to grow by 50% within the next decade. In Europe alone, 44 million patients suffer from this disease, and their treatment weighs on the continent’s health systems to the tune of EUR 130 billion.
There is no cure for diabetes; it can only be managed and contained with the right medication and an appropriate lifestyle.
This solution will help rethink diabetes management with an app that combines all the relevant patient data and puts it into context. Based on GNSS data, it provides individual insights into the patient’s life in order to derive suitable recommendations and therapies.
Existing apps either focus on insulin dosage or the manual acquisition and provision of information. A timely, patient-specific feedback system is needed that integrates all sorts of data on the patient and refines it to identify foods habits, routines, and events that can impact the daily course of the disease.

Tatjana Weiss

Terraincure Telehealth App
The growing population of recovered COVID-19 patients will need a helping hand to restore their health and resume their daily lives and jobs. Unfortunately, after battling the virus, 30% of recovered patients have been diagnosed with respiratory disorders and 10% with circulatory disorders, while 10% of asymptomatic patients still have long-term effects.
Fortunately, there is a method of rehabilitating and strengthening the circulatory and respiratory system with a successful track record dating back to the mid-19th century: Terraincure.
Terraincure enables users to walk on rough terrain with gradual increases in distance and elevation. It is popular at the Alpine resorts of Germany, Austria, France, and Italy, and should ideally be used in areas unaffected by environmental pollution.
The concepts of mass air travel and health tourism are sure to change. Besides, not everyone can or wants to go to the Alps, so patients suffering from cardiovascular, respiratory, and muscular disorders caused by COVID-19 or other infections (as well as elderly and people affected by obesity) will need rehabilitation under medical supervision right where they live.
Through joint use of GNSS, DEM, and inertial navigation from wearable devices (which will be supplemented by data from the Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service), this system will calculate the best route for the strongest rehabilitation effect while offering a comprehensive real-time picture of the ecological purity of a given area.

Oleksandr Tugayev

Challenge

Galileo/EGNOS provide georeferenced data, information with high temporal and spatial resolution, high availability and quality, whereas Copernicus offers information services based on Earth observation (EO) to monitor our atmosphere, land, marine, climate change and emergency management.

Space data offers huge potential to support the fight against such new health-threatening viruses as COVID-19. GSA is calling for solutions that are expected to help public authorities to monitor and analyse such emergency situations and to increase awareness amongst citizens about viruses like COVID-19.

Prizes 2020

Cash Prize

Cash prize worth EUR 10.000

Extra EUR 10,000 Cash Prize if your concept gets selected as Galileo Masters 2020 Overall Winner

Additional Prize

Chance to win one of six tailored Galileo Incubation prizes worth up to EUR 62,000 each

Additional Prize

Criteria

Submissions to the GSA Space for Being Safe & Healthy Challenge will be assessed using the following criteria:

Innovation

Innovative approach over existing technical solutions and commercial services

Relevance

Use of Galileo/EGNOS and/or Copernicus differentiators, data & services

Market potential

Considerable contribution to uptake in one of the various satellite downstream market segments

Benefit

Commercial and societal benefits along the entire value chains for market players, society and the end users

About the Partners

European GNSS Agency (GSA)

The European GNSS Agency (GSA), a European Union agency, is working with the European Commission on a range of activities aimed at helping European entrepreneurs and businesses – especially high-tech small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), research institutes and related networks – build their applications using the positioning, navigation and timing data delivered by Galileo and EGNOS. www.gsa.europa.eu