GeoVille – a Leader in Satellite-based Land Monitoring
Article

GeoVille – a Leader in Satellite-based Land Monitoring

GeoVille Information Systems and Data Processing GmbH is a high-tech company providing innovative geoinformation solutions to a broad international client base in more than 130 countries worldwide. Its headquarters are situated in Innsbruck, Austria, a location known for its high quality-scaled ICT industry. GeoVille started with the goal to revolutionise the market and has since become an established name for delivering real-world geoinformation solutions that enable clients to get meaningful spatial insights into their businesses.

(This article is brought to you by GeoVille) 

By Maria Lemper, GeoVille Information Systems and Data Processing GmbH, Austria

It all started in 1998 when Christian Hoffmann founded the company with the vision to remap the unknowns of human activities around the world. Years before Google Earth became part of our daily lives, he was already fascinated by watching the Earth and its changes from a bird’s-eye perspective. Thus, the basis was laid for the company that is today one of the leaders in satellite-based land monitoring.

These days the company is internationally recognised for its leading role in the development of innovative Earth observation (EO) services. GeoVille is a true one-stop shop for targeted value-added geoinformation products providing evidence-based decision-making support for many key sectors. “We are definitely very proud to be an independent company that is recognised as one of the leaders in satellite-based land monitoring with a global footprint,” says Dr Christian Hoffmann, CEO of GeoVille. “In the last 20 years, we have established a broad international client base and successfully participated in more than 440 national and international projects. During that time the company has managed to grow in a sustainable way, by combining technical excellence with a profound service and market knowledge.”

Andreas Walli, commercial director, Christian Hoffmann, CEO and Jürgen Weichselbaum, technical director (from left to right).

20 years of excellence in geoinformation solutions

This year the company is celebrating its 20th anniversary with the main focus still being on the monitoring of environmental changes with satellites. From global predictions of crop growth and yield or coastline changes and deforestation in Africa to the evolution of land consumption in Europe, GeoVille constantly provides insights and monitoring solutions for real-world problems, thereby providing timely, comprehensive and accurate information on the ‘where’ and ‘how much’ of land surface dynamics.

GeoVille’s clients range from public authorities, international institutions and NGOs to corporate industry customers in need of reliable operational monitoring solutions with known performance for complex management issues. Especially for its public clients, GeoVille’s data provides the ultimate baseline to evaluate governance options, take actions and control observance.

At present, GeoVille is growing and employs more than 80 international experts and consultants from Europe and the USA, helping clients to perform their daily business efficiently and effectively.

Investing in the future

Ever since its foundation, GeoVille has allocated substantial resources to research, innovation and development in the context of national and international scientific activities to constantly provide answers to emerging challenges. This is a key asset of the company and provides the basis for forward-looking investments, such as the foundation of the Earth Observation Data Center (EODC) in 2014, a public-private partnership for the establishment of the first Sentinel-focused big data storage and processing facility. Through this investment, GeoVille has had a head start on how to employ machine learning techniques and combine EO with non-EO data streams from users to deliver continuous monitoring information solutions. To this end, GeoVille is currently in the process of opening up these technologies via www.landmonitoring.earth, a unique solution providing online access to its back-end production engine. The system is designed along Space 4.0 standards, which in recent years provided the entry point for the production teams to efficiently implement major client solutions such as the European Copernicus Land Monitoring Service products. Experts can specify desired land monitoring data for any place on the globe for any given time period and receive a quality-controlled output within days or even hours, depending on the required coverage and frequency.

GeoVille sees a shift in the demand from classic EO products towards numerical business intelligence services, which is why the company is currently focusing on vertical integration of its services into specialised industries. Just recently the company Geo4Agri B.V. was founded in The Netherlands with the aim of delivering highly specialised EO-based data streams to the agri-food industry to target the value chains surrounding the agricultural sector.

Copernicus High Resolution Layers providing consistent pan-European land cover characteristics derived from high to very-high resolution satellite imagery, including ESA’s Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellites.

GeoVille will continue to develop groundbreaking solutions and products from Earth observation data to provide meaningful insights for its clients. In times where Earth observation is on the brink of a revolution, GeoVille believes that satellites will diversify the understanding of our planet.

Interested to know more? GeoVille is continuously looking for partnerships to create new businesses.

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