Mayday.ai and ConstellR – two German companies pioneering technological developments in the areas of risk and disaster management and agricultural monitoring, are joining forces. The partnership will allow Mayday users to benefit from a higher spatial and temporal resolution. This higher performance product will be critical for disrupting the highly reactive nature of disaster management and will allow for deeper insights in reducing climate change disaster risks.
In light of the latest COP26 EU €100m pledge and other member state contributions to the Adaptation Fund – the highest single mobilization to the Fund yet – this partnership builds on the acknowledgment that risk-informed strategies and action need to be anchored on the best available climate and disaster risk analytics.
Mayday.ai is a German-based provider of real-time risk and disaster intelligence. Mayday’s platform provides early warning and a common operating picture – that is, the aggregation of multiple disparate data layers into a single ‘source of truth’ – in real-time for all users in the disaster management ecosystem. The service covers multiple disasters, all phases of disaster management, and all geographical regions. The solution runs on real-time earth observation and ancillary data, ranging from social media and news to traffic data and ground-based imaging. This data is distilled through Mayday’s industry-first innovations and its proprietary AI fusion engine, enabling dynamic modelling with high levels of accuracy and granularity
ConstellR, a space company based in Freiburg, Germany, is pioneering the use of satellite-based thermal infrared imagery for the optimisation of high-precision agriculture, crop health monitoring, yield, and supply chain management. Using land surface temperature as the key indicator, ConstellR’s monitoring service uses evapotranspiration as a fundamental measure of crop water need; this provides critical input for irrigation and yield monitoring practices. The company has developed a patent-pending microsatellite technology that allows the agricultural supply chain to mitigate potential crop losses based on symptoms of stress long before irreversible damage occurs, unlike current monitoring technology; and to better plan and manage trading and logistics activities.
In disaster management, latency is key. With the availability of high-resolution thermal information in very short time frames comes a vast host of applications waiting to be explored, from a volcano and earthquake monitoring to underwater oil pipeline leak detection and importantly, disaster precursors such as pre-analysis of dry soil which increase the chances of avoiding certain types of disasters altogether. Whilst risk and disaster profiles can be diverse, informed and timely action is key for all stakeholders; those providing a first response, international policy
Higher granularity thermal data from ConstellR’s constellation will provide an additional, live, measure of risk, allowing Mayday to drive disaster management from reactive and recovery to a more preemptive and preventive approach, helping reduce extremely high associated costs and leveraging greater resilience, particularly in the context of climate change and risk; water stress and conflict, wildfire and urban heat and disease management.
This new alliance fuses ConstellR’s upstream heritage and downstream data processing capabilities with Mayday’s downstream AI-enabled data fusion competencies. It will allow Mayday to provide an enriched offer for customers: higher spatial resolution and a quicker and more complete operating picture, as well as to further drive its work to shift to what it calls the next generation of disaster management. With their combined technology, the two companies are helping democratize pertinent disaster intelligence where it is most needed, supporting the implementation of the UNDRR’s Sendai Risk Framework and complementing Mayday’s ongoing work to introduce a new dynamic risk score based on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Sendai Risk Framework globally
“We are delighted with this German partnership. The high spatial resolution imagery provided by ConstelIR will complement our existing EO sources. It will also further enhance our agnostic AI fusion engine’s capabilities, as we bring in our real-time disaster and risk intelligence solutions to various partners globally” Kian Mirshahi, CEO and Founder of Mayday.ai
“We are impressed by the analytical performance of the platform such as the sub-pixel detection accuracy of wildfires from geostationary orbit. On the one hand, we immediately saw the benefit of integrating our data to improve existing capabilities. On the other hand, we believe in transferring this approach to other sectors such as agriculture to improve analytical data products for which the current resolution might not be sufficient.” Dr. Max Gulde, CEO and Co-founder of ConstellR.
