Economy bY spacE (EYE) – Impact of COVID-19 Outbreak on European Economies

ALMA Sistemi Srl awarded another Horizon 2020 project focused on the economic impact of COVID-19 monitored from space.

Space technology combined with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) is one of the most rapidly developing fields of science and also plays a key role in monitoring and controlling disasters such as the COVID-19 outbreak. While space technologies have been successfully applied to a small number of macroeconomic and healthcare-related matters over the last decade, there is still neither a significant utilisation of space assets nor a systematic analysis of requirements for space-based services in this domain.

A significant number of indirect parameters observable from space can be correlated with the impact of natural, health-related (including epidemics), and man-made disasters on the economy. Classical environmental parameters (geographical, climatological and hydrogeological), together with man-induced impacts (such as pollution and heat), can be combined with economic parameters of human activities affected by epidemics, including transportation, industry and commerce. Specific human activities can even be directly correlated with the progression of diseases — for example, the increase in heat detected from crematoriums in affected areas, or from dwellings under lockdown restrictions.

All these observed parameters need to be correlated with macro-parameters related to the evolution of epidemics and their economic impact at different scales. At medium- and long-term time scales, this methodology enables the near real-time monitoring of macroeconomic parameters during recovery phases following the end of the emergency outbreak.

The EYE project intends to propose a pre-operational prototype service based on Copernicus satellite data, automatic image processing supported by AI algorithms, and the integration of statistical and geospatial data into an IT platform. This system will be able to provide econometric and epidemiologic nowcasting and forecasting to assess the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on the economy at different scales (regional, national, European).

The EYE platform is designed as a decision-support tool for public authorities at different levels (national, regional, local, European) as well as for economic operators interested in the assessment and rating of local and national economies. Initially, the service will be targeted to Italy and Spain, the countries most affected by COVID-19 in Europe, with planned extensions to Cyprus and Greece, and the potential to be scaled to the entire European Union and worldwide.

In the images below: Long Beach container yard on February 8th (left) and March 17th, 2020 (right), showing the slowdown in container transportation. The number of containers is one economic parameter that can be used to measure the decline in business activity at Long Beach and potentially derive the impact of lockdown measures on California’s GDP.

Satellite imagery of Long Beach container yard before and during the Covid-19 lockdown, showing redu

Satellite imagery of Long Beach container yard before and during the Covid-19 lockdown, showing redu

EYE Network

• ALMA Sistemi Srl (Italy) – SME – Management, System Integration / IT Platform

• University of Rome “Tor Vergata” (Italy) – Academia – Department of Management and Law, Economic Geography / (macro)economic spatial planning and programming

• Geosystems Hellas (Greece) – SME – Remote Sensing Data Processing / IT Platform

• University of Thessaly (Greece) – Academia – Epidemic Study Department

• Creotec Instrument SA (Poland) – SME – Copernicus Access System, Image Processing and AI Software

• Wroclaw University (Poland) – Academia – Geodesy and Cartography Departments / Spatial Economy Department

• Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) – Academia – Department of Mathematical Analysis and Applied Mathematics / Faculty of Informatics and Economics

• Space Systems Solutions Ltd (Cyprus) – SME – IT Platform

• Cyprus Space Exploration Organisation (CSEO, Cyprus) – Academia – Economy / Data Analytics (including Cyprus International Institute of Management)