As space research becomes more commercialized, it is also gaining relevance for financial services. Kristina Tamane from the University of Edinburgh told finews.com where the opportunities in space lie for financial companies.

Space research is no longer confined to space agencies or to the departments of national research institutions.

Over the past few years, companies have discovered ways to extract commercial value out of the space data already available to the public, while also sending their own self-built mini satellites to space to gather data they can sell to others.

 SAR Radars

Imagery from so-called synthetic-aperture radars, which can operate through clouds and produce easily recognizable earth-bound images in almost real-time, is one example of how the private sector has capitalized on existing technology while distributing and propagating it at the same time.

When business development lead of Edinburgh University’s Space Innovation hub, Kristina Tamane, speaks at the UK-Swiss Financial Services Exchanges conference in Zurich this Thursday, she will be telling Swiss financial companies how insights from space can help their businesses.

Although she admits that the financial industry is still «discovering what the opportunities in this field are,» in the UK she has experienced fintechs using Earth observation data, among other purposes, for climate change mitigation.

Beyond Climate 

These involve using satellites to gather information on biodiversity, tracking sea ice and monitoring greenhouse gas emissions. Beyond climate-change-related uses, examples from other sectors could indicate additional ways financial companies can leverage space intelligence.

UK Councils, for example, are using Earth observation data to identify the size of buildings in order to attribute business taxes to residents.

Similarly, insurance companies could also use space data to verify policy holders’ statements in regard to how many cars they have and where these are parked, she said.

Essentially, «space can offer cold and objective ongoing historical datasets that we reliably know will be there in the future. This is where the opportunity lies,» Tamane said, adding that the beauty of the data is that everything you do is scalable, «because you have the whole world to play with.»

Scotland in the Lead

Scotland is leading in the field of space data research «there are more satellites being manufactured in Glasgow than any other city outside California,» Tamane said.

Not only does the University of Edinburgh boast having the second-fastest university supercomputer on campus, according to Tamane, its artificial intelligence school is world-leading and second only to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The supercomputer gives researchers the ability to ingest a very large amount of data from different sources and to analyze it. «Having this infrastructure and expertise allows our scientists to do something different that other places can’t,» she said.

Universities as Partners

With all their competence at hand, «universities have a big role to play in finding out how the industry can apply the data,» part of which is understanding the challenges that financial companies face, she said. 

Feedback from the sector so far is that financial companies «don’t know what they don’t know. So it is a case of providing education, showcasing what the opportunities could be and most importantly, starting the conversation,» Tamane said.

*Finews.com is acting as a media partner for the UK-Swiss Financial Services Exchange