For more information on the 20 winning solutions and suppliers, please see the Innovation Catalogue.
“We were surprised and delighted by the huge interest in our competition, the space-based solutions, and this record number of tenders for us”, says the SPACE4Cities Project Coordinator Renske Martijnse-Hartikka of the City of Helsinki Innovation Company, Forum Virium Helsinki. “We are happy to say, the level of innovation is high, and there is a large enthusiasm from the companies to start refining their solutions with us.”
The 20 winners hail from eleven countries, including three from France, Netherlands and Belgium, two from Finland, Italy and Spain; and one from Greece, Portugal, Austria, Hungary and Czech Republic. 85% of the winners are small or medium sized companies (under 250 employees). Thirteen of them address the Urban Planning challenge, eleven focus on Climate Adaptation, and four tackle Sustainable Mobility. Many proposals address multiple challenges, showcasing the interconnected nature of these issues.
Winning companies
The winning companies coordinating the solutions are the following, in alphabetical order:
- ASITIS (Czech Republic)
- Avoin Map (Finland)
- BitaGreen (Belgium)
- CEiiA (Portugal)
- CGI Nederland (Netherlands)
- Detektia (Spain)
- eOnsight (France)
- Everimpact (France)
- Geo Solutions (Belgium)
- GeoVille (Austria)
- Latitudo 40 (Italy)
- Neptune (Italy)
- OPTIM.AIZE (France)
- ORG Urbanism & Architecture (Belgium)
- Paulinyi&Partners Innovations (Hungary)
- Sensar (Netherlands)
- SINGULARLOGIC (Greece)
- Survintel (Netherlands)
- Vexiza (Spain) and
- Zero Gravity (Finland).
Some examples of the solutions’ focus points are the cities’ flood control, water management or wildfire prevention, as well as infrastructure and CO2 monitoring, building emission control, and promotion of active mobility. Some of the companies are experienced in the field of space data, and for others integrating satellite services into tools for cities is rather new. Eleven of the suppliers work alone, while nine have formed a consortium to work on SPACE4Cities.
Funding of up to €376,000 per company
Each winner will receive up to €36,000 funding to create a detailed Solution Design by the end of August 2025. After that, the top 10 Suppliers with the most suitable solutions, will advance to the next phase to develop their concepts into working prototypes by the end of April 2026. This phase will be awarded with up to €90,000 each.
Finally, the best five Suppliers will each have the opportunity to field-test their prototypes in three different European cities during July 2026 – February 2027, with an award of up to €250,000. In other words, the Suppliers selected to continue until the end of the project, will receive funding of a total amount of up to €376,000 each. The top 5 suppliers are expected to further scale up their tested innovations into market-ready solutions, and the SPACE4Cities Buyers Group Cities – Helsinki, Amsterdam, Athens, Ghent and Guimaraes – will help to open up the market for them.
Objective from Space – Enhancing Europe’s Resilience
SPACE4Cities is an innovation initiative that aims to increase the resilience of European cities by providing replicable solutions for dynamic urban planning, environmental change preparedness and adaptation. The project seeks to boost the utilization of European satellite data and the growth of European space technology companies, thereby enhancing Europe’s self-reliance. The core idea of the pre-commercial procurement project is to deliver highly innovative and scalable solutions, ensuring rapid development and roll-out, based on the true needs of cities.
Space data and services will contribute to more than 55 billion euros in the EU alone in 2033 (Source: EUSPA EO and GNSS Market Report, Issue 2, 2024). SPACE4Cities is the first pre-commercial procurement stimulating European tools and data sources, Earth Observation (EO) from Copernicus and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technologies from Galileo programmes, thus fostering their combination in meeting European cities’ needs as well as the needs of the space sector.
