Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Good for Business, Technology

Urmas Kolli, chairman of the board of Datel, said that the innovative early warning system can detect shifts as small as of 1 millimeter with the help of satellite data.

"This solution will make monitoring the technical condition of infrastructure accessible and financially feasible even for medium-sized companies and organizations," Kolli said. "At present, this key service is only available to global infrastructure enterprises and organizations related to national defense and security."

The development of the early warning system, called Sille, has been a huge project for Datel and its partners including the European Space Agency, with more than 20,000 work hours invested in it over a couple of years.

Agu Leinfeld, head of software development and technology at Datel, said that the solution has great potential on the global market.

"It can be implemented instantly around the world," Leinfeld said. "Using the Earth's long-range observation satellites, we can essentially monitor any major infrastructure anywhere on the planet. Working with the European Space Agency guarantees the highest quality and provides additional assurance for our partners and future customers."

"We are currently testing the system in collaboration with partners from both Estonia and the United States, and the service is scheduled to launch in a couple of months. In Estonia, one of our partners is the National Road Administration, while in the U.S. it is the state of Maryland," he said.

At the beginning of April the first user agreement for the system was concluded with the state of Maryland for the monitoring of several major sites, whereas several other infrastructure owners from Estonia, the U.S. and Europe have displayed their interest. Datel expects Sille to achieve seven-digit sales already in the coming few years.

"This sort of collaboration is only possible for our companies thanks to the fact that Estonia has been a full member of the European Space Agency since 2015. ESA's financial contribution to the development of our enterprises has been remarkable over the last couple of years," said Madis Vooras, head of the Estonian Space Office, an institution working alongside Enterprise Estonia.

While ESA has the right to use the innovative new services created under the cooperation agreement, ownership and commercial rights remain with the Estonian developers.