Finnish developers Aarni Koskela, Matti Määttänen, Otso Rasimus, and Henrik Skogström won both the SAP special prize and their local pre-selection Appathon in Turku with AGRAI, a personal farming solution for mobile phones. The app simplifies farmers’ work by advising them on their daily routines – such as when to fertilise or harvest – and issuing warnings on imminent anomalies like pests, drought, or frost. By combining data from satellites and various other sources on the SAP HANA Cloud Platform, AGRAI will save farmers time and money while making their daily lives easier.

Anda Truta, Alex Dumitrescu, Alex Dantis, and Julian Laval from Code Green took home the ESA prize with the app FarmIQ. The four computer science students from the University of Bristol (UK) won the local pre-selection Appathon in Harwell. They are focusing on analysing crowd-sourced information to develop predictive agricultural models. Offered in a product-as-a-service (PaaS) format, their app harnesses the power of Earth observation and agricultural big data to provide state-of-the-art crop monitoring, predictive monitoring (including suggestions on field optimisations), and advance warnings regarding potential Problems.

Other apps developed during ESA App Camp Barcelona included EcoFit, which identifies the best potential renewable energy sites (wind farms, solar parks, or geothermal plants, for example) in a fast, easy way to help users make related decisions; Malevich, a smart solar sales mobile app powered by a mix of Earth observation and business data analytics for energy providers Viridian Raven, a mobile, space-based early-warning system for detecting bark beetle outbreaks in forests, which will help reduce global insect-related forest damage through early intervention; and SAMPEI, a mobile solution for precision fishing that identifies phytoplankton-rich areas as potential fishing zones.