Germany’s Ministry of the Interior and Community and Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy, or BKG, are tapping Planet Labs’ Earth data products under a one-year contract with a two-year renewal option. The deal, which the Berlin-based software company said was a “seven-figure” award, provides a fixed rate for all Planet Labs’ data covering the whole of Germany.
Martin Polak, managing director of Planet Labs Germany, said the country’s “incredibly diverse” topography makes the company’s broad-based monitoring capabilities important in assessing daily changes in German agricultural land, forests, rivers and mountains. Recognizing the topography challenge, BKG “has since demonstrated the value of centralized [Earth observation] data to support initiatives across different federal agencies,” he said.
Diverse Planet Data for Multiple Uses
The award extends a BKG contract that the company booked in 2021. Its extension covers access to an insights platform containing planetary variables and water monitoring services from Planet Labs partner EOMAP. Planet Labs said the data will inform government entities on various use cases, such as monitoring forests, land utilization and water resources to support environmental and socio-economic analyses.
Earlier in September, the company secured a three-year contract from the German Aerospace Center’s German Space Agency to supply Earth observation data products and services. The contract opens agency researchers’ access to PlanetScope data products, including near-daily imagery, a deep archive of satellite data dating back to 2016 and Planet Labs’ RapidEye archive of Germany.