Space ... pushing Thessaloniki's growth with turnovers of hundreds of millions of euros over the course of ten years, aspires to bring in businesses and institutions that have already launched the establishment of the first North Hellenic cluster of companies active in earth observation and space technology.
According to AUTH Professor George Zalidis, head of the Inter-Balkan Environmental Center and key inspirer and coordinator of Pan-Hellenic business cooperation in the sector, seven Thessaloniki companies have already "given their hands" to their integration processes. Hellenic Space Technology and Applications Industries (EVIDITE) and Si-Cluster, which has been operating in Evia for over ten years, with the participation of 40 companies.
It is worth noting that the existing Si-Cluster started with about 10 companies a decade ago and today, with 40 members already, has already shown turnovers ranging between 2-5 billion. euro, employing more than 2,000 specialist scientists.
According to the project coordinator for Thessaloniki, Mr. Stergiou Diamantopoulos, head of Omikron SA. The Cluster of Thessaloniki will function as an independent branch of Si Cluster: “It will specialize in the fields of Agri-food, environment and water protection, natural disasters and marine applications. Cluster companies and with the support of the participating institutions will be able to claim and implement larger projects, achieve a dynamic turnover increase and boost the local economy, but also employ fast-paced, more specialized science from universities and research institutes in the region, contributing significantly to the prevention of brain drain. "
Founding members of the Thessaloniki Cluster will be the following companies: OMIKRON SA, GEOSENSE IKE, DRAXIS SA, SCIENTAST SA, AEFORIKI SA, CONSORTIS EE, USS IKE, as well as the TEE / TKM that will house the cluster at its premises M. Alexandrou of Thessaloniki, the Inter-Balkan Environmental Center and the Remote Sensing Laboratory of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
It is worth noting that despite the existence of Si-Cluster and its dynamics, the Greek market has not been able to dynamically tap into the resources available under international space technology development and deployment programs, at a time when these technologies and applications utilizing Earth Observation Data, make up a global market of 200 billion euros per year with 70 billion in Europe.
The industry worldwide has been growing at 9% over the past 10 years, giving investors six euros for each euro of investment, while EU funding of € 200 million is pending over the next three years for "Defense" applications. & Security & Research & Development.
The businesses in the industry have a wide range of products and proposals, which address both the private and public sectors: navigation, meteorological forecasting, environmental protection, agricultural production monitoring, traffic monitoring , defense and border surveillance, etc. It is noteworthy that in the latest NASA mission to Mars, signal processing and compression of data coming to Earth is done with Greek hardware.
Other examples of implementation are the development of tools for the Integrated Thermal Gulf Coastal Zone Management (EYCOAST), the Strimon River Basin Flood Alert (RIVERALERT), the illegal quarrying, abandoned quarrying systems.
Article by Vangelis Moses (https://www.thepresident.gr)