The Valencian company Orbital EOS has signed a new collaboration agreement with the Saudi public company SIRC (Saudi Investment Recycling Company) to renew the oil spill monitoring service based on satellite imagery in the territorial waters of the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea belonging to Saudi Arabia and other new services, extending over the next year.

In addition to monitoring oil spills, the contract includes other services such as detecting vessels dumping contaminated oils into the sea, drift models, and “one of the most ambitious and precise surveillance systems in the world to anticipate potential environmental crises,” explains Orbital EOS Operations Director, Pablo Benjumeda.

According to Benjumeda, the monitoring service and data platform will turn SAIL, SIRC’s marine environmental care department, into “a benchmark in situational awareness of oil spills across the Middle East region.”

The development and creation of Gaia, an AI developed by the Valencian firm to detect oil and derivative spills, was made possible thanks to Sergio Ferrer and José Ángel González, two Orbital EOS developers who trained this artificial intelligence with over 200,000 image fragments taken from the public satellite Sentinel-1.

Despite the complexity of developing this technology, “Gaia has become the world’s best AI tool for detecting fuel spills at sea, with nearly 98% accuracy in its predictions,” says Sergio Ferrer, CTO of Orbital EOS. “Its main differentiating value,” adds Ferrer, “is that the dataset used to train the model was designed by a group of people with decades of experience in locating and analyzing oil spills using remote sensing. Their experience is nearly impossible to replicate.”

Although Gaia is currently only prepared to analyze Sentinel-1 images, the medium-term goal is to design an AI for every satellite in the world that can detect not only spills but also ships, coastlines, onshore spills, etc., he notes.

Among the tasks Orbital EOS develops is a 24/7 emergency monitoring service, such as the one used a few weeks ago with the tanker Sounion, which had the world on edge and whose management prevented a catastrophic spill. This incident underscores the need for constant vigilance and coordinated action to protect the oceans.

About Orbital EOS

Orbital EOS is a Valencian company specializing in developing solutions based on advanced satellite image analysis. The company has developed a pioneering platform for detecting, characterizing, and predicting oil spills for the oil and gas industry, maritime and port authorities, desalination plants, or environmental authorities. This digital solution was awarded in 2020 by the European Space Agency (ESA) for its highly innovative nature.

Furthermore, Orbital EOS develops other solutions in the area of environmental safety and sustainability for energy and space sector companies, highlighting the synergy between spatial data and artificial intelligence algorithms that help us extract patterns and trends, better understand the world, and make better decisions.

Its flagship product, EOS Viewer, is an online platform that combines Earth observation and geospatial analysis. It is the first digital system to provide global-scale detection and characterization of oil spills in marine environments.

Orbital EOS has become a reference and model in space-based remote sensing as an environmental solution worldwide. The defense of the environment and the sustainability of marine resources is a foundational and fundamental value of the Valencian company, as its main activity promotes responsible practices in the oil and gas industry.

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