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Researchers all over the world have a wealth of satellite data at their fingertips to understand global change, but turning a multitude of different data into actual information can pose a challenge. Using examples of Arctic greening and drought, scientists at ESA's ɸ-week showed how the Earth System Data Lab is making this task much easier.

Josef Aschbacher, ESA's Director of Earth Observation Programmes, welcomes 24 app developers at the first day of the 2019 Space App Camp, held at ESA's Earth observation centre in Frascati, Italy.

ESA's second ɸ-week brought together emerging space investors, tech leaders, entrepreneurs, space scientists and Earth observation researchers to explore how open science and innovation can benefit from the latest digital technologies to help shape future Earth observation missions and services. Let's take a look at some of the week's highlights.

On the sidelines of ESA's Φ-week, a five-day app-development bootcamp took place where young developers came together to solve big industry challenges using Earth observation data. The teams developed app prototypes, which were tested by a set of users. Those with the best commercial potential were awarded with prizes.

The non-gravitational acceleration and thermosphere density data, both derived from the GPS receiver data, were reprocessed for the entire period from launch in November 2013 until July 2019 for all three Swarm satellites.

Globalisation and international trade allow us to consume produce from all over the world. But this comes at a cost to the environment – but, for the first time, satellite data combined with artificial intelligence is being usedtoprovide information to assess the impact of global supply chains.

There may not be an obvious connection between rewilding and machine learning, but as highlighted today at ESA's ɸ-week, a project in the Netherlands uses satellite data and new digital technology to understand how a nature reserve responds to the pressure of being grazed by herbivores.

Following the success of last year's ɸ-week, this year's event promises to be even more exciting. With the conference room packed to the gunwales, ɸ-week 2019 kicked off this afternoon at ESA's centre of Earth observation in Italy with a series of stimulating talks, lively debate and an announcement of a new initiative.