The Canadian Space Agency has awarded C-CORE a contract for the development of blockchain technology to be used with Earth observation big data.
The contract is the fourth award from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) procurement notice for seven priority technologies (PT) announced last November and covers PT 7, Blockchaining on Service of Earth Observation Big Data. The contract is valued at $500,000.
Blockchain technology and Earth observation big data
With this priority technology the CSA says it is proposing “to explore new technologies to enhance security and protect valuable Earth Observation (EO) data. In particular, it intends to study how Distributed General Ledger technologies such as blockchain can be used to independently verify the integrity and provenance of Earth Observation data sets. As data is generated, moved across organizational boundaries and data hubs, and finally ingested into analytic platforms, it is important to mitigate risks of accidental data corruption, processing errors, vulnerabilities such as security violation, data tampering or malicious interference in the databases.”
It goes on say that “blockchain as a security mechanism can be deployed independently or in conjunction with a cloud data storage model. The main objective of this project is to present a full end-to-end chain of safekeeping for data through its lifecycle, and solutions that can assure data integrity and immutability.”
Some of the potential user groups identified for this technology include;
- Satellite EO mission operators, including the operators of the RADARSAT Constellation and follow-on missions such as EOSC (Earth Observation SAR Continuity) which provide near real-time EO data processing at CSA as well as long-term data archiving service.
- Collaborative nodes for missions.
- Downstream application service providers (for example in risk management, environmental management, logistics or insurance domains) in need of a verifiable and trusted data value chain.
Other priority technology contract awards
In the last month the CSA has awarded three other contracts of the seven priority technologies procurement notice.
- ABB was awarded a $2.25 million for PT 1, Cosmological Advanced Survey Telescope for Optical and UV Research (CASTOR) concept.
- Nรผvรผ Cameฬras was awarded $1 million for PT 3, Enabling Technologies for the Exploration of New Worlds โ technologies for future payload opportunities.
- Bishops University was awarded $1 million for PT 2, Enabling Technologies for the Exploration of New Worlds โ microsatellite opportunity.