New cooperation will develop Space Lab in Luleå

Luleå The research institute of Sweden, RISE, and the Swedish National Space Agency have signed an agreement for a long-term and strategic cooperation, which will result in developing the Swedish Space Data Lab in Luleå in the county of Norrbotten.

The cooperation will meet the needs to analyze data from space which are increasing in the challenge of climate impact and for making weather prognosis. It will also be useful för the forest industry, the agriculture business and other areas where information about vegetation and ground surface is needed.

- We already cooperate in several projects together with the Swedish National Space Agency, and this new agreement indicates that both parties want to strengthen the cooperation even more. We see a lot of interest from agencies, academia and companies in the area, and together we can create conditions for increased use of data from space, says Pia Sandvik, CEO at RISE.

RISE is running the internationally leading research data center ICE. The datacenter, based in Luleå in the north of Sweden, is an enabler for projects with great needs of compute power and handling big data.

- This long term agreement means a lot for the development of the Swedish Space Data Lab, and we are really looking forward to continue the cooperation with the Swedish National Space Agency and with other stakeholders, says Ann-Christin Uusitalo Eriksson, Acting Head of ICE Datacenter at RISE.

The Swedish Space Data Lab was initially established 2019 by a Vinnova-financed project. It is meant to be a national competence- and datahub for the work of Swedish authorities with space data and for development of AI- and ML-based analysis of data generated in space systems. The goal is to further develop this platform for innovation, including data, technology and methodology.

Vinnova is a government owned Swedish innovation agency.