ESA's AI4EO Initiative: Bridging the Gap Between the AI & Earth Observation Communities

As Earth Observation (EO) is undoubtedly one of the industries that will benefit the most from the 4th industrial revolution driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI), the European Space Agency (ESA) Centre for Earth Observation (also known as the European Space Research Institute or ESRIN)) has contracted a team of contractors led by SpaceTec Partners to accompany its staff in exploiting opportunities of rapprochement between the AI and EO communities to the largest possible extent. To implement this ambition, the Artificial Intelligence for Earth Observation (AI4EO) initiative builds a community that fosters the interaction between AI and EO experts, developed a custom AI4EO platform, and host three challenges on the platform to tackle grand societal issues. The objectives of the challenges such as air quality or food security are to combine EO with an innovative AI method enabling the development of novel solutions. This paper introduces the AI4EO project and the first challenge.