“Working on the democratization of products and services related to spatial imagery and on the creation of synergies between stakeholders for the common good”
- You are the CEO of INSIGHT, a company actively participating in the facilitation of Theia GeoDEV New Caledonian Regional Animation Network (RAN). What motivates your company’s involvement in Theia?
- How does your activity as facilitator and company manager in the satellite sector fit in?
- In your opinion, what are Theia’s greatest achievements, and what is the biggest challenge for the consortium in the future?
You are the CEO of INSIGHT, a company actively participating in the facilitation of Theia GeoDEV New Caledonian Regional Animation Network (RAN). What motivates your company’s involvement in Theia?
Jean MASSENET: Alongside Marc DESPINOY from IRD-NC/UMR EspaceDEV, I am the co-facilitator of Theia GeoDEV New Caledonian RAN. My role within Theia is to ensure, through the regional animation network that we set up, our overall mission to facilitate, structure and federate the New Caledonian GIS&RS community.
We particularly aim at strengthening links between Theia and New Caledonia, taking advantage of our annual OSS NC (Observation Spatiale au Service de la Nouvelle-Calédonie) seminar (Read p.1) in order to create opportunities with Theia technical and thematic experts according to the orientations taken by the local community and the needs of users.
Before being a commitment in Theia, it is a commitment for the benefit of the New Caledonian GIS&RS community. Marc and I were already working on the democratization of products and services related to spatial imagery and on the creation of synergies between stakeholders for the common good. So, when we discovered the existence of Theia animations (RAN), it seemed obvious to us that New Caledonia needed one!
How does your activity as facilitator and company manager in the satellite sector fit in?
Jean MASSENET: As Operations Director of the innovative New Caledonian start-up INSIGHT SAS, my primary objective remains the most complete possible understanding of the various contributions of space imagery for a sustainable management of territories and resources. My main role is then to act as a facilitator between my technical team and the potential users, and also to try to create synergies between the users themselves in order to work on collegial reflections on a territorial scale and to enable the pooling of resources.
As the representative of Airbus DS within the South Pacific region, INSIGHT SAS has been working for several years now to offer the best to both local and regional GIS&RS communities, with as much adaptation as possible to the specific needs of island territories. We therefore spend a lot of time and energy working for the community, sometimes at the expense of our own activity as a private entity with an inescapable need for profitability.
In your opinion, what are Theia’s greatest achievements, and what is the biggest challenge for the consortium in the future?
Jean MASSENET: As far as I’m concerned, Theia’s best achievements are on the one hand, the synergy of different actors via the Scientific Expertise Centres (SECs) for the development of operational and available products and services; and, on the other hand, the fact that with its regional animation network, Theia proposes an integrated approach from data producers to users and thus allowing the necessary feedback of information as to the relevance of the products in relation to operational needs.
This global approach seems to me to be particularly relevant and sustainable, fully adapted from producer to user, allowing a virtuous circle for the production of products and services derived from Earth observation and based on spatial imagery data. INSIGHT, via GeoDEV NC RAN, works in particular to promote this dynamic among the various geomatics communities within the South Pacific region.
Jean Massenet
INSIGHT SAS
@J.Massenet
New Caledonia: A second successful rendezvous with space
The 2nd edition of the seminar “Space observation serving New Caledonia” (OSS NC) was held from the 16th to 18th of November 2020. It gathered more than a hundred participants, both physically and remotely.
Organized by the Theia GeoDEV New Caledonian RAN over three days, with free initiation sessions, plenary presentations and thematic workshops, this seminar was attended by nearly 125 participants from all sectors (public, private, associations, etc.), including 14 videoconference participants and 7 French experts from the continent.
After an official opening by the Government of New Caledonia, the University of New Caledonia and IRD-New Caledonia, the event was held in two major stages:
- Plenary sessions with, in particular, contributions from metropolitan referents, including CNES (Gilles Rabin), Theia (Nicolas Baghdadi and Arnaud Sellé), Aerospace Valley (Philippe Lattes) and SHOM (Yvan Lubac);
- Thematic workshops dealing with drought, land use, maritime space monitoring and biomass, with interventions notably from CESBIO, under the Soil Moisture and Biomass SECs.
The interventions were particularly interesting, the exchanges were very constructive and some actions has been identified over short, medium and long term, offering nice perspectives about the different topics discussed.
The event has also been an opportunity to sign an agreement between its co-leaders, INSIGHT and the IRD-NC, engaging themselves in the process of setting up an agreement formalising the creation of the New Caledonian RAN!
Marc Despinoy (IRD)
& Jean Massenet (INSIGHT),
animators of Theia GeoDEV New CaledoniaN RAN
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