Q&A: Arnaud De Saint-Vincent at Airbus on Ecopia AI Partnership

The Airbus-Ecopia AI (Ecopia) partnership will allow Airbus customers to quickly and easily request Ecopia Vector Maps by leveraging industry-leading AI-based systems to extract land cover classes from Airbus Imagery.

We sat down for a Q&A with Arnaud De Saint-Vincent, Analytics Strategy — Digital Services at Intelligence (Airbus Defence and Space), to learn more about what excites them about Ecopia AI’s technology, and what future solutions the partnership can provide their customers.

1. How did you learn about Ecopia?
"We initially discovered Ecopia via web searches we made when we were looking for a partner company that could rapidly and accurately extract buildings and land use from our high-resolution satellite imagery."

2. What was it about Ecopia that prompted you to reach out and learn more about our global partnership program and technical capabilities? Why did you choose to work with Ecopia?
"We had contacts with several other companies and tested their feature extraction technology capabilities. We were particularly interested in highly-detailed building and road extraction. Before Ecopia, we did not find a technical solution that met the level of quality and accuracy that we were looking for. We chose Ecopia for the high quality of their products and for their commitment to human-level accuracy."

3. How do Ecopia’s Global Feature Extraction capabilities stack up against other product offerings that you have seen?
"Ecopia’s extraction capabilities are definitely higher than similar product offerings we have seen so far."

4. How did you evaluate Ecopia’s products? What were your findings?
"Our R&D team conducted a number of quality checks to evaluate Ecopia’s products, including buildings and roads. We ran these tests across 25 different urban areas around the globe and found Ecopia’s feature extraction capabilities exceeded the accuracy of other solutions, meeting the human-level accuracy we required."

5. How do you see the Ecopia and Airbus partnership developing over time?
"We’re excited about the future of our partnership. We are currently discussing the development and release of several new products based on high customer interest. The ability to create airport maps, high-definition city models, and conduct advanced change detection are just some of the future capabilities enabled by the partnership."

6. What are you most looking forward to about the partnership?
"We are excited to grow our market share by offering a comprehensive solution that allows our customers to request high-accuracy land use from our fresh satellite imagery. ‍Pléiades Neo 30cm imagery, which will become commercially available in the coming months, will also expand our capacity to better answer customers’ needs and extend our market reach toward new applications."