The Santa Ana (Calif.) Watershed Project Authority (SAWPA) on Friday awarded a contract in excess of $1 million to analytics and imagery provider OmniEarth for water resource management, according to a company executive.
Frank McKenna, head of OmniEarth’s satellite services division, told Defense Daily Monday the exact value of the contract is proprietary and subject to negotiation. He said OmniEarth teamed with DropCounter for the contract. Water resource management is a growing sector for OmniEarth as the company has developed products to help California deal with its mandatory water use reductions.
These products, McKenna said, are arriving at a time where they can give insights and understanding on how to implement and target reductions more effectively and efficiently compared to many other tactics used today. California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) in April signed an executive order imposing a state-wide 25 percent reduction in potable urban water usage through February 28, 2016 due to a drought the state is experiencing.
McKenna, in a recent interview with Defense Daily, said the contract with SAWPA takes not only the analytics engine, the analysis and land classification information and water consumption on an external parcel land, but combines it with other water meter data provided by the authority. McKenna said OmniEarth then feeds the information into an engine that develops a series of products allowing customers to specifically tailor their programs to individual users.
McKenna said the goal of products like the combined analytics and water consumption info is to create efficiencies of 25 to 35 percent through machine learning of data sets. He said social norming usually used to drive water reductions only gains about a five percent reduction in use.
OmniEarth, McKenna said, earlier rolled out a water conservation product in the fourth quarter of 2014 that is now going into 400 districts across California. McKenna said the company received its first contracts this year. Subscriptions for this water conservation service, he said, range from roughly $50,000 to $100,000, depending on the size of the district. McKenna said these values grow based on volume and recently some of the larger districts have garnered subscriptions over $1 million.
OmniEarth is also launching a project to help improve sugarcane crop yield forecasting in Brazil by combining data sets from electro-optical (EO) and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) information. McKenna said the company is combining EO and SAR data because sugarcane grows in generally cloud-covered areas, making most EO data not exquisitely available. He said the company uses EO to collect information on clear days and SAR data on cloudy days and the combination of the two gives a “very nice product” for analyzing the health of various crops.
Precision agriculture is just one of many “verticals” for OmniEarth, which also specializes in imagery, resource management, asset monitoring and hosted payload, according to the company’s website.
In asset monitoring, McKenna said OmniEarth can help companies more effectively manage their infrastructure by developing a notification system that alerts companies when changes have been detected in electrical service request, parcel data and tax records. This, he said, helps companies stay compliant with regulatory requirements.
McKenna said OmniEarth staffs 25 people among three offices, including Arlington, Va., Boston and the recently-opened Berkeley, Calif., location. The Berkeley office, he said, is about expanding into water resource management products. McKenna said OmniEarth, as an early stage company, is growing its revenues and just received a $5 million round of Series A financing in April from existing investors and new strategic investors, including Space Angels.
The Space Angels Network is a global network for angel investors, offering insider access to the emerging private space industry and sophisticated investment opportunities, according to its website. McKenna said OmniEarth will be looking for further funding and growth in the latter part of 2015.