Founded in August 2019 by water resource engineers and doctoral students Charlotte Wirion and Imeshi Weerasinghe, WEO has quickly transformed itself from an inexperienced water-focused startup into a competent do-it-all Environmental Analytics business.
While still in its early stages, WEO has already impressed with its Tree Monitoring Solution and garnered the support of big players such as City of Luxembourg, Antwerp and the European Space Agency.
In the age of powerful Earth observation satellites, open-source data and AI, tedious and expensive field work is becoming increasingly obsolete. Founded in 2019, while its co-founders Charlotte Wirion and Imeshi Weerasinghe were still working on their doctoral theses, WEO is a shining example of this recent development.
“While working on our own research we found that there was a lot of great research being conducted, however, that research often wasn’t being translated into practice, which we found quite frustrating,” says Imeshi, CEO of WEO.
After setting up some workshops to get try and bridge the gap between research and real-world application, the pair quickly realised they were better off starting their own business than trying to convince researchers who “were stuck in their ways.”
While WEO’s co-founders started out with the idea of using Earth observational data to focus solely on water resource management, they later pivoted towards a more comprehensive Environmental Analytics approach.
“What we do in a nutshell, and very general, is we take Earth observational space data, such as satellite imagery, and then we produce algorithms, so that we can extract actionable information for our clients,” says Imeshi.
This actionable information falls under three large categories: Resilient Cities, Tree Monitoring and Sustainable Water Management. For each of these categories, WEO combines open-source data and AI algorithms to produce a variety of solutions such as Land Surface Temperature Monitoring, Tree Monitoring and Water Monitoring – all of which are tailored to the needs of the client.
“We take Earth observational space data, such as satellite imagery, and then we produce algorithms…”
Imeshi Weerasinghe
A Growing Market
By using open-source data in combination with advanced algorithms – and only supplementing it with commercial data when necessary – WEO keeps the price of its analysis affordable.
With the global environmental monitoring market valued at 17.5 billion and new policies, such as Luxembourg’s Climate Pact, constantly pushing governments and municipalities to step up their game, any solution that beats the average market price is one worth keeping an eye on.
Already counting the City of Luxembourg and Dudelange as one of their clients as well as trialling pilot projects with the CFL and the municipalities of Gent and Antwerp, WEO’s future is looking bright.
After having impressed their partner, the European Space Agency, with their Tree Monitoring Project WEO were also invited to speak at the COP26 where they discussed how spatial data could be used to support climate action.
As a former Fit 4 Start participant and successful graduate, WEO’s CEO Imeshi says, “We would not be where we are today without the Fit 4 Start acceleration programme.”
While WEO has already had quite some success, the cofounders are only just getting started. Their future plans include expanding to cities outside of Belgium and Luxembourg, fully automating their solutions and making their business scalable.
This article was first published in the Silicon Luxembourg magazine. Read the full digital version of the magazine on our website, here. You can also choose to receive a hard copy at the office or at home. Subscribe now.
