As 2020 comes to an end, we reflect on a turbulent year where the world was turned upside down by the covid-19 pandemic, and we take this opportunity to express our deepest sympathy to all those affected. Despite the pandemic, satellites have continued their journey in space - untouched by the travel restrictions and social distancing on the ground - providing critical data and information to underpin key functions in both the public and private sector domains.

Like previous years, 2020 has seen an explosive growth and surge in the use and application of satellite data, and the covid pandemic has in many ways underlined the value of continuing to look to space for data to supplement or replace traditional data sources. This value of space data has been further emphasized for us this year, when we – as the first Danish company specializing in satellite data - won the ‘Gazelle’ business growth award by Børsen (The Danish equivalent of Financial Times). With this award, we end the year 2020 - where we also celebrated our 20-year anniversary - on an upbeat note.

Among our main achievements in 2020, we have:

• launched a product suite ‘WindSight’ , building on the results of Innowind (an Innovation Fund Denmark partnership from 2017-2020 with VESTAS, Vattenfall, EMD and DTU), which includes 5 new high-quality and high-resolution data products to improve, and complement, existing data used in wind models;
• launched Flood Metrics, a brand-new all-in-one interface for our state-of-the-art flood monitoring products, providing an easy and transparent platform to search, explore and request our operational flood products;
• developed and delivered the world’s first high resolution mapping of global wetlands, using new automated methods and Sentinel satellite data. The product has since been integrated into the UN Environment Program sdg661.app, as a key component to support the monitoring of the earth's freshwater-related ecosystems;
• continued operationalization and further development of the first nationwide operational agricultural monitoring service, specifically tailored to the monitoring needs of the EU’s CAP policy. The system was successfully implemented by the Danish Agricultural Agency (LBST) last year and 2020 marked the second year where the system has been used to underpin CAP monitoring in Denmark.
• continued to explore new avenues of coupled EO and deep learning approaches for systematic and scalable change detection solutions and updating of national, regional and global data sets.

We thank all our clients, partners and collaborators for another great year in DHI GRAS and we look forward to continue our journey in 2021, where we will continue to push the boundaries of earth observation solutions to satisfy a growing global market.