Dr. Anna Christmann, BMWK Commissioner for the Digital Economy and Startups, emphasizes: "The award-winning founders impressively demonstrate how start-ups are a driver of economic and social progress with their innovative business ideas.
nadar provides an early warning system to detect changes in forest health using satellite data, deep learning and automation to combat forest degradation and help foresters improve the resilience of their forests. Changes such as storm damage, wildfires, drought stress or bark beetle infestations are localized in near real-time, and an alert is used to inform foresters of their location and extent. In the future, the team plans not only to map the actual state of the forest, but also to use AI to make predictions about forest areas at risk and warn foresters before irreversible damage has occurred.
With its business ideas, nadar was awarded one of a total of fifteen start-up prizes, endowed with 7,000 euros in prize money. All participants receive written feedback on their start-up idea, in which strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and risks are highlighted and recommendations for further development are given. The award winners also benefit from an extensive range of coaching, mentoring and networking activities.
When asked how they will use the prize money, nadar responded with:
Since we want to enter the market very quickly, almost everything we have actually goes directly into the development of our platform and our solution - Caroline Busse and Simon Vogt, Team nadar.
The "Startup Competition - Digital Innovations" is aimed at people interested in founding a company and young startups with innovative business ideas in the ICT environment. Ideas from all conceivable application areas are welcome. These include the energy industry, healthcare, the IT and data industry, manufacturing, the mobility sector, the agricultural sector, the cultural and creative industries, and schools and education.
Find out more here.