Big Data Value Valencia Summit 2016 was organized by the Big Data Value Association (BDVA) between November 30th and December 2nd 2016 in Spain. It gathered more than 300 representatives from industry, academia, public administration, data owners and users.

The Summit agenda included one day for parallel sessions and working groups that helped the participants to get in touched with particular aspects of the wide Big Data domain. Following its efforts for coordinating the EO / Geospatial Sub-Group within BDVA, TERRASIGNA has organized and chaired (Florin SERBAN) the “Fully Benefiting from Big Data from Space” session. It addressed the Earth Observation domain’s multiple challenges in tackling big data related issues given the incredible volumes of open data available from COPERNICUS Programme and the latest EU open data policy. The objective of was to bring together the IT and EO communities, for a common understanding of the related challenges and market opportunities, and to find complementarities and synergies to tackle the respective challenges in the actual context. The importance and the interest in the cooperation between the two sectors was proved by the high number of participants in the session (50).

The session was attended by representatives of different DGs of the European Commission: Marta NAGY-ROTHENGASS (Head of "Data Policy and Innovation" Unit within DG CNECT), Martina SINDELAR (DG GROW), Gilles OLLIER (Head of Earth Observation Sector, DG R&I), and also by representatives of other EO key players: Günther LANDGRAF (Head of ESA Ground Segment Infrastructure, Engineering Section, Directorate of EO Programmes) and Geoff SAWYER, Secretary General, European Association of Remote Sensing Companies (EARSC).

The IT industry view was pictured by the representatives from important sector players, as THALES.