Exactly 10 years ago, I worked on a project at the European Space Agency (ESA) exploring who, if anyone, would actually use the data from Europe’s Copernicus satellite system – built at a cost of nearly €7 billion to European taxpayers – and what they might build with it.

The core idea was that European institutions like ESA could invest in the technological infrastructure of expensive satellites and sensors, and that the private sector would eventually build applications on top of it far faster and more cheaply than any government could.

A decade later, I found out just last month that a man in Enniscorthy has done exactly that. In two months, motivated by the devastation that Storm Chandra inflicted on a country that still has no flood-warning system, Gavyn Pedley built his own by fusing real-time data from Met Éireann, the Office of Public Works’ (OPW) river gauges, Teagasc soil moisture readings, and Europe’s Copernicus satellites.

Back in January, when an Oireachtas committee asked the OPW why the Republic still had no local flood-warning system, the answer was that it would take five to 10 more years to create one, that the first stage alone had taken seven years instead of five, and the next stage of localised alerts sent to people’s phones had no budget and no timeline.

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A credible question at this........

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