The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Business Applications and Space Solutions (BASS) has signed a Memorandum of Intent (MoI) with Liberty Mutual Reinsurance (LM Re), part of Liberty Mutual Insurance Group, marking the start of a three-year collaboration.
The collaboration aims to explore how space applications can support the development of parametric insurance solutions to protect sectors such as agriculture and forestry from climate-related risks.
By combining expertise and resources, ESA and LM Re aim to help businesses accelerate product development using satellite data and other space technologies to design better insurance solutions. The collaboration also seeks to make insurance faster, more transparent, and more scalable, while supporting the development of advanced risk models for climate resilience.
In addition, the collaboration will create opportunities for companies outside the insurance sector to explore space-enabled applications with LM Re in support of risk innovation.
The first collaboration opportunity will commence on 12th February 2026, when LM Re will host a workshop, joined by ESA, to help data and technology companies understand the challenges involved in assessing wind damage in forestry.
Following the workshop, these companies will have the opportunity to propose solutions to these challenges using space data and technology. Successful applicants will be able to work with LM Re and may benefit from ESA BASS support and funding to bring these solutions to market.
The solutions will focus on wind damage to global forests, responding to the need for transparent and objective parametric insurance products for forest windthrow and related storm losses. With the forest economy, carbon markets, and the bioeconomy increasingly dependent on effective risk transfer and rapid recovery solutions, space-driven technology has the potential to enable affordable, data-driven wind risk solutions at scale. These solutions could benefit forest owners and managers, forest land investors, utilities, and public institutions, among others.
“We are delighted to announce this new MoI” said Ana Raposo, Business Applications and Partnerships Officer at ESA. “It will create new opportunities for businesses looking to develop commercially viable space-based solutions for the insurance market across multiple sectors, and particularly around agriculture and forestry where climate change is having a big impact. We are looking forward to our first joint initiative in early 2026.”
Victor Bouton, Head of Science, Parametrics and Agriculture at LM Re, added, “We are excited to announce our partnership with ESA. Through collaboration and forging partnerships outside of the insurance industry, we can develop cutting-edge solutions to meet the everchanging needs of climate change related risk.”
