ERATOS at NewSpace New City

Context

On March 26, 2025, the NewSpace New City workshop brought speakers together in Grenoble to discuss satellite data and urban spaces. The event was organized by the Grenoble University Space Centre (CSUG), with Sciences Po Grenoble UGA and Innovacs.

The ERATOS presentation

According to the CSUG account, Thibald Astier closed the evening by presenting ERATOS, described as a SaaS solution for Swiss local authorities. The presentation was part of a discussion connecting remote sensing, mapping, artificial intelligence and urban planning.

The evening’s workshops explored how spatial data could address urban challenges. The ERATOS presentation brought territorial analysis into that discussion: how can available information be connected more closely to decisions about a particular place?

The question behind the work

A spatial observation describes the world as it is; a planning rule governs what may be done in a particular area. Combining the two requires an understanding of their scope, timing and meaning. An image can show land use without establishing the rights that apply to a parcel. A document can define a constraint without providing usable geometry.

The methodological task is to connect these representations while keeping their differences visible. For an infrastructure decision, this discipline helps relate the site, environmental constraints and networks. It also requires a clear distinction between observations, inferences and matters still awaiting confirmation.

This milestone predates the research presented here on compute siting and energy architectures. The research thread is spatial intelligence that makes physical and territorial dependencies explicit enough to examine.