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. The agreement marks the start of a three-year collaboration aimed at exploring how space applications can help create parametric insurance solutions to protect sectors such as agriculture and forestry from climate-related risks.
ESA and LM Re aim to combine expertise and resources to help businesses accelerate product development to:
• use satellite data and other space tech to design better insurance solutions
• make insurance faster, more transparent, and scalable
• develop advanced risk models for climate resilience
As well as sharing knowledge and ideas, the collaboration will involve creating opportunities for companies outside of the insurance sector to explore space-enabled applications with LM Re in support of risk innovation.
“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, 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.”
The first collaboration opportunity will take place on 12th February 2026 when LM Re will host a workshop, joined by ESA, to help data and technology companies to understand the challenges involved in assessing wind damage on forestry. Following the workshop, these companies will have the opportunity to propose to LM Re solutions to these challenges that use space data and technology. Successful applicant(s) will be able to work with LM Re and may benefit from ESA BASS support and funding to bring these solutions to life.
The solutions will focus on the impact of wind damage on global forests in response to the need for a transparent, objective parametric insurance product for forest windthrow[1], and related storm loss. With the forest economy, carbon markets, and bioeconomy all dependent on better risk transfer and rapid recovery solutions. Space-driven technology has the potential to enable affordable, data-driven wind risk solutions at scale, which can benefit forest owners and managers, investors in forest land, utilities and public institutions, among others.