GAROTES Platform – Open and Disruptive Innovation Projects Grants 2024

SPASCAT is enhancing GAROTES with the creation of an open, subscription-based WebApp to monitor coastal resilience using satellite imagery. This initiative has been supported by ACCIÓ through the 2025 Call for Open and Disruptive Innovation Project Grants – Line 3 (Resolution EMT/2305/2024).

GAROTES is SPASCAT’s proprietary algorithm for the automatic reconstruction of bathymetries using satellite images (SDB - Satellite Derived Bathymetry) and advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning models. As part of this grant, the team has developed and launched a website (garotes.spascat.com), based on a pay-per-credit model, enabling any marine science professional to independently access these algorithms.

This technology represents a disruption in the coastal monitoring market, where data is currently collected only once a year through costly dedicated campaigns, often with errors caused by inherent mosaic reconstruction methodologies, which can leave gaps in depth data in certain areas.

With GAROTES, institutions, research centers, and companies will be able to access fast, recurrent, and low-cost information on the state of the seabed and the resilience of beaches, thus supporting strategic decision-making in the face of climate change impacts.

The project has had the direct support of ICGC as a collaborating user, validating the results obtained.

This initiative aligns with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and European Green Deal policies on oceans and climate action.

According to Roger Huerta (CEO) and Bernat Gené (CTO), co-founders of SPASCAT: “GAROTES aims to democratize access to bathymetric data through satellite technologies, making it possible to anticipate — and not only react to — the impacts of climate change on our coasts.”