Thanks to its geo-intelligence products and services for territories, Kermap has been supporting since its creation public and private players in the implementation of environmental preservation and climate resilience initiatives:
In line with its contributions to programmes towards sustainable living and production, Kermap’s responsible governance and CSR policy are as follows:
Economic aspects
Values
Kermap’s ambition is to provide transition players with precise, reliable, clear and immediately usable information on territories and their evolution, based on Earth observation data. The company’s founding idea is to draw on the latest advances in academic research in the fields of image processing and artificial intelligence to operationalize them, and industrialize the production of high value-added environmental information.
Commercial relations
The company aims to become a major player in environmental diagnostics and monitoring, and therefore attaches particular importance to customer satisfaction and loyalty. This approach is based on :
- the co-construction of products and services supplied, in order to meet the expectations of our customers as closely as possible to their needs
- Agile methods during implementation, based on transparent processes and regular communication with customers
- A detailed presentation of deliverables, as well as one or more post-delivery exchanges to ensure that the service meets operational requirements and that the products delivered (reports, dashboards, platforms, APIs, etc.) are user-friendly.
This approach to project management, combined with the innovative nature and quality of the services provided, enables Kermap to position itself as a trusted player. The many local authorities that use our services in the field of land planning regularly testify to their satisfaction:
Just like the various players in the agricultural sector, where the company already has several major customers:
Service providers
Kermap also pays particular attention to the choice of its commercial and technical service providers, in order to support the local or at least French ecosystem:
- Alkante – Noyal-sur-Vilaine (35), IT services and outsourcing
- OVHCloud – France, IT services and hosting
- Axonaut – France, Management solutions
By relying on these trusted players, particularly in the field of hosting, Kermap intends to remain in a position to meet the challenges of data sovereignty in the production and delivery of data to its customers.
Social aspects
Values
Kermap’s DNA lies in providing useful and necessary information to meet the challenges of climate change and environmental issues. Beyond Kermap’s commercial vocation, its management and teams are driven by the environmental sense of the work and missions carried out by the company.
This is why Kermap places particular emphasis on the democratization of Earth observation information, via freely accessible platforms such as nosvillesvertes.fr, klover.city and maps.nimbo.earth. The free consultation of these platforms entirely created by Kermap enables everyone to access objective, concrete information on environmental issues and regional development.
Non-discrimination
These societal values are reflected at the very heart of Kermap’s organization. The company ensures that the principles of non-discrimination are applied both in recruitment and in the workplace. Kermap is also committed to gender equality in terms of remuneration.
The company applies a proactive training and recruitment policy for young people under the age of 26. Kermap’s workforce includes many talented individuals recruited after completing their internships within the company, as well as a number of individuals who have undergone professional retraining. The company is moving towards a more gender-balanced workforce, with 13 men and 7 women today.
Environmental aspects
Values
Thanks to its geo-intelligence products and services, Kermap supports public and private players in implementing environmental protection and climate resilience initiatives. In addition, Kermap’s information platforms are freely accessible, enabling anyone to obtain objective, concrete information on environmental issues and regional development.
These values are also reflected in the company’s financing, with NGO Earthworm Foundation acquiring a stake in Kermap as part of its first fundraising round in 2022. This operation illustrates the company’s commitment to a trusted shareholder base driven by the same ambitions, in which economic success and environmental contribution are inextricably linked. Kermap’s other core shareholder is Sodero Gestion, a private equity specialist based in Western France, which integrates ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) criteria into its investment decision-making process.
Organization
Kermap operates from its offices Cesson-Sévigné’s Digital Square, one of Rennes Métropole’s business incubators, managed by Société Publique Locale Citédia Métropole. The company benefits from Citédia’s various initiatives aimed at reducing the environmental footprint of its business real estate management activities:
- 100% renewable electricity via a contract implemented at Digital Square since January 1, 2019.
- Heating capped at 19° throughout winter
- Automatic switch-off of lighting when offices are unoccupied
- Cleaning services subject to social and environmental clauses since January 1, 2021
- Responsible waste management (collection and sorting bins for plastics, metal cans, batteries, small electrical appliances, glass, cigarette butts, etc.)
- Local service providers committed to social and responsible approaches favored for other equipment-related contracts
- Encouraging soft and/or carbon-free mobility
Kermap employees are made aware of environmental issues and the actions they can take to limit their carbon footprint and the company’s. In the company’s daily life, simple habits are put in place:
- Mobility
- reduction in commuting distances thanks to the introduction of 1 or 2 teleworking days,
- limiting business travel by systematizing videoconferencing,
- long-distance rail travel whenever possible
- Energy
- switching off workstations at the end of the day
- rational use of other electrical appliances
- Resources
- minimum consumption of paper and ink through dematerialization (invoices, quotes, pay slips, etc.),
- black and white printing,
- purchase of second-hand equipment (furniture, electrical and digital equipment, etc.)
- Waste
- instructions and areas for collection and sorting in the company’s break room (compost, recyclables, other…)
Digital sobriety
Data sharing
The very philosophy behind the Nimbo solution is to collect and analyze satellite images and produce visualizations and indicators that are turnkey, transferable and scalable. This pre-calculated, global data is intended to be used by a large number of users, so that each does not need to mobilize the human, material and energy resources that would enable them to obtain these results.
Infrastructure and hardware
Kermap uses a hybrid IT infrastructure, based partly on local servers and partly on third-party datacenters.
As Kermap’s business is highly machine-intensive, the company’s purchasing policy favors the acquisition of second-hand equipment (90% of the server base). Replaced equipment is recycled.
Kermap uses third-party providers for part of its R&D activity (cloud computing), as well as for hosting its solutions and platforms.
For part of its activities, KERMAP relies on the services of OVHCloud, the European leader in eco-responsible cloud computing.
OVHCloud is pursuing a proactive policy to reduce its carbon footprint, which should result in 100% low-carbon energy and 0% landfill by 2025. OVHCloud hosting has been awarded the Green Hosting label by the Green Web Foundation.
For Kermap’s Nimbo solution, hosting and facilities management are provided by Alkante, based in Noyal-sur-Vilaine (35). Alkante’s CSR approach is based on the Alkante Impact program, which aims to reduce its own and its customers’ greenhouse gas emissions.
Operations
- Processes
Kermap’s R&D activities involve developing artificial intelligence and image processing algorithms requiring considerable computing power. The company’s R&D department is committed to optimizing these operations in several ways:
- On the hardware side, by sharply limiting the use of energy-hungry GPUs in favor of CPUs. GPUs account for just 10% of Kermap’s installed computing power.
- On the process side, Kermap uses cloud computing services with dynamic resource allocation options to optimize server utilization and reduce carbon emissions.
- Lastly, Kermap’s R&D Department works to optimize the ratio of production time to performance, in order to produce information with satisfactory accuracy, and whose realization does not exceed a given energy consumption, depending on the project.
- Code optimization
Kermap is committed to using IT development protocols to reduce the energy consumption of its applications and the servers that host its data.
Kermap’s development teams are trained to take into account the best environmental practices associated with IT development. These activities are based on the implementation of efficient and optimized code to avoid loops and unnecessary redundant operations, to optimize queries and algorithms to reduce processing time, and to use energy-saving libraries and frameworks whenever possible.
Within the web applications made available by Kermap, development is designed to minimize the consumption of hardware resources by optimizing memory, efficiently managing temporary files and avoiding excessive read/write operations. Data caching aims to find the best compromise between server occupation and performance on client terminals, in order to limit the impact on the latter’s energy consumption.
Finally, Kermap’s teams promote the development of sustainable software that is easy to maintain and update, to reduce the need for new versions or frequent replacements.
Assessment
Kermap uses several eco-design and environmental impact assessment tools to diagnose its productions (website & platforms) and identify areas for improvement. The Ecoindex.fr tool is a simple, high-performance tool for obtaining an assessment of a page’s environmental performance:
With a score of 76/100, Ecoindex’s assessment of Kermap’s corporate site suggests very satisfactory performance.
The Ecograder online tool can also be used to assess a page’s environmental footprint:
Performance is rated satisfactory to very satisfactory on all criteria.
Outlook for 2023-2024
Kermap continues to take into account the environmental impact of its activities by initiating a process to quantify the carbon footprint of its products and services. The methodology chosen is that of the Bilan Carbone, formalized by Ademe, which will enable the inclusion of Scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG emissions.