MEEO was founded in Ferrara in 2004, when 3 physicists (Marco Folegani, Stefano Natali, Simone Mantovani) decided to found a privately-held company in the field of environmental monitoring. The use of multispectral/hyperspectral satellite data for the most different purposes (air quality monitoring, land use classification, rainfall rate estimation, urbanization monitoring, crop-yield estimation inside) is the current core business of the company. In September 2010, The Globe Tricolore 2010 award for Innovation (Italian Women World-IWW) went to Marco Folegani, one of the three founders of MEEO S.r.l. The IWW awards for Italian exellence in the world, was sponsored by Italian Government and the Italian Chamber of Commerce. The excellence awards are for the innovative meteorological and environmental monitoring applications, succeeding in a few years to credit prestigiously their scientific and entrepreneurial activities in the international arena. MEEO was funded by Aster consortium through many different funding programs during years 2004-2005. In 2004 MEEO was granted funding from the regional innovative development program SPINNER, supported by the "Fondo Sociale Europeo", "Ministero del Lavoro e delle Politiche Sociali" and "Regione Emilia Romagna". In 2005, MEEO granted access to all services offered by the “Information TECHnology spin-OFF” (I TECH-OFF), a business incubator in the field of information technology and multimedia operating in the Emilia-Romagna Region. MEEO is a Value Added Partner of the European Space Agency (ESA) since 2006. In 2009 another company was founded: SISTEMA GmbH, which represents an extension of MEEO commercial, research and development activities. SISTEMA GmbH is the official distributor of MEEO products and aims also at improving the products realizing specific research and development activities in direct contact with customers and end-users