LAND and XNatura take root for the sustainability of the future

It was announced during the Winners’ Night of Business Meets Innovation 2025, a competition organized by the Italian-German Chamber of Commerce (AHK Italien) to foster innovation synergies between international players such as E.ON and Bosch and startups operating in the GreenTech, ClimateTech, and GeoAI sectors.

XNatura is the digital platform winning the “nAIture Landscape Modelling” challenge. The Nature Intelligence division of 3Bee Srl, which also won the Overall Winner award at the eighth edition of BMI, will contribute to strengthening LAND’s Natural Capital quantification model. The result will be a cutting-edge interactive tool capable of integrating artificial intelligence and real-time environmental monitoring to shape the landscape of the future, guided by a sustainability measurable through Natural Capital Accounting.

The Winner Group Picture at Business Meets Innovation 2025 (from the left: Jörg Buck, Valentina Galiulo, Simone Mazzolla, Andreas Kipar)

“Once again, BMI has been for us an almost unique opportunity to capture a snapshot of the start-up ecosystem and innovative realities which, year after year, continues to evolve and to surprise us with increasingly advanced, integrated, and scalable technologies and solutions,” said Jörg Buck, CEO of AHK Italien. “In an edition of the contest focused on the theme of sustainable cities, LAND—with the project launched for the initiative and the related winning solution—is a clear example of how today’s major sustainability challenges can rely on highly sophisticated, effective, and targeted tools. In this specific case, the level of detail achieved through digital environmental monitoring shows us a future that is already here.”

Building on a network of over 10,000 IoT devices, the involvement of more than 15 research centers, and over 1,000,000 hectares mapped across 25 countries, XNatura is an innovative digital platform for Nature assessment. It integrates satellite imagery, remote and in-field sensors, as well as AI-based laboratory analyses to monitor ecological performance through a range of environmental KPIs.

“We are proud to integrate the XNatura platform into BIM and LIM models for data-driven design,” said Niccolò Calandri, CEO of 3Bee | XNatura. “This win validates our approach: remote mapping of KPIs such as NDVI, measurement of pollinator attractiveness through IoT sensors, and community engagement via the gamification features of the Biodiversa app. With XNatura, we turn AI into predictive analytics to monitor ecosystem health and resilience in real time.”

Thanks to XNatura’s expertise and contribution, LAND and the LAND Research Lab innovation platform will develop a dynamic, advanced, and adaptive tool capable of analyzing environmental indicators such as thermal and water stress, evapotranspiration, pollinator attractiveness, and other key parameters. This will help guide climate adaptation strategies and the enhancement of Natural Capital. The company will thus be able to further expand its proprietary LIM – Landscape Information Modelling® model by integrating satellite remote-sensing data, multispectral drones, and environmental sensors with artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms.

“For 35 years we have been reconnecting people with Nature. A Nature that, as Goethe said, never sleeps and now needs to embrace data and artificial intelligence to bring new vitality to the business of those who live and work with landscapes every day,” emphasized Andreas Kipar, CEO and Co-Founder of LAND. “We are all owners and beneficiaries of Natural Capital. Everything depends on Nature, and our actions gain value when we are able to qualify their impacts, guide choices, and improve the way we operate,” added Valentina Galiulo, initiative lead. “Sustainability is not just about quantification: it is the ability to turn information into responsibility, metrics into decisions, and numbers into tangible care for living systems,” concluded Nikolas Neubert, Chief Innovation Officer of LAND.