BRITTANY

Bretagne covers 5% of the French territory with 27,207 km2. With 67 billion euro in 2005, Bretagne represents 4.2% of French GDP (1,600 billion euro).

Bretagne has more than 100,000 students in 4 major universities, 17 Engineering Institutes and Universities, 8 Academic Institutes of Technology (IUT) and 8 schools of higher education.

Research occupies a major place in Bretagne. The public sector, comprising 4,500 researchers, represents 4.5% of the French public research. More than 6,500 researchers and engineers are working in the private sector. Bretagne benefits from a distribution over its entire territory of this R&D capability. Each year Breton companies invest more than 650 million euros in R&D.

Bretagne has important assets in space technologies and associated services:

- Several research teams are working on remote detection.

- Companies located in its territory.

- Located in Bretagne, VIGISAT is a research space remote tool which provides instruments for land and maritime survey.

- Settled in Bretagne, CLIMSAT is a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) initiative.It is an integrated service centre which has an independent global satellite observation capacity and a pool of high level experts, helping the regions to anticipate the effects of global warming.

4 competitiveness clusters:

• Media & Networks competitiveness cluster (ICT)

• Valorial, tomorrow’s food competitiveness cluster (Agri-food)

• iD4car cluster (Automotive)

• Bretagne Sea Innovation and business competitiveness cluster (Maritime)