Unlocking the potential of Earth Observation Data - Environmental Assessment

The Earth Observation industry has finally reached a long-promised point. EO data governs the need for knowledge and covers several sectors, including agriculture, finance, utility, and urban planning, because of its quality and durability.

“Earth observation data is a unique source of commensurable information. Professionals can combine it with administrative, social and economic data at multiple scales for in-depth policy analysis.”

— OECD

According to reports, global demand for Earth observation data and services will reach the 8 billion dollar mark by 2029 from 4.6 billion dollars in 2019. Demand, trade markets, and low-cost data are the driving forces behind the successful acceptance of EO data. As data prices decline, particularly for the ground resolution of one meter for value-added services, it is anticipated that EO might slow down despite its improved consumption.

Current Trends in Earth Observation:

In the modern age of Earth observation, satellites are highly valuable for businesses and public goods owing to technical advances and breakthrough technologies. Satellites as small as SIM cards and as inexpensive as $2,000 will deliver terabytes of planet photos daily and provide a host of applications powered by AI, which previously had limited insights into the world’s economic, social, environmental, and industrial processes.

In recent years, satellite technologies and geographic information systems have promoted detailed awareness of the region and interpretation of the environment. Satellite data has become more readily accessible with extensive, high-resolution data, contributing to disaster forecasts, its management, and mitigation. It may also classify information on a wide variety of globally traded goods, such as minerals, metals, oil and gas, and agricultural products. The EO market will develop and expand further in risk forecasting, risk detection, evacuation, rehabilitation measures, and infrastructure planning.

Due to data accuracy and durability, EO data guides the need for actionable information, and sectors such as agriculture, banking, utility, and urban planning have embraced it.

A good database for the regional spread of environmental and economic activity needs targeted and effective environmental policies. Traditionally there have been data holes or incoherency in the latest knowledge base of environmental policy. In-situ measurement, ground-based tracking stations, Earth observations from satellites, aircraft, and drones may provide a specific and timely, proportionate database across nations, territories, and towns. To achieve the above-said, we must harmonize the reporting of natural resources, habitats, and climate sinks across the world.

While the EO industry, engine innovation, and propulsion for microsats continuously improve, spatial resolution and calculation accuracy with improved cameras and sensors are becoming even more crucial.

How is Earth Observation Data leading to democratization?

‘Earth Observation Democratization’ is a silent revolution as more people participate in the earth observation segment.

Earth observation data constitute a category of factual data representing fixed signals produced by satellites reflected from objects on Earth’s atmosphere, heights, or oceans. After the satellite sensors acquire the information, they send it to the ground station by telemetry for further processing. EO technology has made it possible for us to keep track of regular improvements in a freight yard, in addition to monitoring the U.S. corn belt.

There has been a substantial increase in the demand for earth observation data and services. The rise in earth observation would drive the earth observation market’s commercialization limits regarding new business models and versatility licensing terms. With a lack of this infrastructure, there will be restrictions on human influence to monitor forest destruction, shifts in poles, and create new population centers. Therefore, the industry is making efforts to provide unregulated, almost universal access to data and earth observation resources at an affordable price.

Some Applications of Earth Observation Data

1) Wetland Assessment — The availability of relevant data could help detect locations, size, and properties of all wetlands. While land cover maps are among the most common uses of EO data, estimating the present state and changes in wetlands remains challenging. In recent years, there has been an essential improvement in the availability and reliability of EO data sets that can meet the information needs of wetland practitioners. This technology has helped formulate and introduce different international programs, solve shortages, and cater to the intelligent development of resources.

2) Tailing Management — Mining operations and expansion of infrastructure create significant landscape changes and have social, economic, and environmental impacts. Mine tailings are a blend of crumbled rock and processed effluents generated during metal, stone, or coal mining. These tailings are usually deposited and submerged in reservoirs (tailing ponds) or implanted behind bars to prevent acid mine runoff (tailings dams). The Earth Observation Open Data policy systems like NASA’s Landsat, ESA’s Copernicus have successfully made available spatial resolution remote sensing data. The emergence of high-performance computing capabilities, such as GPU clusters and clouds, has further encouraged deep learning networks to classify land cover, semantic segmentation, and information extraction using remote sensing images.

3) Wildlife Monitoring — Although the GPS trace of animals from space is not exclusively connected to distant, sensor-based biological diversity applications — since there are no acquired images from space. EO has made it possible to find animals with small GPS sensors, tracking animal movements and migration routes. However, there is scarcely any detailed analysis of all of the various sensors and their earth observation data. Yet precisely this mixed knowledge about sensor sizes, individual sensors and spatial and temporal resolution, time, and data availability is vital for biologists, conservationists, and environmental scientists. These professionals need to decide which data to use in dealing with the most critical wildlife monitoring concerns.

Conclusion

Earth observations are not new; recent satellite investments, transparent and accessible access to data, evolving algorithms, and data processing allow the use of this knowledge beyond a specialized scientific community. These technologies give opportunities to improve the range of environmental data metrics and their reliability. Earth Observation approaches and data are notoriously under-utilized despite their advantages. The significant constraints, particularly in developing economies, include lack of standardization of EO data, analytical data, lack of successful case studies to prove a hypothesis, and lack of cooperation among other developed nations.

EOs routinely collect data from the Earth’s surface; this data treasure has the potential to reveal findings beyond anyone’s imagination!

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Citations:

Pearlman, F., Lawrence, C.B., Pindilli, E.J., Geppi, D., Shapiro, C.D., Grasso, M., Pearlman, J., Adkins, J., Sawyer, G., and Tassa, A., 2019, Demonstrating the value of Earth observations — Methods, practical applications, and solutions — Group on Earth Observations side event proceedings: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2019–1033, 33 p., https://doi.org/10.3133/ofr20191033.

‘Future Trends in geospatial information management: the five to ten year vision — Third Edition, August 2020

Thomas, A, Edwards, SJ, Engels, J, McCormack, H, Hopkins, V & Holley, R 2019, ‘Earth observation data and satellite InSAR for the remote monitoring of tailings storage facilities: a case study of Cadia Mine, Australia’, in AJC Paterson, AB Fourie & D Reid (eds), Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Paste, Thickened and Filtered Tailings, Australian Centre for Geomechanics, Perth, pp. 183–195, https://doi.org/10.36487/ACG_rep/1910_11_Thomas

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