Satellites for everyone

[Music]

as most of us know

our planet is going through a lot of

changes

climate change biodiversity declines

polluted oceans intensive land use and

so on

but earth is a big place

and there is one tool at our disposal

that provides us with the big picture

about the health of our planet

and that tool is earth observing

satellites

and we’re in a revolution of sorts when

it comes to earth observation that’s

been a long time in the making

in 1957 when the soviet union launched

sputnik 1

the first artificial satellite it opened

up

the era of earth observation

and as you would expect from the height

of the cold war

a lot of these satellites had secret

military objectives

and their data were classified and not

available to the public

in 1972 nasa launched landsat 1

which was the first civilian satellite

to provide

global coverage of the earth’s land

surface

since then satellites have really

transformed

how we see and what we know about our

planet

in particular satellites have

really shown us how our planet is

changing

i think we’re living in a golden age

when it comes to earth observation and i

say this for four main reasons

the first reason is that over the past

10 years

more satellites more civilian satellites

have been launched into orbit

than any decade prior and it’s getting

increasingly more cost effective

to build launch and deploy satellites

for example cubesats like the one you

see that’s being built in this image

are bigger are about as big as a loaf of

bread

and are made of commercial grade

uh electronic components that are

relatively inexpensive

the second reason is free and open

access to satellite data

in 2008 nasa

opened up its landsat archive going back

to 1972 that launch you saw earlier

and every landsat data

since then will be free to the public

similarly the european commission’s

copernicus program

which has several pro several satellites

in orbit at the moment and several more

are planned in the future

is also based on a open data policy

other countries that have national space

programs like japan

for example also provide some of their

satellite data available to the public

what all this means is increased

accessibility

to satellite data and data products for

the public

the third reason is the growth

of parallel computing and increasing

processing power

think about it it was only 15 years ago

that intel launched the pentium d which

was its first

consumer grade dual core processor today

you can get a processor with roughly

eight times the number of cores for

about the same price as in 2005.

on top of that we have tech behemoths

like google

and amazon and microsoft that provide

a cloud computing infrastructure where

you can get near unlimited uh

space for uh for satellite data as well

as insane computing power

for relatively low price

the fourth and final reason i think

we’re in a golden age

is the increasing popularity of machine

learning

and shared knowledge repositories the

thing about machine learning

is that it is capable of extracting

information

and patterns from satellite data with

increasing levels of accuracy and access

to machine learning has never been

easier than it is today uh there are

tons of online tutorials

and shared knowledge repositories like

github

where people post post their code for

others to use and build upon

and there are also uh structured online

programs

like udemy or coursera for anyone who

wants to delve deeper into machine

learning

all of this has been great for science

we’ve been able to

map and quantify and measure aspects of

our planet that we never thought were

possible

20-30 years ago for example in the last

couple of years

we’ve been able to map

whales in the world’s oceans trees in

the deserts

individual elephants in complex savannah

landscapes

and even albatrosses which are large sea

birds on remote islands in the antarctic

in a way satellites have become sort of

a macroscope

on our planet engaging itself

but you’re probably wondering what does

this mean what does all this mean what

does it mean for you to be in this

golden age of earth observation

it means a real democratization of

data and science it means that anybody

with a computer and an internet

connection can

download satellite data process it using

open source tools

and extract information for their own

use

it’s that simple and is right at our

fingertips

to give you an example of what this

combination can do

these 13 lines of code that you see here

produce an index that can tell you how

green

any given location on earth is

this is from google’s online platform

called earth engine

where with just a google account users

can manipulate

large amounts of satellite data at

global scales

you don’t even have to write a single

line of code

because lots of examples like this are

already provided and the data is there

as well

this one uses data from the landsat 8

satellite

so you’re probably wondering like what

did this index of greenness

look like right it looks like this

where the green areas show you healthy

vegetated areas

the brown and the yellow are either

stressed or no vegetation

and because it’s an image from a single

season the white areas are

are places that are covered by clouds

and in a lot of ways a few lines of code

is really all you need

to extract information like this from

satellite data

and you can do it globally and has real

practical applications for landscape

planning or for conservation

you can even use it to assess the

quality of life

in cities as research has shown that

greener neighborhoods have higher

quality of life

other examples include merging different

kinds of satellite data

to map different aspects of the land

surface for example here

where users can merge optical satellite

data

with data on the elevation of the land

surface

combine it in a ready-made ready-to-go

algorithm called principal component

analysis to extract

geologic maps for uh exploration of

minerals for example

you can also go back in time because we

do have that archive going back 50 years

and see the development of road networks

you can go online download data from the

80s the 90s the 2000s

and see how the urbanization took place

in a city

for example like dubai over here

or maybe you live in a rural setting and

you’re interested to find out the

distribution of crops

in your area so you go

to the fields you take a few samples of

the crop types

sunflowers here beets there cereals

there you combine that information with

satellite data

in the machine learning framework and

you map the crop distribution

where you live

let’s be honest we don’t know our planet

as much as we think we do and because of

this

the possibilities of what can be done

with satellite data

are truly exciting with all this

data and tools readily available we’re

really accelerating the rate at which

scientific discoveries are made

so the two things i want you to

get from this presentation the two

takeaways are that satellite data are

available

and they’re accessible to you thank you

very much