6 minute read
Tiding Over Climate Crisis via Geospatial Data Refinery
from जमींन से जायदाद तक
To harness underutilized data, Blue Sky Analytics has set out to develop a revolutionary technology – Geospatial Data Refinery – to empower decisionmakers with climate intelligence by leveraging satellite data, AI and the cloud, writes Kshitij Purwar, Founder
and CTO, Blue Sky Analytics.
Blue Sky Analytics Geospatial Data Refinery
Problem: The impending climate crisis
We are in the midst of a global climate crisis, with climatic disasters worsening in intensity and frequency each passing year. According to the latest IPCC report, the fight to keep global heating under 1.5°Celsius has reached a “now or never” territory. It is “almost inevitable” that humanity will surpass this critical temperature threshold in the current scenario. The trend of increased frequency and intensity of extreme climatic events has inevitably increased the exposure of businesses to material financial losses across the corporate value chain. By the end of the century, the expected value at risk to manageable assets is estimated to be as high as $43Tn. Additionally, 215 most prominent global companies reported almost $1Tn at risk from shortterm climate impacts, likely to accrue by 2024.
The climate data gap
Currently, the world is plagued with fragmented and expensive environmental data, leading to inefficient capital/resource allocation for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Satellite data can play a pivotal role in bridging this gap as according to the Global Climate Observing System, 50% of essential climate variables (ECVs) can only be tracked using satellites. However, a variety of issues are still prevalent that hinder the ability to harness the true potential of satellite data. There is a challenge in acquisition and processing of geospatial data. One: it is heavy and non-standardised. Two: the current tech-infrastructure is not enough to develop a catalogue of datasets that is replicable and scalable. There is a lack of capacity to build an all-inclusive platform that maintains the required accuracy, resolution and coverage for all environmental indicators. At present, many models are based on outdated research papers, resulting in static datasets that do not evolve with new research. And finally, information derived from satellites available today is in the form of repackaged, raw imagery that users cannot directly consume. The problem is so grave that even exponential growth in the upstream satellite market in the past decade and the utilisation of the data harnessed have been below par. For instance, it is estimated that more than 100 TB of satellite data is generated per day, with less than 1% being analysed.
"The upstream space market, with its rocket launches and hightech satellite payloads, may seem at a first glance to be the most exciting segment of the space industry. But when it comes to innovation, job and revenue creation and the provision of services that change people’s lives for the better, the downstream market is where the action is" - New Space Economy forum in Rome on December 12, 2019
Solution: Climate intelligence
At Blue Sky Analytics, we wanted to empower decision-makers with climate intelligence by leveraging satellite data, AI and the cloud. The idea was to harness the true potential of satellite data as a result of the booming upstream space market to draw deeper and decision-ready environmental insights. For this, we set out to build a revolutionary technology infrastructure that
A glimpse of Blue Sky Analytics’ visualization platform — SpaceTime™
would cut time and continue to evolve the underlying models as new sources come online & as improved research is available.
Instead of treating each dataset like an individual product, we decided to build an automated, scalable, and reusable infrastructure that could ingest data from various sources, including satellites, run them through various machine learning algorithms, and deliver the resulting datasets via APIs. Hence, making our tech infrastructure our core value proposition.
This infrastructure is what we call our “Geospatial Data Refinery”. Similar to an oil refinery, it takes in and analyses terabytes of raw data from satellites, on-ground monitoring devices, and any other credible ancillary public sources. First, the data is cleaned, standardised, pre-processed, and stored on the cloud, and then we run it on our proprietary algorithms and disseminate intelligent data to various stakeholders via APIs and SpaceTime™.
Blue Sky Analytics Geospatial Data Refinery
The refinery helps tackle the climate data gap by providing all environmental indicators to all kinds of end-users via two platforms - SpaceTime™ and APIs. This helps the data science team to plug the data into their workflow or CXOs glancing through the visualisation to make key decisions. This also minimises stakeholder cost and efforts put in to consume data and draw insights. With the refinery being automated, we can provide as many input streams and get the required output. The advantage is that our current datasets evolve with the availability of input streams. And, with research and recognition of the market need, we can develop and deliver the required dataset.
Given the accelerating climate crisis, the geospatial data refinery has the ability to generate valuable insights to speed up the response timeline. It has proved to be an effective layer between the upstream ecosystem and decision-makers. For instance, our first dataset, BreeZo for air quality monitoring, took us 12 months to develop while our second dataset, Zuri for fires and GHG emissions tracking, took us only eight months. Since then, it has been our goal to develop new datasets every quarter, which will enable us to build a comprehensive catalogue of datasets efficiently.
On the user-facing side, SpaceTime™ has also reaped benefits from the scalable infrastructure that we have built over the last two years. It took us more than a year to deploy the first two datasets on SpaceTime™. In just the last two months, we have deployed five new datasets across parameters like GHG emissions, electrification, and fire prediction with each varying in type, representation, temporal frequency & spatial resolution. As the name suggests, SpaceTime™ has the ability to accommodate any kind of dataset with a spatial and temporal component.
The impact of our refinery can most notably be observed in its application in Climate TRACE, a global coalition led by Al Gore, with a mission to accelerate climate action by providing independent high-resolution and near-real-time (GHG) emissions data. As a founding member of Climate TRACE, in just one week, we have been able to visualise global sector-wise and country-wise emissions data provided by the numerous members of the coalition on SpaceTime™.
Exploring true potential of sat data
The refinery infrastructure will be instrumental in harnessing the true potential of satellite data and propagating meaningful climate action. Moreover, the refinery will enable us to develop a myriad of climate datasets in 2022 across various parameters – fire prediction, electrification mapping, surface water quality and quantity monitoring, flood mapping, sea-level monitoring — contributing to 11 out of the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs).
We encourage users to engage with the geospatial data refinery through SpaceTime™ and our Developer Portal to explore how they can make the most of the infrastructure.
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