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Collaboration, Data Fusion Key to SAR Commercialization
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is set to drive the expansion of the Earth Observation industry in coming years. Dr. Motoyuki Arai, Founder & CEO, Synspective Inc., talks about its potential and what it takes to accelerate the journey towards commercialization.
You have a vision of establishing a SAR satellite ecosystem, including a constellation of 30 satellites by 2026. What is your motivation to make this a reality?
The SAR satellite constellation can capture a lot of data, including ground terrain data, infrastructure assets, and economic activity. With the capability to provide high-frequency data in any weather condition, SAR can monitor the distribution of resources and economic productivity, as well as natural and human-induced changes to the Earth.
At the same time, data science and analytics technology are picking up which are helping us understand how best to leverage
SAR data with machine learning techniques. The combination of a satellite constellation and analytics platform will lead us toward a “Learning World” where customers across industries are enabled to make data-driven, timely decisions. This is a big motivation for us.
At present, for example, there is no technology that can fully assess flood damages. SAR satellites can identify and capture a flood area in near real time. When this gets fused with 3D maps and other raw data, responders can plan search-andrescue missions with the latest and most reliable information.
We are in the process of building a full constellation of 30 satellites to facilitate disaster mitigation efforts and support sustainable and resilient infrastructure. A constellation of 30 satellites can provide data anywhere on Earth every two hours. It will take an additional hour to downlink the data for analysis. That means that responders can get access to comprehensive data of affected areas in less than three hours after a disaster. This is crucial because the human survival rate decreases after the first 72 hours.
Which sector will benefit the most from SAR technology?
Infrastructure, most definitely. SAR data, integrated with BIM, CIM, and other data such as land survey data or base maps can be used in every step of the infrastructure value chain, from assessment to the design and engineering, construction and maintenance including disaster response and mitigation.
One of our clients, a big construction company, uses our land displacement monitoring solution to detect sinkhole or landslide risks at its construction sites. The data provided by our small SAR satellite “StriX” constellation can also apply to their daily operations.
Our flood damage assessment solution can be used for disaster mitigation and even for regular maintenance processes, for example, for the maintenance of a large dam or pipeline network or another similar type of infrastructure.
SAR data integration can provide new value to users in each of the infrastructure phases. As a result, the entire value chain can be connected and visualized.
What is the role of partnerships in strengthening your customer engagement in the market? Data fusion is very important in generating solutions from SAR data. Therefore, we need to work with partners who have the industrial know-how on the actual user requirements and potential use cases of our data.
We can provide SAR data, land survey data, or land deformation data, but solutions are developed through discussions with experts in construction, engineering consultancy, and insurance companies.
We can provide data that identifies a flood area and the estimated depth of the flood. However, in order to measure damage from the flood for insurance purposes, we need to fuse the data with appropriate statistical data owned by the insurance company. In this case, partnerships with insurance companies and consulting companies are very important for us.
How do you foresee business expansion within and beyond the infrastructure, construction and insurance markets? The SAR market is still in its development phase. The early adopters in each of the industries that are already testing SAR are very good partners for us. We look forward to expanding our business with them, either directly or through our resellers. So infrastructure development, construction and insurance companies are promising customers.
In addition, I can see that the traditional defense and intelligence sector will be a big customer of SAR data. We can make the base revenue through data business with them and gradually start creating solutions. It has great potential to scale up and become a very important business for us.
We are also eyeing business opportunities for climate-related applications and clean-tech sectors. For example, forest monitoring. Traditional forest monitoring only covers forest areas. But with SAR satellites, we can identify the volume of biomass in the forest area, which helps to calculate CO2 emission more accurately for CO2 credit or trading.
Another potential use case is in offshore wind farm assessment. Wind speed can be estimated by measuring the wave fluctuation on the sea. SAR satellites can generate this data.
Synspective recently launched StriX-1, its third satellite after the success of StriX-α and β. What is your expectation from this launch? Synspective has been developing techniques and accumulating know-how regarding multiple operations with two satellites already in orbit. With the addition of the first commercial satellite, StriX-1, we will gain experience in the manufacturing process and increase the amount of data we collect, accelerating business expansion. We have also signed several significant contracts with governmental and industrial customers with verified solutions.
With StriX-1 in orbit, we can scale up the customers’ needs in terms of data volume. In this sense, Strix-1 will demonstrate the scalability of our commercialization from a production point of view as well as from a business point of view.
The number of commercial SAR satellites in orbit is growing exponentially – all with varying sizes, tasking speeds revisit rates and image resolution. How will this impact the larger Earth Observation ecosystem? From several conferences that I’ve attended in recent years, I noticed that the number of analytics compa-
nies and satellite operators has increased drastically compared to 3 or 4 years ago. From an analytics and solutions provider point of view, this is a very good trend. There are many different datasets that can be provided from various types of constellations. The increase in data type and data volume makes proof of concept (POC) or a pilot project easier and more practical.
Partnership and collaboration will be key to determining what type of dataset or data fusion is required to create appropriate solutions. Experience and know-how will determine whether or not we’ll be able to commercialize the growing dataset. We’ve gone through big changes this last year. We signed new contracts with the defense and intelligence sector, as well as the infrastructure development sector. We also had discussions with foreign government and analytics companies, and some construction consulting companies.
SAR data is rich in information, but it is also less intuitive than traditional satellite images. Will this prolong the realization of its full potential in the market? I think the lack of industrial know-how is the barrier to expanding SAR’s use cases in the market. We already have many satellite operators providing data, and many analytics companies to developing analytical tools. What we need to do is create more and more solutions.
Actually, there are many academic players – professors and researchers – who have thought of various solutions using SAR data. But those solutions need more frequent datasets and a biggervolume. Now, as the first step of commercializing SAR, we’re working with these experts to verify their ideas with actual data and create solutions or packaged services for customers.
We’re in this ‘verification’ phase currently. The next phase of creating new solutions through discussions or accumulated know-how with new datasets will take another two or three years to build up. It does take time. There are also sectors already aware of the actual use cases, but they don't know about satellite datasets. So we need to connect our data to their needs and then we can build up usable solutions. There is a lot of potential but we need to find out the appropriate route to get there.
Customers today are looking for better analytics rather than more data. What’s your take on this? I think packaged analytics is preferable for customers because then they don’t have to hire special professionals for their in-house solution developments. I believe analytic solutions would be the main revenue generator for companies like ours.
At the moment, the defense and intelligence sector has so much power in consuming SAR data compared to other sectors. There are many startups focusing only on defense and intelligence applications that are making enough money from this sector, especially considering the current global national security landscape. But I think in three or four years, the solutions market will grow and overtake the data market.
This is because data sales are mainly limited to the defense and intelligence sector while there are many industrial sectors waiting for valuable data and analysis. If we cover the analytics development part, we will be able to at least provide analytics services, and hopefully, package it with solutions. I think this will be a standard service for the SAR market.
SAR is known for its ability to record accurate measurements even amidst severe weather. Do you see the technology as a gamechanger in the fight against climate change? Yes, but SAR data alone cannot make big changes. Data fusion is definitely required. SAR data can cover a broad area with very high resolution and in any weather condition. But we need ground truth data to be able to use SAR data with enough credibility and maturity.
I think we need to spend a few more years to create and raise the quality of SAR data services. To achieve that, we need several ground truth datasets provided by IoT sensors, smartphone GPS or manual assessments. The combination of these datasets will be game-changing.
