A paradigm change in Earth Observation: How Singapore can be part of it

Location-based services have become commonplace with the ubiquity of smart phones and internet connectivity. Users can now get access to vast quantities of information stored on cloud servers virtually wherever they are in the world, and the cloud processing power available to them is far superior to that of the mobile phone, tablet, laptop, or PC that ordinary users can carry or have available in their home or business.

Increasingly, all sorts of data are being captured, stored, and made available, and there is increasing interest in such “Big data” in the IT sector to extract and create new information products that have commercial value, with the aim to create new market opportunities and businesses.

Spaceborne Earth Observation data have been captured for well over 30 years, mostly by government assets, and today still only a handful of EO service providers own their own space assets. Such infrastructure traditionally requires significant capital investment and many of these companies have their own government customer as their anchor tenant for the business. Their customers are generally sophisticated and knowledgeable, have significant needs for data, and substantial budgets to match.

The availability of Google Maps and its equivalents have made the general public much more aware of the value of satellite-derived Earth Observation data and some organisations have already identified that "fresher" more frequent satellite imagery of a location can provide value across a range of new applications for less sophisticated users.

The ability to obtain daily imagery of a specific location around the globe by satellite has only become available from a small number of providers in recent years and, occasionally, we now see satellite imagery on the news for events where the media attention is prolonged or predictable such as the Olympics site or a disaster scene.

Demand has been growing for higher and higher resolution data, but also for daily imaging opportunities. The latter typically require a fleet of satellites rather than single units and systems include those of BlackBridge’s ‘RapidEye’, the DMCii coordinated disaster monitoring constellation, GeoEye and Airbus-CIS high resolution satellites, and eGEOS, and Airbus-CIS’s radar systems.

The model for users to obtain satellite data has not changed much from the time when governments operated the only operational satellites and it is still expensive and time-consuming to obtain satellite imagery. EO satellites have limited capacity and need to be programmed to return imagery.

This data is then stored on the company servers, processed using manual or semi-automated processes, and distributed to the buyer after a day or two. The computer hardware and software required for processing is generally expensive and often proprietary. For users looking for archive imagery over a specific area, and at a specific time, each of the proprietary databases must be searched.

This traditional model is now being challenged by some entrepreneurial companies trying to bring IT business models to the business of Earth Observation, where the revenue is not always collected direct from the end-user but through advertising or subscription services.

Some are focusing on making it easier to access, discover, and process Earth Observation data over the internet, whilst others are considering making open-source or licensed data and algorithms available for application developers.

Some of these companies have also realised that small satellites have now truly come of age and can be used to address business needs reliably. Demand and interest in high temporal resolution satellite data has been increasing in the past year through a number of new commercial initiatives, with the most visible players being Planetlabs and Google Skybox.

These companies have raised significant capital on the basis that not all users need the highest scientific quality or quantity of data and focus instead on Earth Observation for new markets, such as the media and market analytics.

The general idea here is that information can be automatically extracted from the imagery which can be of value to local government and businesses, for instance the number of cars in a car park outside a superstore, the amount of flood water in the floodplain of a river, or the number of residential homes with gardens in reach of a planned garden centre outlet.

The Earth Observation market is projected to grow threefold in the next decade and the new paradigm in EO systems will be a significant contributor to this growth. The characteristics that drive the design and specifications of these EO satellites will change as EO data gets greater use with this new user community, and delivery time, ease of discovery, and ease of access will become more important than the actual data quality.

Singapore already has taken its first steps into space, has excellent IT infrastructure, and is a hub for high-tech manufacturing and service provision. In the history of spaceflight, the cost of engagement has never been so low and, for Singapore as an innovation-driven economy, this emerging new model in the Earth Observation market provides opportunities for its entrepreneurs to extend its share of the worldwide space market.

Alex is among the speakers who will be sharing their expertise at Global Space & Technology Convention 2015.

Global Space & Technology Convention 2015
Singapore
11-13 February 2015

Click here for details.