Over the past half-century, environmental agencies, governments, and private companies have launched hundreds of satellites specifically purposed for public or commercial use. As a result, billions of square miles of the earth’s surface have been surveyed by satellites — in some cases each day — to comprise a deep, unexplored archive of our world. Much of this data is free or relatively inexpensive, and ready to be connected with emerging computer processing and AI technology. We are in an era of Open Source Geospatial Intelligence: with expanding the availability of new tools and resources, we no longer need to be a geospatial scientist or Satellite Imagery analyst to apply space-derived data to research questions. Changing the world from space is a challenge, but it is a straightforward one accessible to all of us. offline data Entry Services are the secret sauce many organizations have used to improve customer experiences, innovate products, and disrupt entire industries. At CloudFactory, we’ve been providing data entry services for more than a decade for more than 360 organizations. We’ve developed the people, processes, and technology it takes to scale data entry without compromising quality Deployment of two of the commercial satellite company Planet’s “flock” of small satellites from the International Space Station. Today, Planet has 150 satellites in orbit including their “Dove” and “SkySat” constellations, which collect over 350 million square kilometers of imagery daily. (Planet; Image: NASA) Today, we are no longer limited by the amount of data we can access from space, or the tools to analyze that data; but rather our own ability to imagine the potential of leveraging space-derived solutions into our world’s greatest problems. Then what, specifically, can we do with satellite imagery? Improve the environment? Increase crop yields? Track terrorist kidnappings? Identify illegal fishing? Study nuclear proliferation? Accelerate early warning on unfolding conflicts? The satellite and analytics company BlackSky’s Machine Learning-driven automated detection of aircraft accelerates the pace of imagery analysis. (Image: BlackSky) Yes. Satellite imagery can be used to do all of the above, and more. In fact, the use cases and applications of satellite imagery analysis remain vastly under-discovered as more and more satellites are launched, and more advanced processing and analytics technologies emerge to extract information from that imagery. The question is not what can we do, it is “where do we start?” Every important satellite imagery analysis project is challenging, but here are ten straightforward steps to get started: 1. Begin with the objective How do you want to change the world? Identify the specific problem, then you can tailor the data and the methods to curate a solution. Identify your region of interest, choose your ultimate objective, then develop an approach. Importantly — do not begin the process with a particular type of technology you’d like to use. Instead, concentrate on the real-world problem that must be solved. For example, avoid the research statement: “I want to use thermal imagery and AI-driven analytics to find earthquakes as they occur all over the world”. Instead, it is imperative to be agnostic of sensor and method agnostic at this stage of your process. Reframe the question to focus only on the ultimate goal: “I want to find earthquakes as they occur all over the world.” 2. Build a foundation Research the specific region and discipline associated with your objective. Are you interested in accurately predicting earthquakes? Ensuring a nation is honoring its cease-fire agreement? Increasing crop-yields in a developing nation? First, research the specific region and the discipline of your project. agricultural patterns, military order of battle, supply chain operations; there is a wellspring of available information and research that will give you critical background and context to begin your journey. Build a foundation of context and understanding before you download your first image. It will make a world of difference in your project. 3. Seek professional help Geospatial analysis is an analytical method in which many different forms of earth observation data — including satellite imagery, geo-enabled environmental information, even geo-located posts from social media — are used to build visualizations that allow us to better understand geographic patterns, trends, events, and changes on earth. It’s a unique tradecraft that takes a short time to learn, but a lifetime to master. When changing the world from space, consider hiring a professional geospatial analyst with academic time-in-grade to undertake your project. There are tens of thousands of formally-trained geospatial analysts who specialize in extracting insight from satellite imagery. Many organizations — like the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, the American Geophysical Union, or one of many of university departments around the world can connect a problem with a particular expert that can help you design a viable approach to your solution while ensuring you don’t “reinvent the wheel”. 4. Choose your sensors There are many types of satellites collecting dozens of different types of data over the earth’s surface. If you want to study broad environmental or land-use changes over time, you should look to the environmentally purposed satellite constellations operated by the United States’ National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration or the European Space Agency’s many environmentally-purposed space missions including its Copernicus-Sentinel satellites. These space missions have websites from which you can download this data, and nearly all of it is free. However, If you want to analyze harder-to-see patterns like shipping or aircraft comings-and-goings, military exercises, endangered animal migration, etc., you’ll need higher-resolution imagery that provides more granular detail. High-resolution imagery is available for purchase, with single images beginning at about $200 per shot. Generally, environmentally-purposed satellites will not give you nearly enough image detail to detect any object smaller than a football field. Conversely, high-resolution satellite imagery will be vastly too expensive to conduct environmental analysis over large swaths of the earth’s surface. Choose satellite data that will be most suited to effectively and economically address your question. 5. Choose your method and approach Every geospatial question requires its own approach, but geospatial analytics methods and software already exist that can be applied — with some tailoring — to your own research. Large-scale environmental questions often require vast swathes of imagery which in turn require automated processing programs to separate the signal from the noise. Conversely, security-related questions, like how a nation is conducting nuclear proliferation, require far less imagery in terms of ground-space, but there are currently no reliable programs to automatically detect nuanced activities and events of this nature. Machine Learning, crowdsourcing, automated object counts, traditional cartography, or legacy imagery intelligence are all viable analytical methodologies; but only one or a few of these methods may be appropriate to address the question at hand. Crowdsourcing imagery analytics platforms like this one from Tomnod proved the efficacy of crowd-based identification of vast amounts of objects — like seals in the Antarctic or potential aircraft wreckage — over vast amounts of the earth’s territory. 6. Get to work You’ve identified your question, gathered background information and expertise, chosen the satellite datasets, and developed a sound approach. The fun part is over. Now it’s time to aggregate the satellite imagery, parse the files into the appropriate software, plug numbers, look at pictures, compare pixels, take notes, and explore the data. You will experience the triumph of discovering something new, and the frustration of inevitable setbacks, which will likely include a software failure that occurs just before you’ve saved many hours’ worth of work. You may observe something on an image, and it will faintly remind you of something you have seen weeks ago, and realize you must retrace your steps to better identify and detect this new pattern. Inevitably, there will be moments when you no longer believe you can carry out the task. Don’t give up: patterns and meaning will soon begin to arise. When you start to see something meaningful, you may have to iterate. Explore, experiment, and emotionally prepare yourself to return to square one to start the process over again with new eyes. My article is a family member of free guest posting websites which has a large community of content creators and writers. You are warmly welcome to signup and publish a guest post with a do-follow backlink no matter in which niche you have a business. Follow your favorite writers, create groups, forums, chat, and much much more!