Space, in terms of business, has always been seen as the domain of large corporations and state space agencies with multi-billion dollar budgets. In the last decade, however, private companies have become the main driver of the space industry. As private space companies launch more and more satellites into orbit, new data determine the development of farmland, arctic transportation routes, and much more. Satellite images of Earth are a very interesting, objective and at the same time quite accessible source of information on physical, economic and social processes at the scale of a city, a country, or even the entire planet. This technology is already being used in practice in a wide range of sectors and businesses. But how do you get those pictures? Where do you find most recent satellite images or historical space data? And most importantly, how exactly do they benefit your business?
How Satellite Imagery Is Catering to Businesses
Space is much closer now than it used to be. Commercial companies are sending many more satellites into orbit than ever before, providing incredible accuracy in almost live satellite view of our planet. Here are some of the most prominent examples of how satellite imagery can help effectively solve tasks across industries.
Agriculture
A number of agri companies use satellite imagery to predict annual farm yields, mainly focusing on popular crops such as wheat, corn, and soybeans. These companies produce estimates that will be useful to farmers, traders, insurers, etc. All by using machine learning to analyze satellite images, taking into account external factors such as location, weather, and historical crop performance. This information can help a company save on labor costs, estimate its earnings for the year, and make better deals with buyers.
Finance
Some data extracted from a number of satellite images (e.g. the number of cars in the parking lots of retail chains) can be used to infer a company’s revenues before the quarterly/annual reports are released and earn on that by trading on the stock exchange.
Insurance
One can extract quite a lot of information about insured objects from space images — the condition of the roof, changes in land plots. Thanks to almost real time satellite imaging, this information can be obtained with high frequency (including on request) and without an inspector’s visit, which allows to reduce costs.
Real Estate
The data that can be retrieved from satellite images (the presence of parks, the number of stories of houses, or air quality) can be used to estimate the value of a particular property or to determine the wealth of the local population. This method is already used by public organizations (e.g. World Bank) to measure the level of poverty, since it is often difficult to collect information using traditional methods (surveys).
Where To Look For Satellite Imagery: Free and Paid
Space imagery has recently become more accessible, with some data freely available on the Internet. Free satellite pictures of Earth are usually of low or medium spatial resolution, when high and ultra high resolution pictures come at a price. More so, in order to solve applied tasks (processing) the original space images with all related information, spectral breakdown, etc. are required. For that purpose, there are online tools that offer satellite imagery analytics on the fly.
One of such digital instruments is EOSDA LandViewer. This satellite imagery catalog allows for searching, visualizing, processing, storing, and downloading of data. The analysis can be performed through the application of over 10 spectral indices depending on business tasks and challenges. The platform offers free low and medium resolution pictures, but high resolution imagery will have to be paid for.
Users can choose a specific area of interest when searching for the image to retrieve data on the exact territory they need. They can also compare the images of the same area made by different satellites at different times. Apart from that, the mosaic feature enables combining different images to create a full image of a specific AOI.
The tool provides access to both historical and most up to date satellite images, which enables change detection. With the help of a time lapse feature the users can also create animation to track how the change occurred visually.
You can easily detect the change by comparing various images of the same AOI taken by multiple satellites, on different dates, and even at a different time of day, using the split view mode and time series analysis, and visualize the results as a time-lapse animation. In addition to default indices, users have an opportunity to create custom indices by applying different combinations of spectral bands.
The amount of information that can be extracted from satellite imagery is very large, and the scope of its application is limited only by imagination. This source of data is available worldwide now, and in the future its quality will increase, its cost will decrease, and its use will become easier thanks to web-platforms and APIs.