Iain Woodhouse’s team is mapping the floods in Southern Malawi using satellite data. The last time the area flooded, 170 people died – so Iain’s hoping the information they can give the government will help them save lives.
The chief executive of Edinburgh-based Carbomap is in Nairobi with environmental consultants LTS. They’re training the government forestry departments from Mozambique and Zambia how to use radar satellite data to map their forests and therefore better control deforestation.
“They’re nearly there, we’re coming to the end of the project,” he explained.
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“Mozambique should be doing operational national forest mapping using satellite radar by the end of the year.”
Carbomap is one of a number of companies spinning out from the various research areas in the School of GeoSciences at Edinburgh University. It’s an ecosystem that is developing rapidly.
Three years ago the European Space Agency launched the Sentinel satellites to monitor land and ocean through radar.
The data they provide are freely available, but the expertise required to translate this into usable intelligence is considerable.
This is where Edinburgh University shines, according to Dr Murray Collins.
He’s the Chancellor’s Fellow in Data Driven Innovation and theme Lead for Space and Satellite at the university’s new innovation hub The Bayes Centre.
“At the university we are very well-placed to capitalise on the opportunities these data provide,” he said.
“We have the combination of scientific and programming skills to create algorithms to process and analyse these data, in the context of information about forests and agriculture, for example.
“The palm oil industry represents a huge commercial opportunity – companies need to prove they are not causing deforestation to comply with global targets signed by companies like Mars and Nestlé. Edinburgh companies like Carbomap, GSI and Ecometrica help them adapt their practices and demonstrate their compliance.”
The final piece of the puzzle is investment – and that’s where the City Deal comes in.
Announced in August 2018 at the university jointly by the First Minister and Prime Minister, the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Deal is a £1.3 billion fund to drive growth across the area. Half of this fund – £661 million – is dedicated to data driven innovation.
This means that 100,000 people can be trained in data skills over the next decade and 400 data-enabled startups can be created over the same period – space and satellite is a huge part of this plan.
The Executive Director of the Data Driven Innovation Programme is Jarmo Eskelinen.
“The city is punching well above its weight in many domains, but we have a tendency not to brag about it,” he said.
“If we don’t shout, we won’t be noticed. We want to be the Data Capital of Europe so we have to provide something valuable. Knowledge sharing activity will be at the heart of the programme. The promise we made to the government, in exchange for £660m to build the assets, is that we will significantly increase innovation, put £100m of the university’s own money in and at least double that from the private sector.
“We intend to blow it out of the water! We’ve already reached our target for the year and we’re only half way through.”
Against a backdrop of Brexit uncertainty, data is the sure bet in terms of economic growth.
As satellites, traditionally owned by governments, move increasingly into private ownership, the volume and standard of data is growing rapidly.
The next generation dataset due to arrive will be from GEDI, a satellite which was launched in December and will start providing data in middle to late 2019.
Dr Steve Hancock, lecturer in 3D Environmental Data Capture at Edinburgh University, has spent years working in the team which developed GEDI’s data software.
“GEDI uses LIDAR, optimised for measuring forest structures,” he explained. “Fuse this with existing data and the information available about the types and health of forests, for example, is extremely comprehensive.”
As new as this ecosystem is, the economic gains for Scotland could be enormous – the sector is potentially worth £2.5 billion.
Sarah Middlemiss, Space Programme Manager at Ecometrica.
The challenge, as it screams ahead in its technology, is taking companies and governments along for the ride.
Ecometrica, another Edinburgh-based satellite data mapping company, saw its turnover increase 112% last year.
“There’s a shift to seeing information as an operational cost, a productive factor,” explained Sarah Middlemiss, Space Programme Manager.
“Raw data isn’t required; it’s lost on most people, especially those making decisions at a high level. What’s needed today are the insights and the actual information brought out of that data in easy-to-digest interfaces and reports.
“Senior managers need to make decisions and take action, so their questions are more like “Is my supply chain at risk, are we complying with this particular regulation, what do we actually need to do here?” These real world issues are being tackled at the Bayes Centre in Edinburgh’s Potterow.
It is the first of five innovation centres operating under the DDI Programme and was full within two months of opening in October last year.
Director Michael Rovatsos explained there is a real mix of private companies and university researchers working together to change how we live.
“One of the collaborations is Orbital Microsystems, a US company looking to launch 40 new satellites,” he said.
“These will update information for airlines every 15 minutes, rather than the twice daily updates currently available.
“This will mean they can recalculate flight routes almost in real time, saving fuel, benefitting the environment and perhaps even leading to cheaper tickets for passengers.”
What’s encouraging is the importance of ethics within this satellite data ecosystem.
“We want to excel in doing data right,” Jarmo concluded.
“We want to strike the balance with privacy and ethics.
“It’s a tricky combination because frameworks break down when you’re using machine learning so we need to develop a tool-like approach so we can trust the systems.
“It’s a major area of development. If we want to create a lasting mark in the data world with our DDI programme, we’re betting on ethical data.”
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