The GeoGeek’s Guide to Planet’s Satellite Imagery

小型卫星技术正在完全改变世界。这是星球在彻底改变地球观测数据的所做的事情，以及如何利用卫星趋势在行业中取得成功。

几年前，卫星撞到了一个转折点，当时建造的数字高潮达到94launchesover the span of a few months. The final frontier is forever changed, and we owe this to smallsats (satellites under 500 kg).

In fact, the US government,NASA, NGA, and NOAA are so excited about the implications forreal-time Earth Observation datathat they’ve thrown millions of dollars into purchasing data and funding new smallsat programs. Record numbers of satellites are expected to launch all over the place in 2017.

Artistic rendering of what Earthprobably looks like.

Why Smallsats are Bigdeals

Smallsats are easier, faster, and cheaper to make and launch than traditional satellites. Founded on this technology, companies like Planet, Urthecast, Skybox, and DigitalGlobe are now capturing continuous images of the earth, giving us access to an archive of (nearly) real-time pictures of the entire planet.

还记得那时您在Google Earth上查找房屋只是为了找到过时的图像吗？这个问题在过去。现在mapping services will actually be able to keep upwith the speed at which humanity functions.

所以,我们应该do with this new volume and frequency of satellite imagery? There’s huge opportunity here in a few different markets.

Industries where Earth Observation Satellites are Changing Everything

1. 政府agencies have so far shown the most demand for EO data, because it’s so useful for tracking resources, analyzing urban expansion, visualizing land use trends, creating development plans, and many other projects.
2. Intelligence agencies不仅要检索自己的国家，而且还为周围的所有国家检索数据，以便[为我自己的安全而编辑]亚搏在线.
3. 环境的organizations are using satellites to find harmful activity like illegal tree-felling or mining, to visualize concerns like deforestation, damaged habitats, and changing rivers, and to monitor the climate.
4. 数据分析公司和任何具有尖端机器学习算法的公司都是准备统治, because someone’s got to take this huge volume of data and provide business insight.
5. Agriculture巨大的好处。现在，通过将当今的数据与昨天或逐年比较，可以轻松查看作物健康，预测产量并做出更好的决定。例如，可以在几天之内看到并减轻植被健康的问题。
6. 灾害管理（自然或人为）的能力得到了改善compareimages of what an area looked like immediately before and after the disaster. And of course satellites offer the ability to track natural disasters.
7. 人道主义efforts can be managed more easily. An amazing use case came up not long ago when Planet’s imagery was used to追踪叙利亚难民营.
8. Monitoring assets and resourcesin various industries — ships, wells, pipelines, power lines, etc. — is blissfully simplified, since you can now see everything in real time (and as actual pictures, instead of GPS points).

这一切都处于早期阶段（我的意思是，每个人仍在称这家数百万美元的公司为初创公司……），因此小型EO卫星的全部潜力是TBD。But it’s clear that real-time pictures of our planet are going to revolutionize the way a lot of industries work — finding, tracking, and monitoring assets and resources, seeing changes over time and, with the help of algorithms and other data sources, giving us illuminating insight on the state of the world.

See also:构建应用程序以将原始的地球观测数据变成有用的智能

How To Access and Use Planet Data

Planet’s satellites, called鸽子，提供高频中等分辨率（3-5米）图像归档回到2009年。您可以通过网络轻松地访问它，以及通过诸如FME之类的应用程序访问它，可让您可以根据需要使用和集成数据。

在FME数据检查器中查看的Planet卫星检索的样品图像。

因此，您触手可及的所有这些惊人的卫星数据。现在是时候对此做些事情了。

通常，当我们从多个来源中获取数据时，就会发生宝贵的见解。这意味着您的第一步通常是将行星图像与其他数据源（GIS，3D或CAD型号，数据库，LIDAR扫描）集成在一起。

Then it’s time to apply pixel-by-pixel calculations, analysis, QC / validation, geometry processing, and whatever other transformations you need. Here are…

11 Ideas for Using Satellite Imagery

1. Use the frequently updated imagery as a ‘live’ basemap for your GIS data.
2. 在数字高程模型（DEM）或LIDAR扫描中悬垂，以可视化3D的景观。

在FME数据检查器中查看的栅格图像挤出到3D。

3. Classify the image so each pixel gets a value depending on whether it’s a tree, water, building, etc. (Note Planet imagery gives you 4-5 bands of different wavelengths plus vector features (black pixel regions) in the metadata to work with.)
4. 结合几张图像以摆脱云覆盖范围。
5. 使其着色以识别感兴趣的区域或制作热图。

See also:17 ways you can process raster imagery

6. 将特定的区域加载到数据库中，因此您可以随着时间的推移（加载到PostGIS或ESRI地理数据库中的图像附件，或作为不支持栅格等的数据库中的二进制BLOB）进行比较。
7. 构建HTML目录，PDF，电子表格或其他报告，以可视化不断变化的数据以及与该图像相关的属性。
8. Vectorize the image. For example, say you’ve got a clearly defined area with water, land, and buildings. Split that into polygons and load them into your GIS or wherever else for further processing.

这是一个示例FME工作流程，可以执行上述几个亚搏在线转换并生成近红外（NIR）表面模型。（自己尝试：我们的场景创建分析师德米特里has put together sample FME Workspaces. Note they read from local TIFF files and you’ll need a Planet API key if you want to work with live data.)

从行星图像中生成3D NIR模型。下载示例FME工作区.

然后，这些数据可用于获取NDVI（归一化差异指数 - 我们正在检查该区域的哪些部分具有绿色植物，以及它的健康程度）。

左：NDVI在原始地形上可视化。右：NDVI在3D中。下载示例FME工作区.

After you’ve transformed the satellite imagery into your desired output, it’s time to automate the workflow.Satellites gather data at high frequency, which means your workflow needs to be able to keep up.This is what FME Server and FME Cloud are for. Set them up to:

9. Automatically pull imagery and process it in your workflow whenever new data becomes available.
10. Add new imagery to your database only when it meets certain requirements, e.g. it’s not covered by clouds.
11. 创建自己的网络地图瓷砖服务（WMTS），以在最新的基础上提供数据。

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Hopefully this inspires you to achieve the incredible with all of this satellite data now available. We’re really excited about the potential for Earth Observation data here at Safe and can’t wait to see what’s next.

What would you like to do with daily imagery of your hometown? Do you plan to do anything cool with satellite data? Share in the comments.

Endnote

For those of you concerned about government spy conspiracy theories, here’s a picture of Planet’s satellite resolution. Note it’s about the right resolution to see trees but not people.

蒂亚娜·华纳（Tiana Warner）

Tiana is a Senior Marketing Specialist at Safe Software. Her background in computer programming and creative hobbies led her to be one of the main producers of creative content for Safe Software. Tiana spends her free time writing fantasy novels, riding her horse, and exploring nature with her rescue pup, Joey.