Google now offers all commercial, and government organisations worldwide access to its Earth Engine, which has previously only been accessible to academics, researchers, and non-profit organisations.
Google said its decision was in response to global business and government authorities’ calls for increased sustainability efforts, which its Earth Engine can facilitate.
One of the largest, publicly accessible databases of Earth observation data is the Google Earth Engine. The latter provides a constant and nearly real-time feed of Earth-imaging data to individuals who have access to the platform by scrolling a stream of Earth observation imagery from various satellites placed in orbit around Earth as well as other imagery resources. When combined with geospatial cloud computing platforms built into the Google Earth Engine, these data provide analytics and insights on a wide range of regional issues, including climate information, assessments of the likelihood and effects of natural disasters, and the control of diseases across different regions, and more.
This, according to Google, will assist businesses and governments worldwide, who can now monitor target forest sections or other critical locations and take appropriate action. Using Google Earth Engine, SC Johnson, a US-based global consumer chemicals company, has already launched a test project to create predictive models of mosquito populations worldwide. These models predicted which regions of the world may have the greatest concentration of the disease vector shortly using existing mosquito breeding patterns and more than one billion data points produced by Google Earth Engine.
The liberalization of geospatial imagery data worldwide, including in India, has given many commercial operators in space the opportunity to provide comparable satellite imagery and analytics to governmental entities and private businesses on Earth.
For instance, the private Indian space technology startup Pixxel will provide customers with hyperspectral imagery and image-based data analytics for actionable insights on climate change, sustainability, agroforestry, and defence applications. Pixxel launched its first satellite, “Shakuntala,” in April this year as a secondary payload aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
GalaxEye, an Indian space-tech firm developing a platform for data analytics based on satellite images, is anticipated to launch in 2023 and provide satellite data to organizations and governments operating in the insurance, mining, and disaster management industries among others.
Google’s Earth Engine data, which is now accessible to businesses and governments, will be a significant competitor for such private operators. However, Google has guaranteed that, at least soon, access to the Earth Engine will continue to be accessible for non-profit organizations and academia.
