Spottitt automated Land Cover Analysis generated from 10m resolution Sentinel 2 imagery.
HARWELL, United Kingdom, Spottitt Ltd. has launched a cloud-based workspace that puts massive satellite imagery sources and advanced analysis capabilities at the fingertips of energy, environment, and infrastructure professionals.
“Spottitt provides users with everything they need to extract valuable information from satellite imagery and related data sets in a secure, self-service cloud workspace,” said Spottitt CEO Lucy Kennedy. “With Spottitt, clients do not need powerful computers, image processing software or formal GIS training to leverage the value of geospatial data.”
The Spottitt online portal gives users instant access to multiple satellite image sources, including open source data from the U.S. Landsat and European Sentinel-2 satellites and sub-meter commercial image products from Airbus Defence & Space and DigitalGlobe. Other geospatial products include Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) and infrastructure feature layers.
“A Spottitt user simply defines their geographic area of interest, and the system provides thumbnail images of available data sets for purchase,” said Kennedy. “The experience is fast, simple and efficient thanks to cloud-based processing and storage.”
The major differentiator of Spottitt is the powerful data analytics it offers in the cloud. The user selects from a variety of enhancement and information extraction algorithms that can be applied to their chosen data set. Designed primarily for use in energy, environmental monitoring, and infrastructure development applications, these analytics functions include the following:
• Land Cover Classification
• Building Recognition Analysis (Footprint extraction)
• Normalized Difference Vegetation Index
• Normalized Difference Water Index
• Rule-based Greenfield Selection
• Rule-based Wind Turbine Site Selection
“Analytics results are delivered to the client workspace for viewing, editing, and further manipulation within Spottitt,” said Kennedy. “They can be shared with other users or downloaded in GIS-ready formats into other mapping software environments.”
The Spottitt solution has already been used extensively in the renewable energy and infrastructure management fields. Energy firms have used it to select the optimal locations for wind turbines by mapping land cover and terrain characteristics in areas of interest. The Spottitt building recognition and change detection analytics are ideal for energy utilities to monitor changes and risks in infrastructure assets over time.
Spottitt workspaces are securely hosted in the Microsoft Azure cloud, giving clients access from any browser-equipped device at any time. Clients are offered the option of paying for imagery and processing as they go or under subscription arrangements.
As well as being available to clients directly through Spottitt’s own online portal we are thrilled that Spottitt’s services are also available through Veracity, DNV GL’s industry data platform and online marketplace. DNV GL, a global quality assurance and risk management company based in Norway, who established the Veracity ecosystem to provide easy access to databases, analytics, and applications for its worldwide customer base in energy, maritime and other industries.
“We are delighted to welcome Spottitt to Veracity and our rapidly growing ecosystem of applications, services and data,” said Barry Authers, Commercial manager Veracity by DNV GL. “We see big potential in combining satellite data with existing asset data and the Spottitt Energy solution is a valuable contribution to our marketplace.”
2019 will see us expanding our offering to our base of energy, environment and infrastructure customers to include analyses based on satellite Single Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery sources such as Sentinel 1 which can see through cloud cover and satellite derived atmospheric data from the Copernicus program, helping our clients automatically detect and quantify an increasing range of changes to land cover, features and atmosphere.
“The Spottitt team believes passionately that satellite imagery and data is a powerful source of global information that is underutilized because it a perceived as being inaccessible, expensive and complex to work with,” said Kennedy. “We believe that by making access to satellite imagery and complex analytics as easy as shopping online Spottiitt can bridge this gap but there is still a long way to go interns of getting the message out to industry that satellite imagery and data has arrived and is ready to support them. Pitching at the Copernicus Ecosystem workshop alongside many other interesting companies working with satellite data all helps to get the message out there.”
To learn more, request a free demonstration, or just find out what satellite imagery and analytics could do for you please visit us at www.spottitt.com or contact us at info@spottitt.com.