UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD THROUGH OBSERVING NATURE'S CONNECTIONS

The field of Earth Observation (EO) has exploded in recent years. There are now over 1200 active EO / remote sensing satellites in orbit returning information to the ground. The images returned have increased in capability, detail and frequency and are now becoming a regular feature of news items related to anything from climate change to conflict. This is a step change from only a decade ago when capturing detailed images of a specific location or useful coverage of a whole region could take months if not years. Is this “fire hydrant” of imagery a double-edged sword and now getting too much to deal with? Are we approaching a paradigm shift in how we relate to and use EO? There is a movement across the land monitoring community away from inflexible classification towards more flexible and extendible characterisations of landscape features. It has been suggested that to maximise the uptake of EO in the land domain we need to be producing information products to standard specifications so as to be highly machine-readable and ingestible into services without the need for human intervention. I’m not advocating the wholesale abandonment of EO data interpretation to AI, but a more nuanced way of building reliable and robust production workflows based on precedents set in more mature industries. For instance, could automatic, efficient and consistent EO-based analytics layers, representing basic surface properties, time series and summaries, fill this gap? Could these analytics layers be presented in the language of the end user to increase their acceptance and uptake? Could this be the era of analytics layers rather than raw image data giving the final user more control and allowing adaptability to local conditions and domain specific interpretations?

Talks are given by top-ranking academics and researchers and industry-leading professionals from across the UK, Europe, and worldwide. The series aims to interest the broadest possible audience by promoting 'hot' research, policy and professional debates, together with novel technologies and organisational issues. We ask our speakers to think broadly about the implications of their work, be bold and encourage discussion and debate wherever possible.

These seminars also represent an important networking opportunity, with a growing audience comprising some of the key players in the Scottish geographical information industry.

Talks are followed by AGI Geo-Drinks, which take place in the Pleasance Bar, allowing plenty of room for informal professional networking.

We can also offer the option to join this seminar via Zoom. Please contact iain.cameron@envsys.co.uk for details.