How satellite data can help achieve sustainability goals

Our trained AI models process satellite data to measure emissions and identify impactful environmental enhancements to offset and restore thriving habitats. With this data and these insights, companies are better able to achieve their environmental and sustainability goals, states Rahul Saxena - Cofounder & CTO, AI Dash.

Companies often struggle to deliver satellite analytics in an automated manner at scale and fail to turn around satellite insights into products that operations teams can use.

At AiDash, they solve these problems by building end-to-end SaaS vertical products that deliver actionable insights. These products encompass customer requirements from satellite data acquisition, analytics and processing, and delivering case-specific workflows. Building intelligent solutions that can automate O&M operations for traditional industries at scale has paved the way for us to establish a strong foothold in the industry.

AiDash is an AI-first, SaaS vertical company enabling satellite-powered operations and maintenance for utility, energy, and other core industries with geographically distributed assets. They use high-resolution, multispectral and SAR data from world’s leading satellite constellations that are fed into their proprietary AI models to empower their full-stack applications. These applications help industries modernize their operations, maintenance, and sustainability initiatives.

“We are a technology company with a strong focus on solving complex problems,” states Rahul Saxena – Co-founder & CTO, AI Dash in an interview with Geospatial World.

Excerpts:

Recently, you secured a Series B funding worth $27 million. How do you plan to utilize the funds?

We are currently expanding our operations and markets, growing strategically with the vision to be a global leader in the industry. As a forward step in that direction, we recently opened an office in London and are attracting some extraordinary talent to serve the UK and EMEA markets. And are expanding our offices in San Jose, Austin, Reston, Bengaluru, and Gurugram. We are also accelerating our operations in the US and India by actively hiring talent with a passion for technology and solving problems, across all major divisions.

To enable our exceptional team to continue the stellar work they are doing, we are investing heavily in research, tools, and technology adoption. These investments will helps us improve and add to our product line with more innovative solutions that enable our customers achieve their goals.

Please tell us about your product Intelligent Vegetation Management System (IVMS) and how it can help people on ground?

IVMS is a revolutionary product that helps utilities and energy companies get visibility into overgrowth of vegetation around transmission & distribution grids and to formulate efficient controls.

Uncontrolled vegetation in the Rights-of-Way (RoW) of utilities is a major contributor to outages, wildfire hazards, and damage to assets. IVMS uses high-resolution, multispectral imagery to view current and historical trends of vegetation around monitored networks. Our trained AI models then process this data and use predictive analytics to determine metrics such as the height of trees, predicted growth rate of vegetation, chlorophyll content in leaves, and moisture content in trees. These data points can help utilities identify hazard trees and suggest optimized multi-year trim cycles.

IVMS is a highly advanced product that helps analyze, predict, plan, review, and audit vegetation management activities. Vegetation managers can use data-based, intelligent predictions to manage trim plans, allocate budgets effectively, and monitor progress of tasks. Meanwhile, field crew can use our mobile app to view and log completion of assigned inspections and trim tasks.

What are the major challenges that your products are going to address? What technologies are you using in your products and services and what are they?

Traditional practices around O&M activities, such as manual inspections, reactive trimming, and contractor management are laborious, expensive, and inept.

We are building some pioneering products to address these challenges. We use high-resolution, multispectral imagery and SAR data which, unlike drones and helicopters, provides continuous data that is independent of light, weather, or cloud-cover conditions. This technology can also detect changes in water and moisture levels, habitat impacts of natural or human disturbances, and changes in the Earth’s surface after natural disasters.

Our AI models add intelligence to this satellite and ground data, allowing our products to transform outdated O&M practices for utilities. Powered by AI, our solutions can offer predictive capabilities that help industries plan, monitor, and act to weather events and other natural hazards.

What technologies have impacted and disrupted your industry the most? What are your views on "the adoption of technologies" impacting business? Or What is the importance of technology adoption?

Satellite technology has massive potential. With the projected number of satellites to be launched in coming years, the scalability of this technology opens new avenues for research and commercial applications. Unlike traditional methods, satellites are weather- and terrain-independent and ensure a continuous flow of near real-time data.

Coupling the power of AI & ML with satellite data adds intelligence and scope of implementation across industries by case studies at scale by several folds.

Adoption of technologies and using them correctly and optimally is crucial to staying ahead of the curve and developing futuristic products.

What are the latest technology trends that you foresee and how do you see the market of geospatial and allied technologies evolving?

In recent years, we have witnessed significant advancements in the field of geospatial artificial intelligence, which is the integration of geospatial studies and AI — especially machine learning and deep learning methods and the latest AI technologies.

The adoption of models at the intersection of geospatial and AI/ML technologies, such as deep learning models and computer vision for application in classification, prediction, and segmentation are opening huge opportunities for our data-driven approach.

The rise of portable satellites and an increase in the number of Earth observation satellites are slated to increase the availability of data and opportunities. Similarly, the availability of Map-as-a-Service also creates an upward trend of subscription-based, imagery-based products and partnerships to provide aerial mapping services.

We offer our products as a SaaS offering with a monthly subscription fee. Most of our contracts are 3-5 year contracts. We foresee this is as a practical and successful business model for companies and customers alike.

Can you please elaborate on your recently launched Intelligent Sustainability Management System (ISMS) at COP26 and how can it help companies achieve their sustainability goals?

ISMS is an innovative SaaS product that helps organizations with large land assets measure, enhance, track, report, and offset sustainability metrics such as biodiversity, natural capital, and emissions on land, air, and water. The product enables organizations to achieve resource efficiency and implement sustainability development goals to realize net-zero carbon emissions to air and biodiversity gains from land and water resources. Our trained AI models process satellite data to measure emissions and identify impactful environmental enhancements to offset and restore thriving habitats. With this data and these insights, companies are better able to achieve their environmental and sustainability goals.

Who are your partners and how do you collaborate with partners and stakeholders? What is the growth trajectory of your organization and where do you see your business in the next 5-10 years?

We partner with leading satellite data vendors and GIS application providers like ESRI, UP42, etc. We also have business partnerships with organizations such as BCG, Kellton Tech, etc. Collaboration and investments from our partners help us with our goal of strategically growing our company and continuously improving our products. We are a technical committee member of the Open Geospatial Consortium, which helps propel us in our forward growth trajectory.

We aim to be a global leader in empowering industries with our deep-domain and AI-first SaaS solutions.