There is a dire need for solutions to mitigate the dooming effects of climate change. As the world searches for an answer to tackle the natural calamity humankind has on its hands, a cornerstone moment can be found in space.
Panelists at the Geospatial World Forum 2024 argue the case, echoing the instantaneous action plan required and the solutions that can be found through space. Moderated by Gunter Schreier, Chair – ISPRS, International Policy Advisory Committee (IPAC), and the esteemed speakers shed their views.
Space Information
Speaking about how the new-age startups can become vital catalysts in the fight for climate change through innovation, Thomas Blaschke, Head of the Department of Geoinformatics, University of Salzburg said, “There are hundreds of startups whose purpose is to generate environmental information relevant for ESG, environment compliance, and reporting. This comes from all the satellites that we now have. Furthermore, we have all these commercial platforms, and optical, hyperspectral, SAR, Radar data, and some people are now saying the next big thing is high-res thermal imagery.”
He further stated that we will see almost a dozen high-res thermal satellites launched by 2025.
“This really makes a difference as it can map urban heat island with 2-3 meter thermal data, especially in areas where we are not allowed to fly drones. Moreover, it will help in urban densely populated areas, to monitor the effect of green rooftops and facades.”
Arianna Vettorel, Adjunct Professor – New Space Law, University of Venice, reiterated the role of startups, “The newspace technologies have a huge impact on us as individuals but also on private companies as they will help achieve the 2030 sustainable goals and as a consequence, they will help us achieve fundamental human rights such as right to life and right to life.”
The Open Data Way
The discussions around Open Data and its implication in solving problems across various facets of human life can be seen as a big revelation. The pathway to an open-data-built infrastructure incorporating a systems-of-system approach is still far-fetched.
However, Jurry De La Mar, Head of International Sales – Public Sector, T-Systems International is putting an effort to make data availability as easy as possible.
“Our objective of the Copernicus data space system is to make data easily available but also to include all the analytics tool to make it simple to address challenges such as deforestation, agriculture, insurance among others. So what does the data space today represent? It’s already the largest EO program worldwide with huge amount of data collected since 2014. And it is all readily available online, more than 70 petabytes of it.”
This data is now available in an open ecosystem, according to Jurry.
