Some of the utilities that satellite imagery can provide through imagery are the monitoring of the consequences of climate change, such as wildfire or floods, droughts and land use tracking. Additionally, they provide solutions for vegetation levels assessment and management, detection of harmful algal blooms in the ocean, or mapping of the global flow of oil and monitoring potential oil spills.
Earth observation from space has been one of the greatest challenges for scientists since the beginning of the 20th century. Extracting accurate, reliable, and continuous information through high-quality observation programs is a key feature for understanding the environment and improving its management and conservation.
The development of satellite technologies has increased at a remarkable pace over the past few years. Nowadays, there is more and more relevant information that we can receive from satellites. For instance, it can help to analyse the condition of roads and buildings for monitoring construction sites and urban development planning. That information is essential for the business decision-making processes. In addition, some of them have an extraordinary resolution that enables to obtain reliable satellite data and complete evaluations with a single image.
In order to obtain such data, it is important to examine in detail the information in satellite imagery. Many of these digital images come from private satellites and are expensive. However, many others are free of charge and are essential to extract and processing the data.
Available free satellite imagery platforms
As opposed to an analogue form, the digital model of satellite imagery collects each block of information differentially. Consequently, if you zoom in on an image, you will see many small squares of different colours called pixels and all the pixels together provide all the information that makes up the whole image.
Now, this satellite data is a crucial cartographic source. Digital image processing is a fast and affordable technique that helps get the most up-to-date maps and are necessary instruments to obtain global and local maps of environmental changes in real time. This is known as digital image processing and is what we put the focus on at Imageryst.
These are the main free satellite imagery platforms:
1. Google Earth
Google Earth is a geographic information system with a 3D representation of Earth, based on paid but also free satellite imagery, and offering the possibility of creating maps.
2. Copernicus Open Access Hub
Copernicus Open Access Hub provides free access to the different Sentinel satellites imagery (1, 2, 3, and 5P) and free downloads of radar data and optical images.
3. Sentinel Playground
Sentinel Playground is a great instrument for creating online combinations of Sentinel 2 satellite imagery, one of the satellites designed to provide plenty of data and images for the European Commission’s program Copernicus.
4. USGS Earth Explorer
The United States Geological Survey viewer is one of the main platforms for satellite data. From its Earth explorer, you can download satellite bands or historical satellite imagery, among other purposes.
5. EOSDIS World View
EOSDIS World View is NASA’s viewer. Here you can access environmental data and satellite imagery. In addition, images are available on a daily basis.
6. EO Browser
From EO Browser you can also download satellite images from countless satellites in a very easy way. The platform is a viewer, so you can make false colour composites and time-lapse sequences.
7. Earth Data
This is another fantastic NASA viewer for satellite imagery searching or any other data related to remote sensing. Also, Earth Data has a wide range of analysis tools.
Applications and main benefits of satellite imagery
Initially, satellites were launched into space for governmental and military aims. However, over the past few years, private companies have been able to benefit from this space technology for different purposes including those mentioned in the introduction or others such as agriculture.
Satellite imagery and data for a more efficient agriculture
One of the sectors that benefits most from earth observation is agriculture. This sector, which is the oldest and most traditional in the world, is one of the main consumers of satellite imagery through space monitoring technologies and other devices such as unmanned aerial vehicles or drones. Thus, these technologies enable different agricultural land studies, daily control, surface sensing and tracking of data processing systems.
In the past, crops were cultivated without any space technology. Nevertheless, with the development and application of precision agriculture, the range of useful information has spread significantly. Once the information is received from remote monitoring, precision agriculture uses the data for the application of different fertilizers, crop control, irrigation dosing, plant protection and other applications that help reduce costs, save resources, and increase yields.
In addition, another crucial benefit is higher resolution satellite images that allow the Imagery’s monitoring of crop status and the detection of plantings, among other things. Technologies then make it possible to achieve better images. Also, by combining high-resolution imagery with remote sensing data, Imageryst can provide companies with the ability to predict weather risks and assess natural and man-made damage to soil and crops, offer soil moisture data and detect critical temperatures to avoid natural disasters.
Thus, satellite imagery is extremely useful and offers many benefits to companies, such as improving product quality, saving time and effort, ensuring more control and protecting the environment.
To conclude, technological advances are extensively systematized and companies already have sophisticated platforms and programs that integrate a significant amount of data at their disposal.
This amount of information can be processed manually with highly-developed remote sensing and artificial intelligence techniques. Imageryst, a SaaS platform that automates the extraction of data from both, paid and free satellite imagery helps companies from different sectors to obtain reliable and accurate information from all types of images.
Thanks to this incredibly wide coverage of satellite imagery data, companies can extract data in seconds to integrate it into their platforms for further analysis. Therefore, new Earth observation technologies are the key to success today.
Increasingly, companies rely on our services to grow their business. Get started today with Imageryst! Start your free trial to discover all the benefits satellite data can bring to your company.
