Ask The Expert - Shaping a Sustainable Future with AI with OKAPI:Orbits and OroraTech
OKAPI:Orbits and OroraTech are both Apex Ventures portfolio companies that are using AI to find more sustainable ways of living to help shape a more ecological future.
Their initiatives offer a hopeful perspective, suggesting that the path forward in technology, especially in the area of space exploration and utilisation, can be crafted in harmony with our commitment to solving the planet’s most pressing environmental challenges.
OKAPI:Orbits is a SaaS startup working on protecting the future of space travel through Space Traffic Management. They are committed to making space travel and exploration more sustainable with safe and secure satellite operations and seamless ground segment integration.
OroraTech is an an intelligence-as-a-service company that monitor the temperature of the earth using a series of thermal sensors installed on satellites. These satellites are able to monitor changes in temperature and detect the threat of forest fires, notifying any customers of a potential threat within three minutes.
Kristina Nikolaus, CEO and Founder of OKAPI: Orbits and Julia Gottfriedsen, Data Science Team Lead at OroraTech, both work closely with AI to help create a more sustainable future.
How is AI being leveraged to improve climate modelling and prediction accuracy?
Kristina Nikolaus (KN): AI and ML have become trending topics in recent years, with huge breakthroughs in some applications. We can talk about AI and Earth Observation when it comes to monitoring climate change or natural disasters, with ESA’s project DestinE (the potential digital twin of the Earth) being a very bright example. We can also talk about AI in satellite navigation, where it can improve — amongst many other things — weather forecasting in space and on Earth, which in return will contribute to the enhancement of satellite service availability. Another example is NASA using AI to adjust Sun images, thus ameliorating the data used for solar research. In the case of OKAPI:Orbits, AI is used in the field of Collision Avoidance and Risk Management.
ML/AI solutions are used within the conjunction assessment processes to help better understand a situation and support decision-making. Its benefits are meaningful when predicting metrics, such as the Collision Probability prediction. However, this data must always be considered as an add-on, where the reference is always based on deterministic algorithms.
There will undoubtedly be further improvements in AI and ML that extend where they can be applied. However, we must be truthful about its real potential, particularly in the middle term. As Abraham Maslow said, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”
This is in fact what is happening in many areas, where AI is used to catch attention and promise revolutionary improvements in a particular area, even though AI might not be the right tool for the given problem, especially when good solutions already exist.
Julia Gottfriedsen (JG): Boreal forests hold over a third of the world’s land-based carbon, acting as a significant carbon sink. However, wildfires pose a major threat to these forests. During March and July 2023 alone, numerous wildfires raged across Canada, devastating over 3% of its forests.
If the burned vegetation does not regrow adequately, these areas may shift from absorbing carbon to emitting it, further exacerbating climate change. AI-based wildfire detection by satellites and the resulting petabyte archive, combined with longer time series data from additional sources, can aid in understanding this relationship and forecasting wildfire hazards in the future.
Artificial intelligence also significantly bolsters our comprehension of climate dynamics by enhancing the resolution of two essential climate variables as defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), derived from thermal remote sensing data: land and sea surface temperature (LST & SST). These temperature assessments are integral to monitoring climate tipping points as well as enabling more accurate and nuanced climate models and predictions, enabling better-informed decisions and understanding.
What are the innovative ways in which AI is contributing to renewable energy optimisation and management?
KN: AI has, in fact, been proven very beneficial when it comes to optimisation of energy consumption in space technology. When planning a rocket or satellite mission, AI can be used to improve manoeuvring and, subsequently, the use of propellant. This, in turn, leads to energy and fuel consumption refinement, thus enhancing cost-effectiveness by up to 70% when it comes to manoeuvring.
There are also innovative AI applications that can take into account the energy constraints of a mission from a very early stage. One example is considering if a satellite’s solar panels have to be torn, facing the sun for a certain amount of time before manoeuvring.
JG: Through advanced wildfire spread modelling based on remote sensing data, AI aids in safeguarding critical grid infrastructure from the damaging effects of wildfires.
If a wildfire is detected by our space-based sensor network close to grid infrastructure, our AI-based forecasting of the wildfire’s propagation recognizes if it will reach the infrastructure in the next hours, ensuring fast suppression and, therefore, uninterrupted energy transmission and distribution. This not only helps maintain the flow of energy but also prevents catastrophic failures that could lead to widespread power outages.
How can AI-powered solutions significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of current climate initiatives in mitigating wildfire risks and reducing carbon emissions?
KN: When it comes to mitigating wildfire risk, AI, and especially data vision tools, help us detect wildfires at a much faster pace than ever before. Observations can be processed completely automatically, and analytics can be derived to deliver valuable insights — sometimes even crucial when it comes to rural areas. The fastest detection and enhanced imagery mean that the responding forces can be faster and better prepared.
JG: AI-powered solutions can significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of current climate initiatives in mitigating wildfire risks and reducing carbon emissions.
Our AI-based short-term wildfire forecasting product delivers superior precision compared to standard models by accounting for the dynamic and region-specific nature of wildfire, using our vast petabyte-scale wildfire database for training. The model continuously learns and adjusts to new patterns of wildfire risk that are influenced by shifting weather patterns, land use, and vegetation changes.
OroraTech’s near-real-time active fire detection product leverages edge AI on board our orbital sensors to quickly process data for early wildfire detection in space. This early detection capability allows for prompt deployment of firefighting resources and informed decision-making for evacuation, thus minimizing potential damage and loss of life.
Forests can act as carbon sinks — remote sensing data of forest biomass and its change over time can be used for AI-based carbon estimation.
This product can be used by carbon project developers and carbon certification and verification companies that need accurate data for creating, validating, and managing carbon offset projects — you want to know if your carbon credits just burnt down or are at the risk of a catastrophic loss through wildfire.
Lastly, our extensive wildfire database, combined with auxiliary data such as vegetation, meteorological, and socioeconomic data, can be leveraged by LLMs such as ChatGPT to ease customer interaction and interfacing, providing users with streamlined access to thermal intelligence for informed decision-making.
The work of OroraTech and OKAPI:Orbits is a true demonstration that we can continue to make progress in spacetech, in a sustainable way and also use it to help solve environmental issues.
By harnessing innovative solutions that are both sustainable and environmentally conscious, these organisations are leading the way in demonstrating how technological progress can be aligned with ecological preservation.
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