How Open Earth Observation Data drives Economic Growth — A start-up perspective
Data enables innovation, and innovation enables economic growth. Data helps us to increase transparency in our society and to tackle problems such as climate change through open exchange of information, collaboration and community-focused development. But most of the global data is locked behind paywalls or simply unavailable for research, commercial users, or the public.
A much discussed topic is how we could improve our lives and our society by opening up this data to the public, and the economic impact it would have. McKinsey tried to answer this question and estimated a value:
Open data could potentially create $3 to 5 trillion a year in value to the global economy.
For Europe, the impressive numbers on the economic impact estimated by the European Data Portal read as follows:
But there’s another part of this discussion that is less covered in your favorite blogs, social networks and magazines: How do companies produce value from the open data and open source software infrastructure that already exists?
In this article, I want to give you an insight how we at WeGaw, and companies like us, use Open Earth Observation Data available online to build a business and create value.
So what is Open Data?
Open Data is digital information that is open to anyone to find, access, use and share without legal limitations such as restrictive licenses, patents, or copyrights.
The term “Open Data” often refers to information obtained and held by public bodies such as data on census, air quality, crime, or demographics. In reality, the definition goes further to also include digitized artifacts and books owned by museums and libraries, finance data, research data, and technology.
Open data for Earth Observation
At WeGaw, we use Remote Sensing to continuously improve our global snow monitoring service for businesses and governments to save lives, boost economies, and protect our climate. For that, we need open geospatial data; data with a location component. To be more specific:
“Geospatial data is data about objects, events, or phenomena that have a location on the surface of the earth. The location may be static in the short-term (e.g., the location of a road, an earthquake event, children living in poverty), or dynamic (e.g., a moving vehicle or pedestrian, the spread of an infectious disease).” (Science Direct)
Does this image look familiar? It probably does. Like us, many businesses around the world unlock value by using open data to build or enrich their product. Google Maps relies among others on Landsat and Copernicus to provide imagery for their Satellite View.
Google also uses open transport data to give an additional layer of information to the Google Maps app and to help users plan their trips on public transport. In the open data spirit, Google also frequently releases open data and algorithms on topics ranging from training sets for Artificial Intelligence to Kubernetes.
How WeGaw uses Open Earth Observation Data
At WeGaw we synthesize snow extent and snow depth information from data that is freely available online under licenses that allow commercial use. To detect snow and snow depth, we base ourselves on satellite imagery, such as imagery provided by Copernicus, VIIRS and MODIS. To enrich our product with additional layers of information, we use freely available ground data and open meteorological models.
Open source algorithms
So now we have our data, what now? To create our snow maps, we partly rely on open source software and algorithms. A big contribution to our product is made by the snow detection algorithm Let-It-Snow. This algorithm was developed by researchers at “Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique” (CNRS) and the “Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales” (CNES) for the Theia land data center.
It reliably detects snow based on multi-thresholding, a Digital Elevation Model, and an input cloud mask. We used this innovative approach as a base for our work, made adjustments where we saw potential for improvement (such as adding additional infrared thresholds to deal with cold clouds), and released our version back online. You can find it here.
What it means to be an open data business
As you can probably tell by now, a big part of our work when designing our systems and enhancing our products is to research and analyse the data and algorithms available. Part of the process is hitting roadblocks caused by data availability, and then coming up with a viable alternative.
The work we do and the products we build are both enabled and restricted by data policies.
And it’s not only us. Many companies and organizations share our experience of depending on open data. And like us, they also produce value from it by creating jobs and boosting their local economies.
A final remark
The topic of open data is more nuanced then often presented. Data obtained through projects that are financed by public funding should be subject to a certain level of transparency and accountability. This means sharing appropriate data openly under the principle of ‘at no more than the cost of reproduction, maintenance, and distribution’, and keeping the data private that is deemed sensitive. I hope that in the future, the choice to keep data locked from the public will be made based on a conscious decision, rather than out of principle.
Regarding the private sector, I believe companies using and producing data are rightfully under no obligation to share their data openly, especially if it hurts their business. At WeGaw, we share what we can afford to share.
It is good for all of us to think what knowledge and data we can afford to open up to other people, and the benefits for our economies and societies could reap.
