Using cloud to harness satellite imagery and sensor data for public sector use

Government and public sector organizations face unique challenges to accomplish complex missions with limited resources. One of those challenges is how to harness the rapidly growing amount of modern satellite imagery and sensor data for public sector uses.

In a recent FedScoop panel discussion, Jon Love, vice president of strategic growth at Maxar — a major provider of commercial satellite imagery to the U.S. government — discusses how modern cloud capabilities are improving not just the amount of data satellites collect, the quality of images they provide as well.

Clouds in the atmosphere make it harder to collect data, according to Love, but a technology that has quickly evolved is the ability to combine electro-optical, or camera imagery, along with synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and even radio frequency data to improve the situational awareness of what is occurring on Earth.

And once that data is collected, an agile and elastic cloud can help organizations “churn through a lot of data” — both SAR and electro-optical — to perform object detection “at a scale that they’ve never done before,” shared Brandon Miller, senior account manager for Maxar at AWS.

But perhaps equally importantly, he added, the ability to scale up and scale down a cloud environment quickly also means agencies can do this “efficiently, effectively and at the right cost.”

Watch the full panel to hear more about improve data and image analysis with cloud.

You can also hear more from other government leaders about driving cloud-first strategies in the public sector.

This video panel discussion was produced by Scoop News Group and FedScoop and underwritten by AWS.