Australian support for African spatial data

CANBERRA — Open data cubes are designed to make freely available satellite data accessible to a wide audience by providing scientists, policymakers, small business, and more, with access to data tools and analysis platforms. Work on the “most ambitious and important data cube implementation globally” began to scale up in August as the Digital Earth Africa project gathered technical advisors in Nairobi to consolidate feedback that will support its work program and product roadmap. “Africa itself is four times larger than Australia. It is no exaggeration to say that DE Africa is taking the use of data cubes to the next level.” --— Dr. Adam Lewis, managing director, Geoscience Australia’s Digital Earth Africa Establishment Team DE Africa, an open data cube designed for the continent of Africa, has lofty goals. It aims to be the world's largest operational platform for accessing and analyzing decades of satellite imagery for African land and ocean territories. Data available freely from Earth observation satellites will be translated into a range of products allowing ready-to-use insights informing governments, NGOs, businesses, and more, to make informed decisions about environmental conditions, water quality, and changes in human settlements. Despite the focus on Africa, a key partner in delivering this solution is the Australian aid program with the project’s establishment team based in Canberra within Geoscience Australia to leverage the expertise and experience developed through the creation of Digital Earth Australia. Importance of DE Africa Dr. Adam Lewis, managing director of Geoscience Australia’s Digital Earth Africa Establishment Team, explained to Devex that the project is ambitious due to its scale. “Whereas most data cubes are limited to a single country, and many are research prototypes, DE Africa will cover a vast continent with over 50 countries,” he said. “Africa itself is four times larger than Australia. It is no exaggeration to say that DE Africa is taking the use of data cubes to the next level.” With a land area of over 30 million square kilometres, developing a continental-wide platform brings a number of challenges from the technical infrastructure such as data sovereignty, data transfer between infrastructures, data storage, and being responsive to the key issues and priorities across each country. Despite the challenges, DE Africa is not starting from scratch. It will leverage the achievements and learnings from the Africa Regional Data Cube tool — an initiative from the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data — that demonstrated the value of data cubes of Earth observation in Sierra Leone, Senegal, Ghana, Kenya, and Tanzania. And the core technology and initial methods and expertise for DE Africa at the continental scale, will come from Digital Earth Australia as well as the work of Geoscience Australia in supporting the Open Data Cube. “Whilst there will always be differences, an African data cube is driven by the same principles as other data cubes, such as the need for improved and open information to inform important decisions and to monitor and report on results, the untapped potential of Earth observation data to provide information for decisions, the energy of the scientific community to develop methods and algorithms that make a difference in the real world, and the need to be informed by and respond to the needs of real users,” Lewis said. DE Africa is supporting better information for Africa to help deliver the Sustainable Development Goals. The project’s scoping phase identifies that Earth observation data can contribute to the delivery of 16 of the 17 goals — with the exception of Goal 4 (quality education). “It is well appreciated that Earth observations will play an essential role underpinning the environmental dimensions of the SDGs, at national regional and local scales,” Lewis said. DE Africa will aim to support all of Africa to drive progress toward the SDGs including zero hunger, clean water and sanitation, and climate action. “All of these challenges can be addressed through insights, knowledge and analysis of the changes across Africa from soil and coastal erosion, agriculture, forest and desert development, water quality and changes in human settlement,” he said. The major challenge, which DE Africa aims to help overcome, is the actual access to data and information from Earth observations. But along with the delivery of the data and its products, Lewis said the project needs to support the communication and learning to help decision-makers understand the power and usefulness of Earth observation data to address these challenges. “We also have to make it worthwhile for decision makers, who are generally busy and pressed for time, to spend time learning about and adopting new approaches,” he said. “A key success factor for DE Africa will be on the uptake of information products as they are applied to decision-making and action at the country level.” “It is well appreciated that Earth observations will play an essential role underpinning the environmental dimensions of the SDGs, at national regional and local scales.” --— Dr. Adam Lewis, managing director, Geoscience Australia’s Digital Earth Africa Establishment Team Australian role in supporting African data needs Through the experience of Geoscience Australia in developing other data cubes, it is playing an important role in supporting African partners to build their capacity to use, manage, and analyze Earth observation data. A core component of DE Africa’s establishment is capacity development and training for African organizations. The DE Africa establishment team that sits within Geoscience Australia, alongside DE Africa partners will work with regional, technical, and research institutions critical to advancing the capacity development program across Africa to ensure the benefits of Earth observation data and cloud computing infrastructure are fully realised. Australia is also supporting the development of the project with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as co-funder. “This funding was granted based on the merit of the project and the ongoing investment of providing innovative technology to Africa that can help the continent to leap frog in its development, support evidence-based decision making and policy development,” Lewis said. In international forums, including the Group on Earth Observations, Lewis explained that Australia is also aiming to advance the work of DE Africa — as well as through the broad support being received from Australian ambassadors based in Africa. “DE Africa will form close relationships and enabling partnerships with institutions across Africa, such as the Regional Centre for Mapping for Resources Development, as well as with technical companies such as Amazon and ESRI and even with the international space agencies that provide the analysis ready data that we need,” Lewis said. Path forward Phase I of the project, a scoping exercise to assess the case for further investment into DE Africa, has been completed. It identified the institutional, political, technical, financial, and capacity-building factors that need to be considered for a successful and sustainable deployment of DE Africa in the long term. The first technical advisory committee meeting to be held next week on the sidelines of the Regional Centre for Mapping for Resources Development International Conference will help scope the directions and priorities for phase II. These will be presented to the steering committee — which includes the Kenya Office of the Deputy President, Ghana Statistical Service, South African National Space Agency, Geoscience Australia, World Economic Forum, Committee on Earth Observations Satellites, Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, and U.N. Economic Commission for Africa — who provide an advisory role for the project. Activities currently underway include the establishment of the institutional hosting arrangements with UNECA, recruitment of DE Africa staff for building the technical infrastructure, and the delivery of an Africa-wide event for key stakeholders to learn about and begin to engage with the program. The project is also looking to establish cloud-based technical infrastructure needed to host and analyze up to four petabytes of satellite imagery over Africa, and to have imagery provided from space agencies that is ready to use — with the first continental-wide demonstration product aiming to be delivered by November and launched as part of GEO Week 2019 in Canberra. Looking beyond 2019, the objectives over the next three years is to see DE Africa established in Africa by being institutionalized within UNECA and having a governance framework implemented that will be largely supported by institutions based in Africa who develop new products to support the changing needs of the continent.