Is your NGO leveraging satellite imagery the right way?

For generations, nomadic pastoralists have relied on deep ecological knowledge to find good pasture and fresh water for their herds. But as areas such as the Afar region of Ethiopia come under new pressure — from population growth, land battles and prolonged drought — new approaches to livelihood planning are needed. Thousands of traditional pastoralists in Afar have seen livestock mortality cut in half since they began using digital maps overlaid with vegetation data to find grazing areas for their cattle. Increasingly, NGOs such as Project Concern International, the California-based international development organization behind this Satellite Assisted Pastoral Resource Management effort, are relying on satellite imagery for the actionable information they need. But while this overhead view is a valued resource for so many global development professionals, there are plenty of cautionary tales. Devex spoke with a range of experts to learn how you can leverage the power of satellites, while avoiding costly mistakes along the way. Don’t spend money you don’t need to spend Google Earth’s freely available archived images will be more than sufficient for most NGOs’ purposes. Some organizations waste time and money by failing to understand that just because satellite data is expensive doesn’t mean it will be useful for them. “Among the NGO community, there is a misconception that satellite imagery is very expensive, even though most actors don’t actually need the images, but the information from the images to make decisions in the field,” said Einar Bjorgo, manager of the U.N.’s satellite program, UNOSAT, which is based at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland. Launched in 2000, UNOSAT aims to provide satellite data and imagery analysis to relief and development organizations within and outside the U.N. system. The team is divided into focus areas such as natural disasters, conflicts and cultural heritage sites, and they respond to requests from the field. “What we typically do is download the satellite imagery then process and analyze it ourselves to produce maps, statistical reports, and other satellite imagery observations,” said Bjorgo. The Rwanda Genocide was the turning point that led Bjorgo to shift his focus from melting polar ice caps to refugee relief operations. He told Devex about his work evaluating satellite imagery to determine the impact of Tropical Cyclone Giri on flood-affected townships in Myanmar in 2010. When UNOSAT looks for data, it begins with free resources, such as the data available through National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Landsat program, which is the longest continuous record of satellite imagery of the planet. Then it looks to the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters, “an international collaboration between the owners and operators of Earth observation missions,” which is limited to authorized users such as disaster management authorities, but currently expanding its user base. UNOSAT only purchases images when it is the last remaining option, and Bjorgo recommends NGOs follow that same path. First, they should ask themselves what kind of information and resolution they really need and whether they can get it at a low price point — or for free. UNOSAT can be a resource, he said. Luckily for NGOs, a number of lower cost solutions have cropped up. The launch of Google Earth in 2001, the collaboration between four students that resulted in Skybox Imaging, the Google acquisition of Skybox Imaging in June 2014, and the launch of Skybox for Good in October 2014 have all contributed to a suite of tools for humanitarians and development professionals. Leverage the power of partnerships “We don’t typically pay for imagery work. We work through partnerships,” said Tyler Radford, executive director of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, which creates and provides collaborative maps for humanitarian aid. “We’ve been fortunate to get pretty much all of our imagery donated.” Through a partnership with MapBox, a San Francisco-based mapping platform company that buys imagery from DigitalGlobe, a commercial vendor of high-resolution satellite imagery, the organization is able to access satellite imagery and create maps based on what they see. The space industry and a growing number of satellite imagery companies recognize this opportunity to partner with the humanitarian sector. “Space is ubiquitous and global, and that means satellites can be the first responders to any emergency,” Rick Ambrose, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space Systems, told Devex in an email. “Now our challenge is to find the right tools and connections to share that information and those resources with the people that need them.” Ambrose, who is also a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council for Space, talked about a prototype of HelpNow, an open source app that would help responders use satellite data from space assets to improve their decision-making in the field. The goal, he said, is to leverage cloud-based technologies for crisis responders who would benefit from continually updated maps in order to deliver aid to the areas with the most critical needs. The app incorporates imagery from DigitalGlobe and runs with OpenStreetMaps. “Our next step is to find the right path forward to mature this prototype and get it into the hands of the people and organizations that need it the most,” he said. A couple trends make the space industry a natural partner for the global development community, Ambrose said. As space becomes an increasingly global domain, resources will be available in more regions than ever before. And as satellites get less expensive and more effective, there will be better data available at a lower cost to a broader audience. While most satellite imagery refreshes every two years, Planet Labs, Inc. is designing, manufacturing and delivering into orbit a constellation of miniature satellites that will allow its customers to monitor changes such as deforestation more quickly. Planet Labs flips the model of some of its peers in the aerospace industry that were founded to serve commercial interests but also contribute to humanitarian causes, said Andrew Zolli, director of impact. The company was founded “to ensure planetary stewardship,” as Zolli put it, and it has attracted investment from a combination of Silicon Valley investors and the International Finance Corp., a division of the World Bank. Math equations were scribbled across white boards, and the miniature satellites scattered across office desks lend a feeling of legitimacy to the nondisclosure agreement required of visitors before entering the office. The hype around satellite imagery has led some organizations to rush into it. They will include satellite imagery in their disaster response checklist, regardless of whether it is really useful. Or they will buy images after the fact to illustrate or validate a decision rather than including it as a central part of the decision-making process. Zolli said he wants to see the NGO community experiment more in this arena, taking small steps in order to understand what giant leaps might be possible in food security, disaster response, environmental monitoring and climate resilience. Be careful when you’re paying for more than pixels While he is tasked with educating global development professionals about the ways they can leverage satellite imagery, Zolli also acknowledges that it will take time to get buy in from users, their funders and their beneficiaries. “Most of our NGOs are 20th century organizations operating in the 21st century with mostly 19th century tools,” he said. “And they have some very understandable and robust concerns about embracing a new technology.” Many satellite imagery companies are moving in the direction of doing analysis on behalf of clients, rather than following a data provider model. This makes it all the more essential for NGOs to understand the benefits and limits of satellite imagery so they are not sold more than they need. In an email to Devex, Isaac Baker, an imagery analysis manager at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative’s Signal Program on human security and technology described his experience responding to the earthquake in Nepal last year. Baker saw how the coordination needs for geospatial data in a disaster far outstrip the current structures. “We don’t have total agreement on the geospatial data preparedness requirements of what we need ‘when’ to do ‘what’ in terms of ground response,” he said, explaining that the global development community needs to address these issues head on in order to develop in-house capacity “to do this professionally with technical and ethical standards, and begin to confront the overarching problem with satellite imagery price points and the challenge of being able to afford it regularly.” Setting an example for how satellite companies might consider helping development organizations build capacity rather than analyze satellite imagery for them, PCI is working with pastoralists to use maps in order to improve their own decision-making. “Imagery companies are not doing analysis for us, and we are not doing analysis for the pastoralists,” Richard Parker, vice president of marketing and communications at PCI, told Devex. The “normalized differential vegetation index” that is autogenerated and auto-emailed for use by pastoralists is derived from a weather satellite that provides public access imagery. PCI worked with communities to identify grazing areas using topographical maps and digitally fused those maps with the satellite data. Now, with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development and in partnership with Google.org, PCI is expanding and further testing the use of satellite imagery among more than 1 million pastoralist in Ethiopia and Tanzania. As Ethiopia’s drought becomes the worst in five decades, the Satellite Assisted Pastoral Resource Management initiative has become crucial, Parker said. Check out more insights and analysis for global development leaders like you, and sign up as an Executive Member to receive the information you need for your organization to thrive.