Satellite imagery, long the domain of governments and militaries around the globe, is finding its way into the commercial marketplace. Commercial satellite operators had hoped that the launch of several spacecraft in the late 1990s and the early part of this decade would jump-start the spread of imagery as an everyday business tool. But many commercial industries have been slow to adopt the technology, and they may be missing out on the cost and time savings that imagery provides.
Imagery Use Growing
The extraction industries such as oil and gas exploration and mining have long known of the benefits that can be derived from satellite imagery. Oil and gas companies have been using the space-based technology for more than 30 years to perform tasks such as geologic mapping, searching for naturally occurring oil slicks that may indicate the presence of untapped oil fields and mapping routes for pipelines.
As the technology improved, sharper and more precise cameras have been placed into orbit and computer capabilities today allow users to create better products from the raw imagery, creating new uses for the data, industry officials say. Today, civilian and urban planners are using satellite imagery for tasks such as transportation planning; real estate developers use the data to search for the best sites to build new communities and commercial developments; and environmentalists have found it easier to monitor issues such as deforestation and urban sprawl.
“The technology and the industry is advancing so fast it’s unbelievable,” says Leo Romeijn, president and CEO of Satellite Imaging Corp., value-added reseller which specializes in providing data to the oil and gas industry. “Other industries such as engineering, construction, land development, real estate, agriculture and forestry almost cannot do without it. If you want to look at hurricane damage, it’s now all controlled by imagery for before and after views. There are also many kinds of homeland security applications. In addition, we get inquiries from country sheriff departments for use in investigations, and we’ve provided imagery for the movie industry.”
Demand for imagery also is being driven by the new global economy, as large corporations use the satellite data to keep track of facilities around the globe. “Construction companies are starting to use imagery more and more to physically measure progress,” Romeijn said. “We acquire the first image of a large project, such as for Bechtel, which is constructing a large chemical facility in China. We take the first image and then three months later take another one so they can see the progress on construction. This is a new type of approach for management control on a large project. We also are working with Exxon in Chad. The big advantage of using satellite imagery products is that you don’t need authorizations from governments to acquire the data.”
Roger Holeywell, an advanced senior geologist with Marathon Oil’s Technology Services group, uses satellite imagery to provide data and services to users throughout the company, mainly for construction projects around the globe. “Our biggest single satellite imaging project is a construction project, the Alba Plant, located on Bioko Island off western Africa in the Gulf of Guinea. Marathon also has a gas processing plant and a [liquefied natural gas] plant that is partly under construction, and we try to acquire satellite image over the plant about four times a year ideally to monitor construction progress.”

Making Imagery Less Intimidating

Satellite imagery now is easily available for use by smaller organizations and the general public. “We’ve seen a real shift throughout the last year in the acceptance of satellite imagery in more consumer applications,” says Tom Kubancik, director of business development for value-added reseller Harris Imagelinks. “Real estate is a big driver in that area, as well as combining imagery and location-based searching,” such as with Google Earth, which has introduced satellite imagery to more than 15 million Web surfers since its launch.
But to first time users, entering the world of satellite imagery can be technically daunting. Many potential users remain wary because of the perception that advanced training is required to work with satellite imagery. There also are many choices with imagery available from government and private sources and in a range of resolutions and types. But the imagery industry has worked hard to make satellite imagery simpler to use.
To bring commercial imagery into business operations, one does not have to go directly to the satellite operators and buy raw imagery and perform all the data extraction. Companies such as these value-added resellers take the raw imagery and prepare it to the end user’s exact specifications. “Mixing and combining data from a variety of satellites to create a product that has an appropriate blend of resolution, coverage and cost is one of our offerings,” says Kubancik. “You don’t want to use expensive 60-centimeter imagery to create a broad area image where maybe using a less expensive data type at a lower resolution is sufficient for a training application, for example. When a plane is at 30,000 feet, you don’t need high resolution imagery, but when it’s close to the airport, that’s where it’s important. We look to provide the right data for the right application. In some cases that is a mix of data. We add a higher level of production than what is available than just the imagery themselves. This combination creates a product better suited and typically more appropriately price for the applications.”
To help navigate some of these complex decisions, some imagery sellers are providing workshops for potential customers. “Education is very important,” Romeijn says. “Most of our customers are not familiar with the technology involved, or the applications or how this data can be utilized. We don’t just want to sell pixels. We’re trying to also include resources on our Web site that explain” some of the technology and terms to potential customers. “Whether you order from us or someone else, we want you to understand what you are ordering.”
Holeywell obtains imagery from both the satellite providers and the value-added resellers “depending upon how large the project is and how much time we have and what else we are doing,” he says. “We use everything from high-resolution data to Landsat data, and it all depends on what the client is trying to see and how recent it has to be and how big their budget is. We normally try to provide a couple of alternatives to the client and show the client the advantages and disadvantages of each product.”
The cost of the imagery can vary, based on factors such as resolution, amount ordered and the type of processing that needs to be applied to the raw data. Basic low-resolution imagery captured by the U.S. government’s Landsat satellites is sold by the government at the cost of fulfilling the request. Raw high-resolution imagery captured by satellites such as Digitalglobe’s Quickbird satellite and Geoeye’s Orbview-3 spacecraft will cost more because those companies are trying to make a profit. Having the raw data processed into a usable image will add to the costs, and the prices charged by the different value-added resellers will vary based on the final imagery product.
“If you zoom really far into an image, every pixel has a color value, and that particular number can be classified and we can search for similar pixels over the entire image,” Romeijn says. “If you want to know where certain agricultural fields are, such as corn, you can specify that as the search criteria. The pixel that represents corn can be identified in a certain color. The processing would be different for other industries such as engineering or construction, where people might want to know different information if they are building a pipeline or road.”
Basic supply and demand also will have an impact. As more users gravitate toward imagery, the more the price can drop. “Now that we are seeing the commercial organizations in the game, it is starting to affect the market in very positive ways,” Kubancik says. “The broad expansion of usage typically drives the price points down significantly. The suppliers are reacting to the increase in demand and providing more exciting products at lower price points.”

Where Imagery Is Making A Difference

Imagecat Inc. which provides handheld reconnaissance systems for measuring and assessing damage after major natural disasters, is one of the companies now incorporating imagery into its operations, says Charles Huyck, Imagecat’s senior vice president. The company provided services following the December 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia and Hurricane Katrina, which slammed into the Gulf Coast of the United States in August, he adds.
Imagecat also developed a loss estimation program that is intended to help assess potential damage that might be caused by a natural disaster, Huyck says. The company was founded about the time commercial high-resolution satellite imagery was hitting the market, and Imagecat found two ways to incorporate the imagery into its products — generating building inventories that include land use estimation, building heights and square footage and for damage assessment to help determine, when combined with computer algorithms developed by Imagecat, how many of the buildings will suffer damage in a disaster.
“With the advent of high-resolution imagery, we’ve gone beyond the level of making a case for using imagery and into the realm of determining what is the best way to use it,” Huyck says. “We used it a lot at the World Trade Center. For an event like the Southeast Asian tsunami, there is no way you can get a good handle on where the damage is without satellite imagery. We went from, ‘This might be a good way to see what has happened in a given area,’ to ‘This is the only way.’ The sooner you can get a handle on the devastation, the better the response can be.”
The company uses a mix of different resolutions, using low- and moderate-resolution data to look for areas of damage and then using high-resolution imagery to assess the damage in small areas, Huyck says. “We’re looking to institute a tiered system, so when we don’t know the extent of the damage we use moderate-resolution data to prioritize where we need to collect the high-resolution data,” he adds.
Imagecat is receiving inquiries from the insurance industry about the company’s inventory of damage databases and is looking at incorporating the high-resolution satellite imagery into a field reconnaissance system, dubbed Views. The data will be combined with GPS and video and still photography to provide maps. “We’ve taken the system out three times for Katrina and used ground surveys and aerial surveys,” Huyck says. “This allows us to get a very good idea of where damage is for insurance loss estimates.”
In other instances, the user does not even have to work with the satellite imagery directly.
Innovative Solutions International Inc., an engineering and consulting firm that provides satellite navigation services, helps airports implement satellite navigation services by providing a survey and safety analysis of the airspace around the airport says Rich Cole, the company’s senior vice president for aeronautical design and implementation. In the past, the process had to be done on site by a team that established the reference points and performed the survey by literally walking the airport. “Because imagery is so good now, we no longer are forced to go out and walk the ground,” he says. “We buy the imagery and use that to do obstacle analysis and airspace analysis. The use of satellite imagery “reduces amount of time and cost associated with” projects, he says.
Innovative Solutions works with third party companies that do the actual surveying to identify the obstacles, and Innovative Solutions uses that information to develop procedures according to criteria developed by the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority and the International Civil Aviation Organization, Cole says. “We say we want a survey of an airport in Angola, and they buy the imagery and do the analysis. With satellite imagery, all the analysis on obstacles can be done by a guy at a desk. He can identify guide wires and stuff typically not see from the air, much less from space.”

Bright Future

The satellite imagery industry has made great strides throughout the past few years, and with Digitalglobe and Orbimage scheduled to launch new satellites within the next two years that will provide even sharper resolution, as well as collect more amounts of data, the choices will continue to grow for corporate users.