Washington DC on Earth Day 2015 as seen by DigitalGlobe’s WorldView 3 satellite. Photo: DigitalGlobe

[Via Satellite 08-26-2016] DigitalGlobe, in collaboration with partners CosmiQ Works, and Nvidia, has launched SpaceNet, an online repository of satellite imagery and labeled training data, available as a public data set on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The companies anticipate SpaceNet will advance the development of machine learning and deep learning algorithms that leverage remote sensing data.

SpaceNet opens access to a large corpus of curated, high-resolution satellite imagery to incubate algorithm development. The product will launch with an initial contribution of DigitalGlobe multi-spectral satellite imagery and 200,000 curated building footprints across the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. According to the company, this initial contribution will provide the necessary data to create new algorithms to automate the extraction of features like buildings in dense urban environments. Over time DigitalGlobe, CosmiQ Works, Nvidia, and Amazon anticipate making more than 60 million labeled satellite images accessible to the public via SpaceNet.

“SpaceNet is key to unlocking a huge explosion of new AI-driven applications that ultimately will help us better respond to natural disasters, counter global security threats, improve population health outcomes, and much more. The industry is coming together to power smarter algorithms so we can see and learn things from imagery about our planet that we simply cannot know today through manual techniques,” said Tony Frazier, SVP at DigitalGlobe.