Inaugural Advancing Earth Observation AEO22 Forum

COVER FEATURE

Bringing Australia’s earth observation communities together at the inaugural Advancing Earth Observation AEO22 Forum

By Stuart Phinn Professor, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences Queensland.

Earth observation data and the many types of information derived from it underpins our industries and government sectors in Australia. Our earth observation communities now include groups who design, build, launch and operate satellites, as well as those who collect the data and transform it into products and services to be consumed in multiple sectors. Information derived from Earth Observation supports agriculture, grazing, mining and water and energy supplies, transportation planning and environmental management, as well as providing the basis for understanding and predicting weather and climate change. Yet Australia’s earth observation communities haven’t collectively met to connect and collaborate in almost a decade. That is all set to change this year, with the inaugural Advancing Earth Observations Forum being held in Brisbane this August.

Registrations are now open for this exciting 5-day event, including two days of hands-on workshops that will run from the 22nd to the 26th of August. At its core, the forum is focused on re-connecting all parts of Australia’s earth observation community.

“The intent has always been to enable people to connect and to do it in a way that people in industry, government and education all get to talk,” explained Stuart Phinn, Forum Director and member of the organising committee.

The workshops and sessions in the forum are based on five themes: 1. Connection and coordination 2. Securing Australia's role in the international earth observation community 3. Infrastructure and people 4. Access to earth observation data and services 5. Generating value conference format, they’ll be in for a surprise.

We definitely don't want a sit-down and listen type meeting, where you've got 10 sessions of people talking for 20 minutes. We wanted to come up with different ways that people can actually interact and learn and build our community and enable the next generation of people that come into it

“It's not an academic conference, it’s not an industry conference or a government one, it’s some weird mix of everything in between…It's where we want the people who are using satellite, airborne and drone data working with the people who are designing, building and launching satellites, as that's a big focus of Australia’s emerging space industry” he said.

From the designers of satellites and sensors to the ever-growing numbers of data- analysis groups and companies transforming data to products and services, to the communities of end-users of earth observation data, the conference sessions have been designed to facilitate as much conversation and connection as possible.

“We definitely don't want a sit-down and listen type meeting, where you've got 10 sessions of people talking for 20 minutes. We wanted to come up with different ways that people can actually interact and learn and build our community and enable the next generation of people that come into it.”

Sessions in the forum include a “town hall” meeting, where forum attendees will be given the opportunity to have focused discussions around the future of industries, governments and how they use and want to use, earth observations in Australia. While there will still be some traditional-style presentations, the forum will be placing emphasis on poster presentations and a novel EO360 presentation style, where presenters are given six minutes to speak, followed by seven minutes for community feedback and discussion.

“We're trying to be as open and inclusive as possible as well because this is a field where if you have more diverse approaches, and people, and backgrounds you get better solutions, whether it's industry, government or whatever. So trying to include all of that in here is a key focus,” Stuart said.

With over a decade of significant technological advancements since the community last gathered, there’s a lot to catch up on! “What's happened in that time is we've shifted from earth observation only being something that government space agencies and defense aerospace companies with multi-billion-dollar programs do, to being an activity that small start-up companies with two to 10 people can engage in on the satellite and sensor side, to the analysis and transformation of global; data sets,” Stuart said.

“The rate of change, in relation to data storage, processing and distribution activities is very rapid, and keeps changing every couple of months… that's another reason to start talking again,” he said.

As technology continues to advance, it’s becoming more and more important that there is communication and collaboration across the entire earth observation process, from satellite construction to end-user.

“The upstream side of the space industry, which is the design, build, launch and operation of satellites, is driven by what the earth observation are actually used for,” Stuart said.

In the past, earth observation satellites were often designed for multi-purpose earth observation, which while helpful, limited their ability to accurately collect specific data. But with space becoming increasingly accessible, Stuart thinks there is a lot of potential for the quality and applications of earth observation data to expand by marrying sensor and satellite design with end-user needs. He used crop yield as an example.

“If you're able to design the sensor in the satellite so it's just for that specific type of crop, it means you know you can specify an optimal pixel size, spectral bands to measure and collection frequency. It means that the product that people will produce, in the crop yield estimates, they could move to being from 50-60% accurate to being 8090% accurate,” he said.

“For a lot of industry and government that shifts these approaches from being research type/testing activities to operational and able to use those data to actually make decisions, where we're also willing to pay to get that information to support our decisions.”

The forum will not just be discussing space-based earth observations. It will also incorporate the uncrewed aerial systems for remote sensing conference (UAS4RS), recognising the increasingly important role drones are playing in earth observation.

Registrations for the forum are now open, and you can find out more about the program at: https://www.earthobsforum.org/