As priorities change and other space-based applications vie for funding, there has never been a greater need to make the case for earth imagery: a technology that can grow economies and provide countries with security and resilience.
Evidence from around the world shows that earth imagery is falling down the list of government priorities (see video).
This is peculiar and baffling for so many reasons, not least of which is that earth imagery’s commercial value hasn’t changed.
If anything, it has increased:
- Agriculture needs trusted monitoring to increase yield.
- Insurers need to understand granular risk.
- Energy companies need exploration, production and site-level intelligence.
- Infrastructure owners need persistent and wide-area oversight.
- Militaries need real-time views of their arenas.
That list isn’t even comprehensive: so many other industries and applications rely upon access to the information that comes from earth imagery.
However, when governments start to follow the prevailing wind of public opinion it can take a lot of time for them to swing back around and recognise the nationwide benefits of longer-term thinking.
In countries that do this, many opportunities will be lost.
“But all of the climate science and all of the other priorities that the last NASA adminstration, we’re going to move aside and all of the science that we do will be directed towards exploration which is the mission of NASA.. not to do all of these earth sciences”
Sean Duffy, Acting Administrator of NASA
BARSC, in partnership with our members, must step up now and make the economic and resilience case for government investment in earth imagery.
And we need to do it with commercial outcomes.
That means that we stop talking about the science of earth imagery – something we often do to justify the upfront costs – and instead, concentrate on the financial value we can provide.
We need to present use‑cases, before‑and‑after scenarios, numbers that matter to a Chief Financial Officer.
Or to a Treasury wonk.
If using earth imagery cuts survey costs by 30%, reduces yield losses by two points or brings a project online three months faster we need to say it, explain how we achieve that and then repeat that story.
In a world of three second attention spans, repetition is key.
And to say that we shouldnt talk about the science of earth imagery, isn’t about abandoning the science.
Apple doesnt explain the science of making a phone call.
Uber doesnt explain how GPS works.
Google makes a feature of not explaining how their search algorithm works!
However, talk is cheap and as the mice discovered, it takes action to put the bell on the cat.
As an industry – if earth imagery can or should be considered a stand-along industry, but that’s for another day – the need to prove the usefulness of earth imagery has never been greater.
Not to explain how it works but why it works and focussing almost entirely on the beneficial outcomes of using earth imagery.
If we can demonstrate repeatable value we can start to set the investment agenda, not finding ourselves following it, as is too often the case.
BARSC exists to promote our members to the world. Let’s make that literal.
We will work to curate member case studies, promote and present them in the language of the intended customer and start to build a library of commercial success stories that governments wont want to ignore.
We have to build the case for the use of earth imagery and that works begins today.