Data scientists, GIS engineers and software developers from California-based company Earth Observing Systems (EOS) have recently launched a cloud-based tool that allows users, journalists, researchers and students to easily search and analyze huge amounts of the most up-to-date Earth Observation (EO) data.
The product is LandViewer and the program was developed by (EOS). This is an on-the-fly, real-time imagery processing and analytics service that provides:
- Instant access to petabytes of new and archive data
- The ability to find geospatial images on any scale in 2 clicks by selecting the required territory on the map or by location name
- On-the-fly imagery analytics, with the option to download any images required for business purposes
The EOS solution enables users to carry out multipurpose research, to find and employ any EO image available from the Sentinel 2 and Landsat 8 satellites in one place and many times faster than previously. The service is free of charge, simple to use and can be accessed from any browser or device. With LandViewer, users are able to explore satellite imagery from the Sentinel 2 and Landsat 8 satellites stored on the Amazon Cloud platform, to apply search filters by date of image acquisition, cloudiness or sun elevation, to analyze images, download and share them with others.
Using tiling technology, LandViewer can recover scenes from archive data in any zoom in less than 10 seconds. Images can be viewed in different band combinations or in an on-the-fly spectral index, such as NDVI, selected to provide the information that best matches the user’s needs. To make this possible, EOS experts have created a technology that transforms on-the-fly raw satellite imagery data stored in 16-bit GeoTIFF format into tiles, which the user can immediately see on the screen in his web browser. There is no need to create and store additional preview screens or to archive data, as the images can be displayed immediately in the browser from raw data.
The user can apply various pre-installed and customized spectral band combinations to highlight and visualize any data type on the image. For example, forest fires are easier to see in the infrared spectrum. Various bands are available for analysis of vegetation, agricultural land, ice cover, rivers, lakes and oceans. Users can review in detail all objects located within a scene, for example, in connection with fires, floods, illegal logging or water resources management. It is also possible to chronologically compare geospatial imagery from 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 to track changes in the development of riverbeds, forests and other natural features.
In February 2017, Earth scientists in Israel used LandViewer to facilitate their research by extracting satellite derived bathymetry to create a 100 meter grid map of the seas around the Arabian Peninsula. GIS experts were also able to carry out shallow bathymetry analysis using the very best imagery (no waves, clean atmosphere, good visualization of real bathymetry etc.) available in LandViewer.
According to EOS founder and CEO, Max Polyakov, by 2017, EOS will be listening to the social and commercial pulse of mankind on the planet. Indeed, the company has the most powerful set of remote sensing image processing technologies at its disposal, while the EOS warehouse aggregates data from a variety of sources: satellites, aerial and UAV. From now on, users can receive access to innovative cloud-based imagery analytics technologies, neural network based methods, point cloud — photogrammetry, change detection, imagery tiling and mosaicking.
