[SatNews] Most people familiar with DigitalGlobe believe the business is only driven by defense and intelligence and location-based services.
While these two customer segments have been tremendous users of high-resolution satellite imagery, the company is witnessing increased adoption across international civil governments around the globe. Many of the most rapidly developing economies in the world in particular are relying on satellite imagery to help inventory and protect their precious natural resources.
For example, DigitalGlobe imagery has been used in India and Russia to support forest mapping and monitoring. These projects are great examples of how our international customers can document change over large areas by gaining fast and easy access to existing and newly collected satellite imagery.
DigitalGlobe’s relationship with a forestry agency in Russia was recently renewed for the third year in a row through one of the company’s Russian resellers. The firm supplies high-resolution satellite imagery for the agency to better manage key forestry regions across the nation. Forested regions account for approximately half of Russia’s land mass in total and represent about 22 percent of the world’s forests. This massive area is equivalent in size to the entire land mass of the United States. We are helping our customer monitor change detection, identify illegal logging and map the inventory of the forest.
Additionally, DigitalGlobe recently secured an award from the forestry department in an Indian state to support mapping and monitoring of extensive forest areas. More than 30 percent of the state is under forest cover, totaling nearly 95,000 square kilometers. The customer is provided with high-resolution satellite imagery with which they can then pursue development and conservation programs that require them to quickly access current imagery of existing forest cover and periodically update the imagery to detect changes. Ultimately, DigitalGlobe imagery will help simplify the customer’s development and conservation efforts while ensuring they have access to the latest visualizations of the state’s extensive forests.
The company expects additional opportunities to emerge as commercial satellite imagery becomes increasingly important to support the monitoring and analysis of rapidly growing, emerging markets. The forestry monitoring success in Russia and India can be applied to other huge land mass markets such as Brazil, China and Africa. The capabilities of forestry analysis is a great example of how the firm hopes to achieve its purpose to See a Better World™.
