DISCOVERY DAY 2015

The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), DigitalGlobe and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) are jointly organizing a DISCOVERY DAY event which will provide a high-level perspective on the benefits and applications of space-based geospatial information for improving land governance, monitoring the effects of climate change and respond to emergency and crisis events.

DigitalGlobe will demonstrate state-of-the-art satellite Earth observation, including WorldView-3, launched into orbit on 13 August 2014, geospatial big data and crowdsourcing with applications for land tenure, environmental sustainability and climate change, infrastructure development, human rights monitoring and food security.

UNOOSA and DigitalGlobe, building on their agreement signed in February 2015, will present how collaboration around the provision of high resolution satellite imagery and geospatial analyses can support the work of UN entities in implementing their respective mandates and facilitate inter-agency coordination.

The value of geospatial information for improving land governance and understanding the environment

10:00 - 12:15SHEIKH ZAYED CENTRE

17 DECEMBER 2015THURSDAY

FAO HQs ROME (ITALY)

14:00 - 17:00 MEXICO ROOM

FAO will demonstrate Collect Earth Free and Open Source Software for land assessment and monitoring integrating Google technologies and freely available satellite images.

DISCOVERY DAY 2015 / AGENDA

10:00

10:10

10:15

10:30

10:50

11:10

11:30

11:50

12:15

MORNING / SHEIKH ZAYED CENTRE 10:00 - 12:15

Opening SpeechMartin Frick, Director, Climate, Energy and Tenure Division, FAO

Welcome by UNECEAmie Figueiredo, UNECE

The supporting role of UNOOSA and the MoU with DigitalGlobe

Insight from Space

Supporting Decisions to Livelihoods, Food Security and Infrastructure Development with Remote SensingAntonio Tabasco, Head of Remote Sensing Applications and Services Division, GMV

This session will show key tools to achieve a holistic understanding of the global situation using affordable and repeatable solutions. The use of Earth Observation satellites provides stakeholders with the capabilities to take consolidated decisions regarding future investments and policies.

Big Data & Crowdsourcing for Geospatial Governance (gGovernance)Iain MacInnes, Senior Manager - EMEAR, DigitalGlobe

Learn how geospatial information associated to high performance cloud computing, machine learning, and crowdsourcing can help with documenting land and obtaining a wide range of insight such as the classification of the natural and the built-up environment, automatic change detection in structures and estimation of population density.

FAO Forestry Team – Further Development of Open Forest Platform to Add Tenure LayerGiulio Marchi, FAO Forest Assessment, Management and Conservation Division

Demonstration of FAO Collect Earth Free and Open Source Software for land assessment and monitoring integrating Google technologies and freely available satellite images.

Questions and Answers

Lunch break

This event will be webcast. The link will be provided soon

Kristian Andersen, Manager – Sales Engineering - EMEAR, DigitalGlobe

Access to large volumes of both historical and current satellite information allows for cost effective, large scale feature extraction, land classification and use mapping. By combining DigitalGlobe’s imagery archive, its ability to collect over 5,000,000 km2 of high resolution satellite imagery every day and with the power of cloud services we are able to extract searchable, analytics ready information layers.

Luc St-Pierre, UNOOSA and UN SPIDER coordinator

On 26 February 2015 UNOOSA and DigitalGlobe signed a Memorandum of Understanding by which they would take stock of their combined expertise in the use of Earth observation technologies for economic, social, and scientific development and improved decision-making, particularly in developing countries.UNOOSA will present how collaboration around the provision of high resolution satellite imagery and geospatial analyses can support the work of UN entities in implementing their respective mandates and facilitate inter-agency coordination.

17 DECEMBER 2015FAO HQs, ROME (ITALY)

This event will be webcast. The link will be provided soon

14:00

from15:00

to 17:00

AFTERNOON / MEXICO ROOM (D211) 14:00 - 17:00

Potential areas for future cooperation - UNOOSA, UNECE, DigitalGlobe and FAO

Demonstrations & ApplicationsInformal sessions in small groups where it will be possible to discuss and debate specific topics and learn from live demonstrations of products and applications, including:

• DigitalGlobe Basemap:Global Basemap is delivers baseline context that enables users to better understand and analyze specific geographies of interest, whether they are state-wide, country-wide, regional, or global. Using complete, high- and mid-resolution, accurate orthorectified imagery coverage and providing continual updates, Global Basemap provides the most relevant imagery basemap available to the market.

• Resolution & Multi-Spectral Showcase:Spatial resolution is used to describe the level of detail that can be observed on the ground. An image at 30cm resolution represents an area on the ground of 30cm by 30cm. This means that the highest the resolution is, the more information you can extract from it.

However, it’s not only about what the human eye can see. Humans can capture a spectral range in the region of 400 to 700 nanometers. Worldview-3 can go way beyond that spectrum with its 16 bands – 8 multispectral bands and 8 shortwave infrared bands. The applications of these bands are diverse, ranging from vegetation analysis, bathymetric studies, habitat mapping and mineral mapping.

• Crowdsourcing:To gain actionable insight about important locations, objects, and events across the globe, our crowdsourcing platform taps into an online network of thousands of imagery analysts. Using an intuitive web interface and advanced geospatial consensus algorithms, the DigitalGlobe Crowdsourcing platform transforms pixels into answers.

Exploiting satellite imagery with human analysts is an expert process that takes time. By applying hundreds or thousands of people to the problem, DigitalGlobe Crowdsourcing increases the scale and speed of analysis immensely, while still retaining the accuracy of human insight.

• Geospatial Big Data:Through our Geospatial Big Data platform users gain cloud-based access to DigitalGlobe’s vast current and historical library of geospatial data along with the tools and algorithms necessary to extract useful information from that data — at scale. This creates the ideal ecosystem to find new solutions without the cost of owning and operating costly data and IT infrastructure.

DISCOVERY DAY 2015 / AGENDA

17 DECEMBER 2015 FAO HQs, ROME (ITALY)

(D211)

© FAO, 2015 I5252E/1/12.15