Between the Poles

INSPIRE-Geospatial World Forum 2015 program released

INSPIRE-Geospatial World Forum 2015, a joint conference organized by the European Commission and Geospatial Media and Communications, has made available its full conference program. Almost 500 presentations are scheduled on topics including building information modelling (BIM), open data, big data analytics, open standards, linked data, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, Earth observation, indoor positioning, land information systems for smart cities, urban resilience and sustainability, health, agriculture and others.  Some 2000 delegates are expected to attend from more than 80 countries.  Top sponsors include Trimble, Topcon, ESRI, Digital Globe, Oracle and Bentley.

The theme of the conference is CONVERGENCE: Policies + Practices + Processes via PPP with a focus on improving coordination among policy-makers, technology providers and users.  Including geospatial data and technology in construction, agriculture, health and other industry workflows is an enabler for more successful public–private partnerships (PPP) by facilitating more informed decision making among the stakeholders.

Latest survey suggests rapid adoption of new geospatial technology in Asia/Pacific

Geospatial World has just published the results of a survey of 650 of its readers conducted between November 2014 and January 2015 targeted on their geospatial technology usage. 

Geospatial technologies

The geospatial technologies respondents were asked to report on their usage of are comprehensive; GIS, GNSS (better known as GPS in North America), satellite remote sensing, aerial photography, 3D Data, total stations, laser scanning/LiDAR, BIM, indoor positioning, UAVs/UAS, and ground penetrating radar (GPR).  Some of these have been widely used for years and represent mature markets such as GIS, GNSS, satellite remote sensing, aerial photography, and total stations.  Some are relatively new and are still being deployed in new market sectors such as laser scanning/LiDAR and 3D data. Others are new innovations and are just beginning to get some market penetration such as BIM, indoor positioning, UAVs/UAS and ground penetrating radar (GPR).

More rapid adoption of newer geospatial technology in Asia/Pacific

One of the things that I found interesting is that more often than not Asia/Pacific ranks highest or tied for highest in frequently using many of the newer technologies, for example, 3D Data (~40%), GPR (~12%), and BIM (~20%).  Asia/Pacific's leading adoption of newer technologies is even more noticeable when considering total usage (frequent+occasional); 3D data (~90%), LiDAR (~75%), BIM (~75%), indoor positioning (~65%), UAVs/UAS (~55%), and GPR (~22%).  This suggests that the adoption of new geospatial technology may be more rapid in Asia/Pacific.  This is perhaps due to Asia/Pacific first of all being very aware of and eager to adopt new technology and secondly being less saddled with legacy business processes tied to older technology which is a major problem in the developed economies of North America and Europe.

Earth observation satellites monitoring Earth's ocean and remote locations every hour

Nanosatellites for Earth observation are very small, low cost satellites typically weighing kilograms and with volumes of a few liters.  NASA has a program called the CubeSat Launch initiative (CSLI) which provides opportunities for nanosatellites to fly inexpensively as auxiliary payloads on rockets supporting major missions.  NASA's CubeSats are cube-shaped satellites 10cm x 10cm x 10cm with a volume of about a liter and weighing about 1.3 kilograms.

Three startup satellite companies have already started putting nanosatellite constellations in space, that promise to provide much more frequent revisits per day than existing satellites can provide and at a much lower cost.

In April 2013 Planet Labs launched two demonstration satellites, “Dove 1” and “Dove 2”.  Planet Labs has already launched 72 cubesats and plans to launch a total 100 of the Earth observing satellites at an altitude of 400 km.  The satellites will provide frequent snapshots of the planet at a resolution of about 5 m, allowing users to track changes such as traffic jams, deforestation, construction progress in close to real time.

Skybox Imaging, acquired by Google, has launched the SkySat-1 and SkySat-2 satellites (each larger than nanosatellites at about 100 kg) which are intended to capture sub-meter imagery and HD-video of any spot on earth, multiple times per day to provide timely high-resolution imagery, HD video, and analytics.

Spire Global

In November 2013 two nanosatellites, NanoSatisfi's ArduSat 1 and ArduSat X, supported by Kickstarter crowdfunding were placed in orbit from the International Space Station .  NanoSatisfi has since been renamed.  Spire Global Inc, has launched 4 out of more than 50 planned remote sensing cubesats into orbit at altitudes of 500–600 km. Spire's remote sensing satellites range from cubesat 1U to 3U and are built with Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components wherever possible to lower costs. The spacecraft carry multiple sensors including RF sensors that are not restricted by clouds, haze and night.

Spire's business niche is 80 km from any coastline,  the three-quarters of the Earth that is either covered by water or considered remote and is not regularly monitored by today's remote-sensing satellites.  Spire plans to be able to collect data from any point on Earth every hour. 

Spire’s multi-sensor satellites provide a variety of data types such as Automatic Identification System (AIS) service for tracking ships, and weather payloads that measure temperature, pressure and precipitation. Spire plans for a 2 year refresh cycle on each satellite enabling a continual improvement in on-board technology .

Some of the applications Spire is targeting include;

• Illegal fishing - Monitoring illegal, under-reported and unregulated fishing.
• Trade monitoring - Virtually all global trade transits through areas of the planet otherwise ignored by traditional remote sensing. Spire can deliver reliable data on every ship in every ocean every hour.
• Marine domain awareness - Criminal activities such as illegal shipments and clandestine cargo exchange are some of the issues.

Other applications envisioned for the future include;

• Insurance - when ships collide determining what actually happened
• Environmental impact - in case of oil spills helping to determine who's liable
• Asset tracking - finding ships in distress faster
• Piracy - vessel tracking that cannot be disabled by pirates

IEA projects net $71 trilllion savings in fuels costs from decarbonizing world's energy over next 40 years

In its latest Energy Technology Perspectives 2014 (ETP 2014) the International Energy Agency (IEA) looked at the energy sector over the next 40 years.  ETP 2014 analyses three possible energy futures to 2050:

• 6°C Scenario (6DS) - where the IEA projects the world is now heading based on existing policies
• 4°C Scenario (4DS) - this scenario reflects the stated intentions by countries to cut emissions and boost energy efficiency
• 2°C Scenario (2DS) - this scenario is based on technological change tht results in a sustainable energy system with reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

In the 6°C scenario global energy demand is projected to grow by 70% over 2011 levels.  Concomitantly emissions are projected to grow by more than 60% over 2011 levels. 

Under the same projections for population and gross domestic product, the introduction of new technology and radical policy action in the 2°C scenario dramatically improves energy efficiency to limit increases in demand by 25% while emissions are cut by more than 50%.  The major sources of reduced energy demand and reduced carbon are (% of cumulative emissions reductions)

• End-use fuel and electricity efficiency 38%
• Renewables 30%
• CCS 14%
• End-use fuel switching 9%
• Power generation efficiency and fuel switching 2%

A major difference between the 2°C and 6°C scenarios is that in the 6°C scenario oil remains the most important primary energy source with demand increasing by 45%.  In contrast in the 2°C scenario new policies and technologies reduce oil demand by 30%.

In the ETP 2014 the IEA makes the case that there is a significant financial benefit in addition to environmental and social benefits from decarbonizing the energy system.  The IEA estimates that  US$ 44 trillion in additional investment in energy infrastructure is required to decarbonize the energy system inline with the 2°C scenario by 2050.   But the IEA forcasts that this expenditure is more than offset by over US$ 115 trillion in fuel savings.  The result is a net savings of US$ 71 trillion (assuming no discount).  With a 10% discount rate, the net savings are still more than US$ 5 trillion.

Distributech 2014: Duke Energy's journey toward a location aware "big data" architecture

One of the hot topics, if not the hottest, at this year's Distributech in San Antonio was big data analytics.  David Lawrence of Duke energy and David Mulder of Leidos gave an insightful presentation on the challenges Duke has encountered in cleaning,  merging and managing operational data, combining it with other types of data including social media, and developing analytical tools to extract meaningful information. 

By way of background, Duke is the largest elecric power utility in the U.S. with 7.2 million distribution customers, 32,200 miles of transmission lines, and  4.9 GW of generation capacity.

David Lawrence's perspective on where utilties are with repect to smart grid is that many utilities are moving beyond their initial AMI deployments into advanced automation. Improved operational performance, reduced costs, and better cybersecurity are driving the convergence of IT(information technology) and OT (operations technology). In addition utilities are experiencing the rapid adoption by their customers of distributed energy resources (DERs) such as wind and solar PV.  Solid state transformers are accelerating this trend.  Dynamic load management is becoming more prevalent and will effectively become another DER.  The convergence of IT and OT is making cybersecurity even more critical.  Microgrids are on the radar but require faster response times and better integration with a variety of equipment.  Utilities expect that “big data” analytics offers significant benefits, but  most don’t yet have a solid strategy for implementing it.

A major challenge is that many operational systems including outage management (OMS), customer information systems (CIS), billing systems, GIS and others are packaged for a single “silo” and are not easily or cheaply interoperable.  Duke has hundreds of these siloed systems.

Sandbox 1.0

To begin the journey toward big data analytics and the benefits expected from this, Duke Energy has undertaken a series of data mining activities by mapping, monitoring, collecting, validating, storing, visualizing, and discovering new relationships with the operational data from its smart grid test area. Duke has data stored in hundreds of databases and systems.  As a first step Duke has implemented a dedicated data warehouse called “the Sandbox” to mine data across operational siloes for interesting insights and to discover new analytical tools.

The data sources that Duke has integrated in a data warehouse include operational sensors and systems such as AMI, transformers, line sensors, capacitor banks and reclosers, outage management systems, billing systems, and smart grid communication nodes and data sources such as weather stations, socioeconomic databases and social network feeds.  For their Sandbox  warehouse they included about 3 months of data from June to August 2012 which comprise about 30 GB of data.

To help find and develope the analytical tools to mine the data that Duke hs assembled, Duke invited the vendor community to participate in a collaborative, non-competitive data mining exercise.  The objective was to mine this data to develop new use cases.  To prime the analytics pump Duke provided six use cases.  Participants were asked to provide new use case ideas, insights into what other types of data should be collected, data quality and interoperabiity issues, and data models appropriate for different types of analysis.

The most important conclusions that came from this effort are that

• no single vendor had all the answers,
• interoperability issues between siloed operational systems limits the value of the data,
• custom data models are needed for different types of analysis (descriptive statistics, time series analysis, logistic regression and so on) of structured data,
• unstructured data such as social network feeds from outside Duke can add significant value.

The collaborative data mining exercise was very fruitful, generating over 150 new use cases.  Some examples of use cases include usage outlier analysis on meter interval data, customer peak analysis on meter interval data, outage analysis using outage data, predicting customer energy usage by correlating historical weather and customer energy usage data (predictive analytics).

Some of the most interesting insights into data requirements that were suggested by vendors include

• Need for more historical data
• Linking data from different datasets across siloed systems was a major challenge and severely limited the analysis
• Semantics - part of the linkage problem is mapping different terminology for the same data across application silos (this is similar to what the CB-NL concept library initiative is attempting to address for the construction lifecycle)
• GPS data (geolocation) for all devices would add significant value
• Skill sets and staffing: power system and data science experts are needed to develop successful big data analytics.

Next steps

The next steps are to consolidate vendor data issues, comments, and modeling methodologies to develop requirements for Sandbox 2.0. The long term goal of the exercise is to define Duke Energy's big data architecture.

Electric power utilities experiencing increased employee turnover

I have blogged extensively over the past few years about some of the workforce challenges that utilities especially in the developed economies are facing.  These are often related to the aging workforce and in some countries to a shrinking workforce.

I have blogged about the shrinking workforce in countries around the world like Japan and Germany, where there have been declining populations.   The shrinking workforce is acting as a brake on the German economy.  Recently Germany liberalized its immigration laws and for the first time in a decade the population of Germany is actually increasing.

In the U.S. because of its policy of encouraging immigration, the shrinking workforce is not the result of population decline, but the result of a decreasing participation rate.   One explanation for the decline is the aging workforce. Boomers are retiring at an increasing rate.  This has created a serious problem for many utilities where it has been estimated that over half the work force will be eligible to retire in the next few years.  But there is another trend that tends to mitigate this, the percentage of older workers who remain on the job post-retirement is trending upwards.  For the age group 65 to 74 the proportion of workers still working is nearly twice what it was in the 1990s.  In the long term the problem remains, finding young workers to replace the older workers when they retire.

A recent report from PricewaterhouseCooper's (PwC) Human Resource Services practice based on data from 29 utilities representing nearly a quarter of a million employees identifies some very interesting  workforce trends, some new, in the power utility industry.

Increasing turnover

First of all the PwC research indicates that utilities are losing workers at an accelerating rate. The voluntary turnover rate increased by a full percentage point between 2010 and 2012, and for high performers and early tenured employees the rate of separation was especially high.  

The research also shows that the turnover of utility employees in their first year was significantly higher in 2012 than in 2011 pointing to a retention problem. As the economy continues to strengthen PwC anticipates that first-year turnover will continue to increase. This is a new experience for many utilities because in the past working for a utility was seen as a job for life.  With the new skill sets for smart grid and releated technologies requiring increasing IT skills, utilities are having to compete with other sectors for IT savvy workers.  PwC reports that other industries have been experiencing intense competition for workers for some time and are better equiped to attract and retain new talent.

Accelerating executive retirement

The PwC research also found that while the number of employees currently eligible or due to become eligible over the next 3-5 years for retirement appears to have stabilized, retirement eligibility rates for executives have continued to increase. From 2011 to 2012 there was a 50% jump in the number of executives currently eligible for retirement.

Perpetuating a culture that discourages innovation

PwC found that by forcing older employees either to delay retirement or to remain in place as contractors, the recession has helped perpetuate a conservative culture that has inhibited innovation in the industry.  Older, experienced workers are unlikely to push for changes when they have only a few more years until retirement and in a aheavily regulated industry there is little incentive for these workers to innovate because of the potential of creating risk for themselves and their employer.

Critical knowledge loss

There is also a tendency for older utilities workers to communicate information orally rather than documenting it in a database.  When these workers leave, critical knowledge leaves with them. This impacts productivity and creates risk for the utility, especially when they leave before replacements can be effectively on-boarded typically through a mentoring process.

Retention

Younger workers tend to be much more tech savvy.  This is critical for the electric power industry as it moves toward the smart grid.  As I have blogged about frequently, younger workers' expectations with respect to technology are also higher.  Sitting a younger worker who has been brought up on 3D technology down with a CAD application to create and print a 2D paper construction drawing risks losing him or her to more technically progressive utilities or to other industries.

Challenges

PwC suggests that there three key areas where there is potential for improvement:

1. Knowledge Retention & Succession Planning
2. Operations
3. Technology & Processes

Knowledge transfer

PwC recommend that utilities organizations need to adapt rapidly to these technology, resource and demographic trends.  In particular, they need to evolve an efficient and effective approach to succession planning and knowledge transfer.  PwC forecasts that the rate of process and technology change is likely to accelerate as smart grid adoption picks up.  It also projects that a culture of continous improvement will become more typical in the utility sector than it has been in the past.

Operations

Operational effectiveness is critical for utilities, but with a static or even decereasing workforce, productivity has to improve and continue to improve. This means the adoption of new technology.  PwC points out that an ageing workforce, deeply knowledgeable but prone to resist change, can significantly inhibit operational improvements unless these workers are fully integrated participants in the change effort.  In my experience older workers can be just as and even more enthusiastic about change if they can see that it simplifies  their work, eliminates tedious redundant and manual paper-based processes, and improves the quality of the final deliverable. 

Technology & Processes

Driven by goals of improving productivity and improving the quality of their decision making through data-driven analytics, utilities are recognizing the importance of understanding their core business processes and implementing standardized, streamlined IT systems for these processes.  PwC recommends that as a first step these processes need to be documented (before the knowledge about them walks out the door) to safeguard core institutional knowledge as part of change management practices.

Internet of things is becoming a reality: Nest Labs acquired by Google

Monday Google announced that it has entered into an agreement to buy Nest Labs for $3.2 billion in cash.

Back in November 2011, I blogged about several ex-Apple iPod engineers who got together to find a new way to change the world, and of all things decided that what the world needed is a high end smart thermostat that you don't have to program manually.   The result was Nest Labs and the Nest thermostat, which is not only stylish as you would expect from anyone with Apple experience, but smarter than any thermostat I have ever seen. There was a very good review in engadget.  According to Nest, The Nest Learning Thermostat programs itself in a week using its six sensors, which track temperature, ambient light, humidity and motion, near and far.  It knows, for instance, that no one is in the house after 8:30 am and that people are back after 5 pm. The Nest also detects if you're at home, even if you're not normally at home at that time, or that you're not when you normally are. You can install multiple thermostats and they can communicate with each other.  It also supports Wifi so you can control it from anywhere on the Internet.  This device could significantly reduce energy usage while maintaining or increasing consumer comfort levels

Since then they have developed a smoke and carbon monoxide detector called Nest Wave, that is also smarter than any of these types of devices.  In Ontario 22% of fires occur where there is no smoke detector or it has been disabled.  Smoke detectors are frequently disabled because they issue a really annoying, strident sound most often when you have burned the toast or overfried the chicken.  Nest Wave is designed to avoid that.  It's called Wave because waving at it will turn off the alarm sound.  Like the thermostat it is smart and automatically configures itself to the room.  If you move furniture and appliances around, it will reconfigure itself.  Best of all in my opinion the device gives you an early warning,  It lights up yellow and speaks with a human voice and tells you where smoke is or that carbon monoxide levels are increasing. This is an earlier warning if there’s a real emergency.  But if you know that you havee just burnt the chicken, you can wave at it and it will subside.  The most important thing is that unlike normal smoke alarms it isn't designed to encourage you to disable it.  I am convinced this device will  prevent fires and save lives.

For both of these devices there are significant benefits for the consumer.

Regulating the internet of things

These devices learn a lot about your habits and even your furniture arrangement.  The are connected via wifi and can be linked to the internet. With the Google acquistion this is the internet of things impacting consumers directly in the home. 

There are clearly privacy issues.   According to Nest,

Our privacy policy clearly limits the use of customer information to providing and improving Nest’s products and services. We’ve always taken privacy seriously and this will not change.

As with geospatial data such as personal location that is now widely available via smart phones, the technology is moving so fast that regulation and legislation haven't been able to keep up with it .  According the the Federal Trade Commission, which is responsible for protecting privacy at the Federal level, the four holy data types are financial data, medical data, data about children, and geographic data.  The first three are treated as very sensitive and there is a legal framework to ensure these data types are protected.  When it comes to geographic data, on the other hand, there is very little by way of policy or legal infrastructure to protect personal geographic data.  Technology, including GPS, GIS and smart phones, has moved so rapidly and regulation and legislation move so slowly that for personal geographic data (where you are and where you have been), the horse has already left the barn and it is too late to close to the door.  I suspect with the broader internet of things including thermostats and smoke detectors, we may be seeing the same situation.  When the legislators and regulators grasp what the technology is capable of, it may be too late to regulate.

IBM's "5 in 5" innovations: cities will help you live in them

IBM has published its predictions for five big innovations that will change our lives within five years. This is the eighth year that IBM has published its 5 in 5.  I find all of these very interesting, but for a couple of them, I am a bit surprised that IBM thinks they could happen within 5 years.  On the other hand in the case of one of them, I think it is happening already.

The classroom will learn you

In five years, analytics will help tailor instruction to your individual needs. In the next five years, IBM believes teachers will use “longitudinal data” about student behavior interacting with electronic learning environments. Sophisticated analytics delivered over the cloud will help teachers make decisions about which students are at risk, their roadblocks, and the way to help them.

Buying local will beat online

Online sales exceeded $1 trillion worldwide in 2012.  IBM sees online technology becoming available to local physical stores.  Retailers will use the immediacy of the store and proximity to customers to create experiences that online-only retail can’t replicate.  Combining on-line and local physical will enable Mom-and-pop stores to offer the same services as the big online retailers but with an immediate physical presence and you won’t have to wait days for shipping. IBM foresees that the technologies that they will use will be as good as anything the online-only retailers offer. IBM suggests that the technology will get so good that online retailers will set up physical retail showrooms to help their own sales.

Doctors will routinely use your DNA to keep you well

Full DNA testing to help make treatment decisions is rare. But IBM sees that the development of cognitive systems and cloud computing could make this type of treatment mainstream. Technology could enable treatment to be done faster, more frequently and at lower cost. IBM foresees DNA-specific personalized treatment options for conditions such as stroke and heart disease in addition to cancer.

A digital guardian will protect you online

Security is evolving from being based on rules to being automatic and based on a 360 degree view of an individual’s data, devices and applications. Based on your behaviour patterns It will make inferences about what’s a normal activity and identify deviations that might represent an attempt to take advantage of a stolen identity.

The city will help you live in it

Of all of IBM's predictions, this is the one that seems most feasible in 5 years because some of these things cities and utilities are doing already. 

Crowdsourcing, mobile applications, sensors and analytics on the cloud will enable cities to better interact with citizens. IBM foresees cities that can respond in real-time, predict problems before they occur, and deliver tailored services.  By 2017, the number of smart phones in the world is expected to top three billion.  These devices will provide access to city services, but also allow the city to collect data anonymously to look for patterns that will help identify potential problems such as traffic jams.  Information will be delivered to smart devices about what is happening in the city,  Citizens will be able to use mobile apps for reporting and tracking problems such as pot holes, overflowing drains and broken street lights.

Mobile technologies, sensors, and cognitive systems will make it possible to find patterns.  Real-time, big data analytics will enable cities to recognize patterns in the huge volumes of data produced and then learn from their interactions with citizens. IBM sees a new generation of machine learning algorithms and language processing systems will emerge to address those needs.

City leaders will have a direct communication channel to every citizen, allowing city leaders to develop tailored plans for communities and regions, addressing each citizen’s needs in a unique way. Crowdsourcing and social sentiment analytics give city leaders a massive amount of feedback on constituent issues they can take action on.  Some municipal governments and utilities are already starting to use Twitter and other social media to interact directly with citizens.

IBM offered another example.  Rather than running empty buses on fixed timetables, routes will be tailored to citizen needs. When it rains or when there is a sports event there will be more buses to keep pace with increased ridership.  And riders will be notified over mobile apps.

Another example uses sensors to alert sanitation workers as to which waste bins are full on city streets. Even more importantly from an energy conservation perspective, city buildings will learn the patterns of building users and automatically adjust the environment - air conditioning, lighting, and other services in response to how many people are in the building and their activities.  Nest thermostats do this already.

IBM sees cities becoming more flexible, more accessible, and less bureaucratic. They are already becoming more open to sharing data.  In the future IBM sees citizens having more direct input to community and city planning and receiving direct feedback from city government.

Planet Labs launches two more earth observation satellites

In April 2013 Planet Labs launched two demonstration satellites, “Dove 1” and “Dove 2”.  Yesterday two more satellites Dove 3 and Dove 4 were placed into orbit by a Dnepr rocket. 

It appears the Dove-3 and 4 mission is a technology demonstration.   They will operate from longer lived sun synchronous orbits. Both satellites are licensed to collect images of the Earth and will undertake an experimental mission in an 800 km by 597 km and a 700 km circular orbit, respectively.  Dove 3 conforms to the 3U cubesat specification, with a launch mass of 5.2 kg. Basic physical dimensions are 100 mm × 100 mm × 340 mm, with two 260 mm × 300 mm deployable solar arrays.  Power storage is provided by Lithium-Ion cells. The batteries will be recharged by solar cells mounted on the body of the satellite and on the two deployable solar panels.

Nanosatellites for 4D (time + 2D/3D) Earth observation

Nanosatellites are very small, low cost satellites typically weighing kilograms and with volumes of a few liters.

NASA has a program called the CubeSat Launch initiative (CSLI) which provides opportunities for nanosatellites to fly inexpensively as auxiliary payloads on rockets supporting major missions.  NASA's CubeSats are cube-shaped satellites 10cm x 10cm x 10cm with a volume of about a liter and weighing about 1.3 kilograms.  The CSLI program promotes innovative technology partnerships among NASA, U.S. industry, and other sectors for the benefit of Agency programs and projects.

Two nanosatellites, NanoSatisfi's ArduSat 1 and ArduSat X, supported by Kickstarter crowdfunding were placed in orbit from the International Space Station yesterday. using a Japanese-built, spring-loaded launcher.

4D (time + 2D/3D) satellite imagery

Two startup satellite companies have already started putting nanosatellite constellations in space, that promise to provide much more frequent revisits per day than existing satellites can provide and at a much lower cost.

In April 2013 Planet Labs launched two demonstration satellites, “Dove 1” and “Dove 2”.  In early 2014, Planet Labs plans to launch 28 mini- Earth observing satellites at an altitide of 400 km.  The satellites will provide frequent snapshots of the planet at a resolution aof about 5 m, allowing users to track changes such as traffic jams, deforestation, conctruction progress in close to real time.

Skybox Imaging plans to launch a constellation of 24+ satellites (each larger than nanosatellites at about 100 kg) that will capture sub-meter imagery and HD-video of any spot on earth, multiple times per day. Skybox will capture the planet on a near real-time basis to provide a tool for addressing global challenges in areas including security, humanitarian efforts, and environmental monitoring.   In both cases it is expected that the cost of the imagery will be signficantly less than current pricing.