Digital Earth platforms are innovative initiatives to assist Earth monitoring, data collection and analysis. They are becoming the tech-solution for natural resource management. But how can we ensure they are effectively instituted/utilised to help create a sustainable socio-ecological system?
Background
Digital Earth platforms are becoming very popular across the world, including in Australia. These platforms use spatial data and images recorded by satellites orbiting our planet to detect physical changes in counties and continents in unprecedented detail. They prepare these vast volumes of Earth observation data and makes them available to governments and industry for easy use.
By investing in these technology, governments and companies across the world would have a better understanding of what is happening in their environment, where it is happening, and what the causes of change are to provide insights into the past, present and (likely) future. When prepared and analysed using high performance computing, this data provides a wealth of information to governments and industry for monitoring the environment, increasing productivity in the agriculture and mining industries, and also supports the rapidly growing market for spatial information and services.
Digital Earth Africa is a project that aims to provide a routine, reliable and operational service, using Earth observations to deliver decision-ready products enabling policy makers, scientists, the private sector and civil society to address social, environmental and economic changes on the continent and develop an ecosystem for innovation across sectors.
The platform will process openly accessible and freely available data to produce decision-ready products. Working closely with the AfriGEO community, Digital Earth Africa will be responsive to the information needs, challenges and priorities of the African continent. The platform aims to leverage and build on existing capacity to enable the use of Earth observations to address key challenges across the continent.
Our story
Challenge
Sustainable socio-ecological systems are typically those that possess timely and effective feedback mechanisms between bio-geo-chemical earth systems and the social institutions embedded within them.
However, the recent history of technological innovation has more often than not enhanced our alienation from the life-sustaining mechanisms of the earth system.
In this project we are asking how can a technical innovation like the Open Data Cube (Earth Observation data; Digital Earth Africa) be effectively instituted/utilised to help create a sustainable socio-ecological system?
