Localising forest fires, estimating biomass or carbon storage – analysing the quality of habitants for certain animal species. All that is possible thanks to remote sensing and essential for organisations like the World Wide Fund of Nature. What is already possible and where will technology lead us? Two important issues discussed by Aurélie Shapiro (WWF), Zac Manchester (Stanford University), Manfred Krischke (CloudEO) and moderated by Joram Völklein (Kochbank) in the DLD18 panel about the hidden potential of remote sensing, space and data.
Aurélie Shapiro is the lead remote sensing specialist for the World Wide Fund of Nature. She and her team use data from airplanes, drones, space and mobile technology to support the protection of the environment. Her work for example can be improved by inventions like the Kickstarter-funded satellite of aerospace engineer and roboticist Zachary Manchester. His satellite is so small that he could even be placed on birds. If technology goes a little further also on butterflies. One aspect that is commented critically by moderator Joram Völklein: „It is sad that we have to equip the nature with microchips in order to protect it." But in the panels opinion it seems to be the best possibliliy so far.
One problem in working with data is that not every data can be collected yet. An attempt to fill in that gap would be networks of satellits and laser data which is already used in space communication. Manfred Krischke the Co-founder and CEO of CloudEO an innovative cloud based collaboration platform and marketplace for Geo-services underlines that the future will be „the combination of different datas“.