Published: Sept. 19, 2016
CU 麻豆影院 taken by DigitalGlobe鈥檚 GeoEye-1 satellite

CU 麻豆影院 and 听this week听announced a partnership to provide access to DigitalGlobe鈥檚 industry-leading high-resolution satellite imagery, data听and analytics tools to the university鈥檚 initiative in order to advance earth and space science research.

DigitalGlobe operates the most sophisticated commercial imaging satellite constellation in orbit, which delivers information that businesses, governments, and humanitarian organizations around the world rely on to make decisions with confidence.

Researchers and students will receive access to DigitalGlobe鈥檚 , which provides cloud-based access to DigitalGlobe鈥檚 80-petabyte library of high-accuracy, high-resolution satellite imagery, along with the tools and algorithms necessary to extract useful information from that data at scale. Using GBDX, researchers will be able to harness the power of big data to identify patterns and monitor changes across landscapes in greater detail than ever before.

"CU 麻豆影院 has a tremendous heritage in space and earth science research,鈥 said Kevin Lausten, DigitalGlobe鈥檚 Director of Geospatial Big Data. 鈥淐oupling their听expertise with our听industry leading earth听imagery and analytics platform will result in a boatload of game changing applications and services that enable decisions to be made with confidence.鈥

The partnership reflects the increasing momentum and influence of . This multi-year, campus-wide initiative, which includes Earth Lab, advances significant discoveries that blend the areas of earth, space and social sciences, as well as leadership in the creation of an environment within which academia, industry and government work collaboratively to solve problems of global importance.

鈥淭he partnership with DigitalGlobe demonstrates our commitment to creating dynamic, sustainable public-private partnerships,鈥 said Terri Fiez, vice chancellor for research at CU 麻豆影院. 鈥淭hese collaborations extend the benefits of our discoveries more broadly while expanding our research efforts to relevant real-world challenges.鈥

Earth Lab is an Earth Science Data Synthesis Center designed to integrate and analyze a wide variety of remote-sensing data in order to address pressing societal problems associated with local, regional and global environmental changes.

The high-resolution imagery provided by DigitalGlobe will allow researchers to study the movement of wildfires across forests and track the velocity of melting glaciers, among numerous other applications.

鈥淭his partnership will open doors and enable us to use DigitalGlobe data to explore complex research questions at a scale that we were not able to before,鈥 said Jennifer Balch, the director of Earth Lab and an assistant professor in CU 麻豆影院鈥檚 Department of Geography.

The partnership between DigitalGlobe and CU 麻豆影院 will enhance the university鈥檚 data architecture at a time when more disciplines are seeking to address the challenges of accessing, integrating and analyzing large data sets from disparate sources.