Over the course of several decades, satellite imagery has emerged as one of the most critical tools for monitoring the Earth’s land, oceans and atmosphere. Despite the power of this data, the Earth observation (EO) sector has faced an array of challenges regarding commercialisation and distribution that has stunted mainstream adoption. Many of these challenges can be traced back to entrenched industry practices that initially focused on catering to Government and Defence customers, which are not suited to modern commercial workflows. These issues are so prevalent, that some industry leaders have at times gone so far as to liken the satellite imagery purchase process to that of a “hostage negotiation”.
The primary difficulties stem from data supply, storage and distribution from suppliers to the consumer. For high resolution satellite imaging companies, the opportunity lies in servicing large government and defense clients, not in smaller (but growing) commercial applications. These problems have essentially made Earth observation data too costly to integrate into innovative solutions across different industries such as agriculture, mining or construction.
Two Australian startups, Arlula and LatConnect60 (LC60) have joined forces to address these entrenched industry problems and drastically improve accessibility to valuable EO data.
LC60, founded in Perth, Western Australia, is Australia’s first smart satellite imaging company and have cemented themselves as market leaders, with over a million square kilometers of sub 1.0m resolution satellite imagery already captured over the Earth. LC60 have differentiated themselves from their competitors by providing high-resolution imagery with a unique pay as you go business model that allows you to consume data one square kilometer at a time. They have also made great efforts to reduce the complexity of their user licensing and are providing best in class terms for their customers. All of these features have allowed LC60 to drive down the cost of data making it more accessible to new application developers.
“ LatConnect 60 is excited to be partnering with Arlula to deliver cutting edge Earth Observation (EO) products that will change the way data is accessed, consumed and analysed for real time insights. As a team, we intend to unlock greater monetisation of EO products across existing and new markets. ”
LC60 CEO, Venkat Pillay.
In order to efficiently provide this product to customers at scale, LC60 have partnered with Arlula to leverage their industry leading automation technology. Arlula is supporting LC60’s growing Earth imaging fleet by providing industry-first data storage and distribution cloud infrastructure that will enable users to affordably access high resolution data in near real time. Arlula has also developed a suite of user facing Earth observation products such as the Arlula API and image browser in order to reduce the complexity of accessing satellite imagery at scale. This partnership will allow Arlula to build on its core strengths and further bridge the gap between consumers and providers of EO data.
“ We are incredibly excited to partner with LC60 to evolve the standard for processing and provisioning of satellite imagery. This partnership acts as a catalyst for change in the earth observation industry ”.
This novel approach to satellite imaging means that users are able to integrate high resolution satellite imagery into their workflows much faster than ever before. It also means that new users who would have traditionally been priced out of accessing satellite imagery now have the opportunity to do so for the first time. By partnering together, LatConnect 60 & Arlula will set a new standard for the industry and make critical data available to those that need it most.
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