Muthu Kumar & Aleksander Buczkowski: Building an Independent Media over the long term: Geoawesomeness - MBM #29
Muthu Kumar & Aleksander Buczkowski are the Editor-In-Chief & Managing Editor (and creators) of the Geoawesomeness website, which has been running as an independent geospatial media for the past 11 years.
Kevin Pomfret: Ethics Isn't Enough & The Case For Geospatial Law - MBM #28
Kevin Pomfret is a Space and Spatial Corporate and Transaction Attorney at Williams Mullen and one of the references in terms of Law around spatial data & within the geospatial community more globally.
Jeffrey Lewis: The Work of an Open Source Intelligence Researcher: Keeping Goverments Accountable - MBM #27
Jeffrey Lewis is a Professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and one of the most influential people in the Open Source Intelligence Community. He is also the host of the "Arms Control Wonk" podcast.
Jean-Martin Bauer: How Data Enables the World Food Program to Effectively Feed a Country - MBM #26
Jean Martin Bauer is the Country Director for the World Food Programme in Haiti, where his job is in simple terms to ensure the population does not run out of food. This conversation focuses on the use of data - specifically satellite imagery & maps - and how it helps feed the country.
Indra Den Bakker - Overstory & Tackling Climate by Monitoring Vegetation with Satellite Data - MBM #25
Indra Den Bakker is the CEO & Co-Founder of Overstory, a company providing vegetation information to electric utility companies about the state of (mostly) trees around power lines by using high resolution satellite imagery. This can lead to prevention of wildfires by finding hazardous vegetation before it falls on a line.
Catherine Nakalembe - Food in Stores Isn't Enough: Food Security in Africa - MBM #24
Dr Catherine Nakalembe is an Associate Research Professor at University of Maryland and the Program Head of NASA Harvest Africa. We talk about some of her work on using satellite imagery for Food Security in her home country of Uganda & how she got into this field in the first place.
Emily Darling & Kim Fisher - The Challenges of Mapping Coral Reefs When Satellites Can't See Them - #MBM 23
Emily Darling & Kim Fisher both work at the Wildlife Conservation Society, respectively as the Director of Coral Reef & as Spatial Analyst. They have developed MERMAID, a platform enabling coral reef scientists to aggregate & share their data together. One of the main challenges they tackle being most measurements need to happen in the field as opposed to being able to leverage satellite imagery.
Arjen Vrielink - Getting to Zero Deforestation with Satellite Images - MBM #22
Arjen Vrielink is the Director & co-founder of Satelligence, dedicated to stopping deforestation by leveraging satellite imagery. They work directly with commodity companies who sell things like cacao or coffee to understand the causes of deforestation and how alternatives can be found.
Barbara Ryan - How Landsat Became Free & Open - MBM #21
Barbara Ryan was instrumental in the policy change in 2008 that opened up the Landsat data to being freely & openly available for anyone to access. This resulted in more than 100x uptake in the number of imagery downloaded and fundamentally changed the Earth Observation industry. She is currently the Executive Director of the World Geospatial Industry Council
Jeff Crusey: Basics of Venture Capital Investing in Earth Observation, Weighing Risk & The Difference between Data & Analytics Companies - MBM#19
Jeff Crusey is the Investment Director of Seraphim Space, an investing firm specialised in the space industry. They have invested in mulitple Earth Observation companies including Spire, Iceye, HawkEye 360 and Pixxel.
This episode in many ways serves as an introduction to investing - specifically Venture Capital (VC in short) - applied to the world of Earth Observation: How funds are raised, how VCs decided who to invest in and how they do it.
Jakub Dziwisz - Orbify, No Code Earth Observation & Saas-like Business Models - Ep 18
Jakub Dziwisz is the founder & CEO of Orbify, a company that is attempting to simplify the process of building Earth Observation solutions for any application.
Ep 17 - Jacopo Margutti - Red Cross, Humanitarian Data Science & Moving from Physical to Digital Aid
Jacopo Margutti is a Data Scientist at 510, the Data Team of the Netherlands Red Cross which uses remote sensing, ground measured data and insights from social media to understand & react to humanitarian crisis. During this conversation, we touch on the the work the Red Cross does around impact forecasting of typhoons, how they have helped covid vaccine distribution, but also how to work on a tight budget to provide the maximum amount of help. Jacopo talks about the desire to move towards digital aid - sending money digitally - over physical goods and what the undesired consequences of humanitarian aid might be.