Last Tuesday, one of our analysts in the DigitalGlobe Analysis Center made an impressive discovery –finding the first Chinese aircraft carrier (known as the Varyag or the Shi Lang) underway in the middle of the Yellow Sea during its second sea trial , in the midst of fairly heavy cloud cover of one of our QuickBird satellite images. Since we (and many others around the world) have been interested and watching the ship during its nearly decade-long refurbishment, we knew we’d found the Varyag. Knowing the strategic significance of the ship, we were certain that people around the world would be very interested in seeing this historic image of the Varyag underway. By now, you have surely seen our imagery and story in the news over the past week (in AP, MSNBC, Nightly News, and countless other outlets).
I’m proud of our discovery and imagery for a number of reasons. It really is reflective of what the Analysis Center has been involved in throughout 2011. We’re monitoring issues literally around the world that matter to people on a global scale (just think of the countless events associated in Egypt, Yemen, Syria and many other countries in the “Arab Spring,” the aftermath of the Japanese tsunami, dramatic flooding in the Midwest, fires in the Southwest and so many other notable events this year). My team continually employs DigitalGlobe’s core assets—our satellites, our ground architecture and powerful web infrastructure to help explain what happened and why it matters. The Varyag is just one small extension of those attributes – just one event of the dynamic world that we’ve kept track of during 2011. The Varyag find also serves as a tribute to the analysts who are hard at work in our Analysis Center. As I told Alan Boyle with MSNBC, despite our powerful technological advancements that we use every day, the ship was identified using a combination of our satellite imagery open-source material on the internet, and geography; however, at the end of the day, it still comes down to a person and in our case—analysts.
To help me make my point, take a look at this first image of the cloud cover over the Yellow Sea on December 8 (when the first satellite in our constellation, QuickBird, snapped this shot). See if you can see the Varyag?
Don’t beat yourself up! – it’s tough to find. But with a careful search, here it is:
DigitalGlobe and Space Imaging Middle East (SIME) recently worked with METAphrenie, a design studio that creates award-winning visual solutions for the advertising, marketing and broadcast industry, to produce the Opening Titles for TEDxDubai 2011.
Using WorldView-2 and QuickBird imagery over Dubai, the show’s opening sequence illustrates the way in which the city has undergone a remarkable transformation over the last decade to become a world leader in enterprise and modernization.
SIME was also the supporting sponsor of the event, which took place at the Dubai World Trade Centre on 22 October 2011.
Space Imaging Middle East is a founding member of the WorldView Global Alliance, a partnership between SIME, European Space Imaging and DigitalGlobe providing best-in-class imagery solutions for Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
DigitalGlobe’s Stephen Wood, Vice President, Analysis Center, wraps up this blog series with his overall impressions of the show.
Content Is King After a great GEOWalk event last night (have you ever been to a party and seen so many cowboy hats and bandanas?) and as we prepare to conclude this year’s successful 2011 GEOINT conference in San Antonio, I will remember several themes from my time here. Walking along the tradeshow floor it seemed as though most exhibitors–and many of the symposium presenters–were talking about cloud services, showing iPad applications, and extolling the virtues of analysis. As the Director of NGA told the crowd on Monday however, the framework for integrating geospatial intelligence starts with having content. In order to fuel those exciting new mobile applications or to have material to analyze, one first requires discoverable, accessible, and relevant content.
QuickBird’s 10 Year Anniversary
This week DigitalGlobe has been demonstrating precisely that: on Tuesday, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of the QuickBird satellite (our first operational satellite) launch and are proud to see her continuing to collect exceptional sub-meter imagery today. In our tradeshow booth, we have been demonstrating how our constellation of imaging satellites has expanded steadily and are collecting nearly 2.8 million square kilometers of high-resolution imagery daily. Talk about content!
DigitalGlobe Launches Two New Services This week, we officially introduced two new services to the public: FirstWatch and the Diplomatic Facility Support Package. Both services correlate well to Director Long’s vision of having apps and services easily accessing that precious content. I also heard the FEMA Administrator speak eloquently yesterday about how important imagery information and analysis is (not just imagery by itself) as governments and the public respond to disasters and crises. As our Analysis Center knows well, from our experience responding to multiple crises throughout 2011, speed matters in those critical hours and days immediately after a disaster strikes.
GEOINT 2011 has been valuable, as always, to enable me to reconnect with former friends and colleagues, listen firsthand to our customers’ needs and requirements, and meet plenty of new partners along the way. Having been to every GEOINT symposium since the beginning, I know I’ll start looking forward to the 2012 conference next week!
DigitalGlobe's Imagery Collection Counter at the 2011 GEOINT Symposium
