The have been a number of developments over the last few years that make ObservedEarth possible:

  • Open data initiatives are making available large amounts of information available. ObservedEarth really only scrapes the surface of what is currently available.
  • Compute capability of mobile devices is nearing that of desktop-class performance. This is especially true when leveraging GPU compute capability1.
  • Data download speeds. Downloading several hundred megabytes of Landsat data is now trivial compared to that of a weekend Netflix binge2.

ObservedEarth is hoping to fill the gap between published open data and ‘non-technical’ users. Whether or not earth observation data is of interest to these users is something to be understood.




1: The Verge, Apple A9X. http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/9/9295923/apple-a9x-ipad-pro-chip

2: Nielsen’s Law of Internet Bandwidth. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/law-of-bandwidth/