Page 131 - GIS for Science, Volume 3 Preview

Microsoft envisons its Planetary Computer as a way to combine a “multi-petabyte catalog of global environmental data with intuitive APIs, a flexible scientific environment that allows users to answer global questions about that data, and applications that put those answers in the hands of conservation stakeholders.” The Planetary Computer will provide insights into critical issues that scientists, conservation organizations, and address regularly in their work. For example:
• Understanding tree density, land use, and forest size has implications for biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. Organizations often conduct expensive on-the-ground surveys or build customized solutions to understand local forests. The Planetary Computer will provide satellite imagery, state-of-the-art machine learning tools, and user-contributed data about forest boundaries from which forest managers will have an integrated view of forest health.
• Needing to make more than educated guesses about land management, urban planners and farmers depend on forecasts of water availability and flood risks. The Planetary Computer will provide satellite data, local measurements of streams and groundwater, and predictive algorithms that will empower land planners and farmers to make data-driven decisions about water resources.
• Combining information about terrain types and ecosystems with accurate and available data about where species live, the Planetary Computer will enable a global community of wildlife biologists to benefit from each other’s data. This capability supports wildlife conservation organizations that have relied on their own local surveys, global views of wildlife populations, and suitable habitats for wildlife.
• Combating climate changes requires organizations to measure and manage natural resources that sequester carbon, like trees, grasslands, and soil. The Planetary Computer will combine satellite imagery with AI to provide up-to- date information about ecosystems and a platform for using predictive models to estimate global carbon stocks and inform decisions about land use that impact our ability to address climate change.
The AI for Earth program is dedicated to building this Planetary Computer platform through dedicated investments in infrastructure development. The system provides access to the world’s critical environmental datasets and a computing platform to analyze those datasets. We will also further invest in specific environmental solution areas such as species identification, land cover mapping, and land use optimization.
This Planetary Computer, which is emerging from beta testing in 2021, is incredibly complex, and we cannot build it alone. We must continue to learn from the work and demands of our grantees while partnering with the organizations best suited to advance global environmental goals. That is why we are deepening our partnership with Esri, a company with years of experience building environmental monitoring solutions.
Our partnership with Esri began at the launch of AI for Earth through shared technology granting programs. Microsoft and Esri share the goals of making geospatial data and analysis—meaning the gathering, display, and manipulation of information about Earth systems—available to every sustainability researcher and practitioner, and ensuring that every conservation organization can contribute its local data back to that global repository. Through hands-on collaboration and grants, Esri has helped conservation organizations transform their operations to use digital spatial information in areas of endangered species conservation, land protection, and the basic science that allows us to understand the natural world. From mapping forest loss to combating elephant poaching, organizations depend on Esri’s tools and expertise to understand and protect the ecosystems in which they operate.
We are deepening our partnership around the development of the machine learning- based geospatial solutions that are the foundation of the Planetary Computer. The partnership will build on the work started with the launch of AI for Earth. Key geospatial datasets will be available on Azure and accessible through Esri tools in 2021. The partnership also will continue providing grants that ensure conservation organizations have access to the datasets, compute and other resources.
The Planetary Computer will attempt to organize all known information about Earth and, more importantly, make the information meaningful and actionable.
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