Global Surface Intelligence (GSI), the Scottish geospatial analytics company providing global resource business intelligence, has secured a six-figure remote sensing agreement in the province of Ontario, Canada.
GSI harnesses next generation artificial intelligence to transform satellite optical and radar data, UAV and ground survey data into actionable insights on forestry, land mass, and agriculture assets for businesses.
Having secured funding from the Forestry Futures Trust (FFT), GSI will provide robust data analysis of the Romeo-Malette Forest in Ontario for its project partners, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry and Rayonier Advanced Materials (formerly Tembec), offering insight into forest regeneration, tree species composition, and natural disturbance threat detection.
Analysing 630,000 hectares of the entire Romeo-Malette Forest, GSI aims to provide key data, derived from innovative and cost-effective methods through its powerful machine learning algorithms, to support forest management decision-making for on the ground practitioners and policy makers.
Gavin Tweedie, CEO of GSI said: “Canada has an abundance of naturally regenerated forests, making it difficult to establish good statistics due to its vast area and mix of tree age and species in these forests. Using earth observation data, we can help quantify these elements and detect changes over time to draw out valuable insights on the health and productivity of the forest. Data is necessary to support effective business and policy decisions.”
The projects are part of the FFT’s Knowledge Transfer & Tool Development (KTTD) program and successful results will contribute towards the advancement of Ontario’s Enhanced Forest Resource Inventory (eFRI). The program was initiated by the Ontario government to fund studies that support the development of decision support tools linking the eFRI to forest management and operational planning.
GSI’s technology can be used to support customers including landowners, asset managers and commodity brokers, to help them answer crucial questions, such as where and when to harvest crops; crop health, damage or value; tree canopy height and density; calculating biofuel within a production plant; pipeline security; mapping illegal land use; and forest damage caused by natural disasters, amongst many others.
