The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same.

Not so long ago, there was just one viable source for Earth imaging data: Landsat, a joint program of NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey whose mission dates back to 1973. Back then, civilian remote sensing was still in its infancy and commercial satellite operators were unheard of. And yet, the nascent professional remote sensing community was galvanized by the promise of what could be. Decades later, civil society has a wealth of commercial and government Earth observation data to analyze, and more is on the way thanks to a dramatic period of innovation whose day is almost here. Innovation fueled by the confluence of available Earth observation data, machine learning methods, cloud computing and an expanding data science workforce that is eager to create new products and solutions, will change everything. And in some respects, nothing.

Machine learning (ML) and Earth observation (EO) are complementary technologies. While EO helps us understand natural and anthropogenic changes on the Earth, ML empowers us to analyze vast amounts of imagery and build new models for EO data that would have been very difficult if not impossible using traditional physical models a few short years ago.

The promise ML and EO hold for agriculture are immense. EO satellites capture data at a global scale, and ML techniques can use these data to map croplands at local, regional, and continental levels, which provide input for farmers and policymakers alike. In particular, the ability to estimate crop yield or detect pest/disease damage during the growing season will be game-changing in addressing food insecurity problems.

The Radiant MLHub API is a STAC compliant API that serves metadata about label items and source imagery and links to download these items.

STAC is an organization of metadata for imagery and labels, making it easy to search for items that match spatial, temporal, or other criteria. At the root level of the STAC API is a list of collections of items. In the Radiant MLHub API, each collection contains items for either source imagery or labels for a dataset. These items are descriptions of source imagery or labels and links to download assets related to these items. Properties found in these item descriptions include spatial extent, temporal extent, band descriptions in the case of optical imagery, label types and label properties in the case of labels, and other information like DOIs and citation examples to reference.

Machine learning (ML) applications for Earth observation (EO) can use currently available data that are collected via surveys for empirical research to investigate applied sciences or conduct socio-economic analysis. However, the chances of those survey data being incomplete are high. Many ML applications on EO require ground reference data, which are accurate observations of some property on the ground and can be used as a label or description of what a potential overhead image¹ represents.

It is, of course, possible to label images remotely using online platforms like OpenStreetMap…