Planet Imagery
Satellite imagery has greatly advanced during the past years and has become widely used in many research areas. Planet launched their first satellites in 2015, and now over 300 million square kilometers of imagery are collected each day. A team led by MSI PI Zhenong Jin (assistant professor, Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering; project PI), Hui Kong (assistant professor, Urban and Regional Planning; project co-PI) and MSI PI Len Kne (Director, U-Spatial Twin Cities; project co-PI) have formed an agreement with Planet that will provide access to the high-resolution (3-5m) planetary imagery archive for research and learning to all faculty, staff, and students throughout the University of Minnesota System.
A database will also be constructed to include publications and presentations that were made possible using planet imagery. The group will also create communities of practice around planet imagery to allow sharing of expertise and experience. U-Spatial will handle administration of this resource in the long term; more information can be found on their website.
MSI is developing training materials for MSI users who want to use their data within MSI’s HPC environment. If you’re interested in using this resource, see the following:
This project was recently awarded a UMII Seed Grant. The Seed Grant program is intended to promote, catalyze, accelerate, and advance informatics research based at the University of Minnesota, so that U of M faculty and staff can successfully compete for longer-term external funding opportunities. This Seed Grant falls under the Robotics, Sensors, and Advanced Manufacturing, Securing the Global Food Supply, and Conserving Our Environment research areas of the MnDRIVE initiative.
Professor Jin uses MSI resources to support research into a range of topics that integrate computational modeling, remote sensing, and machine learning for agriculture sustainability. MSI, U-Spatial, and UMII are partners in the Research Computing group of the Office of the Vice President for Research. MSI and U-Spatial work together on various projects in the areas of Geographic Information Systems, remote sensing, and spatial computing.