Companies that provide satellite imagery and data to government customers are now offering data analytics support to help their clients quickly generate insights from the volumes of data amid a growing constellation of satellites and the emergence of new sensors, Defense One reported Thursday.
Dan Smoot, CEO of Maxar Intelligence, spoke about a “push, pull” model in which the company works to meet government emergency satellite data requirements in key areas while also proactively providing analytical support to emerging situations in specific areas.
“They come to us, sit down and say, ‘We’re interested in Indo-Pacific Command. [area]”What’s happened over the last few days and what’s happening now,” Smoot said of the pull approach.
According to the CEO, the push feature of the model is a new approach whereby space imagery providers push information to government clients if there is a new event in a particular region that requires attention.
“When there’s a change on the ground, how do we get the information to our analysts quickly and have them really disseminate what the change is, rather than trying to parse through all the information to find the change? The way we approach it, the way our insights work, is to actually drive that change and have them be the ones to make it happen.” [meaning the government customer] They need to understand what people are looking for and give them the ability to subscribe to something,” Smoot said.
To meet growing computing requirements for space data, Amazon Web Services is establishing more connection points, including edge-based connections, in support of U.S. and allied military forces.
“We’re thinking about what the optionality of the connection points are, how often the edge is talking to the larger cloud, and how much processing can be done there versus how much processing needs to be done in the cloud,” said Liz Martin, director of DoD business at AWS.
