Earth Observation Products & Services

Pixalytics' Earth Observation Products & Services turn satellite and airborne data into information on the current state of water, coastal and land environments and how they have changed over time. The provider positions the service for remote locations, assessments needed quickly, and time series where in-situ data were never recorded.

The work covers four areas. Water and marine management includes water temperature, salinity and quality, bathymetric mapping of harbours and coasts, turbidity mapping (how deep light penetrates the water, used to time seafloor and bathymetric surveys) and river level monitoring. Its Virtual Water Gauge uses satellite altimetry, for example Jason-2, to derive water heights in estuaries, rivers and lakes without installing a physical gauge. Coastal management maps shorelines, coastal erosion, sediment transport and areas at risk of flooding, using Landsat imagery and flood-extent polygons extracted from Sentinel-1 radar. Urban and land management covers green vegetation mapping (NDVI and classification from Landsat 8), land use, urbanisation, deforestation, desertification and night-time light pollution from DMSP data. A data quality line applies atmospheric correction software developed in-house to optical data from sensors such as MODIS, Landsat and the HICO hyperspectral imager.

Buyers can order historic analysis, one-off measurements or ongoing monitoring. Pixalytics either develops bespoke software so the client runs its own monitoring, or manages the process and supplies the results. A client testimonial cites joint projects on water-quality monitoring from ocean-colour imagery and river-discharge estimation from satellite altimetry.