EOS Platform provides toolbox for processing Earth observations

Most image analysis tasks that required ENVI or Erdas Imagine software are now available online with EOS Platform, a new cloud service launched by Earth Observing System (EOS). It provides GIS professionals with a one-stop solution for search, analysis, storing and visualization of large amounts of geospatial data.

EOS Platform is an ecosystem of four mutually integrated EOS products, which together provide a powerful toolset for geospatial analysts, according to the company. Image data obtained from LandViewer or uploaded from a user’s computer is stored in cloud-based EOS Storage and is instantly available for remote sensing analysis or image processing.

EOS Processing offers 16 processing workflows that run online, including raster tools (merge, reprojection, pansharpening), remote sensing analytics, photogrammetry and proprietary feature extraction algorithms designed by EOS engineers and data scientists to address the main challenges of agriculture, forestry, oil, gas, retail, city planning, defense and other industries. Such pre-processing tasks as cloud detection or radiometric calibration refine raw data for further analysis. Images can be corrected for atmospheric effects to obtain the real ground radiance or reflectance values.

Users can also use the cartographic features of EOS Vision for vector data visualization and analysis (analysis coming soon). Other features in upcoming updates include lidar analysis and 3D modeling.

Data agnostic platform

Users can work with a variety of satellite and airborne raster datasets in EOS Processing, EOS Storage and LandViewer, which enables quick and intuitive search of images within collections of Sentinel-1 and 2, Landsat 8 and 7, MODIS, NAIP, CBERS-4, Landsat 4 and 5. Besides downloading images from public datasets, users can also upload their own GeoTiff, JPEG, JPEG 2000 files and apply GIS data-processing algorithms via API or from the web interface. EOS Vision is a tool for vector data operations with multiple format support (ESRI Shapefile, GeoJSON, KML, KMZ).

Object detection, change detection and classification

The convolutional neural networks, pre-trained by EOS to extract features from imagery, allow users to apply state-of-art methods to detect objects and track changes from space.

• Having only a set of multi-temporal images and change detection workflow, users can track how illegal deforestation progresses over time.
• Edge detection can show the exact boundaries of agricultural lands down to the last pixel.
• It is possible to estimate the parking lot traffic of the largest shopping centers with a car detection algorithm.

Products within EOS Platform support almost all remote sensor types. Users can choose from numerous spectral indices to calculate on the fly.

Aside from the complete set of vegetation indices (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, NDVI; Red-Edge Chlorophyll Index, ReCI; etc.), there are also indices to outline landscape features (Normalized Difference Water Index, NDWI; Normalized Difference Snow Index, NDSI) and burned areas (Normalized Burn Ratio, NBR).

One of the most useful features is the ability to experiment with spectral bands: users can create custom band combinations and indexes on top of the default ones.

The user-friendly interface of EOS Processing makes it easy to manage processing workflows depending on the user’s business needs. Users can set the parameters for processing and repeatedly use customized workflows to automate high-frequency analytical tasks. Coming updates will add an ability to create custom algorithms from the available data-processing operations.

Agriculture, forestry, oil and gas and more industries

A tandem of EOS products form a comprehensive toolbox both for general use and for industry-specific cases, the company said. With vegetation indices and crop classification feature, agronomists can continuously monitor crop conditions to detect plant diseases, pests and droughts. Forestry specialists can classify forest types, assess fire damage, monitor forest health, and track and enforce logging restrictions.

EOS Platform can also be used for regional and urban planning. It helps users identify land cover classes to generate a vegetation map and can also make a complete list of urban features such as buildings, roads or other major features in the region.

The platform can tackle disaster management by measuring flood extent and finding fire boundaries. When it comes to oil and gas, it is capable of identifying oil rigs and assessing the environmental impact.