NOAA Contracts with Planet to Gain Situational Awareness of Oil Spills, Marine Debris, and Marine Life
July 21 2022 - 9:00AM
Business Wire
Planet Labs PBC (NYSE: PL), a leading provider of daily data and
insights about Earth, today announced a new contract with the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The
organization is leveraging Planet’s PlanetScope and SkySat products
to evaluate oil spills, track marine debris, detect vessels, and
identify large marine mammals like whales.
In 2004, Hurricane Ivan caused severe damage in the Gulf of
Mexico, including the collapse and sinking of an oil platform.
Crude oil from this platform continued to leak for over a decade,
in what would become the longest running oil spill in United States
history. NOAA began tracking the region with government-provided
satellite data to generate reports on the situation. In 2018, NOAA
reached out to Planet to explore how having a perspective of change
on a near-daily basis around the platform could help inform their
work.
“With rapidly changing activity in the ocean - from increasingly
severe storms to growing industrial demands - I’m so glad that NOAA
is able to use our datasets to continue their vital efforts to
protect coastal communities and ecosystems from hazards like oil
spills and illegal fishing,” said Planet Federal’s Vice President
Jon Powers.
Using PlanetScope imagery which provides near-daily imagery at 3
m resolution, NOAA set up an Area of Interest (AOI) around the
leaking oil platform and received timely imagery of the region,
supporting their evaluations of the quantity of oil leaking into
the surrounding environment. These updates were shared within their
Marine Pollution Surveillance Report. Following this work, NOAA
expanded their work with Planet, and today they observe a large
region covering approximately 35,000 sq km in the Gulf of
Mexico.
By having this frequent perspective, NOAA monitors a number of
platforms, looking to identify oil spills early on. This near-daily
data helps NOAA’s audiences stay informed on oil spills in the
region. Their regular reports on the oil platforms are distributed
to a community including the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
(BOEM) and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement
(BSEE), which are integral government departments that support
regulations and enforcement for environmental protection and
oceanic activities.
“Working with Planet, NOAA gets a more complete and frequent
stream of information about the status of our oceanic and coastal
world. Planet's high-cadence imaging helps us identify and track
potential oil spills, and with tasking capabilities, we've advanced
our situational awareness for vessel monitoring or marine debris,”
said Jerome Fisher, Physical Scientist at NOAA.
NOAA also leverages Planet’s tasking capabilities with SkySat’s
50 cm resolution imagery to gain deeper situational awareness of
activities happening in sea waters. For example, with oil spills,
they are able to identify details of operational facilities and
delineate oil spread with greater accuracy. SkySat also enables
them to identify illegal fishing vessels operating in “no-go” or
marine protected areas where fishing and traversing is prohibited
due to potentially vulnerable coral reef communities. These tasking
efforts have also been used by NOAA to monitor large humpback whale
migrations and identify beached marine mammals.
SkySat imagery is also being evaluated by NOAA analysts for its
ability to show marine debris, either at sea or in rivers. Its high
resolution makes it a good candidate for debris detection in
situations where other satellite imagery would not be
effective.
About Planet
Planet is a leading provider of global, daily satellite imagery
and geospatial solutions. Planet is driven by a mission to image
the world every day, and make change visible, accessible and
actionable. Founded in 2010 by three NASA scientists, Planet
designs, builds, and operates the largest Earth observation fleet
of imaging satellites, capturing over 30 TB of data per day. Planet
provides mission-critical data, advanced insights, and software
solutions to over 800 customers, comprising the world’s leading
agriculture, forestry, intelligence, education and finance
companies and government agencies, enabling users to simply and
effectively derive unique value from satellite imagery. Planet is a
public benefit corporation trading on the New York Stock Exchange
as PL. To learn more visit www.planet.com and follow us on
Twitter.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220721005273/en/
Planet Press Claire Bentley comms@planet.com Planet
Investor Relations Chris Genualdi, Cleo Palmer-Poroner
ir@planet.com
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