One of 40 – Encroachments and Change Detection

• General

One of 40 – Encroachments and Change Detection

Who's (or what's) that in your asset area?

Précis
  • Problem: Encroachments in the ROW or corridor.
  • Solution: Automated alerts from geospatial analytics.
  • Benefit: Increased safety, decreased risk of damage, decreased risk period.

Who was the neighborhood lookout when you were growing up? You know… the person who always seemed to understand the pulse of the neighborhood. Whose kids had a party when their parents were out of town? What was going on with Mrs. Johnson? Who was buying what? I bet someone jumps to mind for all of us right off the bat! Wouldn’t it be nice to have a lookout like that for those of you tasked with maintaining the integrity and safety of large infrastructure areas?

It’s no secret that 3rd party damage is a big concern for utilities, oil and gas, and pipeline companies. Recent estimates suggest encroachments and damage to infrastructure is a problem measured with a capital B, as in Billions of dollars, in the US alone. Our Constant Vigilance™ change detection algorithms alert you to threats facing critical infrastructure a few hours after satellite overpass with results posted on our secure satelytics.io platform or passed through to your internal software program of choice.

In today’s satellite-filled skies, a high-resolution satellite (less than 0.5-meter spatial resolution) can be tasked 4-5 times per week anywhere in the world. As space investment accelerates, experts are predicting that revisit times will shrink down into the minutes within the decade. This will yield an incredible amount of data! Of course, with big data, the analytics platform to transform it into something actionable must be robust, as well. This is where Satelytics comes in with machine learning algorithms processing on the cloud and can handle the terabytes of geospatial data that come with large monitoring programs.

Our motto is “Every pixel, every time,” meaning each 0.5-meter square area on the earth’s surface is analyzed with the chosen algorithms. Our software measures reflected sunlight in the infrared spectrum. Every object, vegetation type, chemical, metal, or other constituent has its own unique spectral fingerprint, allowing detection and even quantification in many instances. The signature of a vehicle will be different from that of an oak tree, and different than that of bare soil or flooded land. The opportunities are endless and we are adding new algorithms every year per our customers’ requests.

For encroachments in the right-of-way or transmission corridor, some of the more common interests for our customers include vehicles, digging, illegal construction, tree encroachment and speciation, land movements, agricultural activities, land use change, erosions, and loss of cover. Automation of routine inspection reduces “windshield time” for our customer’s employees, who are a precious commodity in today’s economy! We are also hearing that increased commitment to advanced monitoring provides a reduction of insurance premiums, allowing new programs to be introduced without additional spending.

The person who popped into my mind growing up as the neighborhood watch was my mom. She always knew what was happening with others (or us, no matter how we spun our story for being late to dinner or bedtime)! Just like Mrs. Dunham, Satelytics' machine learning algorithms get more precise with experience.

Call us today to see how an eye looking down from space could benefit your “neighborhood.”

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