The Planetary Computer: Putting Global-Scale Geospatial Data to Work
Channel: Center of Expertise in Big Geodata Science
Date: 06/10/2021

Environmental sustainability depends on very large geospatial data sets, particularly satellite imagery and climate forecasts. But working with geospatial data – whether it’s large or not – is a deep skill set unto itself, and working with very large data – whether it’s geospatial or not – is its own field of expertise as well. Consequently, the niche expertise required in GIS and distributed computing creates a huge barrier between this invaluable data and the sustainability practitioners who need it. Microsoft’s Planetary Computer aims to lower that barrier, by combining (1) a 25PB catalog of analysis-ready geospatial data, in consistent file formats, in a single data center, (2) an API that facilitates spatiotemporal querying over that data, and (3) a computing environment that simplifies distributed computing workloads. Of course, files and distributed computing don’t address environmental issues directly, so Microsoft is also partnering closely with the sustainability community to build applications that put the Planetary Computer to work for sustainability decision-making.


This talk by Dr. Dan Morris (Principal Scientist, Microsoft AI for Earth Program) highlights features and capabilities of Microsoft's Planetary Computer and showcases selected applications.


For the slides and Q&As please visit the event page: https://itc.nl/big-geodata/talks/event/microsoft-planetary-computer/