U.S. geospatial analytics firm Vantor has secured a $5.3 million contract from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to develop tools that combine multiple satellite data sources to monitor changes to Earth’s surface.
Awarded under NGA’s Luno B program, the project will provide intelligence agencies with information on shifts in roads, vegetation, buildings and terrain, as well as impacts from natural disasters and human activity. The system will use artificial intelligence to detect changes across vast datasets.
To build a comprehensive global picture, Vantor plans to merge its own 30-centimeter resolution Earth observation imagery with data from third-party sensors. High-resolution optical imagery can identify small changes in infrastructure, while synthetic aperture radar (SAR) can capture ground conditions at night or through cloud cover.
“What we’re seeing is that the missions that our customers are asking us to perform really do require pulling together multiple types of data,” said Susanne Hake, executive vice president and general manager for U.S. government at Vantor. “They want a complete picture.”
The company will use precision alignment technology to ensure accurate fusion of data from sensors that capture the world differently in terms of resolution, viewing angle and spatial accuracy. Without such alignment, change-detection models would struggle to distinguish genuine alterations from sensor discrepancies.
“Fusing data from multiple sensors is challenging because each one captures the world differently,” Hake said, noting that pixel-level accuracy is essential for reliable analysis.
Artificial intelligence will play a central role in scanning large volumes of imagery quickly, while human analysts will remain involved for quality control and tasking decisions.
“Using AI is obviously a time savings, but it’s also to help scale,” Hake said. “To do continuous change detection across the entire world’s terrain at scale, that’s when you really need to be able to use AI.”
The capability could support a range of applications, including monitoring regional conflicts, assessing infrastructure development and responding to humanitarian emergencies.
