Applications of PlanetScope Constellation Dove CubeSats for Hazards and Climate Monitoring

C.K. Shum ¹ Tarig Ali ² Xiaobin Cai ³ Rebecca Gianotti ⁴ Yuanyuan Jia ⁵ Marty Kress ⁶ Joseph Mascaro ⁷ Kuo-Hsin Tseng ⁸ Zhifeng Yu ⁹

¹Division of Geodetic Science, School of Earth Sciences, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA
²Geospatial Analysis Center, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
⁴Global Water Institute, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA
⁷Program Manager for Impact Initiatives, Planet Inc., San Francisco, California, USA
⁸Center for Space and Remote Sensing Research, National Central University, Taipei, Taoyuan, Taiwan

Planet, Inc`s PlanetScope constellation consists of over 120 currently operating nanosatellites (3U CubeSats) are taking multi-spectral images of the Earth every half a second, and is capable of near daily monitoring of the global Earth surface in between 81.5 or 52 degree latitude bounds despite of cloud cover or weather, and at 3-5 m ground sample distance (GSD) or spatial resolution. This presentation highlights the ongoing research and applications for Earth sciences, as well as applications like natural hazards and environmental monitoring and climate change studies. Timely monitoring of natural hazards such as storms, cyclones, flood, drought, harmful algael bloom in freshwater water bodies or coastal oceans, and other disasters enables rapid hazards response and management. Here, we present examples using the PlanetScope Dove images to detect flash floods in semi-arid regions, cyclone-induced floods and debris in mega cities, and harmful algal blooms in fresh water lakes; and other applications such as water resources management, crop classification, and sensing of energy resources.