This episode continues discussion around effects of The International Charter Space and Major Disasters. This charter was mentioned 2 episodes ago by Andrew Schroeder of Direct Relief:
Development Seed, via Kevin Bullock, continues this discussion. He came up on LinkedIn shortly after the LA fires. He catalogued all open spatial data released for example from satellite imagery providers. He provides extra detail on LinkedIn, along with several other experts in the comments.
Kevin's point is that, if the industry was responding effectively to this charter, he would not have to spend a week curating this list of open data. Yes, it is 2025 and the best we've got is a Google Sheet someone volunteered their time to make. We have to ask what incentives are necessary to stop this happening again.
Kevin mentioned several useful resources, listed below.
Australian Acoustic Observatory, and Development Seed’s work with it.
Brianna R. Pagán, PhD’s post on LinkedIn about losing her home in the fires.
Bill Greer’s incredible idea Should Humanitarians Operate Satellites for Their Missions?
Rhiannon Price is involved in the same, called Common Space ‘A nonprofit evidencing the need and impact of a dedicated humanitarian satellite mission in partnership with community and activating a coalition of supporters to realize this vision.’
SatSummit, a conference run by Development Seed. There will be one this year.
Machine Learning Reveals Hidden History of Runaway Slaves, amazing example of what Bill Perkins, owner of SkyFi and Synmax, has funded in the past.
Over the past few episodes we have learnt of Microsoft’s AI For Good Lab, Data For Good at Meta, in this episode we also learnt of Google.org.
This is the AWS registry of open data. An example of another tech company contributing to the common good.
OFF PISTE
I threw Kevin a surprise question at the end of this episode. It was driven from his mentioning that Development Seed is a group of some of the world’s best software developers. I had to ask him then about what Luigi Mangione, a software developer, could have done instead of killing Brian Thompson, the United Healthcare CEO. Amongst other things, Kevin observed how effective Metadata+ was in offering transparency about drone strikes. This was a phone app sending alerts until 2017 of every US drone strike anywhere in the world. It used a map. Listen in for the rest of Kevin’s ideas.
I look forward to continuing to collect opinions on this from the software development industry. I also look forward to profiling customer needs in general for the app that Luigi, had he not been overwhelmed with rage, should have made. The benefit to hundreds of millions of Americans could be profound. Especially in light of the fact that according to The Hill, in an executive order 2 days ago ‘Trump rescinded former President Biden’s Executive Order 14087, “Lowering Prescription Drug Costs for Americans.”’
THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX
The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5.4% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For ~$400,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment.
NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER
NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY
NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE
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