Ecometrica Platform (Ecometrica) (IPP funded as Forests 2020 project)

Overview

The Ecometrica Platform brings together Earth observation (EO) ‘big data’ and turns it into strategic, geo-analytical insights for use by businesses and governments worldwide. An easy to use web interface enables non-experts to easily interact with and rapidly analyse large, complex environmental datasets – from forest protection to disaster response, sustainability metrics to full global supply chain intelligence.

www.ecometrica.com

Platform interface showing results of the Hectares Indicator (HI) in Mexico

Solution benefits

Offers a complete view of fast-changing environmental information, and rapid, critical decision-making tools on local, regional, national or supranational scales.
Easy to use interface enables non-experts to easily interact with and rapidly analyse large, complex environmental datasets.
Product is used by governments and donors globally to monitor impact: identifying ecosystems at risk, tracking progress with roll out activities, monitoring outcomes of investments, policies and progress and analysing the spatial distribution of results.
Platform is fully hosted and supported by experts with deep subject matter expertise.
Platform has capability to manage terabytes of EO data using cost effective cloud storage solutions.
Enables clients to make sense of complex EO data, assess risk to land assets or populations from natural disasters, prove compliance and sustainability of new venture.

Key technical features

‘Off the shelf’ products: include measuring avoided forest loss, impact monitoring and environmental risk mapping across agriculture, forests, biodiversity and water.
Areas of Interest (AOI): Enables end users to run complicated data models on specific geographic areas.
Time series: It can perform time-series analysis with historical results, querying large quantities of data in seconds.
Results and reports: Areas of Interest (AOIs) are used to run queries on key geographic areas – results appear instantly on screen and can be downloaded as spreadsheets or PDF reports.
Data agnostic – Ecometrica has partnerships with various EO data providers; providing our own content, plus content from others – similar to the Netflix approach.
The platform can combine EO data from various sources such as free optical data from Sentinel-2, Landsat and MODIS; high resolution optical data; or radar from Sentinel-1.
Ecometrica works with end users to identify their user requirements, to bring the most appropriate data to answer those specific questions.
The Ecometrica Platform is ready to use with no user IT infrastructure beyond a desktop/laptop computer and internet connection.

Case studies

The UK Government has been using the Ecometrica Platform to monitor the International Climate Fund (ICF)’s forest investments. The Ecometrica Platform is used to report against Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and the Hectares Indicator is used to measure avoided forest loss because of UK investment. Hectares Indicator uses a combination of EO data to develop risk maps to determine expected loss (and where that will happen), as well as to look at actual loss over the investment period.

Forests 2020 is an IPP supported project using EO imagery to improve forest monitoring across six partner countries: Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Ghana, Kenya and Indonesia. It addresses some of the technical barriers to effectively using EO for forest monitoring such as timeliness and accuracy of data. The Ecometrica Platform has been established in each country to support curation and analysis of data to ensure new national data products are accessible to those who need it for policy and management decisions.

Organisation overview

Ecometrica is a global leader in downstream space and sustainability reporting. We turn vast and growing streams of observation data from space, air and land into actionable insights for business, government and society. From forest protection to disaster response, sustainability reporting software to full global supply chain intelligence, Ecometrica’s technology uses machine learning and world-class human innovation and expertise to provide our public and private sector customers with a complete view of fast-changing information, and rapid, critical decision-making tools on local, regional, national or supranational scales.

For more details on our range of products please visit our website: www.ecometrica.com