Advancing Earth Observation
Mini Forum 21
25 August 2021
The AEO Mini was a free online event
held on
Wednesday, 25 August 2021
10:00am - 16:00pm AEST (UTC +10)
We couldn’t wait until next year to catch up with everyone in the Earth observation community, so we decided to run a mini forum this year as well. Join us online on the 25th August 2021 for some education, entertainment, and connection all in the name of advancing Earth observation.
Fear not, this won’t be another death by Powerpoint passive zoom session. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to get involved!
See below for session recordings!
Program Overview
| Time (AEST) | Session | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 10:00am | Opening | Conference welcome, introductions, and ice breaker |
| 10:30am | Plenary/keynote | We'll set the scene for the day with an Earth observation expert sharing some big picture ideas on the future of our industry |
| 11:15am | Break | |
| 11:20am | Pechakucha | Experience the fast pace of some entertaining pechakucha talks, followed by a Q&A session |
| 12:15pm | Break | |
| 12:20pm | Town Hall | Have your say on our national directions in this interactive session |
| 13:15pm | Lunch Break | |
| 14:00pm | Learning Labs | Select from a range of interactive sessions to attend |
| 14:55pm | Break | |
| 15:00pm | Debate | Watch and listen to a diverse panel debating contentious issues in Earth observation |
| 15:45pm | Final words | |
| 16:00pm | Close |
This online format conforms to the COVIDSafe (Social Distancing) protocols set in place by the Commonwealth and Queensland Government Health Departments. In addition, we would encourage attendees, interested in holding group online sessions, to conform to any meeting restrictions that may be imposed by the Health Department in their state, at the time of each event.
Banner image: Karen Joyce and Jack Koci, James Cook University.
Program Details.
Dr Trevor Dhu
Introducing our Keynote Speaker...
Dr Trevor Dhu is Microsoft’s Asia Lead for Sustainability Science, where he is helping Microsoft to achieve its sustainability goals by connecting to the wide range of incredible science and technology from across the region. Prior to joining Microsoft in 2021, Trevor worked at Geoscience Australia where he led the development and implementation of Digital Earth Australian (DEA), a continental scale analytics platform that is helping Australia to use satellite data, environmental science and machine learning to change how we manage our natural resources. He’s also worked on disaster risk reduction programs in Australia and across the Asia-Pacific region. This includes almost 5 years working for the Australian Agency for International Development in Jakarta, Indonesia. Trevor has also engaged extensively with the global Earth observation community including as Australia’s Principal to the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and a member of GEO’s Executive Committee.
Advancing Earth observation with Pechakucha!
Why Pechakucha?
Many people will agree that it's a challenging task to tell their story in just 400 seconds. But therein lies the appeal. The idea is to capture the audience through great visuals and fun, informal words. Short and sweet. Or fast and furious - depending on the speaker! Either way, given the level of preparation required to nail the timing, it's bound to be entertaining! And with so much zoom fatigue out there right now, we wanted to mix things up just a little.
The presenters.
Taofiq Huq (he/him)
Founder and CEO, Spiral Blue
Making Earth observation satellites smarter.
Taofiq is Founder and CEO of Spiral Blue, where he leads a dynamic team of space engineers and data scientists on a quest to make Earth observation more accessible. Originally founded in 2017, Spiral Blue has recently launched the first of its Space Edge Computers to orbit and is now awaiting the results of this in orbit demonstration. Mr Huq is also Advisor for Sperospace, a space robotics startup, and holds a Bachelors in Aerospace Engineering from the University of New South Wales.
Laura Duncanson (she/her)
Assistant Professor, NASA
NASA Lidar missions for global-scale biomass mapping and forest conservation.
Dr. Duncanson is a remote sensing scientist with a research focus on global-scale forest structure and dynamics. Her research focuses on using lidar data for a range of science and policy applications, including theoretical ecology and forest conservation. As part of NASA's GEDI science team, she is helping to lead the development of empirical biomass models for GEDI. She also serves on NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System’s Science team, NASA’s Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE), and NASA’s ICESat-2 Science team. She really likes trees.
Matthew Alger (they/them)
Earth Observation Data Scientist
Geoscience Australia / Australian National University
Aggregation Problems in Earth and Space.
Matthew is a radio astronomer who now works on optical Earth observation data science.
Bethany Melville (she/her)
Lecturer in Spatial Sciences, University of Tasmania
The EO Conundrum: ‘So what is it that you do exactly?’
Bethany is a Lecturer in Spatial Sciences at the University of Tasmania, specialising in remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Bethany’s work is focused on identifying new applications for spatial technologies and techniques. Previously she has worked on applications in environmental management, agriculture, and the resources sector. Bethany is a strong advocate for improving scientific and spatial literacy across all levels of education, and empowering women to enter spatial careers.
Lieutenant Colonel Lisa Bush (she/her)
Director Mission Data Intelligence, Defence Intelligence Group
Australian Defence Force
Defence and Earth Observation
Lieutenant Colonel Lisa Bush is an Army Intelligence Officer specialising in Geospatial Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence. Career highlights include leading a small team to provide Joint Geospatial Intelligence to OPERATION RESOLUTE, Australia’s Whole-of-Government effort to protect Australia’s borders and offshore maritime interests; and deploying on Operation ASLAN, the ADF’s contribution to the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) in 2012-13. Here she designed and instigated the military mapping program for South Sudan, the world’s newest country. She is currently employed as Director of Mission Data Intelligence where she leads a small team developing enterprise geospatial, Intelligence Mission Data, and Full Spectrum Data policy and capability.
Town Hall.
In this year’s town hall we will focus on how the Australian Earth observation community can work across government – industry – start-ups - education – research sectors to build our individual and national capabilities.
We will very briefly present four key national EO coordination programs then focus on a community and panel discussions to asses critical challenges for EO to move forwards. The four key national EO coordination programs are:
Australian Space Agency – National Civil Space Priority EO Roadmap (link to be confirmed)
Australian Academy of Sciences - Decadal Space Sciences Plan 2021-2031
Town Hall panellists
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Kate Williams (she/her)
Chief Business Officer, FrontierSI
As Chief Business Officer at FrontierSI, Kate works closely with government, university and industry partners to develop collaborative projects to bring spatial solutions to real world problems. To do this, Kate draws on her 20 years' experience in technical, project management, leadership and business development roles in the private and public sector. A certified spatial professional (GISP-AP), Kate has extensive experience across the digital twin, utilities, natural resource management, transport, and digital sectors.
A Geomatic Engineering and Arts graduate from Melbourne University and joint recipient of the Women’s Leadership award in the Victorian Spatial Excellence Awards (2019), Kate is passionate about the spatial industry and its potential to create social, environmental and economic benefit.
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Donna Lawler (she/her)
Principal, Azimuth Advisory
Donna Lawler is a member of the International Institute of Space Lawyers, a fellow of the London Institute of Space Policy and Law as well as Co-Founder and Principal at Azimuth Advisory, Australia's first legal practice specialising in space activities. Over twenty years in the satellite industry she has been an advisor to Optus and SingTel on satellite related issues, and more recently, to a range of commercial space organisations, including launch facilities, launch service providers, communications satellite operators and operators of cubesat constellations.
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Jonathon Ross (he/him)
Director of National Planning and International Relations, Geoscience Australia
Jonathon is Director of National Planning and International Relations in Geoscience Australia's Earth and Marine Observation Branch. Jonathon's team is responsible for working with other Commonwealth agencies, State/Territory governments, space agency partners and the broader national EO community via Earth Observation Australia, to coordinate development and implementation of national strategies for Earth observations. Jonathon was formerly Executive Officer of the international Committee on Earth Observations (CEOS) and managed the taskforce that delivered the 2019 Ministerial Summit of the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO).
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Alisa Starkey (she/her)
Founder & Director, Ozius
Alisa Starkey is the founder and Science Solutions Lead lead at Ozius.
Alisa learned the benefits of utilising Earth Observation data while completing her B.Science (Honours) at the University of Wollongong. Alisa’s career has spanned R&D and entrepreneurship, with a dedication to fusing artificial intelligence, earth observation data, and environmental science to solve complex environmental challenges for government and business applications.
Alisa founded Ozius in 2014 with a dream to make advanced Earth Observation analytics more accessible, and to empower business decisions. Ozius has since delivered new business intelligence to some of the world’s largest enterprises, across the globe.
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Reece Biddiscombe (he/him)
Director Earth Observation, Australian Space Agency
As Director Earth Observation, Reece’s substantive role at the Australian Space Agency is developing the national Earth observation roadmap through close engagement with the Australian and international Earth observation communities. Reece led the Bushfire Earth Observation Taskforce that explored how Earth observation can make a greater contribution to bushfire risk management in Australia.
Reece is a secondee to the Agency from the Australian Department of Defence where he has had a long career as a geospatial intelligence analysis team leader and, since 2013, leading space capability development and directing Defence major projects DEF799 Phase 1 and DEF799 Phase 2.
Reece has bachelor degrees in surveying and data management and has nearly completed a Master of Space Operations with a focus on space project management.
Learning Labs.
We're super excited to have members of our earth observation community apply 'Each One, Teach One' to grow our collective community knowledge through interactive learning experiences.
At AEO Mini you'll have the opportunity to attend a 40 minute Learning Lab of your choice to dive into one of the following topic areas:
Bushfires: is Earth Observation the solution!?
Hosted by Dr Marta Yebra, ANU, Dr Nicolas Younes, ANU, and Dr Stefan Maier, Maitec. In this session we want to find out more about the community involved in remote sensing of fire and flammability traits. We want to know who's doing what, when, where, and we aim to generate connections and collaborative efforts to achieve goals faster. To do this, we need to understand the people involved in remote sensing of fire and flammability traits, therefore we will create a survey, brainstorm, and pool ideas in this session.
Dr Marta Yebra
Director ANU Bushfire Initiative
The Australian National University
Dr Yebra’s main background is in remote sensing of vegetation biophysical properties, such as fuel load and moisture content for spatial fire risk analysis, and canopy conductance for carbon sequestration and water balance studies.
Nicolas Younes (he/him)
Postdoctoral Researcher / Remote sensing and geospatial scientist
The Australian National University
Environmental engineer by training, and remote sensing scientist by trade. I grew up in the beautiful Andean landscapes of Ecuador. Before turning into science, I worked for many industries including Oil & Gas, Construction, and Engineering; I was also a university lecturer and the co-founder of a small consulting firm. I use remote sensing (not only satellites) to gather information about vegetation. In my latest project, I use hyperspectral images and mass spectrometry to examine traits that influence the flammability of eucalypt trees. I also advocate against the use of NDVI, especially when analyzing long time series.
Stefan Maier (he/him)
Director, Maitec
Stefan is a graduated engineer in Applied Physics (Fachhochschule Isny, 1993) and has been awarded the degree of Doctor of Engineering from the Technical University Munich in 2000. Stefan held Research Associate (1996-1999) and Post-Doctoral (2000-2002) positions at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen. From 2002-2007 he worked at Satellite Remote Sensing Services, Western Australian Land Information Authority, initially as Senior Research Officer and later as Manager. In 2007 Stefan took up a position as Principal Research Fellow - Remote Sensing at Charles Darwin University, Darwin. In early 2015 he founded Maitec.
Plan your first drone mapping mission!
Hosted by Joan Li, GeoNadir. Drones are tackling problems from disease control to vacuuming up ocean waste to delivering pizza, and more. Drone mapping is also taking off in different industries these days. It is widely used in environment studies, mining, surveying quarries, and so on. However, it is not something just for highly-experienced professionals, you can do it too! In this session, we would like to help you plan your first drone mapping session that can contribute to the future good.
Joan Li (she/her)
Data scientist, GeoNadir
Joan believes technology is the key. As a data scientist at GeoNadir, she is currently focusing on unlocking the endless information from nadir angle using artificial intelligence. With a background in marine science and strong interests in remote sensing, her previous adventure involves detecting sea cucumbers from drone images with state-of-the-art object detection model. She would love to getting more people on board to explore the potential of drone data!
Making the most of intergenerational expertise in EO.
Hosted by Roshni Sharma, FrontierSI. Are you keen to see our industry make the most of young blood coming through with fresh new ideas, as well as the important experience and wisdom of those who have been around for a while? Interested in carving out clarity about career pathways in EO, finding out about how we can come together to push EO to the edge? Then you're in the right place - join us for this session!
Roshni Sharma (she/her)
Project Manager & Geospatial Analyst, FrontierSI
Having traversed environmental science and management, human geography, palaeoclimatology and business, and onto her third masters degree, Roshni is a thought leader, a compassionate disruptor, a connector and someone who gets things done. She is making it her life’s work to harness location intelligence to create tangible positive change for society, creating real traction around sustainability and leveraging tech for good. Roshni loves dogs (but not cats), experimental cooking, and reads copiously at every opportunity. At FrontierSI, Roshni is at the forefront of the industry, bringing together cutting-edge innovation into useful applications for academia, industry and government.
Design Thinking: an introduction to User-Centred Design.
Hosted by Gavan Huang, Spiral Blue. This interactive Learning Lab introduces attendees to the first stage of the Design Thinking process; an iterative user-centric method to create more meaningful solutions that truly solves a user's needs. In groups, attendees will be guided through the problem discovery process and use empathy mapping tools with a real user in order to better understand the user needs and problems.
Gavan Huang (he/him)
Community Manager, Spiral Blue
Gavan Huang is the Community Manager at Spiral Blue. He is a passionate advocate for user centred design, education and STEM. He currently organises Spiral Blue's monthly events to promote the global Earth observation community. Previously, Gavan was the Lead Organiser of OrbitOz, a Sydney-based space community group that promoted space entrepreneurship and businesses and was an organiser for the NASA Space Apps Hackathons. As well, he was previously an academic tutor at University of Technology Sydney teaching engineering design and leading education reforms within the Faculty of Engineering and IT. He is currently completing his final year of his Bachelor of Engineering and Business degree at the University of Technology Sydney.
Exploring three decades of satellite data with Digital Earth Australia.
Hosted by Dr Robbi Bishop-Taylor, GeoScience Australia. This Learning Lab will provide a brief introduction to exploring petabytes of freely satellite imagery and environmental data using Digital Earth Australia (DEA) - from the comfort of your internet browser! The Lab will cover how to use the interactive DEA Maps platform to browse, compare and download information about Australia’s changing waterbodies, vegetation and coastlines, and introduce the DEA Sandbox learning and analysis environment for processing satellite data in the cloud.
Robbi Bishop-Taylor (he/him)
Coastal Earth Observation Scientist, Geoscience Australia
Dr Robbi Bishop-Taylor is a Coastal Earth Observation Scientist from the Digital Earth Australia Program at Geoscience Australia. Robbi works as part of an interdisciplinary team responsible for developing the first continent-wide maps of Australia’s vast intertidal zone, and the recently released Digital Earth Australia Coastlines dataset that maps Australia’s dynamic coastline using three decades of satellite imagery.
Debate.
Debating the scarcity mindset in Earth observation
When there's just not enough...
The scarcity mindset is an affliction from which many of us suffer. It's where we feel that it doesn't matter how much we have of something, we always want more, and there's just never enough. We often observe this feeling in terms of funding, time, staff, and many other aspects of our personal and professional lives.
So what's the alternative?
On the other hand, the abundance mindset is driven by a feeling of contentment and sufficiency. Where we realise that we do have enough to achieve our goals and create the impact we desire.
What does this have to do with Earth observation?
Through our interactions within and external to the EO community, we've started to recognise the emergence of a scarcity mindset, specifically with respect a continued desire for more data, tech, and analytics. So we've decided to tackle this mindset head on at our Advancing Earth Observation Mini Forum to debate:
More EO data, more tech, and more sophisticated analytics will solve all of our planetary challenges.
On the affirmative team - convincing us all that this statement is true...
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Melanie Olsen (she/her)
ReefWorks Project Director, Australian Institute of Marine Science
Melanie leads ReefWorks – Australia’s Tropical Marine Technology Test Range at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. Melanie is an Electronic Warfare Engineer working on initiatives to foster technological innovation and the sustainable integration of new technologies and autonomous solutions into our tropical marine observation network sustainably. Melanie’s previous roles include cutting edge product design & development, leading the Australian engineering effort in multinational research & development projects and transitioning prototypes into operations. Melanie is also an Australian Army Reservist and Mum of 2.
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Alex Held
Director, CSIRO Centre of Earth Observation & AquaWatch Australia Mission co-Lead & co-Chair, Committee on Earth Observation Satellites SIT
Alex has over 25 years experience in domestic and international earth observation programs and policy, technical skills in optical and microwave remote sensing, plant physiology, plant growth modelling and agronomy. COSPAR Massey Award 2020.
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Olivia Sackett (she/her)
Space Tech and Trusted AI Lead, EY
Olivia is a Data Science leader with 10+ years experience. Her focus is on accelerating the adoption of space technology and AI for the benefit of people, society and the planet. Olivia has a PhD in hyperspectral analysis and modelling in the domain of polar marine science, she has co-authored 7 peer-reviewed publications and taken part in a research expedition to the Southern Ocean.
Oliva is currently co-supervising a PhD project with academics from Swinburne University, the Hertie School of Digital Governance and the CSIRO to develop an AI Governance framework for the emerging Australian Space Sector funded by SmartSat CRC.
And the negative team- convincing us all that this statement is false...
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Jasmine Muir
Earth observation technical lead, FrontierSI
Jasmine is an experienced scientist and manager in the use of Earth observation technology and AI to inform decision making and achieve business growth. Experienced in research, government and private sector across multiple domains including agriculture, mining, forestry and conservation. Committed to facilitating earth observation uptake in industry. Ability to implement complex technical concepts, and explain these concepts to a non-technical audience. PhD from the University of Queensland, in terrestrial laser scanning to assess vegetation condition (processing very big data). Technical background with High Performance Computing and programming in Python, R and SQL. Currently learning JavaScript, HTML, and CSS for fun.
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Yvonne Fong (she/her)
Data Scientist, EO Data Science / NGIS Australia
Yvonne is a Data Scientist working with the Earth Observations team at NGIS Australia to help clients operationalise Google Earth Engine for their business or project. She is passionate about leveraging satellite data to gain insights and drive positive environmental and social change through projects such as the Group on Earth Observations and Google Earth Engine program.
Before entering the world of Earth Observations, Yvonne worked as an Environmental Scientist and has a background in ecology and environmental sciences. She still enjoys volunteering with local conservation groups and getting her hands dirty out in the field.
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Peter Scarth (he/him)
Full stack remote sensing scientist, Qld Govt / University of Queensland / Cibo Labs
Peter builds map-like things that try to help with decision making. He is happiest when producing and delivering automated, operational, and validated national and global scale products that can be used by scientists, industry, policy and the public.
The debate.
Will more EO data, more tech, and more sophisticated analytics solve all of our planetary challenges?
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