CATALYST Develops Automated Workflow for South African National Space Agency to Convert SPOT Archive to Analysis Ready Data

The scalable workflow enables SANSA to prepare its entire SPOT archive for immediate analysis using the Open Data Cube, machine learning, and AI models.

CATALYST’s ARD workflow automatically converts optical satellite imagery into ARD measurements by performing a series of image preprocessing operations. The output product is a geometrically precise image with nbar surface reflectance measurements based on the rigor and specifications of CARD4L.

“With the CATALYST ARD workflow, our users don’t have to spend their time on processing,” said Andiswa Mlisa, Managing Director Earth Observations at SANSA. “They can simply go where the value lies – which is extracting information from the data.”

SANSA is the government agency responsible for South Africa’s space programs and research. The SANSA Earth Observation department collects, processes, archives, and disseminates satellite imagery to support policy and decision making, economic growth, and sustainable development. Imagery in the enormous SANSA SPOT archive is used by multiple government departments for programs related to agriculture, water resource management, and responsible development.

SANSA plans to make their ARD SPOT imagery, which they have been collecting since the early 90s, available to all South African government agencies using the Open Data Cube geospatial data management and analysis platform.