Today, Earth observation (EO) moves beyond capturing images of the planet. It is about understanding change to deliver insights needed for better decisions.

This shift is transforming how governments and organisations understand environmental change, infrastructure development, climate risk, and natural resource management. Instead of relying on static snapshots, they now have continual, data-driven visibility, enabling faster decisions, greater transparency, and proactive intervention.

At NGIS, we are seeing a powerful convergence of high-frequency satellite data, high-performance computing, and planetary-scale AI. By bridging the gap between space-based insight and ground-level action, we’re helping our clients move from static imagery to predictive intelligence, solving complex environmental challenges with confidence and clarity.

The Next Generation of Monitoring: Planet’s Pelican^™ Constellation

The foundation of our near-real-time monitoring capability is our strategic partnership with Planet. While the PlanetScope^® and SuperDove^™ constellation continues to provide our near-daily scan of the Earth, 2026 marks a historic expansion in capacity.

We are incredibly excited about the deployment of the Pelican constellation. With 50 cm resolution and rapid tasking, Pelican allows us to “tip-and-cue” with incredible precision, seeing events as they unfold — from infrastructure changes to emergency responses — multiple times per day.

Google AlphaEarth: AI-Powered Pixels

Hardware is only half the story. The true breakthrough is how we process this data. Through our Google Cloud partnership, NGIS is leveraging Google Earth Engine and the revolutionary AlphaEarth Foundations model.

Rather than manually analysing individual image bands, we are now using Google AlphaEarth embeddings to monitor deforestation, agriculture, and to monitor native vegetation to allow accurate and timely detection of illegal vegetation clearance. This AI-driven approach turns petabytes of raw imagery into 64-dimensional “feature vectors” or embeddings.

Why this matters: These embeddings encode not just the spectral signals but also the context of a pixel. They can differentiate between a parking lot and a freeway or detect subtle forest degradation that the human eye might miss. This allows us to perform “similarity searches,” finding every location on Earth with similar environmental signatures, at scales impossible with other approaches.

Impact in Action

The NSW Gov-NGIS-Planet Partnership

Our ongoing partnership with the New South Wales Government and Planet is a prime example of how EO can be operationalised, exploiting these advances.

By using Planet high-frequency imagery into operational workflows, NSW agencies are now able to:

• Monitor Natural Capital: Establishing trusted metrics for ecosystem health across the state, and providing valuable biodiversity support to the Cumberland Plains Conservation Plan.
• Respond to Emergencies: Utilising PlanetScope near-daily imagery combined with SkySat 50 cm resolution data, to monitor and respond to emergency events, such as bushfires and flooding, in a timely manner.
• Increase Climate Resilience: Using change detection to track recovery after extreme weather events and manage fuel loads for bushfire prevention.
• Ensure Water Security: Automating the monitoring of the Murray-Darling Basin, helping to ensure equitable resource distribution through near real-time insights.

The NGIS Edge

The future of EO is about data interoperability. It’s the ability to combine data and insights from multiple sources, such as high-frequency daily imagery from Planet SuperDoves and the future constellations, combined with tasked Pelican imagery for a 50 cm detailed image, and utilising AI and Geospatial Foundational Models such as AlphaEarth embedding analysis in Google Earth Engine.

At NGIS, we don’t just deliver the data, we provide the expertise to make sense of it, allowing organisations to move from observation to prediction and from insight to impact.

We are proud to be the link that transforms space-age innovation into real-world, local outcomes.

Want to learn more about EO? Contact us today.