Episode Description: 

Bushfires can have catastrophic consequences, as demonstrated by Australia’s 2019–20 Black Summer bushfires. The fires caused devastating loss of human life, destroyed more than 3,000 homes and had a devastating impact on wildlife, with an estimated 19 million hectares of land burned.

In this episode of Location Matters, host Nick Chai talks with Jake Ramsay, Planet’s defence and intelligence account lead for Australia and New Zealand, about what changes when agencies can see the entire continent from space every day.

Jake walks through the full fire cycle: tracking fuel load before the season, measuring whether planned burns actually worked, tasking high-resolution imagery over an active fire ground within hours, and mapping fire scars and catchment damage afterwards. He also explains how nine years of daily imagery is changing long-term risk planning.

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Key Topics Covered: 

• [0:18] Black Summer, and seeing the whole of Australia from space every day
• [1:17] Jake’s path from open source intelligence to Earth observation at Planet
• [2:26] What it takes to image Earth’s entire landmass daily, and why daily matters
• [4:00] How a constellation of passive satellites line-scans the planet and downlinks to ground stations
• [7:04] How commercial startups made satellite imagery affordable and accessible
• [8:14] Why Australia’s scale, terrain and varied fire behaviour suit satellite monitoring
• [9:37] Fire spotting before satellites, from hilltop lookouts to aerial patrols
• [10:51] Tracking fuel load and drying vegetation in the months before a season
• [13:36] Measuring whether a planned burn worked across the whole treated area
• [16:10] Tasking high-resolution imagery over an active fire ground to guide evacuations and resourcing
• [17:21] Planet’s two constellations, daily passive coverage and tasked imagery delivered within hours
• [18:46] Where satellites fit alongside aerial and ground crews during a fast-moving fire
• [20:09] Mapping fire scars, habitat loss, infrastructure damage and catchment impacts after a fire
• [21:54] Jake’s experience of the 2003 Canberra fires and Black Summer, and why floods often follow
• [23:31] Nine years of daily imagery and what it shows about long-term fire risk
• [25:47] AI, automated detection and what agencies will be able to do in five years
• [28:15] Using AI to triage where scarce ground resources go first
• [29:09] Why the first conversation should be about the operational decision you want to improve
• [30:11] How the NGIS and Planet partnership builds imagery into existing government workflows
• [31:20] Jake’s closing message on El Niño, drought and preparing for this summer

Resources Mentioned: 

• Planet, Earth observation company and NGIS partner, operating the daily imaging and high-resolution tasking constellations discussed in the episode
• NGIS, Australian geospatial company that builds satellite imagery into the systems and workflows government agencies already use
• How satellite-based Earth observation supports emergency response teams, NGIS article on satellite imagery for emergency management
• Planet’s rapid SkySat data enables effective regional bushfire management in Australia, Planet case study on tasked high-resolution imagery for bushfire management
• From Bushfire to Flood webinar, Planet webinar on Earth observation across bushfire and flood 

About the Guest: Jake Ramsay is Planet’s defence and intelligence account lead for Australia and New Zealand. His background is in open source intelligence, including geospatial and Earth observation, and he works with emergency management agencies and government partners across the region to close the gap between what they think is happening on the ground and what they can see. Based in Canberra, Jake experienced both the 2003 Canberra bushfires and the 2019-20 Black Summer season first-hand.

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