IRIS: Image Recognition Intelligence for SpyMeSat

SpyMeSat is an existing commercial product, available for iOS and Android, that 1. Integrates access to satellite imagery from multiple satellite systems, 2. integrates image acquisition (satellite tasking) across these systems, 3. presents access through a cross-platform mobile app, for both government and civilian markets, 4. delivers image results singly or in collections, including collections packaged for ingestion by automated processes, and 5. can deliver either images or push notifications about the images, allowing users to control bandwidth usage. We propose extending SpyMeSat ’s capabilities to include automated image analysis, which would give our customers the ability to generate object-recognition tasks that can be applied to its data. This capability would be added, initially through the integration of a few public-domain image-processing libraries, as a prelude to the implementation of more cutting-edge techniques. Our first use case is automated monitoring of natural gas extraction sites, to collect data on fracking activity. Other use cases exist in civil engineering, environmental monitoring, urban planning, agriculture analysis, and maritime tracking. This is a low-risk proposition suitable for an accelerated schedule.