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OPO's Urban Greening Platform Goes Live Today
Melbourne, Tuesday 17th August, 2021 - Office of Planetary Observations (OPO) is excited to announce the launch of the OPO Urban Greening Platform. The platform is designed to make easily accessible environmental analytics products using near real-time satellite data for more sustainable city planning. This week, it has also been announced that OPO has been selected to join Microsoft for Space Startups Australia.
Based out of Melbourne, OPO’s platform www.officeofplanetaryobservations.com provides an affordable and accessible data science solution for better sustainable decision making for city planners to better connect the built environment with nature.
OPO streamlines and analyses satellite data from multiple sources, ingests that into its Microsoft Azure based AI infused platform, where unique algorithms interpret the data and serve insights to users in a digestible form.
Posing the simple question “How Green is your Suburb?”, the OPO Urban Greening Platform (Beta) makes the ordering of decision ready data derived from satellites possible without the need to be a data expert. Analysis Packs are focused on providing decision ready data focussed on vegetation cover and health, land surface temperature and tree canopy maps easily ordered via the OPO Urban Greening Platform.
Founder and CEO Thomas Gooch says that the overarching ambition of OPO is “To work with nature rather than take from it, creating greener, more liveable and sustainable cities is at the heart of our mission. Working with a talented team of data scientists, the opportunity to work with Microsoft for Space Startups Australia and industry leaders like MAXAR, means that there is high usability for the end customer. It means you don’t need to have a PhD in data science to make local impact on climate change.”
Lynn McDonald, Azure Space Lead, Microsoft Australia said; “We are delighted to welcome OPO to our emerging ecosystem of companies creating new solutions and platforms to solve some of the greatest challenges on and off the planet. By providing streamlined access to Microsoft technology, expertise and mentors through Microsoft for Space Startups Australia we hope to accelerate both OPO’s and its clients’ success.”
Gooch, with a background in Landscape Architecture, knows the need to argue for nature when designing cities. OPO is excited to serve a variety of customers in efforts for the greening of cities that include local government, town planners, landscape architects and urban foresters. Over time, OPO expects enthusiasts and incidental users will be engaging to better understand the health of their local environment.
OPO Joins Microsoft for Space Startups program
Today, Microsoft Australia announced OPO as one of the first companies to be selected for Microsoft for Space Startups Australia. The program is dedicated to accelerating the trajectory of high-potential startups to enable growth at scale. Giving OPO access to Microsoft Azure technology, cloud platform credits, mentorship and business support, it also enables companies to reach new customers through the Microsoft network.
Thomas Gooch said; “It’s through opportunities like Microsoft for Space Startups Australia initiative that we hope to further democratise decision ready data encouraging the urban greening of our Australian cities and towns. At OPO, we want to help our customers proactively address climate change locally one community at a time. Going to space has made it possible to change our relationship with nature to be one underpinned with near real-time satellite data. At OPO, we are just getting started but we can now continue to innovate to better understand the planetary systems we live in and steward their success.”
To learn more about the OPO Urban Greening Platform (Beta), go to www.officeofplanetaryobservations.com. Explore the question “How Green is your suburb?” and sign up to learn more about decision ready data sets. The platform will be continually improved and developed by inviting user feedback and building continued technology capability. Forthcoming new data sets will include high resolution satellite imagery to enable richer insights.
OPO’s goal is to ensure the greening of our cities underpinned by decision ready data, whilst also supporting future generations of Australians to with strong natural systems where the built environment connects with nature.
About Office of Planetary Observations
Our mission is to create a healthy ecosystem for all living things using frequent environmental satellite data. We provide environmental analytics for city planning purposes. Our decision ready data products are easily accessible for the non-spatial user for underpinning city planning decisions with data driven insights. Focused on urban greening, this ‘smart nature’ vertical ensures our cities of the future have strong urban greening metrics towards combatting the urban heat island effect and being climate resilient.
For media enquires, please contact:
Thomas Gooch
Founder |CEO
+61 409 400 641
- OPO selected to join Microsoft for Space Startups Australia Initiative
- New OPO platform will aid city planning
- Underpinned by decision ready satellite data
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Acknowledgement
We recognise the traditional owners of the land where we work, their elders past and present and their relationship with the landscape.
We recognise the Earth’s right to exist in its integrity, with all planetary boundaries intact and healthy so that all life on Earth can be sustained.
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