WASHINGTON, D.C. - May 22, 2023 - Impact Observatory, a leader in AI-powered global mapping and monitoring, today announced its early access program for IO Monitor, an AI-powered space-based mapping and monitoring product that provides timely, actionable land use data for insights and decisions. IO Monitor enables global decision makers to better understand financial, climate, and environmental risk in near real-time at previously unobtainable speed and scale.

What makes IO Monitor unique is Impact Observatory’s deep learning approach, which automates and accelerates space-based mapping and monitoring to classify Land Use Land Cover (LULC) categories globally. With IO Monitor, customers get on-demand access to the most up-to-date global land cover maps based on the most recent satellite imagery available.

With IO Monitor, customers experience best-in-class space-based global LULC mapping and monitoring benefits including:

• Near Real-Time Data: Most publicly available global land cover maps are only updated once every one to two years, whereas IO Monitor’s maps are available in near real-time, allowing customers to scale access from small areas to entire countries, anywhere in the world, as soon as the satellite imagery is available.
• Customization: Users can select or customize their area of interest, and the time period they want to monitor.
• Transparent Pricing: IO Monitor’s Early Access Program offers introductory pricing of just $1 per square kilometer - allowing users to access data easily and within budget.

“The world is changing rapidly. Every day, cities grow, new crops are planted, forests are harvested, and droughts and floods continue to increase. This greatly impacts the infrastructure, food systems, water supplies, and natural resources that the world depends on,” said Steve Brumby, Co-founder and CEO of Impact Observatory. “With AI-powered on-demand monitoring from IO Monitor, you can support long-term climate change mitigation efforts by monitoring land use change based on recent trends and historical patterns, enabling decision makers with detailed warnings of climate-crisis-related threats to communities, infrastructure, and critical natural resources.”

IO Monitor use cases include:

• Governments: Across the globe, leaders need access to reliable geospatial intelligence to support security, humanitarian and disaster relief efforts. Impact Observatory enables government leaders to monitor the entire world in near real-time without over tasking national assets.
• Food and Farming: Helps to assess the risks that agricultural expansion can pose to food systems including deforestation, soil degradation, loss of biodiversity, and water pollution.
• Sustainable Sourcing: Enables corporations and governments to track and identify supply chain related tree loss in order to meet zero deforestation goals and to establish global accountability.
• Urban Sprawl and Human Expansion: Verifies the magnitude and spatial patterns of global urban expansion.
• Forests and Water Supply: Assesses where forest loss has occurred that could lead to an impact on critical watersheds and downstream communities, helping customers to assess risks and prioritize action plans.

Images of Earth collected by the Sentinel-2 satellite constellation observe the world as trillions of pixels, each showing a 10 meter by 10 meter patch of ground. IO Monitor turns millions of these satellite images into maps that label every pixel into one of nine categories of major land use and land cover. Since the release of their first global map in June 2021, Impact Observatory has received over 1,000,000 visitors accessing and downloading our annual maps via Esri Living Atlas, Microsoft Planetary Computer, and the AWS Registry of Open Data.

Availability
The Early Access program for IO Monitor is available now, and open for early user purchases, at only $1 USD a square kilometer, today. For more information on large-scale discounts, contact Impact Observatory’s sales team at sales team.

Supporting Resources

• Impact Observatory website
• Impact Observatory monitoring on demand
• Impact Observatory blog and news
• Esri, powered by Impact Observatory, high resolution map of the world
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