Global Heritage Fund Leveraging Planet SkySat to Protect the Cultural Fabric of Ukraine
August 18 2022 - 3:00AM
Business Wire
Planet Labs PBC (NYSE: PL), a leading provider of daily data and
insights about Earth, today announced its work supporting efforts
to protect cultural heritage in Ukraine with Global Heritage Fund,
a California based non-profit that transforms local communities by
investing in cultural heritage to advance economic development.
UNESCO reported in July 2022 that over 165 Ukrainian heritage
sites have been damaged since the onset of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
As the Russo-Ukrainian War continues to impact Ukrainian cities,
Global Heritage Fund is teaming up with University College London
(UCL) to map cultural heritage site destruction using Planet
imagery.
This project aims to perform a quantitative assessment of urban
areas severely affected by the conflict. The data is the base for
future reconstruction plans. By focusing on change detection,
Global Heritage Fund and UCL will use this imagery, alongside local
knowledge from informants onsite, to perform supervised
classification of urban texture, highlight areas destroyed, and
quantify the damage inflicted upon Ukrainian cultural heritage
sites.
“For Global Heritage Fund, preserving the cultural fabric of a
place encompasses protecting historical buildings as well as
conserving locations that stimulate the arts, foster social
innovation, and advance economic development,” explained Nada
Hosking, Executive Director of Global Heritage Fund.
Global Heritage Fund and UCL teams are using Planet satellite
imagery to document sites of Ukrainian heritage value. Using SkySat
tasking capabilities, they are collecting high-resolution images of
attacked regions, and where possible supplementing the data with
ground validation via local specialists. This project, titled
“Under Fire Heritage of Ukraine,” creates a baseline database of
Ukrainian cultural heritage – a digital geospatial inventory of
sites that are under threat of looting, forceful appropriation, or
deliberate erasure during the war.
“We are working quickly with UCL to capture and categorize
before and after images. This view of change over time is crucial
for rapid and cost-effective reconstruction of heritage sites,”
said Hosking. “The aim is to make this database accessible to
Ukrainian colleagues so it can contribute to, or become core of,
the national geospatial monument inventory system.”
The project, funded in part through a grant from the
International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict
Areas (ALIPH), will create a centralized inventory for Ukraine
through the systemic digitization of satellite images, maps, and
aerial photography of significant architecture, pulling from
historic archives and modern SkySat satellite images. A top
priority of the project is to provide swift recommendations for how
to protect and stabilize artifacts, buildings, and monuments as the
situation evolves. Both the database and recommendations are
intended to provide long-term value to the Ukrainian Ministry of
Culture.
The project tasks SkySat satellites following damage tips from
specialized informers on the ground and media reports of destroyed
or attacked locations. The images are used to validate damage to
particular locations, especially when photos cannot be obtained
without putting people in harm’s way.
Hosking noted that documenting locations in conflict areas can
be challenging as local authorities often discourage citizens from
taking pictures of significant sites, whether damaged or not.
Historical landmarks may be deliberately attacked in strategic
warfare and authorities try to avoid adding data to systems, which
could be hacked to target locations.
“This war will have lasting effects on Ukraine and the world,
but we are proud to know that our imagery can provide a digital
cultural baseline for reconstruction. These historical buildings,
and places of cultural significance are so crucial for maintaining
the vital and strong culture of Ukraine,” said Andrew Zolli,
Planet’s Chief Impact Officer.
Global Heritage Fund is one of 30 NGOs and intergovernmental
bodies Planet is working with and supplying data to that are
supporting a number of humanitarian operations in Ukraine,
including: civilian evacuation; planned demining operations;
conducting building damage assessments; tracking alleged human
rights abuses; and trying to mitigate and measure impacts to food
supplies.
About Planet
Planet is a leading provider of global, daily satellite imagery
and geospatial solutions. Planet is driven by a mission to image
the world every day, and make change visible, accessible and
actionable. Founded in 2010 by three NASA scientists, Planet
designs, builds, and operates the largest Earth observation fleet
of imaging satellites, capturing over 30 TB of data per day. Planet
provides mission-critical data, advanced insights, and software
solutions to over 800 customers, comprising the world’s leading
agriculture, forestry, intelligence, education and finance
companies and government agencies, enabling users to simply and
effectively derive unique value from satellite imagery. Planet is a
public benefit corporation trading on the New York Stock Exchange
as PL. To learn more visit www.planet.com and follow us on
Twitter.
View source
version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220818005183/en/
Planet Press Megan Zaroda comms@planet.com Planet
Investor Relations Chris Genualdi, Cleo Palmer-Poroner
ir@planet.com
Planet Labs PBC (NYSE:PL)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024
Planet Labs PBC (NYSE:PL)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024