DataCube California Tour – December 2019

CSIRO’s Silicon Valley office in the US arranged a week of targeted meetings for Alex Held, Centre Director and Neil Sims, remote sensing research scientist to socialise the Data Cube project for California to potential partners and collaborators. The objective of this week was to assess if there is interest in supporting and using a Data Cube for California and to build a network to support its development.

There is definite interest and need for a Data Cube in California within universities and California State Agencies. Timing is perfect as there are current, well funded projects that will be at the stage mid-2020 where they will need Data Cube to progress further. State agencies have a clear vision for the need and application of the Data Cube particularly in the areas of fire and water as well as current and near-term projects that are currently funded.

A Data Cube in California can be an ideal avenue to allow for deeper connection, collaboration, access to joint funding with California state agencies, US Federal Agencies, and Universities. Specifically, in the following areas: wildfire recovery and mitigation, forest health monitoring, agriculture, mining, and climate change adaptation.

Meetings Arranged With: Boeing, JPL, UCDavis, California Air Board, California Department of Water Resources, US Forest Service, CalFIRE, SlantRange, UC Santa Cruz, UC Santa Barbara, Planet Labs, NASA AMES (NEX), USGS, Amazon Web Services, NASA Langley, California Department of Conservation.

Outcomes:

  • Centre of Excellence: Verbal agreement from UC Davis to be the university partner for Data Cube.
  • Built network of university, California state and federal agency contacts who are interested in engaging with the Data Cube project as end users.
  • Developed a clearer understanding of what swath of land the Data Cube pilot should cover in order to best align with current funded water and fire projects.

Next steps:

  • Centre of Excellence: formalise centre of excellence with UC Davis (next meeting set January 12, 2020).
  • Pilot cube: complete pilot cube (set for March 2020).
  • Event in March 2020 at UC Davis to update all parties in progress and seek commitments from at least one or two organizations to trial and implement Data Cube.