Short description of your organisation
Earth Blox is a commercial tool that provides access to the power of Earth Observation, removing the need for coding, high-performance computers and extensive local storage — giving you intelligence anywhere. It operates exclusively using Google Earth Engine datasets and processing. It saves time by eliminating repetitive manual tasks and increases confidence in user decision making by harnessing numerous Google Earth Engine data sources. Earth Blox is a Scottish startup led by Earth Observation experts with an academic background. Its scalability makes it ideal for teaching and research. It is used for EO lab work by the University of Edinburgh, Trinity College, Dublin, and others.
How does your organisation currently support the development of EO*GI skills?
The downstream EO sector still lacks diversity: one needs deep domain expertise, coding skills or a hefty budget to subcontract those skills. Everyone everywhere addressing sustainable development goals should be able to benefit from satellite intelligence effortlessly. “This is what drives us to deliver a cloud-based, code-free solutions-builder as simple as building blocks for EO intelligence”, Earth Blox.
In NGOs and commercial organisations, we empower both EO and non-EO experts to conduct geospatial analysis more rapidly and easily. Our tool lowers the barrier to entry by opening up a powerful new capability, that is otherwise inaccessible to non-EO experts. We save you time by not having to learn to code and fast track entry into the applied side of EO. Non-EO experts can develop their skills by analyzing and sharing universally interpretable results resulting from EO data analysis done for them already (behind the scenes). This encourages greater collaboration. As our intuitive interface devolves the ability to perform high-level geospatial analysis, your project outputs and overall organisational will become more efficient.
As for academic institutions, Earth Blox helps professors save preparation time by offering a clear starting point to demonstrate the value of the EO discipline and its different applications. It is an engaging, introductory tool to EO, providing analysis-ready data for entry-level students who do not need to learn specialized coding. Earth Blox also supports GeoTIFF export, serving as a complementary software or stepping stone before advancing to other GIS systems in more advanced courses. We support online learning, empowering you to expand learning to larger class sizes and rely less on laboratories. Ultimately, Earth Blox helps increase students’ understanding of and engagement with EO disciplines, keeping them motivated to develop their EO skills, which makes for a stronger future workforce.
What do you think we need in order to improve GI and EO skills in Europe?
We believe there is a need for wider recognition of the value of applied EO data in solving planetary-scale problems whilst addressing the Sustainable Development Goals. A tool like Earth Blox demonstrates how important the outputs of coding are to a wider audience, some of which would have never considered it or had access to it in their projects before, but can now see the immense benefits of processing EO data for a range of applications, e.g. disaster preparedness, environmental risk assessment, measuring Nature-based Solutions (NBS) assets.
We need to therefore build and maintain a strong network of commercial organisations, NGOs and academic institutions, where our tool could be leveraged to help meet broader needs. With greater EO awareness and education, we will in turn help develop these skills to shape our
future workforce in Europe and contribute to protecting our planet for generations to come.
Why was it important for you to join EO4GEO?
We want to raise our profile in Europe so that we can empower everyone within the community, EO expert or not, to gain access to our EO data analysis tool. We cannot wait to connect with like-minded professionals
and find out more about the problems they are facing and see where we could provide solutions. We also think that we can help develop the European workforce’s EO skillset by democratising access to planetary-scale data analytics to current and future professionals.
