Google Cloud Platform > Case Studies > Airbus: Leveraging Google Cloud for Real-Time Satellite Imagery Access

Airbus: Leveraging Google Cloud for Real-Time Satellite Imagery Access

Technology Category

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms
Sensors - GPS

Applicable Industries

Agriculture
Telecommunications

Applicable Functions

Quality Assurance

Use Cases

Clinical Image Analysis
Tamper Detection

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
Testing & Certification

About The Customer

Airbus Defence and Space is a leader in the European space business and an international pioneer in earth observation services. With exclusive access to a unique constellation of radar and optical satellites, Airbus works to make the world a more connected, safer, and smarter place. Airbus Intelligence, a unit of the Airbus Defence and Space division, delivers comprehensive, up-to-date satellite imagery and data to more than 1,200 customers in over 100 countries around the world. Since its founding more than three decades ago, Airbus Intelligence has expanded its roster of clients from governmental security to include other entities that benefit from high-quality imagery such as agricultural companies.

The Challenge

Airbus Intelligence, a unit of Airbus Defence and Space, provides comprehensive satellite imagery and data to over 1,200 customers in more than 100 countries. Over the years, Airbus Intelligence has expanded its client base from governmental security to include entities that benefit from high-quality imagery such as agricultural companies. However, the company faced a challenge in meeting the growing expectations of its customers due to the limitations of its existing solution. The traditional process involved capturing images from satellites, processing them, and downloading them into the company’s library. Customers would then select the images they wanted from a catalogue and receive them several hours later. As Airbus added more satellites and technology became more sophisticated, the company was able to provide better quality data and imagery at increasingly large volumes. However, the existing solution could not speed up the production and delivery of its image and data products.

The Solution

To address this challenge, Airbus decided to create a new platform, OneAtlas, that would provide customers with the images and data they needed as quickly as possible without compromising on quality or the range of coverage. Airbus trialed seven separate cloud-based options for the OneAtlas Platform and chose Google Cloud as the winning solution due to its facility with deep learning and image processing, robust security models, and excellent customer service. The first component of OneAtlas released was the Basemap product, which allowed customers to stream images of the whole world instantly or download them at a range of different resolutions depending on their needs. Airbus trained deep learning algorithms in TensorFlow to recognize cloud cover, which reduced the error rate for detecting clouds from 11% to 3%. To process the images, Airbus relied heavily on Google’s managed services, using Google Kubernetes Engine to orchestrate the various methods used to extract information from the images and Cloud Pub/Sub for messaging. The data was held in Cloud Datastore for easy scalability.

Operational Impact

With Google Cloud, Airbus has built a highly secure, cloud-based platform, capable of delivering data and imagery to its customers at unprecedented speed. The robust, global network of Google helps ensure that the OneAtlas platform can deliver the same high-quality service to its customers wherever they are in the world. The new platform also enables Airbus to make its image products much more affordable for smaller organizations, such as NGOs or farmers who can take advantage of newer, lower-cost options like streaming data for a limited time or only paying for the images they use, instead of more traditional subscriptions models. Airbus Intelligence is also working on a range of additions to OneAtlas which include expanding its Data as a Service offers beyond the Basemap service to include more high-resolution imagery, elevation data, and automated change detection. Other services will include industry-specific analytics services for Agriculture, Maritime, and other markets.

Quantitative Benefit

Reduces the time for customers to access satellite imagery from hours to less than half a second
Delivers a scalable, cloud-based platform for satellite images with no limits on size or users
Adds millions of square kilometers of imagery per day