The rise of community remote sensing

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:41:58 -0500

If you ask someone involved in community remote sensing to define the emerging field, the most likely response will be a chuckle followed by “That’s a hard question to answer…”

Bill Gail, a director at Microsoft’s Startup Business Group in Boulder, Colo., coined the term, and he says he likes to keep the definition “nebulous” as the field takes shape. At its core, the movement is about remote sensing — collecting data from afar. Remote sensing “has revolutionized science and Earth monitoring,” Gail says. Airplanes, satellites, space probes and the like have helped scientists gather information on long-term, global scales, but these tools have limitations: They fail to capture what’s happening at the local level, he says.

Community Remote Sensing on EARTH Magazine

The rise of community remote sensing