Arjen Vrielink - Getting to Zero Deforestation with Satellite Images - MBM #22
06/01/22 • 149 min
Arjen Vrielink is the Director & co-founder of Satelligence, dedicated to stopping deforestation by leveraging satellite imagery. They work directly with commodity companies who sell things like cacao or coffee to understand the causes of deforestation and how alternatives can be found.
About Arjen:
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Episode Sponsors:
- Radiant Earth Foundation: Apply for the 2022 Radiant MLHub Impact Award for agriculture-related applications for Africa - with a $5,000 cash prize.
- Element84
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Shownotes:
- Zero to One by Peter Thiel
- Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics
- Planet Acquiring Vandersat
- Range by David Epstein
- Steve Ballmer
- Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction by Bret Victor
- xkcd: Adjective Foods
- Superforecasting by Philip E. Tetlock, Dan Gardner
- Book recommendations:
Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
02:55 - Conversation Begins
07:56 - Arjen quoting me to describe work environment
13:02 - The origin story of Satelligence
17:45 - What Satelligence does
19:05 - Remote Sensing to solve deforestation: Solution looking for a Problem?
26:48 - Data comes in to convince bosses
34:38 - Financial incentives & shareholders
40:27 - How Satelligence makes money & long term vision
45:02 - Why Satelligence decided to raise a first round after a few years
51:25 - Downsides to raising
55:14 - What happens to the mission after an exit?
59:30 - Creating a work culture
1:03:43 - Lunch is more important for your culture than your Strategy day
1:13:17 - Hiring
1:17:47 - Why Arjen hired me as an intern
1:29:48 - Open Source in Geospatial
1:42:28 - Importance of technical knowledge in leadership roles
1:44:36 - Layers of Abstraction
1:51:16 - Committing to one specific thing
1:57:18 - Why maps aren’t (always) the best way to communicate insights
2:06:43 - Geospatial is incredibly niche
2:12:57 - Book recommendations
2:21:15 - Asking for advice
Feel free to reach out!
Arjen Vrielink is the Director & co-founder of Satelligence, dedicated to stopping deforestation by leveraging satellite imagery. They work directly with commodity companies who sell things like cacao or coffee to understand the causes of deforestation and how alternatives can be found.
About Arjen:
---
Episode Sponsors:
- Radiant Earth Foundation: Apply for the 2022 Radiant MLHub Impact Award for agriculture-related applications for Africa - with a $5,000 cash prize.
- Element84
---
Shownotes:
- Zero to One by Peter Thiel
- Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics
- Planet Acquiring Vandersat
- Range by David Epstein
- Steve Ballmer
- Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction by Bret Victor
- xkcd: Adjective Foods
- Superforecasting by Philip E. Tetlock, Dan Gardner
- Book recommendations:
Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
02:55 - Conversation Begins
07:56 - Arjen quoting me to describe work environment
13:02 - The origin story of Satelligence
17:45 - What Satelligence does
19:05 - Remote Sensing to solve deforestation: Solution looking for a Problem?
26:48 - Data comes in to convince bosses
34:38 - Financial incentives & shareholders
40:27 - How Satelligence makes money & long term vision
45:02 - Why Satelligence decided to raise a first round after a few years
51:25 - Downsides to raising
55:14 - What happens to the mission after an exit?
59:30 - Creating a work culture
1:03:43 - Lunch is more important for your culture than your Strategy day
1:13:17 - Hiring
1:17:47 - Why Arjen hired me as an intern
1:29:48 - Open Source in Geospatial
1:42:28 - Importance of technical knowledge in leadership roles
1:44:36 - Layers of Abstraction
1:51:16 - Committing to one specific thing
1:57:18 - Why maps aren’t (always) the best way to communicate insights
2:06:43 - Geospatial is incredibly niche
2:12:57 - Book recommendations
2:21:15 - Asking for advice
Feel free to reach out!
Previous Episode
Barbara Ryan - How Landsat Became Free & Open - MBM #21
Barbara Ryan was instrumental in the policy change in 2008 that opened up the Landsat data to being freely & openly available for anyone to access. This resulted in more than 100x uptake in the number of imagery downloaded and fundamentally changed the Earth Observation industry.
She is currently the Executive Director of the World Geospatial Industry Council
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Episode Sponsors:
- Radiant Earth Foundation: Apply for the 2022 Radiant MLHub Impact Award for agriculture-related applications for Africa - with a $5,000 cash prize.
- Element84
---
About Barbara:
Shownotes:
- We recorded this interview while Barbara was in Amsterdam for the Geospatial World Forum
- Landsat policy change document
- Gilberto Camara at the time Chief of INPE: Brazilian National Institute for Space Research
- Mark Mayers, former Director of USGS
- World Geospatial Industry Council
- GEO: Group on Earth Observations: the organization, not the field ;-)
- Books recommendations:
Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
02:56 - Importance of in-person conversation
05:52 - Connecting people
08:00 - Reaching people beyond languages
10:43 - Landsat pre-2008: before it was free & open
19:09 - Impact of the giving the data away for free
21:51 - Details on the policy change: push-backs & financial incentives
28:43 - The direct impact on the USGS
30:39 - International collaboration
32:32 - Domino Effect: The impact of Landsat on offer Open Data Policies
36:02 - Potential unexpected negative effects
37:41 - The scale of the impact opening up Landsat had
41:13 - Don’t use data as your transactional currency
44:14 - Making satellite imagery accessible beyond the data
52:00 - Distributing data as easily as possible
57:07 - Spicy politics story involving the Secretary of Interior
1:04:21 - Open Data should not be taken for granted
1:11:31 - Thoughts on Commercial Earth Observation
1:14:16 - Open Data Policies for Commercial EO: Parallels with the Gaming Industry
1:23:18 - Improving Communications in Science
1:28:41 - Earth Observation could learn to tell stories from the Gaming Industry
1:34:21: Barbara’s current role
1:39:04 - Being better ambassadors of Geospatial
1:42:32 - WGIC’s funding model
1:45:36: - Barbara retiring only to come back multiple times
1:51:12 - Book recommendations
1:53:21 - Advice for younger people
Feel free to reach out!
Next Episode
Emily Darling & Kim Fisher - The Challenges of Mapping Coral Reefs When Satellites Can't See Them - #MBM 23
Emily Darling & Kim Fisher both work at the Wildlife Conservation Society, respectively as the Director of Coral Reef & as Spatial Analyst. They have developed MERMAID, a platform enabling coral reef scientists to aggregate & share their data together. One of the main challenges they tackle being most measurements need to happen in the field as opposed to being able to leverage satellite imagery.
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Episode Sponsors:
- Radiant Earth Foundation: Apply for the 2022 Radiant MLHub Impact Award for agriculture-related applications for Africa - with a $5,000 cash prize.
- Element84
---
About Emily:
About Kim:
Shownotes
- MERMAID
- Wildlife Conservation Society
- Allen Coras Atlas
- SparkGeo
- Books & Podcast Recomendations:
Timestamps
- 00:00 - Introduction
- 03:07 - Kim & Emily presenting themselves
- 07:49 - Computer Science & Data at the service of Science
- 17:30 - A symbiotic relationship Software Engineering & Marine Biology
- 23:38 - High level overview of what MERMAID is
- 26:52 - What problem does MERMAID solve?
- 32:28 - Getting traction on a scientific tool
- 37:37 - Stories on top of the data
- 46:00 - Another simple question: Why is coral reef important?
- 49:55 - Working with Policy Makers
- 55:28 - Coral Reef is still measured with pen & paper
- 1:01:55 - Partnering with SparkGeo, a geospatial consultancy
- 1:10:54 - Thinking about projects over the long term
- 1:12:45 - Financing a Non-Profit project
- 1:19:40 - Transparency in Non-Profits through Open-Source
- 1:25:45 - The impact of Data Science on Emily’s work
- 1:29:01 - Book & Podcast Recommendations
Feel free to reach out!
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