Planet and GPC Group Team Up to Map the UAE

I’m thrilled to announce our first customer in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region: the Geographic Planning Collaborative (GPC).

The GPC Group’s MENA operations are based in Abu Dhabi, and they will distribute Planet Labs data to their many government, environmental, and commercial customers throughout the region. As our first MENA customer, the GPC Group will field test Planet’s unparalleled, timely dataset in one of the world’s most dynamic regions.

Mark Sorensen, General Manager of the GPC Group, comments that Planet Labs’ “ability to monitor conditions and changes across the planet is going to revolutionize how we manage urban development, water and food security, national security, and all other aspects of sustainable, climate-resilient development.”

Dubai Creek is home to a number of high-rises, marinas, and golf courses. Several A380s—the world’s largest aircraft—are visible at nearby Dubai International Airport

Sorensen continues: “We see this as being especially critical for rapidly-developing economies, small island developing states (SIDS), and so-called fragile states, where we tend to do much of our work. We also believe that Planet Labs’ approach to agile aerospace, utilizing nanosatellites and rapid development and deployment cycles, is going to revolutionize the field and make emerging new capabilities available in record time.”

Shallow waters surround the Farasan Islands, a coral archipelago in the southern Red Sea. The island chain, which hosted an oil refinery for much of the 20th century, is now a protected marine area and popular diving destination—home to unique fish, coral, and mangrove species

Planet Labs CEO Will Marshall comments that, “The GPC Group will prove a valuable partner for Planet Labs. I’m excited to work with their in-house GIS experts and their established network of international partners to pioneer entirely new civic, environmental and commercial use-cases for our growing, global imagery dataset.”

To learn more about our imagery data, visit our Solutions page.