The Planet Purpose Award Winners

Earlier this year we announced our first-ever customer awards! The Planet Purpose Awards recognize and celebrate companies that are leading the way in the respective categories that align to Planet’s core values. 

And we heard you! We received numerous submissions in each category that our leadership team at Planet read through and voted on. 

Today we are thrilled to share and recognize the pioneers leading the way.  

Do Good: Vigil Monitor

The first category, Do Good, recognizes those whose work helps bring transparency to our changing world and strives to make it a better place for people and the environment.

The Do Good Award goes to Vigil Monitor, a non-profit research organization focused on human security and early warning reporting, covering a range of humanitarian and human rights issues across multiple destabilizing contexts. They utilize Planet SkySat and PlanetScope to both anticipate and respond to conflict and crises. 

“At a time when communications blackouts are increasingly common, satellite imagery cuts through the fog of war to show us conflict’s victims — civilians. High revisit satellite imagery does not merely show the before and after, but can describe the direction a situation is going in. Civilians suffer the most in war and satellite imagery is increasingly able to produce visual evidence of that suffering. We should pay heed to William Wilberforce’s often-quoted words: ‘You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.’ Civilians are not a target.” – Alexander Lee, Director and Lead Investigator, Vigil Monitor.

Dream Big: NTT Data

The Dream Big award highlights a customer who pushes the boundaries of what’s possible, driven by a big audacious mission.

This year’s award winner is NTT Data. Apart from their existing geospatial collaboration and project with Planet, this customer pushes new boundaries and concepts, enabling new Proof-Of Concepts (POCs) with customers and business areas using Doves for 3D mapping.  

“We have incorporated new technologies such as Multi-View Stereo Processing and AI image analysis into our AW3D product to provide global 3D map data. We look forward to further collaboration with Planet by utilizing its high-frequency satellite data to not only conduct POCs to tackle global challenges but also to create 4D map data service in the near future.” – Alex Otake, Director of AW3D business, NTTDATA Corporation.

Mike Merit presenting the purpose awards at Explore 2021 © 2021, Planet Labs Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Be Collaborative: LiveEO

The Be Collaborative award showcases how groups and partnerships can collaborate to do something that each individual couldn’t accomplish alone.

LiveEO shares the mission for agile and actionable aerospace as they are providing their customers with recurring up-to-date insights about the condition of infrastructures such as railways, pipelines, and powerlines. They also have provided constructive feedback that helped improve our SkySat product.

“The first commercial contract we signed with a satellite operator in our founding year 2018 was with Planet. The reason for this was the market-leading position in enabling scalable access to the data via API in combination with great coverage of PlanetScope imagery. Nowadays, we are also innovating together fully automated products based on SkySat tasking. Together, we are going where no one has gone before.” – Daniel Seidel, Co-Founder/Co-CEO LiveEO. 

Drive for Results: San Diego Gas & Electric

Drive for Results awards those who rapidly hypothesize and test, measure, and improve the way they approach solving a problem to drive more results.

The Drive for Results award goes to San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E)! SDG&E has been testing and evaluating Planet data as a replacement to MODIS to see if it helps improve their Fire Potential Index. They are constantly trying to test and evaluate new technologies to decrease the threat of wildfires to their close to 4 million residents and customers. 

“We are perpetually asking ourselves, does the environment support wildfire growth, and if it does, how are we going to operate differently? Planet provides the high-resolution data necessary to help us answer that question on a daily basis.” – Chris Arends, Meteorology Program Manager, San Diego Gas & Electric. 

Strive for Openness: Sinergise

Our mission at Planet is to make change visible, accessible, and actionable which is why the Strive for Openness award promotes those who build bridges and share information in a way that fosters openness and shared outcomes. 

The award goes to Sinergise! The team at Sinergise is promoting Planet data in the Agriculture market, serving some of the largest companies in the market, governmental agencies, down to individual farmers. But what really makes Sinergise stand out is their commitment to being open, both as a partner to Planet in providing feedback as well as sharing their formula for success with the community.

“This means a ton to us. We’ve always seen ourselves similar to Planet in some way. While Planet was redefining the way how to collect the EO data, we were pushing to change how people use it. We are most happy to see that Planet notices our contributions to the field!” – Grega Milcinski, Co-Founder and CEO Sinergise. 

That wraps up our first-ever Planet Purpose Awards! Congratulations again to all of the winners.