Barbara Ryan - How Landsat Became Free & Open - MBM #21

Minds Behind Maps

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
  • Dan Pilone’s appearance on the podcast

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About Barbara:

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

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:
  • Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
  • Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

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!

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