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pixel level, categorising the extent and severity of damage across millions of buildings in hours, not years. For example, following Hurricane Beryl in 2024, Microsoft partnered with Planet to rapidly assess and map building damage in Carriacou, Grenada, supporting more effective and targeted emergency response.
These advances are supported by innovations in edge computing. Satellites equipped with onboard AI can now process images and detect anomalies in orbit, downlinking only salient insights and reducing data latency. This is a key benefit for emergency responders and planners.
A new era for climate forecasting EO’ s revolution in data is paralleled by advances in high-resolution climate forecasting and digital twins.
ML-based models are one of the most impactful trends, as they can significantly accelerate and sharpen climate and weather predictions. Foundation models – large AI systems trained on diverse EO datasets – enable localised and global forecasting at speeds and scale that traditional physics-based models cannot match. Microsoft’ s Aurora, for example, can predict air pollutant levels worldwide in seconds and NASA’ s open-source Prithviweather-climate model supports both flood mapping and crop yield projections.
128 February 2026