Public geodata and earth observation - new opportunities to support the Green transition

In early 2021, DHI GRAS participated in a hackathon organized by the Danish Business Authority, the Agency for Data Supply and Efficiency and the Danish Agency for Digitisation. The aim of the hackathon was to innovate and design new ways to make best use of publicly available geodata to support the Green transition.

Our dedicated team of data-hackers and developers worked intensively over two weeks to experiment and innovate with public geodata, such as aerial photos, LIDAR data, topographic vector data, environmental data, Sentinel satellite data and lots of other data sources.

In just two weeks we went from initial idea, through experimentation, innovation, and design of a new solution to count and quantify every green square-meter of Denmark (or whichever country with Green ambitions). In a few days we managed to produce a fully updated national forest map (extent and type) in high spatial resolution (10 meters) and developed and applied our Deep Learning models to automatically count and map small landscape elements such as single trees, hedges, and shrubs at centimeter scale – all key ingredients for data-driven decision making within biodiversity and forest management. Full steam ahead and looking forward to continuing our mission of using earth observations and innovative thinking to support the green transition.

Thanks to the organizers and not least our great team working on this! Stay tuned for more updates on how we use geodata to map and monitor the green state of Denmark.

The solution developed through the hackathon can be explored at https://greendenmark.dhigroup.com/ or by clicking the image below.