Company background
Space Intelligence turns satellite data actionable information, helping you make better informed decisions.
We provide maps of forests, deforestation and forest degradation. Based on a foundation of world-class science, we formed the company in response to the growing number of requests for satellite data analysis in the private and public sectors.
We provide high quality products and services, whether that is classification of satellite imagery, advising on data acquisition and processing, or implementing large scale forest monitoring programmes.
We have research and consultancy experience across the tropics, with projects in Africa, Asia and the Americas. We also undertake work closer to home, having conducted landscape analysis for the UK Government’s Department of Energy and Industrial Strategy, and more recently with the Forestry Commission here in Scotland.
Team
Dr Murray Collins, Chief Executive Officer
Murray has spent the past 15 years working on environmental technology projects: from camera-trapping in the jungles of Sumatra, measuring over four thousand trees in Gabon, to using satellites to track deforestation.
He holds an interdisciplinary PhD from the London School of Economics, and the Institute of Zoology, ZSL; an MSc with Distinction from Imperial College London; and a BSc from University College London, with a term spent on ERASMUS at La Sorbonne, Paris V. He has certificates in Radar polarimetry from the European Space Agency (ESRIN); and Tropical Field Botany from the Royal Botanical Gardens Edinburgh.
Murray’s PhD research integrated causal inference techniques of Difference-In-Difference, regression and propensity-score matching; along with forest surveys and cutting-edge satellite radar sensing techniques to assess the performance of forest management projects.
He has published peer reviewed papers on mapping forest biomass, deforestation and forest degradation using satellite radar data; quantifying emissions from protected forests around the world; REDD policy; and has worked as a consultant providing such information for numerous clients globally.
He is also an expert in climate legislation particularly as relates to forests; co-authoring on the 3rd and 4th Global Climate Legislation Studies (GLOBE 2013/2015), reviewing hundreds of climate laws from 99 countries, and presenting the results to assembled governments at the World Bank in 2014.
He retains an interest in valuing the ecosystems which Space Intelligence maps: during his time at the LSE he worked on the economics team of the UK’s National Ecosystem Assessment.
In 2017 he won a highly competitive Royal Society of Edinburgh Enterprise Fellowship supported by the Natural Environment Research Council. This provided training and mentoring from Scottish business leaders, and set firm foundations for Space Intelligence Ltd.
Murray is also a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, leading the Space and Satellites innovation programme.
Dr Ed Mitchard, Chief Scientific Advisor
Ed is a world expert in the field of satellite mapping of land cover change and forest properties. As such Ed is our Chief Science Advisor, bringing great scientific weight to the work of Space Intelligence. He is also a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geo Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.
He has published over 30 peer reviewed papers in this field, which have been referred to in the scientific literature over 2500 times since 2012.
He has won over £1 million (US$1.3 million) in research funding, from UK and US governments as well as the European Space Agency and the World Bank.
In addition to expertise in developing and testing methods for using different types of satellite data to map forest change, he has also led field campaigns to collect ground data in countries including Brazil, Cameroon, Gabon, Kenya, Peru and Uganda.
He has advised governments including those of Gabon, Cameroon, Colombia and the UK on land use monitoring methods and forest inventory, and conducted training workshops on the use of remote sensing data across the world.
Dr Keiko Nomura – Senior Analyst
Keiko has a unique expertise combining policy analysis and remote sensing /earth observation. Before coming to Edinburgh, she worked for UNDP and UNEP on REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) in Southeast Asia, where she assessed the readiness of countries participating in REDD+ and provided technical assistance in developing national strategies and communication tools. She was also part of the team that created the REDD+ academy, a capacity development initiative by the UN-REDD Programme, and directly contributed to several modules in the curriculum.
Driven by the urgent need for better data in forest monitoring, Keiko left the UN and spent three years in PhD research and successfully developed methodologies to detect forest loss and identify drivers of deforestation with high accuracy and at low costs.
At Space Intelligence, she is applying and further developing her skills in land use monitoring as well as for other sectors related to Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
Our technology protects forests extra ordinary biodiversity
Space Intelligence Ltd
Company number: SC595836
Registered address:
113 St. John’s Road
Edinburgh
EH12 7SB
Company offices:
Space Intelligence Ltd
GeoVation suite
Meadowbank House
153 London Road,
Edinburgh
EH8 7AU