In this exclusive interaction with The Catalyst, Bill Ray, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, shares his perspective on the growing strategic value of Earth Intelligence, the industry’s leading adoption, and how AI is redefining its potential to power smarter, more sustainable business strategies.
What strategic value do you see Earth Intelligence delivering to enterprises beyond traditional environmental monitoring?
The use cases for Earth Intelligence area almost limitless. Good examples include the German Railways scanning the whole country to look for fallen trees within hours of a storm, watching the movement of oil rigs (nodding donkeys) to estimate the quantity of American oil pumped every day, or just counting the cars outside Disney to estimate the company’s revenue.
In your view, what’s driving the recent surge in corporate interest and investment in Earth Intelligence technologies?
The availability of AI has massively increased the value of Earth observation, as it enables skilled analysis at low costs. Even a relatively basic analysis, such as counting the cars in every supermarket in a town, is highly time consuming (and, thus, expensive) for humans, but can be done instantly with a basic machine learning platform.
Are there particular industries where you’re seeing the fastest adoption of Earth intelligence tools?
Agriculture is the biggest user at the moment, for crop health monitoring and identification, but we’re seeing increased use in supply chain management, mining and insurance.
How critical is the integration of domain-specific AI models to truly unlock actionable insights from Earth observation data?
AI is absolutely critical to Earth intelligence, as it turns observation into insights, but most of the AI used is machine learning. GenAI (and large language models) are being used experimentally, to provide user interfacing by responding to queries, but the analysis is machine learning.
How do you expect the market for Earth intelligence to evolve? Will the demand focus more on raw data, ready-to-use models, or fully integrated applications?
The analysis of data still requires specialist skills, so is usually undertaken by analysis companies which understand what’s possible, as well as how it can be achieved. The majority of people do not know how multispectral data can reveal the health of a tree, or that synthetic aperture radar can be used to measure soil moisture. However, they also don’t care, so if an AI-enabled interface could be created which could answer questions, then the specialist companies could be disintermediated. However, that development is still many years away.
What’s the possibility related to Earth intelligence solutions to become embedded into everyday business applications and decision workflows?
This is already happening, with examples such as the oil-pumping example above. The same company also provides figures for the quantity of nickel, and copper, smelted each day (by observing the temperature of every smelter in the world), and all this data is fed directly into futures trading applications. Insurance is also making increasing use of Earth intelligence in estimating risk and evaluating loss.
Looking ahead, what role could Earth Intelligence play in helping organizations meet ESG and sustainability goals more effectively?
The quality of Earth observation is now good enough, in many cases, to identify plant species, allowing wide area monitoring of biodiversity. We’ve also seen AI used to spot the building of roads in rain forests, a necessary precursor to illegal logging, so action can be taken before the forest is damaged. Satellites can also monitor for algae blooms, particulates, and chemicals such as methine and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), identifying sources.
Earth Intelligence is clearly moving beyond its traditional role, evolving into a critical enabler of smarter, faster, and more sustainable business decisions. As AI continues to unlock deeper insights from complex geospatial data, industries will find new opportunities to improve efficiency, reduce risk, and advance ESG goals. While challenges around accessibility and specialized expertise remain, the trajectory is clear: Earth Intelligence is poised to become an integral part of enterprise strategy, embedding itself into core operations and reshaping how organizations understand and interact with the world.
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