An interview with Thomas Gooch, Founder of Office of Planetary Observations
Subak Australia had the pleasure to talk with Thomas Gooch, Founder and Director of Office of Planetary Observations (OPO)! With a background in Landscape Architecture, Thomas has incorporated satellite remote sensing into city planning since 2016. With work exhibited at ESA's living planet symposium, published in the 'Manual for Digital Earth' and government council policies. He advocates for the use of environmental data for underpinning decisions towards valuing nature. Innovating in the space industry has also led him to contribute writing a 'Declaration of Rights of the Moon'.
1.What's the story behind your company, OPO, and how is it going so far?
Office of Planetary Observations (OPO) is a startup in Melbourne, Australia born out of the need to give city planners access to environmental analytics for underpinning design decision with data.
OPO formed in 2019 just before the pandemic started and we’ve had great success amidst this unique time. Launching the OPO Urban Greening Platform (Beta) in August was a real milestone for the team, and since, it has been great getting uptake and feedback from customers as our beta version. Being the first invited by Microsoft to join their ‘Space for Startups’ initiative was also a highlight this year. We really enjoy working with them, as their right across all the issues linked with data, cloud computing, customers, caring for nature, and the space industry.
A startup is definitely a rollercoaster, and trying to change the world isn’t easy, but as a team, we’re having lots of fun and continue making important steps to sure up our business and service the market. This has meant partnering with some fantastic organisations, often leading the world in their own sectors. And that’s what we’re excited by too, as it will take a partner ecosystem to really provide climate impact in the next 10 years.
2. How did you end up in this field of study? Was the intersection between landscape architecture and climate change always something that interested you?
Landscape Architecture is a really interesting discipline. It’s one which bridges the arts and sciences, meaning there’s an opportunity to always be creative, whilst working with nature and the realities of the built environment. It traditionally attracts practitioners who have a deep care for nature.
In this way, we’re often early innovators in greening our cities. The last 20 years have shown landscape architects leading on increasing bio-diversity, green corridors, increasing tree canopy, and now utilising nature-tech. From around 2010 onwards you can see much of the above now in council policies linked with Urban Greening. Even ‘Infrastructure Australia’ is now pushing for ‘Green Infrastructure’ at a national scale.
So as a trained landscape architect, satellite observations naturally presented an opportunity to provide great impact at scale for measuring and monitoring nature in our cities.
3. What has surprised you in the space since starting OPO?
Simply the customers really quick understanding of the tech. Along with their excitement and uptake of what we can do. Often a customer will get OPO’s offering, then want insights 10 steps ahead of where the overall industry is at. This is exciting as It shows the demand for insights linked with nature, and as OPO grows, we’ll be able to get more complex insights for the customer.
The whole geospatial and earth observation industry is going through an overhaul in the last five years. This is associated with the reduced cost to launch satellites, along with cloud computing and advances in AI. In the next years, you’ll see huge uptake of insights from satellite data, changing completely the way we relate to nature. This is really exciting and it keeps surprising me how quickly customers see and want this to happen too. We’re at a great inflexion point – watch this space!
4. Vegetation and trees have a great impact on our urban environments. Can you explain why using satellite-sourced data that maps the earth is crucial to building climate-resilient cities?
Trees and general vegetation in our urban environments are vitally important for the cooling of our cities. However, we’re seeing huge vegetation loss in both the public and private realms. Local government tree stocks are senescing, and new developments are removing trees, shrubs, and lawns. Leaving our cities less resilient to climate change effects such as rising temperatures and increased storm events.
Satellite-sourced data that maps the Earth is crucial because it can democratise the data to ensure we have transparency and accountability around the health of our vegetation/tree metrics. Typically, environmental data sets have been really hard to get, and very expensive. Then when gained, they can take years to process, you most likely need a Ph.D. to extract insights and manage the data.
Utilising satellite-sourced data can remove the barriers for non-spatial users with small budgets. It means we can streamline the insights pathway to enable the user of the data to optimise their day-to-day workflow. Using AI, cloud computing, and industry knowledge, we can do the heavy lifting, or ‘bake the cakes’ so to speak, so we deliver decision-ready data easily and quickly.
5. What do you believe is the number one challenge startups face in the climate change space today?
The number one challenge startups face in the climate change space is linked with creating a viable business that attracts VCs! This is one of humanity’s all-time challenges because we’re in a time when we now want businesses which make money by caring for nature, whilst assisting our ability to survive climate change. Whereas traditionally money has been made through the exploitation and extraction of nature. Shifting this global engine is taking time linked with an investor’s risk appetite.
Ultimately an investor is looking to make money with associated low risk. In the market, in recent years, a climate change start-up has meant innovating in energy or batteries, as there’s a clearer pathway to sales. We’ve now seen huge investments in other initiatives such as fake meat and in the recent 18 months big capital investment in Earth observation startups. So it’s one thing to care for nature and want to reduce climate impacts, it’s another to ensure your sales pipeline is strong to attract VC attention, scale, and have an impact in the world. If a climate change startup can get this right, then they are home and hosed…
6. The idea of data being open so anyone can access it can help the climate crisis! What is OPO’s experience with the procurement of data? And what are your thoughts on data accessibility towards climate change?
Open data sets are hugely beneficial. But to have climate impact across, biospheres, nations and the planet, we need to get serious about paying for environmental data towards underpinning climate decisions.
Traditionally the geospatial and Earth observation industry is a really generous one with lots of support for open data. This is really important and some are part of OPO’s data stack, simply to assist coding or otherwise. However, the final insight can’t always be open and free without a financial cost somewhere in that data processing/pipeline/dashboard journey.
The cost could simply be linked with cloud computing, labour, insurances or overheads, meaning someone (us) bears that cost. Thus, if we can tackle the climate crisis with open data – great, but it begs the question of who will bear the cost along the way to make that happen.
In saying all that, we have a free offering on OPO’s Urban Greening Platform which was important for us to do. Because ultimately it comes down to the customer journey and doing what we can to provide insights which are open and free but lead to deeper paid insights.
7. What are the next steps for OPO? And, what are you trying to achieve in the next years to combat climate change?
OPO is a startup providing environmental insights from satellite easily for city planners for underpinning city planning decisions. So the next years are about continuing to make this happen by focusing on the customer needs, insights required and improving the customer experience.
Our Urban Greening Platform launched in August is our beta version, so we’re already improving this behind the scenes. Getting ready to launch an update in 2022 whilst working with beta testers and customers to ensure we’re meeting their needs.
We’re excited to be moving through the capital raising process and how that’s enabling us for growth. All the while building our partnership ecosystem. There’s a lot of excitement around climate-tech, nature-tech and we’re eager to keep moving forwards as innovators in this field.
So people should feel free to reach out to us, we’re really happy to have a conversation on all things climate change, nature tech and satellite data!