Intel Geospatial is a cloud platform for AI-powered imagery analytics

Intel today quietly launched Intel Geospatial, a cloud platform that features data engineering solutions, 3D visualizations, and basic analytics tools for geovisual workloads. Intel says it’s designed to provide access to 2D and 3D geospatial data and apps through an ecosystem of partners, addressing use cases like vegetation management, fire risk assessment and inspection, and more.

The geospatial analytics market is large and growing, with a recent Markets and Markets report estimating it will be worth $96.34 billion by 2025. Geospatial imagery can help companies manage assets, for example network assets prone to damage during powerful storms. Moreover, satellite imagery and the AI algorithms trained to analyze it have applications in weather prediction, defense, transportation, insurance, and even health care, namely because of their ability to capture and model environments over extended periods of time.

Using Intel Geospatial, which is powered by Intel datacenters, customers can ingest and manage geovisual data from a mobile- and desktop-accessible web portal. They’re able to view slope, elevation, and other data layers in a 3D environment with zoom, pan, and tilt controls and auto-updated time and date stamps. Moreover, they can analyze the state of various target assets as well as run analytics to extract insights that can then be passed to existing enterprise systems.

Intel Geospatial offers data from satellites, manned aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) like drones, with data from Mobileye — Intel’s autonomous vehicle subsidiary — available upon request. The platform’s user interface auto-populates with area-specific datasets and allows for search based on street addresses or GPS coordinates, which are standardized for analytics.

Intel Geospatial offers out-of-the-box algorithms for risk classification, object counting, distance measuring, and public and private record reconciliation. Intel says it’s leveraging startup Enview’s AI to power 3D geospatial classification for faster lidar analytics turnaround. Meanwhile, LiveEO is delivering algorithmic monitoring for railway, electricity, and pipelines.

Intel’s new service joins the list of geospatial products already offered by companies including Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. Google’s BigQuery GIS lets Google Cloud Platform customers analyze and visualize geospatial data in BigQuery. Microsoft offers Azure Maps, a set of geospatial APIs to add spatial analytics and mobility solutions to apps. Amazon provides a registry of open geospatial datasets on Amazon Web Services. And Here Technologies, the company behind a popular location and navigation platform, has a service called XYZ that enables anyone to upload their geospatial data — such as points, lines, polygons, and related metadata — and create apps equipped with real-time maps.