TCarta is a marine remote sensing company.
So what that means is we specialize in using Earth observation
data, such as satellites, in order to map
and identify features underneath the ocean.
So we primarily specialize in coastal areas, areas where the water is shallow.
That's the most dynamic area,
and it's also the area where our technology works the best.
TCarta, our primary products are going to be satellite-derived bathymetry,
which, if you think about topography,
bathymetry is just topography under the water.
So basically elevation or depth of the water.
We use ICESat-2, primarily the ATL-03 geolocated photon data product.
That's our primary input.
Even though ICESat’s original mission did not include bathymetry
as one of its core sort of missions and therefore data products,
the 532-nanometer blue-green laser is ideal for underwater mapping.
And so there's been a lot of really good pioneering research on that that we kind
of took along with us to create our the bathymetry product.
After we've extracted bathymetry point measurements of ICESat-2,
we typically are integrating those with a multispectral
or hyperspectral satellite image.
And that's what allows us to, basically delineate
continuous seafloor models from these kind of disparate point data sets.
And then we do have a large customer base of commercial users.
So things like,
engineering firms, you know, if they want to build a new hotel
in an area where there's lots of protected structures,
such as reefs or seagrass patches, having a seafloor classification model
where they can develop their plan around low impact
decisions can be very valuable, as well as quantifying volumetric change
it might need to do in order to build something like an island.
There are many, many places in the world that do not have sufficient in-situ data
or depth measurements in order to to calibrate and validate these models.
You know, kind of one of the reasons why we need to map these areas.
And so having this data on its own won't satisfy the requirement
for having a continuous map of, say, some really remote Pacific atoll,
but having these point measurements, and then extrapolating across what we call
the image space or within the image that we're using, it's really powerful.
And, you know, some of these places,
the last time anybody took a depth measurement was Captain Cook.
Our motivation, or TCarta’s motivation, for joining
ICESat-2’s Applied User Program and mission
was basically exactly what I was talking about, is solving for
that need for measurements of the water column
that are recent or accurate and cover lots of different benthic types.
You know, there's an insane amount of Earth observation,
multispectral imagery around the world, from freely available data
you know, Maxar commercial data,
you know, Planet Labs, lots of, Airbus, lots of commercial data as well.
But if you don't have anything to kind of confirm the results of your model
or inform your model, depending on the approach you take,
it's really hard to convey to the end users that this is a good product.
It's also hard for us to have confidence in our product as well.
We already have seen a global impact from using ICESat-2 data.
So, I believe at this point, we've donated over 250,000 square kilometers of
coastal bathymetry to Seabed 2030,
which is a Nippon Foundation nonprofit effort.
That's a really cool kind of amount, kind of effort across the globe
for lots of different hydrographic offices and commercial agencies
to procure and donate data to this effort to map the seafloor,
regardless of depth, to a certain accuracy by 2030.
And so using ICESat-2 informed data sets, we have been able to donate
a large quantity of data to that effort, which is now made
publicly available at a 100-meter or 90-meter resolution.