Tag: satellite imaging

Seeing the unseen: How AI-powered geospatial tech is transforming utility safety

Every six minutes, somewhere in the United States, an underground utility line is damaged by careless excavation. Such incidents not only disrupt electrical, gas, and other services but also create serious environmental hazards. For example, a broken gas line could trigger an explosion that puts people and property at risk. Utilities and local distribution companies (LDCs) are embracing geospatial analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to prevent or limit damage to buried cables and pipelines.

The Common Ground Alliance (CGA) estimates that in 2019, excavation damage cost U.S. utilities $30 billion, including the cost of lost service, emergency response, and repairs. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) estimates that pipeline excavation incidents continue to rise, averaging 1.45 per day in 2024.

Despite local regulations and 811 lines to “call before you dig,” excavation breaches continue to grow due to a lack of visibility and up-to-date information about underground lines. Utilities can’t give contractors and excavation crews accurate information about buried assets that are invisible from the surface.

Satellite imaging and spectral sensing technology provide utilities with the means to monitor rights-of-way, identify excavation threats, and troubleshoot problems such as gas and water leaks. AI-powered geospatial analytics are the modern canary in the coal mine for hazardous leaks and service disruptions.

Keeping Track of Buried Service Assets

Keeping track of underground assets is an ongoing challenge for pipeline operators, utilities, and LDCs. The traditional method of tracking buried assets is periodic field observations. Right-of-way inspections and 811 locate ticket programs are typically initiated before third-party excavations, but these manual methods leave a dangerous visibility gap.

Inspections are needed every 30 to 90 days, which is costly since they require rolling trucks with human inspectors. Manual inspections can also provide only limited coverage, particularly in remote and hard-to-access areas. Even with regularly scheduled inspections, encroachments may go undetected for weeks or months. The result is a vulnerability window between inspections.

The CGA reports that failure to notify 811 and inaccurate location information are among the top contributors to excavation incidents. Even when appropriate dig notices are filed, construction grading or trenching often begins before infrastructure owners can respond to dig requests.

Advances in remote sensing, AI, and GIS now enable utilities to monitor rights-of-way from 270 miles up. Using satellite imaging and AI algorithms, utilities can continuously monitor pipeline and cable corridors and help close the visibility gap. Commercial satellite images from providers such as Airbus and Vantor (formerly known as Maxar) can provide high-resolution imagery for cloud-based AI processing that can detect changes as small as 30 centimeters, about the size of a dinner plate. Using satellite imaging is also faster and more cost-effective than using drones or aircraft, because cloud computing resources can analyze images in hours, rather than days or weeks.

High-resolution imagery is necessary for specific, accurate alerts. (Photo: Satelytics)

To power geospatial analytics, remote sensing technology (RST) captures multispectral and hyperspectral data from high-resolution satellite sensors, then uses AI-powered algorithms to analyze spectral signatures. Spectral imaging can detect a wide range of surface activity, including soil disturbances, vegetation changes, soil grading and trenching, new construction starts, heavy equipment use, new access roads, and encroachment on utility easements; activities that could indicate a risk to buried cables and pipelines.

Integrating Geospatial AI with ArcGIS

To make potential problems easier to identify, high-resolution images and geospatial analyses can be fused with GIS asset layers and corridor models to pinpoint anomalies that could indicate excavations or construction that interfere with utility rights-of-way.

Utilities that already use ArcGIS as their system of record can readily integrate results from geospatial analytics into existing workflows. For example, users can visualize and detect disturbed layers using ArcGIS Pro, tracking surface risk trends and KPIs with ArcGIS dashboards.

Monitoring the utility corridor for unwanted structures. (Image: Satelytics)

To show how this works, Southern Company, which owns Georgia Power, Alabama Power and Mississippi Power, needed to identify new construction along its service corridors to detect potential encroachments before construction. Southern Company established a quarterly monitoring schedule with Satelytics, a provider of cloud-based geospatial analytics software.

Using data from the Pleiades 1A and 1B satellites, Satelytics captured multispectral imagery at 50-centimeter resolution, then used AI-poweredanalytics to detect changes, such as new barns, parking lots, or other construction. Encroachment alerts were delivered through the Satelytics web portal, and the geospatial data was transferred directly to Southern Company’s ArcGIS system via application programming interfaces (APIs).

Southern Company then compared items flagged in the satellite images with field visits to fine-tune the AI models. Following the pilot program, the AI models were refined to flag only those encroachments that posed a danger or a problem.

Flagging encroachment risks from space. (Image:: Satelytics)

AI-powered geospatial analytics strengthens Enhanced Positive Response (EPR) by documenting risk locations, including map layers and images, and providing evidence of corridor conflicts and surface changes. While AI accelerates detection, ground truthing remains essential. As shown in our Southern Company example, on-site validation is required to improve machine learning algorithms to increase accuracy. Integrating Field Maps and Survey 123 into AI workflows can verify findings and prioritize responses.

Using AI and GIS for Predictive Dig Safety

Geospatial AI technology is becoming an essential tool for more than just excavation monitoring. Using AI to analyze satellite images offers other benefits, such as measuring gas leaks or tracking water and oil leaks. Combining AI, GIS, and historical data will soon be used for predictive excavation risk management, identifying high-risk areas in advance of filing an excavation permit.

Predictive analytics will continue to play a larger role in excavation monitoring. AI analytics will provide construction forecasts and enable permit intelligence layers in GIS. The same data can power dynamic risk scoring dashboards and support three-dimensional corridor safety twins.

As new building construction continues to boom, utilities are harnessing the latest technology to prevent excavation incidents and protect underground assets. Combining satellite imagery, AI, and GIS provides the advanced tools needed to maintain continuous asset awareness, closing the visibility gap for underground cables and pipelines. Pipeline operators, electric utilities, and LDCs are reducing operating costs and minimizing environmental impact by leveraging geospatial analytics powered by artificial intelligence.

Sean Donegan is CEO of Satelytics, a company that uses cloud-based, geospatial analytics to analyze multispectral and hyperspectral imagery to identify pipeline leaks and other environmental issues. Donegan has over 30 years of experience building technology and software companies.

November 13, 2025
Esri to monitor illegal activities in Argentine waterways

Argentina’s coast guard Prefectura Naval and Aeroterra S.A. have partnered to implement Esri’s ArcGIS platform for a real-time tracking system.

The new system, called Guardacostas Pro, uses a combination of satellite imaging and signal processing to monitor vessels for illegal activities such as drug smuggling and fish poaching in the coastal waters of Argentina’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

As Argentina’s coast guard, Prefectura Naval deploys patrol vessels, helicopters and airplane spotters to protect its economic interests and to guard against the decline of its fishery.

This year, the Guardacostas Pro system allowed Prefectura Naval to track a Spanish vessel that entered the EEZ and attempted to return to international waters. The coast guard was able to catch the ship, which had poached roughly $380,000 worth of fish; escort it back to port; impound it; and fine the crew.

The captain had little ground to refute the charges because the coast guard had the data to prove the illegal activity.

“As of five years ago, we had very little information about the use of our seas,” said Ernesto Miguel Klocker, Prefectura Naval director of informatics and communications. “Now we have a good picture, which gives us electronic control of the sea, allowing us to send our air and naval units directly to the places where ships operate.”

Until recently, its primary enforcement tool was constant patrolling and investigation of all ships. Now Guardacostas Pro monitors signals that every vessel transmits to avoid collision and to provide data on vessel type, speed, and location. It combines this with satellite imaging and Esri’s spatial analytics capabilities to give coast guard personnel real-time alerts when a vessel is entering their waters.

“Prefectura Naval is setting a truly cutting-edge example of a forward-thinking organization,” said Dean Angelides, Esri head of international alliances and partners. “The best way to effectively enforce laws over such a large scale as the EEZ is to know exactly where things are happening and when, and Argentina is now leading the way in data-driven public safety.”

After being successfully proven at sea, the Guardacostas Pro system has been moved ashore and is now a multiagency tool to aid Argentina’s Ministry of Security’s homeland security mission. The Ministry of Security will use the system to track and locate its operative units through mobile phones, radio equipment, vehicles with location sensors, and search and rescue aircraft.

October 5, 2018
Google Acquires Satellite-Imaging Startup for $500M

Google enhanced its online mapping service by acquiring Mountain View, California-based Skybox Imaging for $500 million in cash. Sources say both Google and Facebook are purchasing satellite and drone companies in an attempt to expand into other market areas.

One of the ways Google will be leveraging Skybox is in disaster relief and to improve Internet access in remote areas, something the company has been strongly pursuing, according to GPS World’s LBS Editor Kevin Dennehy.

On its website, the five-year-old Skybox said that it plans also to share in the development of the burgeoning autonomous vehicle market and continue to design its own satellites.

Skybox posted a message about the acquisition on its website: “We’ve built and launched the world’s smallest high-resolution imaging satellite, which collects beautiful and useful images and video every day. We have built an incredible team and empowered them to push the state-of-the-art in imaging to new heights. The time is right to join a company who can challenge us to think even bigger and bolder, and who can support us in accelerating our ambitious vision.

“Skybox and Google share more than just a zip code. We both believe in making information (especially accurate geospatial information) accessible and useful. And to do this, we’re both willing to tackle problems head on — whether it’s building cars that drive themselves or designing our own satellites from scratch.”

June 25, 2014