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Back in the day I did an MSc in Applied Remote Sensing - yay - and for a while, working with Landsat and SPOT data to devive new insights and present information in then new ways, it seemed a potent tool, but then the music kind of died. GIS was the new kid on the block, funding of satellite borne sensors went soft, internet bandwidths (then) and imagery didn't work too well together. Today, we seem to have come full circle, and while 'remote sensing' sounds unfamiliar, the world of EO is seriously 'hot'. Among the major change agents has been the post 9/11 requirement to find out more about 'stuff' often a long way from 'home' and Moore's Law across the capacity of the related tools and technologies (storage, bandwidth, processing, compression etc). Depending on how you classify 'flocks' of micro/nano satellites there are c.1000 live image collection sensors in orbit, providing daily coverage (or at least the potential for) the entir...

Not that we're quiet at the moment but something must be in the air - so, like buses, another post! courtesy (c) MediaBuzz 2017 Steve Wilson has managed to capture in this post , on a specific case to do with health care data, arguably amongst the most sensitive of personal data, a sense that 'we' have lost or are losing (what limited) control we might have had, over our data, over who collects it, on whose behalf they collect, how they analyse and process it - in particular what other data they "join"* [see below] it to, on whose behalf that is in turn done, who that is sold or supplied to. * join - a short-hand here for the vast array of, to many, unfathomable ways in which 0s and 1s from X data set are ingested, validated/verified, analysed, combined, associated or otherwise linked, directly or indirectly, using techniques and methods in and from data science, statistics, information science, physics, geography, operations research et al with many other d...

Apropos of not very much and being as it is almost the Friday before Christmas, some ponderings. There has been a bit of a spat (I caught some of it on Newsnight) about cultural appropriation brought on by a journalist seeking expert input to improve the quality, insight and value of their work/output. I doubt if there is a single Twitter user who hasn't had or seen a similar request across their timeline. Various epithets might be applied to such requests/exchanges: open, transparent, accessible, sharing, what the web is for etc. It sometimes seems that others might equally apply: cheeky, cheapskate, lazy. This is especially true when what one is being asked to impart is part of the value - the knowledge, insight and wisdom that comes with age and experience, of those being asked. So, easy right, don't answer, don't engage and lose the opportunity to be cited, cross-referenced or widen your social and professional graph. Conflicted? But then does the actual 'com...