Project Hephaestus
Marketing
Building on the success of the Chilean Mining Project, Satellite Applications Catapult continued with the optimisation of the Hephaestus application. This application is a software product that allows access to complex sets of data that were traditionally only available to experts in Earth Observation and Remote Sensing teams. This application was initially conceived as a result of the Chilean Mining opportunity funded by Innovate UK.
The pilot application showed how the satellite data products could be visualized in 3D by end-users without requiring any specialist knowledge, skills or expensive hardware. This interactive application allows users to “fly” through the region of Chile where the products were created and navigate directly to specific points of interest.
The application showcases the potential of using satellite-based data to drive business process changes, reducing the need to visit the locations and reaching a broad number of stakeholders. Collectively, the tools demonstrate how satellite data and analytics can enable and facilitate evidence-based decisions, to help agencies clearly identify where they should focus their efforts in order to support and accelerate regional mining ecosystems.
The aim of the application and associated satellite-derived data products is to deliver significant economic improvements to Chile’s mining sector over the next decade, as well as improvements in the environmental management of extractive industries, which would also have broader applicability worldwide. There are several activities currently being undertaken within South America to seek future funding opportunities and projects and the outputs of this project are also supporting this.
