When it comes to monitoring critical infrastructure, proxies aren’t enough. Whether you’re using optical imagery, drones or using lower resolution thermal information from public missions, the data and connections you make with these insights can often yield a picture of activity that is incomplete or based on assumptions. Not anymore. We can fill in the gaps with true, accurate, and most importantly, reliable data using our high-resolution Mid-Wave Infrared (MWIR) thermal imaging.
With thermal data sources like our Thermal Visual data product, there is an activity signal that provides the ability to capture ‘operational snapshots’ by revealing heat emissions from assets, offering a unique perspective where synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and electro-optical (EO) imagery alone can't complete the picture. For example, visible EO imagery shows power generation turbines under daylight and SAR highlights the structure and shape regardless of weather or lighting. To understand if those are operating, we traditionally resort to proxies - is there smoke or flaring that could indicate operations? Is there snow melt on roofs that could indicate a building is hot? Are there cars parked which show there are employees who are likely working?
Answering these questions is not enough. To understand what is really happening from a power generation standpoint, you also need to be able to capture heat as a proxy. You need to go beyond what’s typically visible. With 3.5m thermal imaging we capture activity insights at a higher level of detail.
MWIR thermal imagery detects heat from the actively running assets like reactors, occupied buildings, or warm water discharges, even in darkness. In other words, it can pick up the thermal signal of operations inside facilities (e.g. machinery running hot, or an active industrial process) that is invisible to many other sensors. In the example above, we can do this for each of the individual reactors of the plant allowing us to answer questions like:
Introducing SatVu’s Thermal Visual product
The Thermal Visual product is designed for photo interpretation and identification of strong thermal signals within a given acquisition both for users and machine driven workflows. It is delivered as a 1-band GeoTIFF packaged with STAC metadata for easy use and reference.
The Thermal Visual data product is map-ready and can be instantly added to workflows to track operational status changes, analyse trends over time, and visualise heat-based disruptions with asset-level clarity.
Industrial plants like refineries, power plants or smelters run very complex industrial processes that involve a large number of assets. By understanding which of the assets are operating and getting insight on the particular intensity of the signal for critical ones, we can determine which processes are running within a plant or what is being produced in the facility.
As in the example above, the information provided by our visual product delivers a more accurate understanding of the operational reality of the Dunkirk Steel Plant. It indicates when operations stopped and when operations came back to normal.
Asset-level monitoring for security
Similarly, for those in intelligence and defence, the Thermal Visual product is interpretation ready for quick tactical assessments. It is useful for monitoring key facilities such as nuclear reactors, power plants, air bases, naval ports, oil refineries. Everything can be monitored day or night, without overflight permission granting insight into activities even in denied or hard-to-reach areas.
Take the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center. The experimental light water reactor (ELWR) was suspected to be nearing operation. Using HotSat-1 we captured time series data, allowing us to monitor nuclear activity at this facility.
Thermal evidence of oil refinery operations like the one in Al Zour is invaluable - providing independent confirmation of activity at a strategic site where direct inspections are impossible. Thanks to the granularity of the data it is possible to combine thermal time series along with other data to better inform the type of activity taking place. With this kind of information, high-resolution thermal imagery reduces analytical ambiguity, giving intelligence analysts an unprecedented level of awareness.
This is real-world thermal intelligence
The data our Thermal Visual product provides is inherently operationally relevant. So, whether you’re working in the commodities market or defence & intelligence, we can help you develop an accurate understanding of operational status in any facility, giving you the answers needed to make confident, timely and informed decisions or actions.
Stay tuned for an upcoming technical deep dive into the Thermal Visual product.
