Earth Engine Partner Initiative expands, creating sustainable transformation opportunities

Governments and businesses are making unprecedented commitments to transform how we live on this planet. They are interested in investing in climate action technology that enables a sustainability-driven business transformation, but they often lack access to relevant data and insights to guide their plans. At Google, we’re committed to building products and solutions to help customers decarbonize their operations and reduce their climate risk through better use of data. To help customers take advantage of these tools we’re fostering an ecosystem of partners to enhance the capabilities and ease the adoption of Google technologies, and we’re establishing initiatives within Partner Advantage to showcase sustainability expertise.

In 2022, we launched Google Cloud Ready - Sustainability, a new validation program for partners with a business-ready solution available on Google Cloud that helps customers achieve sustainability goals. One of the tools proving to be incredibly powerful in helping organizations achieve sustainability goals is geospatial data, and the ability to understand timely, accurate insights about the state of the planet. 

That’s why we also established the Google Earth Engine Initiative within Google Cloud Partner Advantage — to increase its adoption via partners that have geospatial expertise and provide data-rich solutions that enhance Earth Engine’s capabilities. This way, businesses can better leverage Earth Engine’s library of real-world observable data and insights for positive impact.

Within a year of its inception, the Google Earth Engine Initiative ecosystem has expanded to more than 30 trained partners, setting the foundation for an increasing number of businesses and governments to integrate Earth Engine insights into their operational decision-making. Partners with specialized Earth Engine knowledge are a critical factor in successfully helping these companies responsibly source commodities, manage natural resources, mitigate climate risk, and become more accountable for the impact of their operations on the environment. Now, organizations committed to exploring and tackling critical sustainability and climate issues have access to an ecosystem of Earth Engine knowledgeable partners to support them in their move from commitment to action.

Earth Engine’s growing partner ecosystem

The Initiative connects enterprises with a powerful ecosystem of partners offering deep knowledge of Earth Engine, a mix of scientific modeling and geospatial analysis, and solutions development and systems integration. By leveraging Google’s growing ecosystem of Earth Engine partners, businesses will be armed with insights that can help them understand and tackle critical sustainability and climate issues such as deforestation, water management, and sustainable land use.

The first two strategic partners to join the Initiative were Climate Engine and NGIS. 

NGIS’s team of GIS analysts and developers leverages satellite imagery with the processing power of Google Cloud, BigQuery, and Google Earth Engine. With these products, they developed Tracemark, a sustainable solution platform that delivers global deforestation monitoring along with implementing traceability and transparency for the sourcing of raw materials. 

“NGIS is thrilled to work with Google Cloud and its partners to enable business accountability for sustainable practices at all levels of their supply chain. Google Earth Engine provides unique geospatial capabilities that enables our global approach to accelerate these initiatives, giving leaders visibility and control over their environmental footprint and that of their suppliers in a way that was not previously possible,” said Nathan Eaton, Executive Director, NGIS.

Climate Engine leverages data from Google Earth Engine and other ecosystem partners to help organizations improve their climate change risk planning in areas such as water use, agriculture, storm risk, and wildfire spread. By linking financial assets and company operations with the environment, organizations can understand how environmental risks are affecting their markets and discover opportunities to reduce their emissions and potential supply chain or operational disruptions from climate-related events.

“The planet is changing at unprecedented rates. Building a more sustainable future depends on our ability to understand, predict, and react to these changes,” said Jamie Herring, Ph.D., CEO at Climate Engine. “Google Cloud’s unparalleled computing capacity for geospatial data available through Earth Engine allows us to leverage the wealth of data we have about the planet and convert it into actionable insights for companies and governments.”

Beyond the original two members the program now includes several other partners such as Woolpert who come with years of geospatial expertise and location intelligence providing solutions and services to enhance the capabilities of earth engine within environmental analysis.

Woolpert Digital Innovations provides premier location-based technologies and cloud solutions for clients around the world. Built on more than 50 years of geospatial leadership, Woolpert has been an award-winning Google partner for close to a decade and creates leading-edge technology, products, solutions and services. 

“Google Earth Engine has enabled world-changing breakthroughs for a decade. Now it's ready for commercial use, and we’re discovering that its unique capability to process high-resolution, planetary-scale information has applicability across a range of markets that Woolpert supports, including agriculture, taxation, land management, and real estate,” said George Azzari, Solutions Scientist, Woolpert Digital Solutions. “The flexibility of Google Earth Engine makes it easy to serve these diverse markets and a wide range of user types. Our scientists and analysts collaborate seamlessly when writing code and share final results with decision-makers in app form for easy access. We can’t wait to see what the future holds for Google Earth Engine and look forward to another year of unstoppable growth and positive change.”

Organizations interested in incorporating Google Earth Engine’s technology into their businesses’ sustainability efforts can locate the right Earth Engine partner for them via the Partner Directory or reach out to their Google Cloud representative to learn more.