Digital Earth Pacific — AI-Processed Satellite Data Reaches 20 Pacific Governments for Disaster and Coastal Planning

The Pacific Community (SPC) built Digital Earth Pacific on Microsoft's Planetary Computer, using AI and cloud processing to turn petabytes of openly available satellite imagery into products usable for national planning. Early applications included assessing volcanic-eruption damage to crops and water supplies, and helping identify relocation sites for communities displaced by cyclones.

By its 6th Steering Committee meeting, held in Nadi, the programme brought together representatives of 20 Pacific countries and territories — including Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu, Kiribati and Tuvalu — with partnerships spanning Geoscience Australia, the Group on Earth Observations, Digital Earth Africa, and two regional geospatial councils (PGRSC and PGSC). Products cover coastline change, flood patterns, mangroves, seagrass, vegetation height and near-shore water depth.

The programme reported nine regional data products deployed or scaled and more than 220 people reached through training. One concrete product, the Digital Earth Pacific Mangroves Extent and Density dataset, tracks mangrove change across Pacific Island Countries and Territories from 2016 to 2022 with planned annual updates, is openly licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, and is hosted publicly on AWS.

Public reporting to date documents outputs and training reach rather than independently verified outcomes — the 2026 steering committee explicitly flagged 'strengthened national uptake' and 'clearer governance pathways' as unresolved priorities, so real-world decision impact is not yet independently measured.