Digital Earth Pacific — AI Satellite Monitoring for Coastline, Mangrove and Water Change Across the Pacific

The Pacific Community (SPC), the region's main intergovernmental scientific and technical organisation, launched Digital Earth Pacific in October 2023 at its 53rd Committee of Representatives of Governments and Administrations meeting in Nouméa, New Caledonia, applying AI and cloud computing built on Microsoft's Planetary Computer and Azure Machine Learning to freely available satellite imagery.

The platform generates standardised environmental products, covering coastline change, mangrove extent and surface water resources, identically for every one of SPC's Pacific member countries and territories, with Director-General Stuart Minchin describing it as intended to become an operational public good that regularly generates products whenever a satellite flies over.

Funding and technical partners publicly credited include the governments of New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, and Microsoft, covering an area SPC describes as more than 150 million square kilometres and roughly 12.7 million people across 27 countries and territories.

The initiative directly targets the region's disaster exposure: Pacific island nations face average annual disaster losses estimated at USD 1.07 billion, with single events such as Cyclone Pam (Vanuatu, 2015, USD 449.4 million) and Cyclone Winston (Fiji, 2016, USD 600 million) illustrating the stakes.

As of the most recent independent reporting in 2024, SPC officials described the platform as still working toward full operational status, and no third-party accuracy or outcome evaluation of the AI-generated products has yet been published.