National Geographic

62 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC • FEBRUARY 2018In this photograph with a longexposure (right), a U.S. Forest6HUYLFHDLUSODQHEDQNVRYHUDZLOGƃUHnear Lake Isabella, California, inSequoia National Forest, to takeimages (below) with a thermalinfrared scanner. The data areoverlaid onto maps (bottom) toSURYLGHDFFXUDWHƃUHSHULPHWHUVVRƃUHƃJKWHUVFDQSODQWKHLUDWWDFNVSUHGLFWƃUHEHKDYLRUDQGLGHQWLI\WKUHDWV&/2&.:,6()5205,*+7678$573$//(<86'$)25(676(59,&(1$7,223(5$7,216ǘ7:2Ǚ 1$/,1)5$5('building construction in South America, the ex-pansion of illegal palm oil plantations in Africa,and crop yields in Asia. In the company’s confer-ence room, James Crawford, the chief executive,opened his laptop and showed me aerial views ofChinese oil tanks, with their floating lids indicat-ing they were about three-quarters full. “Hedgefunds, banks, and oil companies themselves knowwhat’s in their tanks,” he said with a sly grin, “butnot in others’, so temporal resolution is extremelyimportant.” Crawford’s firm also employs Planet’soptical might to charitable ends. For example, itconducts poverty surveys in Mexico for the WorldBank, using building heights and car densities asproxies for economic well-being.Meanwhile, Planet’s marketing team spendsits days gazing at photographs, imagining aninterested party somewhere out there. An insur-ance company wanting to track flood damage tohomes in the Midwest. A researcher in Norwayseeking evidence of glaciers eroding. But whatabout ... a dictator wishing to hunt down a rovingdissident army?Here is where Planet’s own ethical guidelineswould come into play. Not only could it refuse towork with a client having malevolent motives,but it also doesn’t allow customers to stake a soleproprietary claim over the images they buy. Theother significant constraint is technological. Plan-et’s surveillance of the world at a resolution of 10``````FIRESWATCHING