A joint perspective from Airbus and UP42
Global mining operations spanning huge, difficult-to-reach territories need a delicate balance between safety, efficiency, and environmental stewardship. Putting all your trust in ground-based inspections can leave you with blind spots throughout a project’s lifecycle. For operators managing a global portfolio, remote sensing data is often the answer.
Many companies are already heavy users with strong GIS departments, where the bottleneck is rarely a lack of data, but rather a lack of coordination and control. To move beyond fragmented, ad-hoc data requests, teams need a unified geospatial strategy. By integrating high-frequency remote sensing into a centralized platform, mining leaders can shift to proactive, data-driven management across every global site.
Why is multi-sensor integration so important?
The Airbus SAR and optical constellations, with their very high resolution satellite data, allow for close monitoring of mining operations. Multi-sensor integration is a key advantage all throughout the lifecycle of mining projects, from exploration phases and infrastructure monitoring to restoration.
The Airbus Radar Constellation is composed of three SAR satellites: the German TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X formation, and the Spanish PAZ. With a large adaptable swath and a high-frequency X-band sensor, they’re ideal for the production of detailed InSAR data (interferometric SAR data), a key asset to understand ground motion and slope stability, and to obtain elevation and 3D models.
The Optical Constellation includes the Airbus Global Basemap with a fully-mosaicked SPOT (1.5 m resolution) layer, along with Pléiades (50 cm products) and Pléiades Neo (30 cm) very high resolution imagery, which offer a variety of use cases: construction monitoring, infrastructure mapping, assessment of environmental impact, and the tracking of reforestation in decommissioning and closure steps of mining projects lifecycle.
This complementarity and diversity of data is a real asset to assess and monitor operations effectively and at a lesser cost, especially in remote areas. Multi-sensor integration addresses many high-stakes challenges of the mining lifecycle. Let’s take a deeper dive into some use cases.
Infrastructure monitoring with optical satellite data
Highly detailed optical imagery is a real asset for construction and infrastructure monitoring. Pléiades and Pléiades Neo, with their respective resolutions of 50 cm and 30 cm, give detailed insights and help track the evolution of a site and its infrastructure.
Chiquicamata mine, Chile, Pléiades Neo © Airbus DS
Optical imagery also serves as a basis for change detection algorithms to easily identify differences between the ‘before’ and the ‘after’. Whether you need fresh imagery or imagery from before mining operations began, both solutions are possible: you can task a constellation to capture new data or look at existing archive imagery. By applying change detection algorithms to archive data, operators can automatically highlight new clearings, pile growth, or infrastructure shifts without manual inspection.
Combined with high revisit frequency, Airbus tasking services help to reduce the risk of critical changes going undetected, regardless of how remote the site may be.
Airbus images of global mining sites
InSAR monitoring of slope deformations to manage risk
One high-value use of SAR data is for interferometric applications: SAR sensors produce detailed data because of their high-frequency X-band. This means that interferograms are precise to the millimiter, and therefore an excellent method for closely monitoring ground deformations and slope stability.
The radar constellation operates through any weather conditions as the electromagnetic waves sent by the sensor penetrate the cloud cover, which is ideal for areas that are often cloudy or prone to storms.
InSAR data makes it easy to identify subsidence or uplifting in the ground, and to anticipate difficulties or safety hazards. As X-band frequencies are much more sensitive to surface changes than C-band, failures can be anticipated by detecting millimetric slope deformations, which is key to preventing the failure or planning changes in development and operations.
By using InSAR and optical data in tandem, mining operators gain a comprehensive overview of their site, ensuring both optimal resource management and better situational awareness.
The operational framework for a unified geospatial strategy
While high resolution data provides the "what," a centralized platform provides the "how." For global organizations, the primary barrier to scaling Earth observation is the technical and administrative friction inherent in managing it. Currently, most EO projects remain siloed within specific departments, leading to fragmented procurement and inconsistent data formats that prevent automation.
To bridge the gap between project stages, organizations require a unified geospatial infrastructure designed to solve the main operational bottlenecks.
Solving procurement fragmentation
Managing multiple vendor agreements separately creates administrative overhead and leads to redundant spending. By consolidating different sensors into one platform, you remove the need to manage individual contracts. This gives headquarters clear visibility into total spending and prevents "duplicate orders," where different teams accidentally buy the same data for the same area.
Standardizing data for immediate integrations
Converting raw imagery into insights usually requires manual downloads and repetitive pre-processing, which delays decision-making. By delivering standardized, STAC-compliant, and analysis-ready data (ARD) through the platform, engineering teams can plug imagery directly into their workflows via API or Python SDK, or stream it directly into their GIS. This removes the data-cleaning bottleneck, allowing teams to start analysis immediately.
Enforcing governance and compliance
As remote sensing usage expands across multiple sites, managing security and oversight becomes more difficult. A unified platform allows you to maintain visibility and control over all projects, while operating on infrastructure that meets SOC 2 Type II and GDPR standards. This ensures you can audit global spending and protect data without adding delays to regional operations.
Bridging the technical knowledge gap
Scaling advanced tasks like combining SAR for stability monitoring with optical imagery for volume assessments requires specific technical expertise. Accessing strategic support ensures that complex projects are set up correctly from the start. This provides the specialized guidance needed to maintain consistent operations across every remote asset, effectively acting as an extension of your internal geospatial team. By consolidating these functions into a single ecosystem, organizations can standardize monitoring protocols and ensure that both historical and fresh data remain accessible across the entire lifecycle of the mine.
Join our webinar
Ready to adopt a unified geospatial strategy? Join Airbus and UP42 for our webinar on the 28 of May. We will dive deeper into the topics and technical workflows discussed in the article.
