The politics of pixels: A review and agenda for critical remote sensing

Bennett, Mia M.; Chen, Janice Kai; León, Luis F. Alvarez; Gleason, C. J.

doi:10.1177/03091325221074691

Cited by 44 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 181 publications

(178 reference statements)

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“…Beyond this however, we are arguing for a participatory systems engineering, taking a page from the fields of GIS and planning that have been building participatory frameworks and tools for the past couple decades 116,122 132–134 . This is also in line with the field of remote sensing, which has a similar Space Race military origin and has recently seen a more participative research agenda mapped out 135 . Systems engineering already has many of the tools for this, in the form of multistakeholder negotiation methods and tradespace exploration tools.…”

Section: Recommendations For Moving Forwardmentioning

confidence: 92%

Systems engineering applied to urban planning and development: A review and research agenda

Reid

Wood

2022

Systems Engineering

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The use of systems engineering tools and methodologies for applications outside of the traditional engineered system domains is on the rise. In particular, systems engineering is seeing increased popularity in urban planning (commonly tied to the concept of the smart city), healthcare, and sustainable development. Many researchers and practitioners may be unaware of a previous boom in the popularity of such applications that occurred in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. At the time, numerous unexpected challenges were encountered, leading to high profile failures and backlash from urban planners, politicians, and the public. This paper seeks to review that history, identify specific pitfalls, consider which ones are still relevant today, issue recommendations for how current practitioners may avoid them, and identify how ongoing research may help obviate the remaining pitfalls.

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Section: Recommendations For Moving Forwardmentioning

confidence: 92%

Systems engineering applied to urban planning and development: A review and research agenda

Reid

Wood

2022

Systems Engineering

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“…Our retroactive generation of super resolution (SR) imagery for a time when no satellite high resolution (HR) imagery was publicly available raises interesting ethical concerns about the production and use of satellite SR imagery. First, there is a human proclivity to regard image data, particularly from highresolution satellite images, as accurate, neutral or politically uncharged (Bennett et al 2022). This proclivity is concerning when considering that satellite SR images are commonly derived from GANs, models originally designed to create synthetic, or fake, data (Goodfellow et al 2014).…”

Section: Ethical Considerations Of Super Resolution Object Detectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contemporary and historical detection of small lakes using cross-sensor super resolution Landsat imagery

Kyzivat¹,

Smith²

2024

Preprint

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Landsat is the longest-running environmental satellite program and has been used for surface water mapping of large water bodies since its launch in 1972. Remote sensing image resolution is increasingly being enhanced through single image super resolution (SR), a machine learning task typically performed by neural networks. Here, we show that a 10x SR model (Enhanced Super Resolution GAN, or ESRGAN) trained entirely with Planet SmallSat imagery (3 m resolution) can be applied to 30 m Landsat imagery to produce 3 m Landsat SR images with preserved radiometric properties. We test the utility of these Landsat SR images for small lake detection by applying a simple water classification to SR and native Landsat imagery and comparing to independent, high-resolution water maps. SR images appear realistic and have fewer missed detections (type II error) compared to LR, but exhibit errors in lake location and shape, and yield increasing false detections (type I error) with decreasing lake size. SR enhancement improves detection of small lakes sized several Landsat pixels or less, with a minimum mapping unit (MMU) of ~ 2/3 of a Landsat pixel. We also apply the SR model to a historical Landsat 5 image and find similar performance gains, using an independent 1985 air photo map of 242 small Alaskan lakes. This demonstration of retroactively generated 3 m imagery dating to 1985 has exciting applications beyond water detection. Yet, much work remains to be done surrounding technical and ethical guidelines for the creation, use, and dissemination of SR satellite imagery.

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“…Such observational technologies generate distinct ways of constituting environmental information and imagination (Jasanoff and Martello 2004). Whether viewing environments from afar, fixing them into governable units of analysis, or collecting image-based evidence for policy measures (Bennett et al 2022), digital technologies and practices constitute and sustain forests as particular kinds of governable entities.…”

Section: Digital Operations: Constituting and Processing Smart Forestsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reworking the political in digital forests: The cosmopolitics of socio-technical worlds

Gabrys

Westerlaken

Urzedo

et al. 2022

Progress in Environmental Geography

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Forests are increasingly central to policies and initiatives to address global environmental change. Digital technologies have become crucial components of these projects as the tools and systems that would monitor and manage forests for storing carbon, preserving biodiversity, and providing ecosystem services. Historically, technologies have been instrumental in forming forests as spaces of conservation, extraction, and inhabitation. Digital technologies build on previous techniques of forest management, which have been shaped by colonial governance, expert science, and economic growth. However, digital technologies for achieving environmental initiatives can also extend, transform, and disrupt these sedimented practices. This article asks how the convergence of forests and digital technologies gives rise to different socio-technical formations and modalities of “political forests.” Through an analysis of five digital operations, including 1) observation, 2) datafication, 3) participation, 4) automation, and 5) regulation and transformation, we investigate how the co-constitution of forests, technologies, subjects, and social life creates distinct materializations of politics–and cosmopolitics. By building on and expanding the concept of cosmopolitics, we query how the political is designated through digital forest projects and how it might be reworked to generate less extractive environmental practices and relations while contributing to more just and pluralistic forest worlds.

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The politics of pixels: A review and agenda for critical remote sensing

Cited by 44 publications

References 181 publications

Systems engineering applied to urban planning and development: A review and research agenda

Systems engineering applied to urban planning and development: A review and research agenda

Contemporary and historical detection of small lakes using cross-sensor super resolution Landsat imagery

Reworking the political in digital forests: The cosmopolitics of socio-technical worlds

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