Scaling up Nature Based Solutions to achieve net-zero targets

Added to
February 19, 2024
January 5, 2023

Earth Blox helps businesses in their transition to net zero. This case study details how one customer selected Earth Blox to help scale the delivery of Nature Based Solutions for their clients.

"Our clients have emissions reduction targets to hit. As demand for Nature Based Solutions increased, we needed a way to scale the assessment and due diligence process for project opportunities. With Earth Blox, our Carbon Projects Team can quickly and easily conduct the initial assessment without relying on me every time." Geospatial Analyst

The Challenge

The customer puts all of their Nature Based Solutions (NbS) project opportunities through a series of five or six stages to assess the viability of an investment. This process is managed by the carbon projects team, who is responsible for ensuring sound investment solutions are delivered to their clients. They assess between eight and 10 NbS project opportunities at any one time. The team is made up of forest specialists with limited geospatial experience.

With the company working to scale projects to support their clients to achieve net zero, it soon became apparent that many of the questions asked of the geospatial analyst in the early stages of an assessment were repetitive, for example, "Can you look at the land cover and land change history over the last ten years?" or "Can you make a summary of all the rainforest losses over the last 20 years?" This was fast becoming a blocker, with the carbon projects team sometimes having to wait up to four weeks to get an answer.

As a digital-first company, the carbon projects team knew there must be a more efficient way to get answers to these early-stage questions. This would free up time for the geospatial analyst to focus on the more detailed aspects of the later stages of assessments where their expertise was essential to accurate decision-making. 

They needed a solution that would allow the team to answer the initial questions themselves. It was essential that they find a single solution that contained all the necessary datasets and results of the analyses. It also had to be accessible and easy for non-geospatial experts to use. 

The Head of the carbon projects team set about researching solutions. They considered various options, including geospatial software providers, Google Earth Engine and consultants.

Solution

After a thorough assessment, they selected Earth Blox, an Earth observation software-as-a-service that provides geospatial data and tools to assess, verify, and report on natural assets with confidence and full transparency. 

It has an intuitive, drag-and-drop interface and pre-built workflows that can be easily run by users that do not have any geospatial expertise. Experienced geospatial data scientists and analysts can conduct more in-depth analyses by building their own workflows. The results are available in visual and tabular formats and can be exported for inclusion in reports.

Through Earth Blox, the customer can access the Google Earth Engine data archive, which contains more than 40 years of historical imagery and scientific datasets, updated and expanded daily. Unlike other solutions that focus on single datasets such as forests or landcover, Earth Blox allows users to layer multiple, diverse datasets to build comprehensive insights into how different environmental factors, such as fire, flood, land change, forest, and mangroves, combine to provide the most accurate picture of what's on the ground.

Earth Blox is a cloud-hosted service removing the need to download data or have significant computing resources on your desktop. Processing time for analysis is shortened from hours or days to just minutes.

As an enterprise customer, their installation is configured to allow them to import their own datasets. The Earth Blox geospatial team have supported the team in building custom workflows to automate their most common analyses. They receive priority support and have a dedicated technical account manager with geospatial expertise.

Results

Budget saved: without a solution for non-geospatial experts, the customer would need to grow their geospatial team or hire external consultants to support assessments. With Earth Blox, the carbon projects team can assess ten opportunities in the time it would take for the geospatial analyst to complete just one.

Supporting scale: as the carbon projects team grows to meet client demand for project investments, so does the number of assessments. Earth Blox unblocks the funnel for NbS assessments by enabling the team to conduct initial assessments and complete the due diligence process.

Time saved: the carbon projects team can conduct initial assessments themselves in 30 minutes rather than waiting up to four weeks for the information from the geospatial analyst.

"Earth Blox has given our team the tools to independently assess carbon project opportunities and conduct due diligence without always having to rely on our geospatial analyst. The carbon projects team is really pleased with how quickly they can get results and deliver solutions for our clients," Head of Carbon Projects.

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