Planet has an unparalleled constellation of satellites in orbit. In addition to their current constellation of 130 micro-satellites, they have 5 RapidEye satellites and the 7 SkySat satellites (recently acquired from Google). What’s more, 48 new micro-satellites were just launched into orbit this July, bringing the total number of Planet satellites to 190. And once the 48 satellites begin imaging, Planet will have global, daily coverage of the entire Earth, covering over 150 million square kilometers every day. Never before has the humanitarian community had access to such a vast amount of timely satellite imagery.

As described in my book, Digital Humanitarians, this vast amount of new data adds to the rapidly growing Big Data challenge that humanitarian organizations are facing. As such, what humanitarians need is not just data philanthropy—i.e., free and rapid access to relevant data—they also need insight philanthropy. This is where Planet’s new Rapid Response Team comes in.

Planet just launched this new digital volunteer program in partnership with the Digital Humanitarian Network to help ensure that Planet’s data and insights get to the right people at the right time to accelerate and improve humanitarian response. After major disasters hit, members of the Rapid Response Team can provide the latest satellite images available and/or geospatial analysis directly to field-based aid organizations.

So if you’re an established humanitarian group and need rapid access to satellite imagery and/or analysis after major disasters, simply activate the Digital Humanitarian Network. You can request satellite images of disaster affected areas on a daily basis as well as before/after analysis (sliders) of those areas as shown above. This is an exciting and generous new resource being made available to the international humanitarian community by Planet, so please do take advantage.

In the meantime, if you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to get in touch by email or via the comments section below. I serve as an advisor to Planet and am keen to make the Rapid Response initiative as useful as possible to humanitarian organizations.