IBM and NASA Collaborate on Geospatial AI Foundation Model on Hugging Face

IBM and NASA have announced a collaboration to make an AI foundation model for geospatial data available on Hugging Face. The model, built from NASA's satellite data, will be the largest geospatial foundation model on Hugging Face and the first-ever open-source AI foundation model built in collaboration with NASA. This effort aims to widen access to NASA earth science data for geospatial intelligence and accelerate climate-related discoveries. The model has demonstrated a 15 percent improvement over state-of-the-art techniques using half as much labeled data, and with additional fine tuning, it can be redeployed for tasks like tracking deforestation, predicting crop yields, or detecting and monitoring greenhouse gasses. IBM and NASA researchers are also working with Clark University to adapt the model for applications such as time-series segmentation and similarity research. The collaboration is part of NASA's decade-long Open-Source Science Initiative to build a more accessible, inclusive, and collaborative scientific community. A commercial version of the geospatial model will be available through the IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite (EIS) later this year. IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise, while NASA is a space agency that provides earth science data for research purposes. The collaboration leverages IBM foundation model technology and is part of IBM's larger effort to create and train AI models that can be used for different tasks and apply information from one situation to another.