Globhe is Using Drones to Improve Global Health: From the Floor of Intergeo

From the floor of Intergeo in Berlin last week, DRONELIFE speaks with Andreas Nordansjö, CMO of drone data and impact tech firm GLOBHE about using drones and drone data to improve outcomes in global health.

Continue reading below, or listen:

Founded by Helena Samsioe, GLOBHE has been an impact tech company since its inception, working with UN organizations such as UNICEF, UN FAO, UNCCD, UN WFP, and the World Bank Group.  “GLOBHE is short for Global Health, and our vision is to one day picture a thriving planet with thriving communities,” Andreas said.

GLOBHE’s projects are widespread, but they are using aerial data to target difficult problems and provide stakeholders with the tools they need to improve outcomes in combating disease, education disparities, climate change, and natural disasters.

“In Malawi we mapped over 2500 km2 for UNICEF for Flood Prevention, and we have helped fight to Malaria through the early detection of breeding sites of mosquito larvae for the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine,” explains Andreas.  “We’ve worked with reforestation projects through GainForest in Paraguay.  We’ve done remote supervision and inspection of investments into building new schools in rural areas with The World Bank in Lesotho.”

One of GLOBHE’s core principles is in using local professional drone operators.  This not only benefits local economies, but enables them to work within widely differing global drone regulations.  “Through our crowd of professional drone operators, we have all the local regulations and local licenses to operate,” explains Andreas.  “Our Operations team is a diverse set of experts in drone data collection with many years of experience, so we are able to navigate a complex landscape of regulations through experience and our network of drone operators – today over 9000 in 140 countries.”

What’s Next for GLOBHE and the Drone Industry

Asked what changes he has witnessed in the drone industry, Andreas is positive about what’s available now.

“We see adoption of drone data like never before, and new sensor types and drone models enabling acquisition of more specialised drone data types,” he says.  “We see more requests for thermal, multispectral and LiDAR data coming in from all corners of the world.” 

As more different data becomes available, Andreas comments, companies, countries and other stakeholders are learning to use it across their organizations.  “We also believe that this will continue as more companies are able to work with drone data in their data pipelines,” he says. “Many companies have yet to figure out what role drone data plays in their data models. Satellite data is the core, but complementing it and being able to work with it at scale is different.”

The GLOBHE corporate culture is built on the goal of driving better outcomes.  With a robust platform and the team working together to scale, GLOBHE hopes to reach more communities and address new problems in the next year.

“We are truthtellers and challengers. We believe in impact and making a change. We are fortunate to still have a start-up mentality and spirit in the team, and the culture is very much oriented towards making solutions that help our clients get data easier. We try to innovate on how to make drone data accessible and democratized, and our culture reflects that by being very hands on in some projects and learning,” said Andreas.

Read more:

• Prevention, Response and Recovery: GLOBHE Uses Drones to Manage Disasters Around the World
• GLOBHE on Monitoring Carbon Offset Projects Around the World
• GLOBHE: The Impact Tech Company Capturing Drone Data in Every Corner of the World
• The GLOBHE World Record for Largest Album of Drone-Collected Images: the Crowd-Droning Concept
• Drones in Telecom: GLOBHE Signs Global Agreement