Corey Goodrich

Hydrospatial Spotlight shines on Dr. Christopher Ilori, Senior Geospatial Scientist, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

Ilori mixes passion for remote sensing with humor and enthusiasm for a good challenge!

Chris Ilori, PhD is a subject matter expert in atmospheric correction and satellite derived bathymetry (SDB) as you can see by a quick glimpse at his Google scholar page. As he has dedicated so much of his professional life to the research of satellite-based marine remote sensing and since Chris has a very sunny personality, he often tells jokes about SDB. For example, recently he told a group of us that if a remote sensing analyst spent 100 years producing SDB, 90 of those years would be spent on Atmospheric Correction. –This is now a common line on our team!

Since Chris has been with TCarta, he has collaborated with our staff to develop more robust radiative transfer methods for SDB and other machine learning approaches, such as the Random Forest method.  He typically contributes his expertise to more challenging regions or images and reliably brings a very positive attitude to these challenges. Chris has also facilitated internal capacity building on atmospheric correction, other imagery processing techniques, SDB and Marine remote sensing in general…always with a little extra joie de vivire (Chris speaks french, too!).  

I invite you to learn more about Chris from his responses to our Staff Q&A:

Q: How do you describe your professional role to people who don’t know anything about it?

A: I tell people I use satellite data to analyse and reveal changes about our (physical) environment.

Q: Tell me something about how you came to work at TCarta?

A: My PhD advisor told me about TCarta and recommended me to the company. In 2018, I was hired by TCarta to come and work on physics-based satellite derived bathymetry, which happened to be my primary research focus in graduate school.

Q: What do you love about your work?

A: I love the idea of using models to derive stunning images/maps of water depth estimates from satellite imagery.

Q: What software or tool makes the most difference in your day-to-day assignments?

A: Python

Q: What industry or subject-matter resource or publication do you recommend?

A: Intercomparison of shallow water bathymetry, hydro-optics, and benthos mapping techniques in Australian and Caribbean coastal environments. Dekker et al 2012.

Q: What is the most relevant real-world application of TCarta’s and/or your work?

A: Production of bathymetry maps for intelligence and safety navigation in nearshore waters.

Q: What’s your current favorite hobby / past-time?

A: Piano playing.

Q: What country or region do you hope to explore next in travel?

A: Japan

Q: What is one of the coolest things you’ve seen or visualized in your work at TCarta?

A: Maps of water depth and coral reefs.

Q: Who inspires you or is a professional role model of yours?

A: Anders Knudby, PhD (Partner in TCarta Canada)

Previous Hydrospatialist Spotlight: Ross Smith

Next Hydrospatialist Spotlight: Michaela Barnes

Interviewing and hiring Ross Smith was one of the first things I did after I joined TCarta in the spring of 2017. In the first weeks of working in the same office, I grew very fond of Ross’ sound effects while working. And still now, at least daily, there will be an intriguing “Aha” or “Ahhhhh” or “Hmm”–the kinds of noises that signal discovery or curiosity. On top of taking up hard Geospatial or Remote Sensing problems with enthusiasm and teaching himself many solutions, Ross is someone that teammates often turn to for support.

TCarta ran a monthly award in 2021, called the “Wookie Award,” in honor of Karl Lalonde, who was a very important part of TCarta until he passed away in 2020. Almost every single month, Ross received at least one nomination for the award, because his peers found his support and technical insight so valuable. 

It has been a pleasure to get to know Ross more, as he and I are now halfway through our 6th year at TCarta. I hope you get a chance to meet him at a conference one day, or to watch his GISCafe Interview, or learn more about him from his responses to our Staff Q&A:

Q: When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

A: I had absolutely no idea. Maybe a goat farmer.

Q: How do you describe your professional role to people who don’t know anything about it?

A: I usually say that I map the seafloor from space- sometimes I leave it as simple as “I make maps.”

Q: Tell me something about how you came to work at TCarta?

A: I went to my interview with the collar of my suit-jacket “popped”. I didn’t notice until I got home, and was mortified until I learned later it was taken to be some sort of bold interview power move — ha!

Q: What do you love about your work?

A: Every day I learn something new, get to tackle a challenge, and work with some brilliant minds to achieve great things!

Q: What software or tool makes the most difference in your day-to-day assignments?

A: My weapon of choice is Python– we rely on it for processing massive volumes of data, with some fairly innovative techniques to increase throughput. I am constantly utilizing Esri’s ArcGIS Pro, as well. 

Q: What industry or subject-matter resource or publication do you recommend?

A: READ. THE. DOCUMENTATION. For any tool, software, python library, etc. You would be surprised how many issues are already documented, if you know where to look and take the time to do so.

Q: What is the most relevant real-world application of TCarta’s and/or your work?

A: I believe that our contributions to Seabed 2030 are the most impactful, though I do appreciate the value of the data we have produced for hydrographic offices as well.

Q: What’s your current favorite hobby / past-time?

A: Music!

Q: What country or region do you hope to explore next in travel?

A: I would love to return to Iceland, or visit Norway.

Q: What is one of the coolest things you’ve seen or visualized in your work at TCarta?

A: The first time we extracted and visualized bathymetry from the ICESat-2 ATLAS sensor back in late 2018 / early 2019, as a part of the Early Adopter program. When we were able to resolve depths down to 40m after only a couple months of work, I knew we were onto something!

Q: Who inspires you or is a professional role model of yours?

A: My late co-worker Karl Lalonde provided me with an immense amount of guidance towards becoming a far better geospatial developer and scientist.

Previous Hydrospatialist Spotlight: Natalie Treadwell

Next Hydrospatialist Spotlight: Chris Ilori

Natalie joined TCarta’s team this spring as a part-time member of the NOAA SBIR Phase II Grant program focusing on Satellite-based solutions for Alaska and the Arctic. Her passion for her home state of Alaska and for GIS, mapping and Esri tools are a wonderful match for TCarta’s mission, vision and strategic plan and for the environmental challenges at play in these regions and around the world. Now a full-time satellite derived bathymetrist for TCarta with a specialization in Alaska, Natalie represented TCarta just last month at the 2022 Alaska Coastal and Ocean Mapping Summit.

Learn more about Natalie from her responses to our Staff Q&A:

Q: When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

A: A marine biologist focused in bioluminescence!

Q: How do you describe your professional role to people who don’t know anything about it?

A: TCarta is a mapping company that focuses on nearshore coastal waters using remote sensing techniques. Most days I am working on Satellite Derived Bathymetry, which is a process where you can determine the depths of the seafloor along the coastline using satellite LiDAR and Imagery. If they are at all curious, I then explain by saying – think about the pixels in an image – if we know the depth in red pixels is five meters and the depths in the green pixels is seven, then we can assume that the depth in the yellow pixels is 6 meters. If they are not familiar with LiDAR and it’s a friendly interaction, I introduce it as a giant space cat with laser eyes that can tell the height of things by bouncing the lasers off of the earth! 

Q: Tell me something about how you came to work at TCarta?

A: I watched a presentation that a former TCartan gave at an Esri conference when I was doing research for my thesis. I remember sharing with a few people close to me that TCarta is doing something really cool and I should try to work with them after I finished school! 

Q: What do you love about your work?

A: It feels like I get to hop around the world every day! I am discovering the world’s oceans every day – and am often the first person to conduct SDB in those regions! I am a modern day explorer – discovering old places with new technology!

Q: What software or tool makes the most difference in your day-to-day assignments?

A: The Trident Tools are my bread and butter – but if I had to pick a favorite script – it would be the irregular composite script that can combine several images with irregular overlap. It’s always a joy seeing how the input images blend together and I enjoy refining the composites to find the best image for SDB! 

Q: What industry or subject-matter resource or publication do you recommend?

A: The remote sensing journal is top notch!

Q: What is the most relevant real-world application of TCarta’s and/or your work?

A: I feel that our work becomes as ‘real-world’ as it gets when clients like Seabed 2030 use the data we produced in the Seychelles and Saya De Malha for navigation and for planning their charting efforts.

Q: What’s your current favorite hobby / past-time?

A: Backcountry skiing! 

Q: What country or region do you hope to explore next in travel?

A: I would like to spend more time exploring Iceland and Greenland!

Q: What is one of the coolest things you’ve seen or visualized in your work at TCarta?

A: Using the pure file magic software (https://pfmabe.software/), it’s really amazing to see our seafloor models in a 3D point cloud. 

Q: Who inspires you or is a professional role model of yours?

A: My favorite contemporary cartographer is John Nelson, an ESRI basemap engineer who spends his free time making artistic maps and youtube tutorials of creative things that can be done with GIS.  I also am inspired by Kate Berg, a GIS officer for the State of Michigan who runs Pokateo_ a GIS based meme account. In the SDB world, I have looked up to Chris Ilori since I began my research into SDB and I find it so cool that we are co-workers now!

Before joining TCarta, Natalie was Esri Innovation Program’s 2022 Student of the Year! We are fortunate to have Natalie join our team every day from Alaska, bringing her passion for geospatial, hydrospatial and remote sensing to modern-day environmental issues.

Other recent resources Natalie has shared with TCarta’s team:

Esri StoryMap Documentation of Typhoon Merbok created by the Alaska Geospatial Office

Esri StoryMap on Seascape: A regional mapping campaign in support of the National Strategy for Mapping, Exploring, and Characterizing the U.S. EEZ

Alaska Coastal Mapping Strategy

Previous Hydrospatialist Spotlight: Graeme Timmeney

Next Hydrospatialist Spotlight: Ross Smith