Layer 1 — Satellite Data (SatSure)
Proprietary satellite-derived ground truth from SatSure Sparta — the structural data advantage.
Layer 1 is the proprietary data advantage. SatSure Sparta provides satellite-derived observations that the public NWP-only crowd doesn't have access to.
What Is SatSure Sparta?
Sparta is a closed data platform (no public GitHub or open SDK) built by SatSure. It provides satellite-derived datasets via API on Azure:
- Soil moisture — farm-level resolution, daily
- Vegetation indices (NDVI) — crop health and greenness
- Cropland data layers — land use classification
- Climate data — satellite-derived weather observations
- Land/water change detection — environmental monitoring
Platform accessible at sparta.satsure.co. Primary market is agritech and insurance.
How Layer 1 Feeds the Engine
Bias Correction Enhancement
NWP models forecast what should happen based on physics. Satellite observations show what actually happened. The difference between the two — measured consistently over time — is the bias that the engine corrects for.
Satellite ground truth is particularly valuable for:
- Urban heat island — NWP models don't resolve individual buildings; satellite LST captures actual urban thermal profiles
- Soil moisture effects — wet soil after recent rainfall modifies surface temperature in ways NWP models may underrepresent
- Cloud cover verification — satellite imagery provides direct observation of cloud fields for irradiance calibration
Settlement Verification
For Tier 2 warranty claims and Tier 3 derivative settlement, an independent data source is required. SatSure provides satellite-derived observations that serve as one leg of the oracle verification chain (alongside NWS ground stations and other data providers).
Agricultural Product Enhancement
SatSure's strongest data products are in agriculture — exactly where Cliff Horizon's Layer 1 advantage is greatest. Farm-level soil moisture and NDVI provide the inputs needed for crop weather derivative pricing with lower basis risk than relying solely on distant weather station data.
Team Relationship
Two of the three Cliff Horizon team members are ex-SatSure, and one is a SatSure founder. Access to Sparta data and technical integration detail is direct — this is not a vendor relationship; it's a structural partnership.
Technical Questions (Under Discussion)
Integration discussions with SatSure are covering:
- LST availability and spatial resolution for urban areas
- API format (REST, response format, authentication, rate limits)
- Query model (point query vs bounding box)
- Satellite overpass-to-API latency
- Historical archive depth (minimum 5 years needed for O-U model calibration)
- Coverage across target markets (US cities, Singapore, Dubai, Mumbai, Jakarta, etc.)
- KaleidEO pre-commercial data access
Fallback
The engine architecture explicitly treats SatSure as enhancement, not dependency. The engine operates on Layers 2 + 3 until Layer 1 access is integrated. Calibration quality is lower without satellite ground truth, but the pipeline functions and produces valid output.