As the world works to live within our true planetary boundaries and ensure rights for all, we face a persistent challenge: opaque global supply chains. How can we demand safe labor practices, monitor environmental impact, and hold organizations accountable when information about the physical locations of factories, farms, and facilities is often hidden, incomplete, or inaccessible?
Building on a shared commitment to harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) and data science for social good, Open Supply Hub (OS Hub) and Earth Genome are tackling this challenge through a new initiative supported by the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation (PJMF). The partnership centers on a 12-month pilot program that uses advanced satellite imagery and AI to map previously unknown production locations, strengthening supply chain transparency at scale. This approach marks a significant step toward closing the gap between where supply chains operate in theory and where production actually occurs on the ground.
Bridging the Visibility Gap
Since 2019, Open Supply Hub has been building the world’s largest open map of supply chain production locations. The platform’s strength comes from collective, crowdsourced contributions directly from the people and organizations working with and in supply chains, supported by machine learning (ML) to deduplicate and standardize data. Today, we host more than 2.5 million production locations derived from over 5.4 million contributed records. This early application of AI in cleaning and matching location data has been essential to making the complex supply chain data we receive easier to use and navigate .
However, scaling to meet the challenge of mapping the world’s more than 40 million production locations requires continually evolving our approach. OS Hub’s next phase involves leveraging remote sensing technology, or as we like to say: mapping supply chains from space. Importantly, we’re committed to accelerating our ability to scale our platform in a way that honors our core values of transparency and accountability; while AI can add speed and efficiency to supportive systems, people and relationships remain at the center of our work and philosophy around supply chain transparency. We cannot responsibly and accurately map supply chains with machines alone.
The Power of Predictive Mapping
This pilot will integrate next-generation AI with satellite observation to rapidly assess whether a site is a production location, and then prepare that data for review and inclusion on the platform. This capability will be enabled through our partnership with Earth Genome and its sophisticated Earth Index.
The technology will be piloted on production location types with distinct physical characteristics that are easily identifiable from satellite imagery, such as aquaculture facilities, mining operations, or animal feeding operations. The exact set of pilot location types is still being finalized. Once trained, the models will be able to identify similar production locations across millions of kilometers of imagery, geocode them, and prepare them for addition to the platform.
Why is this important? Despite the more than 2.5 million production locations we’ve mapped via crowdsourced data contributions, many remain a mystery. Production locations hidden deep within forested areas, including sites conducting illegal logging, facilities built on land taken from indigenous communities, or operations located within trafficking corridors are less likely to be contributed. In many cases, these locations may be entirely unknown. Adding these unnamed and previously unmapped locations to the platform helps complete the picture of global supply chains. For example, identifying an unnamed production location located 15km outside an economic production zone suspected of using illegally logged wood can help uncover unsustainable practices connected to a supply chain.
A Virtuous Cycle: People Plus Technology
Crucially, this initiative is not about replacing human insight; it’s about amplifying it. Our strategy is centered on a “human-in-the-loop” approach, an iterative process that blends human and community knowledge with technological capability.
Indeed, it is the world’s most vulnerable humans who stand to face consequences if we don’t ensure that our process is not safe, inclusive, and worker-led. Research completed by OS Hub’s Stakeholder Engagement team in 2025, published in our Beyond Transparency report, found that while digital tools are now central to global supply chain governance, there are significant usability gaps and serious constraints, including physical risk, that not only keep these tools from helping those closest to the work, but run the risk of actively harming them.
Thus, the process begins first and foremost with using those research findings as the basis for our project design, ensuring that our community members on the ground have input and access to the data we are gathering, and that it serves them well.
While we are still in the planning phase, we envision the technical process starting from existing OS Hub production locations, which would serve as initial labels for Earth Index’s AI models. This would allow the system to classify the visual signatures of facilities from satellite data. A dedicated user interface would then allow OS Hub’s data team and the aforementioned community members to review these AI-detected sites, confirming accurate predictions and correcting any errors. This verified information would then be fed back into Earth Index, continuously refining the detection process for greater accuracy. Finally, all newly identified and validated locations would be added to the OS Hub platform, ensuring open access and increased transparency for all users.
Through this process, OS Hub and Earth Genome aim to establish a new standard for supply chain data, one that is both machine-generated and human-verified – and, most importantly, open and accessible. This approach aligns closely with the priorities of the project’s funder, the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, which builds partnerships that demonstrate how AI can advance the public good when communities participate in its design and governance.
Vilas Dhar, President of PJMF, says, “Innovation does not end when a technology is created. It continues through the choices societies make about how those advances are governed and used in the real world. Our partnership with Open Supply Hub and Earth Genome ensures people decide how AI is applied to real needs, using technology as a tool to strengthen democracy, protect human rights, and widen opportunity.”
The Path to Accountability
This pilot represents a pivotal step forward in the pursuit of safe and sustainable supply chains. The ability to locate and verify production locations using satellite imagery significantly expands the capacity of our stakeholders to monitor risks related to deforestation, pollution, and labor practices in real-time, driving accountability all the way down to the site level.
This collaboration is grounded in the belief that an equitable and sustainable future depends on AI tools being applied in an open and participatory manner. We are building with, not just for, our global community of users, together producing the foundational data required for genuine accountability in global supply chains.
We’re thrilled to embark on this first collaboration with Earth Genome and grateful to PJMF for their partnership in this innovation. By bringing together the cutting-edge technologies of two non-profits working to protect people and the planet, we aim to demonstrate what is possible when advanced tools are applied in service of transparency and accountability.
We know there are many others out there building the satellite mapping big picture, and we’d love for us all to learn from one another. Get in touch if you’d like to collaborate or learn more!
About the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation:
The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation (PJMF) is a philanthropic organization dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence and data science solutions to create a thriving, equitable, and sustainable future for all. PJMF works in partnership with public, private, and social institutions to drive progress on our most pressing challenges, including digital health, climate change, broad digital access, and data maturity in the social sector.
OS Hub is a non-profit platform that relies on philanthropic support to sustain the world’s most complete, open and accessible supply chain map. Join us in powering the transition to safe and sustainable supply chains by making a donation today.
