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NASA IMAGESEER: NASA IMAGEs for Science, Education, Experimentation and Research

A number of web-accessible databases, including medical, military or other image data, offer universities and other users the ability to teach or research new Image Processing techniques on relevant and well-documented data. However, NASA images have traditionally been difficult for researchers to find, are often only available in hard-to-use formats, and do not always provide sufficient context and background for a non-NASA Scientist user to understand their content. The new IMAGESEER (IMAGEs for Science, Education, Experimentation and Research) database seeks to address these issues. Through a graphically-rich web site for browsing and downloading all of the selected datasets, benchmarks, and tutorials, IMAGESEER provides a widely accessible database of NASA-centric, easy to read, image data for teaching or validating new Image Processing algorithms. As such, IMAGESEER fosters collaboration between NASA and research organizations while simultaneously encouraging development of new and enhanced Image Processing algorithms. The first prototype includes a representative sampling of NASA multispectral and hyperspectral images from several Earth Science instruments, along with a few small tutorials. Image processing techniques are currently represented with cloud detection, image registration, and map cover/classification. For each technique, corresponding data are selected from four different geographic regions, i.e., mountains, urban, water coastal, and agriculture areas. Satellite images have been collected from several instruments - Landsat-5 and -7 Thematic Mappers, Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) Advanced Land Imager (ALI) and Hyperion, and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). After geo-registration, these images are available in simple common formats such as GeoTIFF and raw formats, along with associated benchmark data.

Le Moigne, Jacqueline↗

Geocam Space: Enhancing Handheld Digital Camera Imagery from the International Space Station for Research and Applications

Handheld astronaut photography of the Earth has been collected from the International Space Station (ISS) since 2000, making it the most temporally extensive remotely sensed dataset from this unique Low Earth orbital platform. Exclusive use of digital handheld cameras to perform Earth observations from the ISS began in 2004. Nadir viewing imagery is constrained by the inclined equatorial orbit of the ISS to between 51.6 degrees North and South latitude, however numerous oblique images of land surfaces above these latitudes are included in the dataset. While unmodified commercial off-the-shelf digital cameras provide only visible wavelength, three-band spectral information of limited quality current cameras used with long (400+ mm) lenses can obtain high quality spatial information approaching 2 meters/ground pixel resolution. The dataset is freely available online at the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth site (http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov), and now comprises over 2 million images. Despite this extensive image catalog, use of the data for scientific research, disaster response, commercial applications and visualizations is minimal in comparison to other data collected from free-flying satellite platforms such as Landsat, Worldview, etc. This is due primarily to the lack of fully-georeferenced data products - while current digital cameras typically have integrated GPS, this does not function in the Low Earth Orbit environment. The Earth Science and Remote Sensing (ESRS) Unit at NASA Johnson Space Center provides training in Earth Science topics to ISS crews, performs daily operations and Earth observation target delivery to crews through the Crew Earth Observations (CEO) Facility on board ISS, and also catalogs digital handheld imagery acquired from orbit by manually adding descriptive metadata and determining an image geographic centerpoint using visual feature matching with other georeferenced data, e.g. Landsat, Google Earth, etc. The lack of full geolocation information native to the data makes it difficult to integrate astronaut photographs with other georeferenced data to facilitate quantitative analysis such as urban land cover/land use classification, change detection, or geologic mapping. The manual determination of image centerpoints is both time and labor-intensive, leading to delays in releasing geolocated and cataloged data to the public, such as the timely use of data for disaster response. The GeoCam Space project was funded by the ISS Program in 2015 to develop an on-orbit hardware and ground-based software system for increasing the efficiency of geolocating astronaut photographs from the ISS (Fig. 1). The Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames Research Center leads the development of both the ground and on-orbit systems in collaboration with the ESRS Unit. The hardware component consists of modified smartphone elements including cameras, central processing unit, wireless Ethernet, and an inertial measurement unit (gyroscopes/accelerometers/magnetometers) reconfigured into a compact unit that attaches to the base of the current Nikon D4 camera - and its replacement, the Nikon D5 - and connects using the standard Nikon peripheral connector or USB port. This provides secondary, side and downward facing cameras perpendicular to the primary camera pointing direction. The secondary cameras observe calibration targets with known internal X, Y, and Z position affixed to the interior of the ISS to determine the camera pose corresponding to each image frame. This information is recorded by the GeoCam Space unit and indexed for correlation to the camera time recorded for each image frame. Data - image, EXIF header, and camera pose information - is transmitted to the ground software system (GeoRef) using the established Ku-band USOS downlink system. Following integration on the ground, the camera pose information provides an initial geolocation estimate for the individual film frame. This new capability represents a significant advance in geolocation from the manual feature-matching approach for both nadir and off-nadir viewing imagery. With the initial geolocation estimate, full georeferencing of an image is completed using the rapid tie-pointing interface in GeoRef, and the resulting data is added to the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth online database in both Geotiff and Keyhole Markup Language (kml) formats. The integration of the GeoRef software component of Geocam Space into the CEO image cataloging workflow is complete, and disaster response imagery acquired by the ISS crew is now fully georeferenced as a standard data product. The on-orbit hardware component (GeoSens) is in final prototyping phase, and is on-schedule for launch to the ISS in late 2016. Installation and routine use of the Geocam Space system for handheld digital camera photography from the ISS is expected to significantly improve the usefulness of this unique dataset for a variety of public- and private-sector applications.

Stefanov, William L.↗

Challenges in Development of Online Visualization and Analysis Tools for Satellite Data

Over the years, various online visualization and analysis tools have been developed to facilitate satellite data access and help scientific users around the world to conduct research and develop applications (e.g., data product evaluation, what-if questions, etc.). For those who are new to satellite data products, using them can be a daunting task due to many obstacles in data processing such as data formats, complex data structures, special software packages, unfamiliar terminology, etc., especially when one is not sure whether a dataset is suitable for his/er research project. Even for experienced users, developing software for data processing and analysis can be a costly and time-consuming task. Online visualization tools can overcome many of these difficulties and allow users to focus on scientific questions. For example, Giovanni (the Geospatial Interactive Online Visualization and Analysis Infrastructure, https://giovanni.gsfc.nasa.gov), developed by the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC), allows access over 1900 satellite and model variables in 82 measurement groups of 8 disciplines without downloading data and software. Main features include basic functions for data analysis and visualization, data provenance, output data in different formats (ASCII, NetCDF, GeoTIFF), and more. Over the years, ~1700 peer-reviewed publications in different disciplines have been benefited from Giovanni in research activities (e.g. initial investigation, what-if questions, product evaluation). Despite the success of online visualization and analysis tools, challenges and new opportunities still exist and more can be done with new requirements and technology. Examples are: a) how to increase the efficiency of dataset search by enhancing intuitive aspects; b) how to facilitate interdisciplinary research; c) how to provide data quality information; d) how to engage users to participate in data quality assessment; and more. NASA Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) satellite-based data products are processed at various levels ranging from Level 0 to Level 4. While most users use data products at higher levels (Level-3 and 4), products at lower levels are still important for case studies, algorithm development, ground validation, etc. In this presentation, we will use Giovanni as an example to present and discuss challenges and near-future opportunities for satellite data online visualization and analysis tools.

Liu, Zhong↗

Providing Long-term Solar and Meteorological Resource Information from NASA Research through the GIS-Enabled POWER Web Services Portal

Solar and other renewable energy systems are optimized using geophysical parameters describing information about the solar resource and meteorological environments and how those environments may be changing in time. The Prediction of Worldwide Renewable Energy Resource (POWER) team at the NASA LaRC Research Center deployed its first version of the revitalized POWER geophysical parameter website that employs Esri Geographic Information System (GIS) tools. This web application provides access to both time series and climatological data sets spanning from a few days behind real-time back to the early 1980’s with a spatial resolution of 0.5 x 0.5 degree, thus extending over 30 years. The GIS tools enable, generate and store climatological averages using spatial queries and calculations in a spatial database resulting in greater accessibility to government agencies, industry and individuals. There is an API that provides data through a URL coding and can also invoked inside user software packages. Output data formats now include ASCII, CSV, geoTiff, JSON and .netCDF. Since May 2018, over 10.4 TB of data have been delivered to fulfill over 110 million data requests from 240,000 unique user IPs (https://power.larc.nasa.gov). This presentation provides an overview of this project and the current version of the new POWER web capabilities through to the end usage. Surface solar parameters are adapted from both the NASA/GEWEX (Global and Energy Water Cycle Exchange) SRB (Surface Radiation Budget) project and the CERES (Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System) data products. The meteorological parameters are adapted from NASA’s MERRA-2 (Modern Era Retrospective-analysis for Research and Applications). We review uncertainty of various basic parameters using surface measurements. After the introduction, we specifically discuss various clusters of parameters for equator pointing tilted surfaces that provide for the estimation of optimal tilt angle by month and year. The discussion will emphasize a few examples of how solar and building engineers are using the data products. We will then preview the capabilities of Version 2 featuring examples of hourly solar and meteorological data products, customized user reports and expanded web mapping services from CERES data products. The web services provide a unique, expandable resource for renewable energy systems engineers to design, evaluate and optimize to environments worldwide.

Solar Resource↗

Updates of MERRA-2 Data and Services at NASA GES DISC

Over40 years of NASA climate reanalysis datasets from the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2) are available at the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC). In addition to being used in traditional weather and climate research, MERRA-2 is also widely used in application studies of, e.g., wind and solar energy, air quality and health, food and drought, and heat waves. Two new MERRA-2 datasets were recently added at the GES DISC: (1) climate statistics derived fromMERRA-2 daily data to assist in the analysis of extreme temperature and precipitation events and of large-scale meteorological patterns from 1980 to the present and (2) gridded satellite and conventional observations processed in the MERRA-2 system, along with key statistics derived from the data assimilation, to help better understand how the quality of observations directly affect there analysis data. The GES DISC focuses its efforts on continually improving existing data services and to develop new data tools to satisfy various user communities. The newly added features include the following: Time series service: This is a new service for MERRA-2 data, which enables the easy and fast access of long-term hourly or daily time series at a location for popular parameters. The data is saved in a single le in Ascii format with a user- friendly structure. New analytic functions in the subsetter interface: Options for downloading daily minimum and maximum values have been added into the subsetter interface, in addition to the existing daily mean option, for all MERRA-2 and MERRA sub-daily products. Data format conversion to GeoTIFF has been implemented. New variables in Giovanni: Most monthly variables have been integrated into Giovanni, GESDISC’s online visualization and analysis tool. Due to the large data volume, hourly variables were selected based on user requests. More online information: New MERRA-2 documentation has been added: Data How-To, Data in Action, and FAQ. This presentation overviews two new MERRA-2 datasets and illustrates the new features of data services through a number of case studies. MERRA-2 data and services can be found at: https://disc.gsfc.gov/datasets?

Data management↗

Addition of First-Person Visualization Capabilities to the Glenn Research Center Communication Analysis Suite (GCAS)

The ability to visualize large sets of data is important to giving an understanding of abstract ideas to large groups. With the ability to visualize the terrain of lunar surfaces in three dimensions from both an orbital and first-person view, the capabilities of the Glenn Research Center Communication Analysis Suite (GCAS) will have expanded to allow specific landing sites to be seen more realistically. GCAS will utilize GeoTIFF-based data to visualize the lunar terrain.

ECMAScript↗

GCAS Visualization Codebase Augmentation Migration to Modern Standards and Feature Enhancements

The Glenn Research Center Communication Analysis Suite (GCAS) includes many analysis tools that can be used to support a wide range of scenarios. It includes a visualization tool that implements the three.js graphics library to display a three-dimensional (3D) representation of its results. This software will enable researchers, engineers, and mission planners to interact intuitively with and understand the results of their analyses, which might not be apparent from raw data. With NASA’s efforts to return humans to the Moon as a part of the Artemis missions, the GCAS has been used extensively for lunar terrain and landing system development analysis, which is vital to ensuring mission achievability and safety. This has created the need to add several significant features to the visualization tool, such as the ability to display the terrain of the lunar surface accurately and to provide information demonstrating how a given region might impact mission objectives. Many of the changes made to the visualization tool can be separated into one of three general advancements: code restructuring to adhere to modern coding standards and practices, new user camera controls for first-person and third-person perspective views, and a terrain generation feature to enable rendering highly accurate terrains based on any celestial body’s digital elevation model (DEM) in GeoTIFF format. These improvements notably elevate the visualization tool's functionality, accuracy, and user interaction while providing a robust foundation for future development.

Visualization↗

PACE Water Resources: Demonstrating the Use of NASA's PACE Hyperspectral Ocean Color Instrument Data for Enhanced Coastal Management

This project developed tools to support the future use of Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) hyperspectral imagery in water resource monitoring and research by NASA DEVELOP teams and members of the PACE applications community. We sought to address a need for support in processing and visualizing hyperspectral PACE Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) data among researchers and decision-makers working in coastal water quality management and harmful algal bloom (HAB) monitoring. To supplement the day of simulated PACE imagery available, we used Aqua MODIS earth observations with Level 3 processing from March 2022 to build a Python graphical user interface (GUI) for visualizing ocean biogeochemical parameters relevant to the early detection and monitoring of HABs. We used simulated PACE OCI Level 2 data derived from the Python Top of Atmosphere Simulation Tool (PyTOAST) to build Jupyter Notebooks for band subset and selection. The Level 3 PACE Viewer components support users with quick visualizations as well as the creation of geoTIFFs and time-series. The Level 2 Jupyter Notebooks address users’ concerns over the volume and complexity of hyperspectral imagery. The PACE Viewer is useful for visual inspection and netCDF data processing but should not be used for geospatial analysis. Once PACE launches, this tool will alleviate the technical burdens of working with hyperspectral data and support the early detection and monitoring of HABs using PACE satellite imagery.

Python Top of Atmosphere Simulation Tool↗

Making NASA GES DISC Level 2 Data GIS Analysis Ready

There are many valuable data hosted by NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) for GIS applications in the areas of extreme weather events, climatic anomaly, and public health. However, using NASA Earth Science Data poses some challenges for GIS users. Many of these users are not experts in Earth Observation and have little knowledge about NASA's Earth science data. In the GIS community, GeoTiff is the most widely used raster format, whereas NASA's data is primarily in complex multidimensional netCDF and HDF formats. This complexity makes it difficult for GIS users, especially those who are unfamiliar with these formats. Although GIS software like ArcGIS has made progress in processing multidimensional netCDF data, certain issues still remain, particularly with level 2 data. In this study, we use TROPSpheric Monitoring instrument (TROPOMI) level 2 data as an example to demonstrate how to make such data GIS analysis ready. The process involves: 1. Creating a feature layer from the TROPOMI level 2 data. 2. Converting the feature layer to a gridded raster dataset. 3. Mosaicking gridded raster datasets into a raster dataset covering the entire desired extent. 4. Generating a symbology with a GIBS-specific style that aligns with the visual standards and requirements of GIBS. 5. Publishing image services. By performing these preprocessing and transformation steps, NASA level 2 data can be made compatible and ready for use within GIS software for various spatial analysis and visualization tasks.

Geographic Information System↗

Python Codebase and Jupyter Notebooks - Applications of Machine Learning Techniques to Geothermal Play Fairway Analysis in the Great Basin Region, Nevada

Git archive containing Python modules and resources used to generate machine-learning models used in the "Applications of Machine Learning Techniques to Geothermal Play Fairway Analysis in the Great Basin Region, Nevada" project. This software is licensed as free to use, modify, and distribute with attribution. Full license details are included within the archive. See "documentation.zip" for setup instructions and file trees annotated with module descriptions.

Brown, Stephen↗

GeoDAWN West Central Nevada EarthMRI Data

This submission includes both the original product resolution (OPR) and LiDAR point cloud (LPC) LiDAR data collected as part of GeoDAWN: Geoscience Data Acquisition for Western Nevada. The USGS Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (EarthMRI) and USGS 3D Elevation Program (3DEP), Department of Energy Geothermal Technologies Office, Natural Resources Conservation Services, and Bureau of Land Management have partnered to conduct airborne geophysical and 3DEP lidar surveys over parts of Nevada and California to collect information on undiscovered geothermal, critical mineral, and groundwater resources in the western Great Basin and the Walker Lane region.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗

GeoDAWN Northwestern Elko County Nevada EarthMRI Data

This submission includes both the original product resolution (OPR) and LiDAR point cloud (LPC) LiDAR data collected as part of GeoDAWN: Geoscience Data Acquisition for Northwestern Elko County, Nevada. The USGS Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (EarthMRI) and USGS 3D Elevation Program (3DEP), Department of Energy Geothermal Technologies Office, Natural Resources Conservation Services, and Bureau of Land Management have partnered to conduct airborne geophysical and 3DEP lidar surveys over parts of Nevada and California to collect information on undiscovered geothermal, critical mineral, and groundwater resources in the western Great Basin and the Walker Lane region.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗