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At least 667 records · Page 37

Global Landslide Hazard Assessment for Situational Awareness (LHASA) Version 2: New Activities and Future Plans

A remote sensing-based system has been developed to characterize the potential for rainfall-triggered landslides across the globe in near real-time. The Landslide Hazard Assessment for Situational Awareness (LHASA) model uses a decision tree framework to combine a static susceptibility map derived from information on slope, rock characteristics, forest loss, distance to fault zones and distance to road networks with satellite precipitation estimates from the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. Since 2016, the LHASA model has been providing near real-time and retrospective estimates of potential landslide activity. Results of this work are available at https://landslides.nasa.gov. In order to advance LHASA’s capabilities to characterize landslide hazards and impacts dynamically, we have implemented a new approach that leverages machine learning, new parameters, and new inventories. LHASA 2.0 uses the XGBoost machine learning model to bring in dynamic variables as well as additional static variables to better represent landslide hazard globally. Global rainfall forecasts are also being evaluated to provide a 1-3 day forecast of potential landslide activity. Additional factors such as recent seismicity and burned areas are also being considered to represent the preconditioning or changing interactions with subsequent rainfall over affected areas. A series of parameters are being tested within this structure using NASA’s Global Landslide Catalog as well as many other event-based and multi-temporal inventories mapped by the project team or provided by project partners. In addition to estimates of landslide hazard, LHASA Version 2 will incorporate dynamic estimates of exposure including population, roads and infrastructure to highlight the potential impacts that rainfall-triggered landslides. The ultimate goal of LHASA Version 2.0 is to approximate the relative probabilities of landslide hazard and exposure across different space and time scales to inform hazard assessment retrospectively over the past 20 years, in near real-time, and in the future. In addition to the hazard. This presentation will outline the new activities for LHASA Version 2.0 and present some next steps for this system.

Dalia Kirschbaum↗

SIM_EXPLORE: Software for Directed Exploration of Complex Systems

Physics-based numerical simulation codes are widely used in science and engineering to model complex systems that would be infeasible to study otherwise. While such codes may provide the highest- fidelity representation of system behavior, they are often so slow to run that insight into the system is limited. Trying to understand the effects of inputs on outputs by conducting an exhaustive grid-based sweep over the input parameter space is simply too time-consuming. An alternative approach called "directed exploration" has been developed to harvest information from numerical simulators more efficiently. The basic idea is to employ active learning and supervised machine learning to choose cleverly at each step which simulation trials to run next based on the results of previous trials. SIM_EXPLORE is a new computer program that uses directed exploration to explore efficiently complex systems represented by numerical simulations. The software sequentially identifies and runs simulation trials that it believes will be most informative given the results of previous trials. The results of new trials are incorporated into the software's model of the system behavior. The updated model is then used to pick the next round of new trials. This process, implemented as a closed-loop system wrapped around existing simulation code, provides a means to improve the speed and efficiency with which a set of simulations can yield scientifically useful results. The software focuses on the case in which the feedback from the simulation trials is binary-valued, i.e., the learner is only informed of the success or failure of the simulation trial to produce a desired output. The software offers a number of choices for the supervised learning algorithm (the method used to model the system behavior given the results so far) and a number of choices for the active learning strategy (the method used to choose which new simulation trials to run given the current behavior model). The software also makes use of the LEGION distributed computing framework to leverage the power of a set of compute nodes. The approach has been demonstrated on a planetary science application in which numerical simulations are used to study the formation of asteroid families.

Burl, Michael↗

Sustainable Aviation Operations and the Role of Information Technology and Data Science: Background, Current Status and Future Directions

This paper reviews the achievements of the international community towards environmentally friendly aviation operations, also referred to as Sustainable Aviation Operations in the last 25 years and the aspirations and goals to limit the impact of aviation and climate in the future. The framework for achieving global progress is provided by the International Civil Aviation Organization. NASA and FAA supported research and development to advance ATM concepts, and implemented the technology, concepts, and procedures that were responsible for creating fuel efficient flights. Historically aviation operations have been analyzed using physics-based models and provide information for making operational decisions. Future developments in aviation operations require new concepts, procedure, modeling, and analysis techniques. There is an increasing interest in applying methods based on Machine Learning Techniques to problems in Air Traffic Management. Aviation operations involving many decision makers, multiple objectives, poor or unavailable physics-based models and the availability of a rich historical database provide opportunities to exploit the richness of data-driven methods. The promises and challenges in applying Machine Learning Techniques to Air Traffic Management are discussed in the paper along with the testing and trustworthiness required for adoption of the techniques in operations.

Sustainable Aviation, Data Science, Machine Learni↗

Sustainable Aviation Operations and the Role of Information Technology and Data Science: Background, Current Status and Future Directions

This paper reviews the achievements of the international community towards environmentally friendly aviation operations, also referred to as Sustainable Aviation Operations in the last 25 years and the aspirations and goals to limit the impact of aviation and climate in the future. The framework for achieving global progress is provided by the International Civil Aviation Organization. NASA and FAA supported research and development to advance ATM concepts, and implemented the technology, concepts, and procedures that were responsible for creating fuel efficient flights. Historically aviation operations have been analyzed using physics-based models and provide information for making operational decisions. Future developments in aviation operations require new concepts, procedure, modeling, and analysis techniques. There is an increasing interest in applying methods based on Machine Learning Techniques to problems in Air Traffic Management. Aviation operations involving many decision makers, multiple objectives, poor or unavailable physics-based models and the availability of a rich historical database provide opportunities to exploit the richness of data-driven methods. The promises and challenges in applying Machine Learning Techniques to Air Traffic Management are discussed in the paper along with the testing and trustworthiness required for adoption of the techniques in operations.

Sustainable Aviation, Data Science, Machine Learni↗

Data-Driven Turbulence Modeling: Summary and Outcomes of the 2022 NASA Symposium

A three-day symposium sponsored by NASA was held in July 2022 in Suffolk, Virginia on the subject of Turbulence Modeling: Roadblocks, and the Potential for Machine Learning. This meeting brought together over 80 experts from academia, government, and industry to discuss critical issues for Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) turbulence and transition models, as well as to evaluate the results from a collaborative testing challenge based on data-driven methods and machine learning (ML) technology. The symposium represents a continuation of an earlier symposium sponsored by the University of Michigan and NASA, held in Ann Arbor, MI in 2017. The 2022 symposium included a wide variety of talks on the subjects of RANS and ML, five invited talks, and three panel discussions. This talk summarizes the main outcomes of the symposium, and includes suggested recommendations and future directions.

machine learning↗

Beyond Fair: Engagement, Data Usability, and Open Community Productivity through the NASA Open Science Data Repository

The FAIR principle (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) governs the storage and sharing of NASA space biology and health data[1]. These guiding principles maximize reuse of data and the reproducibility of scientific findings. The NASA Open Science Data Repository (OSDR; an expansion of NASA GeneLab) was built on the FAIR principles and houses over 500 studies and close to 1000 datasets from decades of space life sciences experiments. OSDR embodies the FAIR principles through data governance that includes mediated, embargoed, and fully open access data. The FAIR data governance principles were recently proposed to be expanded to encompass a FAIREST framework for assessing research data repositories (FAIR + Engagement, Social connections, and Trust)[2]. FAIREST emphasizes the importance of data repositories engaging with the scientific community and gaining the trust of researchers regarding data quality. Trust also refers to the TRUST principles developed for assessment of digital repositories: Transparency, Responsibility, User Focus, Sustainability, Technology[3]. We present the “Open Science for Life in Space” Analysis Working Groups (AWGs) as evidence regarding the power of engagement, social connections, and trust which has enhanced OSDR’s capabilities and productivity. AWG members engage in two main activities. One, members provide feedback on OSDR scientific standards for data ingestion, curation, and reuse (study, subject and assay metadata; processing pipelines; dataset formats and uniformed structures for machine-readability). Two, AWG members collaborate to mine-reuse OSDR data to conduct scientific analysis. With nearly 800 active members, the AWGs have resulted in 32 publications re-using OSDR data and contributed many papers in two major special issues in Cell (2020) and Nature (2024). AWGs also serve as networking groups, facilitate social connections between researchers at all levels of experience, and also have a social online ‘Forum’ used to keep members informed on projects and opportunities. This community-centric, productive, and trustworthy data culture has resulted in a broader effect with international space agencies, academics, and the commercial space sector wanting to submit their data to OSDR. Ten studies of Inspiration 4 data were recently publicly released by OSDR, as were some JAXA human data. Coming up soon in OSDR are data submissions from the European Space Agency, Virgin Galactic PIs, and SpaceX Polaris Dawn. A major benefit of OSDR is the array of standardized and uniformly formatted data (which was developed through AWG member consensus), from which visualization tools, analysis tools, and machine learning models can be built or trained. This talk will cover the Multi-Study Visualization Tool, the Environmental Data Application, RadLab, and a UCSF-NSF funded knowledge graph biomedical health discovery tool ‘SPOKE’ currently being integrated with OSDR. OSDR also provides training programs in bioinformatics and machine learning to improve the scientific community’s awareness of data availability and to boost their ability to perform data analysis. The increasing engagement of the scientific community and the public with technologies powered by artificial intelligence (AI) heightens the need for data analysis to be transparent. The AI for Life in Space initiative leverages the data products provided in OSDR to train AI models, with an emphasis on explainable and trustworthy AI, which would not be possible without FAIR data and metadata. Overall, here we will demonstrate the importance for NASA life sciences data repositories to adhere to the FAIREST framework, by providing examples and success stories from different aspects of OSDR.

data↗

A Global Land Cover Training Dataset From 1984 to 2020

State-of-the-art cloud computing platforms such as Google Earth Engine (GEE) enable regional-to-global land cover and land cover change mapping with machine learning algorithms. However, collection of high-quality training data, which is necessary for accurate land cover mapping, remains costly and labor-intensive. To address this need, we created a global database of nearly 2 million training units spanning the period from 1984 to 2020 for seven primary and nine secondary land cover classes. Our training data collection approach leveraged GEE and machine learning algorithms to ensure data quality and biogeographic representation. We sampled the spectral-temporal feature space from Landsat imagery to efficiently allocate training data across global ecoregions and incorporated publicly available and collaborator-provided datasets to our database. To reflect the underlying regional class distribution and post-disturbance landscapes, we strategically augmented the database. We used a machine learning-based cross-validation procedure to remove potentially mis-labeled training units. Our training database is relevant for a wide array of studies such as land cover change, agriculture, forestry, hydrology, urban development, among many others.

Radost Stanimirova↗

Science Autonomy for Ocean Worlds Astrobiology: A Perspective

Astrobiology missions to ocean worlds in our solar system must overcome both scientific and technological challenges due to extreme temperature and radiation conditions, long communication times, and limited bandwidth. While such tools could not replace ground-based analysis by science and engineering teams, machine learning algorithms could enhance the science return of these missions through development of autonomous science capabilities. Examples of science autonomy include onboard data analysis and subsequent instrument optimization, data prioritization (for transmission), and real-time decision-making based on data analysis. Similar advances could be made to develop streamlined data processing software for rapid ground-based analyses. Here we discuss several ways machine learning and autonomy could be used for astrobiology missions, including landing site selection, prioritization and targeting of samples, classification of “features” (e.g., proposed biosignatures) and novelties (uncharacterized, “new” features, which may be of most interest to agnostic astrobiological investigations), and data transmission.

ocean worlds↗

Embracing the fourth Industrial Revolution - Challenges, Opportunities and Path Forward for Propulsion

The aerospace industry is at a point where components are reaching design maturity and performance improvements are incremental. Aggressive goals to achieve sustainability and the threat of climate change necessitate a new paradigm. An artificial intelligence (AI) approach that enables revolutionary changes in system architecture, mission analysis and performance metrics is needed. The growing interest and development in the field of machine learning presents an opportunity to speed up by 10X or more the discovery, analysis and development of aerospace systems using artificial intelligence. Through IDEAS (Intelligent Design and Engineering of Aerospace Systems) we are embarking on a research and development effort that addresses this opportunity. The objective of IDEAS is to enable design of systems based on requirements. We discuss possible approaches to generating data, training models and applying them to near term applications. Results of recent workshops with industry, academia and other agencies to identify challenges to adopting AI and machine learning are presented.

Machine learning↗

Embracing the Fourth Industrial Revolution - Challenges, Opportunities and Path Forward for Propulsion

The aerospace industry is at a point where components are reaching design maturity and performance improvements are incremental. Aggressive goals to achieve sustainability and the threat of climate change necessitate a new paradigm. An artificial intelligence (AI) approach that enables revolutionary changes in system architecture, mission analysis and performance metrics is needed. The growing interest and development in the field of machine learning presents an opportunity to speed up by 10X or more the discovery, analysis and development of aerospace systems using artificial intelligence. Through IDEAS (Intelligent Design and Engineering of Aerospace Systems) we are embarking on a research and development effort that addresses this opportunity. The objective of IDEAS is to enable design of systems based on requirements. We discuss possible approaches to generating data, training models and applying them to near term applications. Results of recent workshops with industry, academia and other agencies to identify challenges to adopting AI and machine learning are presented.

Machine learning↗

NASA Satellites and Data Fusion: A Case Study with Coral Reefs

As the world is experiencing a significant rise in both AI, Climate, and Space start-up companies, we are in a new wave of limitless innovation. NASA's statutory responsibility is to "provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof." (51 U.S.C. § 20112) In particular, through machine learning, the public data drawn from NASA’s space assets can provide insights for addressing climate-related problems here on Earth. And many climate start-up companies can benefit from leveraging this data, either for proof of concepts or their own missions. In the Fall of 2021, several scientists from NASA and Coral Vita led a Practicum with the Georgia Institute of Technology Masters in Data Analytics program. The Practicum saw two teams of students develop and implement machine learning models to infer, from CALIPSO satellite imagery, vitality properties upon satellite pass. This kind of capability can lead to real-time mapping of coral health around the world, giving organization an understanding of where to prioritize reef reconstitution.. In this presentation, we will highlight this use case and discuss other concrete applications in which space data is used to solve problems here on Earth.

Earth Sciences↗

MLtool Python Code

Machine Learning (ML) is a subfield of Artificial Intelligence that gives computers the ability to learn from past data without being explicitly programmed. The predictive capabilities of ML models have already been used to facilitate several scientific breakthroughs. However, the practical application of ML is often limited due to the gaps in technical knowledge of its users. The common issue faced by many scientific researchers is the inability to choose the appropriate ML pipelines that are needed to treat real-world data, which is often sparse and noisy. To solve this problem, we have developed an automated Machine Learning tool (MLtool) that includes a set of ML algorithms and approaches to aid scientific researchers. The current version of MLtool is implemented as an object-oriented Python code that is easily extensible. It includes 44 different regression algorithms used to model data. MLtool helps users select the best model for their data, based on the scoring metrics used. Besides regression algorithms, MLtool also includes a suite of pre- and post-processing techniques such as missing value imputation, categorical variable encoding, input feature normalization, uncertainty quantification, exploratory data analysis (EDA), etc. MLtool was tested on several publicly available multi-dimensional data sets and was found capable of making accurate predictions.

Machine Learning↗

NASA’s Prototype Spectral Water Inversion Processor and Emulator (SWIPE): Towards Global Coastal and Inland Water Quality and Algal Biodiversity Monitoring

Degradation of Earth’s inland water resources due to anthropogenic perturbations and climate anomalies at both local and global scales continues to place human health at substantial risk. There is now a growing necessity to develop pragmatic approaches that allow timely and effective extrapolation of local processes, to spatially resolved global products, and to promote operational and sustainable resource policy management. This presentation will provide updates on NASA’s prototype open-source aquatic modeling platform, Spectral Water Inversion Processor and Emulator (SWIPE), which is a comprehensive, multi-faceted modeling platform for both forward and inverse modeling of diverse aquatic ecosystems from the benthos to top-of-atmosphere (TOA). SWIPE provides a cohesive application which leverages recent advancements in particle modeling, Big Data analytics, and machine learning to develop a high-fidelity synthetic training ground for sensitivity studies and algorithm development for multispectral or upcoming hyperspectral missions. Some of the prominent features of SWIPE to be discussed include: 1. Advanced hyperspectral modeling of globally diverse algal and non-algal particles using a novel two-layer coated sphere scattering model and radiative transfer modeling, 2. Massive, highly detailed synthetic spectral libraries of Analysis-Ready-Data (ARD) which include spectral libraries of particle microphysics, water biogeophysical and optical properties, as well as surface and TOA reflectances at 1 nm resolution, 3. An ensemble of pre-built analytic, machine learning, and deep learning inversion algorithms for various water quality and biodiversity related retrieval parameters and uncertainty quantification, 4. Sensor-agnostic water quality inversion at wide ranging spatial and spectral resolutions including a codebase for seamless application in the Google Earth Engine and NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) for planetary scale analysis. SWIPE will be a fully open-source platform based in python with comprehensive documentation, tutorials, and options for distributed computing on high performance computing clusters or on single, local machines. Further, we will discuss how we envision SWIPE contributing towards a global analysis of coastal and inland water quality dynamics.

top-of-atmosphere (TOA)↗

Supervised Learning Applied to Air Traffic Trajectory Classification

Given the recent increase of interest in introducing new vehicle types and missions into the National Airspace System, a transition towards a more autonomous air traffic control system is required in order to enable and handle increased density and complexity. This paper presents an exploratory effort of the needed autonomous capabilities by exploring supervised learning techniques in the context of aircraft trajectories. In particular, it focuses on the application of machine learning algorithms and neural network models to a runway recognition trajectory-classification study. It investigates the applicability and effectiveness of various classifiers using datasets containing trajectory records for a month of air traffic. A feature importance and sensitivity analysis are conducted to challenge the chosen time-based datasets and the ten selected features. The study demonstrates that classification accuracy levels of 90% and above can be reached in less than 40 seconds of training for most machine learning classifiers when one track data point, described by the ten selected features at a particular time step, per trajectory is used as input. It also shows that neural network models can achieve similar accuracy levels but at higher training time costs.

Bosson, Christabelle S.↗

Supervised Learning Applied to Air Traffic Trajectory Classification

Given the recent increase of interest in introducing new vehicle types and missions into the National Airspace System, a transition towards a more autonomous air traffic control system is required in order to enable and handle increased density and complexity. This paper presents an exploratory effort of the needed autonomous capabilities by exploring supervised learning techniques in the context of aircraft trajectories. In particular, it focuses on the application of machine learning algorithms and neural network models to a runway recognition trajectory-classification study. It investigates the applicability and effectiveness of various classifiers using datasets containing trajectory records for a month of air traffic. A feature importance and sensitivity analysis are conducted to challenge the chosen time-based datasets and the ten selected features. The study demonstrates that classification accuracy levels of 90% and above can be reached in less than 40 seconds of training for most machine learning classifiers when one track data point, described by the ten selected features at a particular time step, per trajectory is used as input. It also shows that neural network models can achieve similar accuracy levels but at higher training time costs.

Bosson, Christabelle↗

ES2Vec: Earth Science Metadata Suggestions and Analogical Reasoning

As the volume of text-based Earth science research grows, it is increasingly possible to discover latent relationships in the literature. However, traditional methodologies are restricted by limited computational capabilities and intractable problem spaces. Advancements in natural language processing (NLP) have allowed us to use an extensive Earth science corpus to create a domain-specific word vector model, Es2Vec, which we have used to surface latent relationships between Earth science concepts and generate improved keyword tags. Earth science metadata keyword assignment is a challenging problem. Dataset curators select appropriate keywords from the Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) set of keywords. The keywords an are integral part of the search and discovery of these datasets. Hence, the selection of keywords is crucial to increasing the discoverability of datasets. Utilizing machine learning techniques, we provide users with automated keyword suggestions to complement manual selection. We trained a machine learning model that leverages the semantic embedding ability of Word2Vec models to process abstracts and suggest relevant keywords. A user interface tool we built to assist data curators in the assignment of such keywords is also described.

word vectors↗

Feasibility Study of Distributed Decision-Making on the Edge for Urban Air Mobility

The Concept of Operations for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) put forward by FAA, NASA, and several industry stakeholders acknowledges the diversity and complexity in UAM operations and, thereby, envisions a federated architecture for UAM management. In this architecture, the decision-making is distributed to a set of service providers who collectively manage the shared airspace usage by different stakeholders. This notionally brings autonomy closer to the UAM businesses and encourages to explore the feasibility of decision making on the very edge, which is the topic of the presented research. This paper reports research conducted on the hypothesis based on which the residual compute capability onboard smart unmanned aerial systems (UASs) is utilized to build situational awareness and resolve conflicts by passive and active coordination among multiple UASs, thereby implementing a layer of distributed autonomy in UAM. Key features of the edge-computing approach involve inter-UAS information exchange, independent assessment of own flight and environmental conditions, and estimation of other UASs’ flight preferences, incorporating machine learning techniques in the last two. Parallel computing on portable graphics processing unit (GPU) enables the machine learning workflow on the edge. A custom-built 3D simulator is used to evaluate the efficacy of the distributed decision-making on the edge. Each edge node, representing a smart UAS, connects to the simulator from a remote location and independently controls the behavior of the corresponding virtual asset in the simulator, analogous to participants in an online multi-player game. The presented edge-computing-based distributed decision-making framework is envisioned to pave the way for collective mobility of autonomous air vehicles in the future shared airspace, while allowing the inclusion of the business preferences of the UAS operators within allowed regulatory limits.

Edge computing↗

Feasibility Study of Distributed Decision-Making on the Edge for Urban Air Mobility

The Concept of Operations for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) put forward by FAA, NASA, and several industry stakeholders acknowledges the diversity and complexity in UAM operations and, thereby, envisions a federated architecture for UAM management. In this architecture, the decision-making is distributed to a set of service providers who collectively manage the shared airspace usage by different stakeholders. This notionally brings autonomy closer to the UAM businesses and encourages to explore the feasibility of decision making on the very edge, which is the topic of the presented research. This paper reports research conducted on the hypothesis based on which the residual compute capability onboard smart unmanned aerial systems (UASs) is utilized to build situational awareness and resolve conflicts by passive and active coordination among multiple UASs, thereby implementing a layer of distributed autonomy in UAM. Key features of the edge-computing approach involve inter-UAS information exchange, independent assessment of own flight and environmental conditions, and estimation of other UASs’ flight preferences, incorporating machine learning techniques in the last two. Parallel computing on portable graphics processing unit (GPU) enables the machine learning workflow on the edge. A custom-built 3D simulator is used to evaluate the efficacy of the distributed decision-making on the edge. Each edge node, representing a smart UAS, connects to the simulator from a remote location and independently controls the behavior of the corresponding virtual asset in the simulator, analogous to participants in an online multi-player game. The presented edge-computing-based distributed decision-making framework is envisioned to pave the way for collective mobility of autonomous air vehicles in the future shared airspace, while allowing the inclusion of the business preferences of the UAS operators within allowed regulatory limits.

Edge computing↗