The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has awarded Orion Space Solutions a grant to build a dynamic, seamless one-stop platform to process, analyze, and visualize Earth observations using advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies. The resulting system will further human understanding of environmental change on Earth, considering both current and past environments to provide important insights into rapidly changing environments.
"Leveraging AI technologies and digital solutions, the platform being developed for NOAA will automate processing, analysis, and visualization of Earth observations collected by spaceborne, airborne, and ground-based sensors,” says Wanli Wu, project principal investigator at Orion. “Our system seamlessly connects space, atmosphere, land, and ocean observations from NOAA and elsewhere in a single location, allowing users to reconstruct past and present Earth environments. It can also act as frontend infrastructure supporting operational numerical weather prediction models.”
Wu and his OSS colleagues have deep AI, modeling, and data expertise. With partners Booz Allen Hamilton providing digital twin technology capabilities, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research providing Earth system modeling and data knowledge, the team will transform NOAA’s wealth of data collected from various sensors and platforms into valuable knowledge.
Digital twin technology acts as a real-time digital counterpart of a physical object or process, for example digitally replicating how an ecosystem looks before and after a wildfire. It seamlessly “connects the dots” across data sources, bringing Earth observation data to a single place for processing, analysis, and visualization. In doing this, the platform provides unprecedented visibility and insight into the data and, in the example, a view of current or future ecosystem impacts.
“Booz Allen is excited to demonstrate our track record of building intelligent, AI-powered digital twins from design to implementation, bringing scalable, open-source technology solutions that will deliver immediate impact for NOAA’s mission to monitor our changing global environment,” says Munjeet Singh, Booz Allen senior vice president and leader of the firm’s Bright Labs incubator.
“The team brings a depth of AI, data science, and digital twin expertise to bear, developing new ways to support NOAA in better understanding and addressing pressing environmental challenges,” says Rachel Hauser, Orion Space Solutions’ Senior Director of Business Development.
Click here to learn about CubeSat sensors and subsystems from Orion Space Solutions.
