Due
to its inherent characteristics, the Instrument allows for a whole new spectrum
of data collection and analysis, as well as for the optimization of the
research being carried out in complex environments.
Faculty
of the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric
Science at the University of Miami [http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/], as stated in
their commitment letter, will utilize the Instrument for research and education
efforts in Coastal Studies.
Coastal research by the team of Nelson Melo
[http://CAKE.fiu.edu/Melo] at FIU and their extramural colleagues
will utilize the instrument research in the fields of oceanography and marine
remote sensing. In particular, it will provide new ways to study oceanic
surface and sub-surface phenomena.
One
of the challenges in airborne remote sensing of the water and coastal
environment is the interference of the atmosphere [I. Levin; Chuanmin Hu; W. Zhang]. Because water targets are typically
dark, an accurate atmospheric correction is required. Such a correction,
however, is often difficult because of the unknown thickness of altitude of
aerosol. These unknowns are often assumed "known", based on historical values
but the errors involved on those "corrections" often mask the data needed
aerosols [Gordon, H.; Mao, Z. (2013), Mao, Z. (2014)]. The Instrument's low
flight heights (less than 500 ft) and no-vibration,
slow-flight speeds will minimize such interference and reduce
blurring of the high-spatial resolution (1-10 cm) pixels needed to
obtain mutli-temporal aerial photography (color,
panchromatic and multispectral) and integrate this data with up to 12 ancillary
sensors.
Sandy
beaches provide a natural barrier between the ocean and inland communities,
ecosystems, and resources. However, these dynamic environments move and change
in response to winds, waves, and currents. During a hurricane, these changes
can be large and sometimes catastrophic. High waves and storm surge act
together to erode beaches and inundate low-lying lands, putting inland
communities at risk [Doran, K.S.]. The Instrument will enable the identification
of coastline areas likely to experience extreme and potentially hazardous
erosion during a hurricane, as well as low-cost quick response to
post-disaster coastal change.
The Dominican Republic Universidad Tecnológica
de Santiago's Center for Energy Studies will utilize the Instrument for analytics of
hyper-spectral near-coastal aerial imagery to detect areas of cold water
at sea bed. This would allow piping of that water into the chilling
system on shore, resulting in tremendous saving on electricity for
air-conditioning for large installations.
References Cited
[LL07] I. Levin and E. Levina, "Effect of atmospheric interference and sensor
noise in retrieval of optically active materials in the ocean by hyperspectral remote sensing," Appl. Opt. 46, 6896-6906 (2007).
[HC02] C. Hu and K. Carder,
Atmospheric correction for airborne sensors: Comment on a scheme used for CASI,
Remote Sensing of Environment, Volume 79, Issue 1, January 2002, Pages 134-137,
ISSN 0034-4257
[RZ07] J. Ruan and W. Zhang. An efficient spectral algorithm for network community discovery and
its applications to biological and social networks. In
ICDM, 2007.
[GW94] H.R.
Gordon and M. Wang. "Retrieval of water-leaving radiance and
aerosol optical thickness over the oceans with SeaWiFS:
a preliminary algorithm." Applied optics 33, no. 3
(1994): 443-452.
[MAO+13] Z. Mao, et al. "A
new approach to estimate the aerosol scattering ratios for the atmospheric
correction of satellite remote sensing data in coastal regions." Remote
Sensing of Environment 132 (2013): 186-194.
[MAO+14] Z. Mao, et al. "A
potentially universal algorithm for estimating aerosol scattering reflectance
from satellite remote sensing data." Remote Sensing of Environment 142
(2014): 131-140.
[SFL+12] K.S. Doran, H.F. Stockdon, K.L. Sopkin, D.M.
Thompson, and N.G. Plant, 2012, National assessment of hurricane-induced
coastal erosion hazards: Mid-Atlantic Coast: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File
Report 2013-1131, 28 p.