National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Small Business Innovation Research 2001 Program Solicitation

TOPIC E4 Applying Earth Science Measurements

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E4.01 Special Event Imaging and Other Earth Observing Instruments
E4.02 Advanced Instrument Technology for Transitional Boundaries of Land and Water
E4.03 Innovative Tools and Techniques Supporting Earth Science Measurements
E4.04 Advanced Educational Processes and Tools

The Earth Science Enterprise (ESE) continues to search for solutions on how the global environment is changing and the effect these changes have on the human societal and economic environment. The planet's continual environmental change, the increasing human ability to influence the environment and accelerate the uses of science in practical uses is of strong interest to the Enterprise. Innovative tools and techniques that are easy to access and use are needed to produce information from Earth science measurements. This information will help guide systemic organizational change in the uses of the planet's resources that can result in a balance of sustainable global economic development with the preservation of the Earth systems' ability to renew itself. The goal of this topic is the routine use of Earth science results by a broad user community that works daily with land/biota, air, water, educational, and emergency issues.

E4.01 Special Event Imaging and Other Earth Observing Instruments
Lead Center: MSFC
Participating Center(s): None

Proposals are sought for the development of innovative technology for the observation of short-lived phenomena in the Earth's atmosphere, oceans, and land. These innovations will make important contributions to the ESE's science and application themes. Areas of interest include but are not limited to phenomena such as severe weather, thunderstorms, lightning, volcanoes, wildfires, flash floods, and ocean blooms. These innovations are intended to increase our understanding of the effects of short term forcing on the interacting physical, chemical and biological processes that affect the environment in which we live. In addition, it is anticipated that proposed innovations should directly contribute to the ESE goal of predicting and mitigating natural hazards. Atmospheric measurements of interest include meteorological parameters that play important roles in short lived phenomena including clouds, precipitation, lightning, cloud ice, water vapor, aerosols, winds, temperature and chemical constituents and effluents. Surface measurements include temperatures of ocean and land, ocean productivity and color, terrain mapping and changes, vegetation index and biological productivity. Sought after technological advances include techniques that lead to improved temporal, spatial and spectral response to the above-described geophysical phenomena. These advances may be at the component, subsystem, and complete system level and should address reduced size, weight or power, improved reliability and lower cost in addition to the requirements for improved performance. These innovations should expand the capabilities of airborne systems (manned and unmanned) and the next generation spaceborne systems. Innovative sensor approaches are an important element of competitive proposals under this solicitation:

• Storm/cloud sensing technology used to obtain a proxy to the instantaneous internal convective strength of storms and its relationship to latent heat release and transport.
• Lightning sensing technology to measure total flash distribution, frequency and intensity, and provide flash type discrimination (e.g., intracloud versus cloud-to-ground lightning).
• Technology to aid in the mitigation of wildfires, either by early detection or through the measurement of phenomena that contribute to or initiate fires.
• Agile optical sensors with high temporal, spectral, and spatial resolution.
  

E4.02 Advanced Instrument Technology for Transitional Boundaries of Land and Water
Lead Center: SSC
Participating Center(s): None

The coastal zone represents a dynamic environment subject to both natural and anthropogenic influences. Innovative technologies are sought for the measurement of biological, chemical, and geological processes characteristic of this environment. Potential new measurement instrumentation include the following:

• Surface and subsurface water variables (e.g., chemical composition, nutrient content, biological/organic content, optical properties, temperature, salinity, suspended materials) and their changes with depth;
• Changes in vegetation occurring on small spatial scales or for which the spectral response is influenced by changing water levels;
• Natural hazards (e.g., hurricanes and sea level rise) and man-induced pressures on land use/land cover in near shore areas (e.g., particulate loading, nutrient loading);
• Physicochemical properties associated with subsurface soil and sediment and their changes with depth in environments covered by water or vegetation, and
• Atmospheric variables necessary for the correction of remotely sensed data (e.g., aerosol absorption, ozone absorption, oxygen and water vapor absorption, atmospheric path length, Rayleigh scattering, aerosol size distribution, and Mie scattering).

Efforts should emphasize the development or improvement of technology applications in areas such as instrumentation and tools for data analysis to support these areas of study. Applications technologies should support both scientific research and sustainable economic development of the coastal zone.

• Airborne and ground based multispectral and hyperspectral-imaging systems providing improved spectral resolution (e.g., less than 10 nm bandwidths, and less than 1nm resolution). Spatial resolution (e.g., less than 30 cm ground sampling distance) with higher sensitivities (e.g., .05 NedL) and signal to noise ratios (e.g., greater than 1000:1) necessary for water observations but with the dynamic range (e.g., albedo of .01 to .5) to include terrestrial observations as well.
• Ancillary data collection for imaging systems which, including the integration of the Global Positioning System, coordinates system, platform attitude, altitude, radiometric and atmospheric data characteristics.
• Improved data processing and analysis systems for image data mosaics, geometric correction, atmospheric correction, radiometric correction, and formatting for ease of analysis.
• Instruments for measuring apparent and inherent optical properties of rivers, lakes and oceans.
• Improved instruments for enhancing the collection of water samples and in situ measurements with equipment deployed from small and large research vessels (e.g., profiling instruments).
• Instruments for measuring bio-optical fluorescence of particles in water.
• Data acquisition systems that integrate multiple sensors integrated data analysis software, networking of multi-sensor arrays, autonomous acquisition and transmission.
• Improvements in ground penetrating radar to improve portability expand frequency ranges, receiver sensitivities, software analysis tools, and integration of ground penetrating radar data with other sensor systems.
• Instruments and tools for in situ and in vivo analysis of terrestrial and aquatic plant bioactivity (e.g., evapotranspiration, optical properties, fluorescence, chlorophyll content, and nutrient uptake).
• Instruments for collecting and analyzing bottom sediments in water for particle size distribution, nutrients, metals and radionuclides.
  

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E4.03 Innovative Tools and Techniques Supporting Earth Science Measurements
Lead Center: SSC
Participating Center(s): GSFC

Proposals are sought for the development of new technologies and technical methods that make Earth science measurements easy to use by practitioners in the areas of community growth, disaster management, environmental quality and resource management. This subtopic seeks proposals with team members supporting the development of end-to-end systems that ingest data to produce information for an end-user community. Proposals should address the full range of technologies; aeronautical, space, in situ instrumentation, computational methods, distribution and capabilities required for the proposed development. Developments should take into consideration operational requirements across different operating systems, computing platforms, wired and wireless communications capability and the technical sophistication of the end user.

Community Growth
Innovative technologies are sought in the diverse area of community growth which includes urban planning, real estate, utilities, transportation and engineering/construction/development.

• Urban planning applications include the monitoring of urban growth including the evolution of the correlative transportation infrastructure, cadastral mapping, and the production of maps and other analyses within a GIS utilizing satellite images as input.
• Utilities applications involve gas, electric, water, and telecommunications infrastructure and include monitoring and site planning and development.
• Transportation applications cross land, sea, and air and include everything from mapping of the evolving road, highway and rail network, pipeline routing and monitoring, cost-surface analysis of new transportation routes, traffic monitoring, monitoring barge traffic, international shipping, and sea ice. An additional transportation application involves the monitoring of volcanic eruptive plumes to reroute air traffic.
• Engineering/Construction/Development applications include site and infrastructure mapping, soils, runoff, and drainage mapping, and boundary mapping.

Disaster Management
Proposals are sought to develop new instrumentation to perform hazard assessment/risk exposure, disaster monitoring, and damage impact assessment related to either natural or manmade disasters. Applications include the requirements of public and private first responders and early warning systems. Major natural hazards categories include earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, landslides, wildfires, flooding, and severe storms. Major man-made disasters include oil and other chemical spills, catastrophic release of airborne pollutants, catastrophic release of radioactive materials, and ruptures of reservoirs and pipelines.

The disaster management sector is involved with the operational logistics and mitigation of natural disasters as well as post-disaster damage impact assessment. The disaster management theme also includes all insurance applications. The insurance and disaster management industries are related, in that they both deal with the risk of natural disasters and managing activity before, during, and after disasters. Typical requirements include land cover characterization and DEM analysis to assess flood hazards, coastal mapping to assess hurricane and storm risk, and mapping of fuel loading to understand brush fire hazard.

Environmental Quality
Proposals are to perform a diverse array of activities that generally relate to air and water quality and include instrumentation for monitoring, management, and mitigation/remediation of groundwater and soil pollution, acid mine drainage and other effects of surface mining and solid waste. Other activities relate to ozone and acid rain, wetlands, analysis of environmental impact of development, non-point source pollution and analysis of urban heat islands. The disruption of the environment by nitrogen fertilizers, phosphorus, and runoff of animal waste from animal farms is also included.

Resource Management
New technologies are sought for balancing the resource demands and growth of populations with natural resource availability and sustainability. The natural resources applications include several broad types of activity: agriculture, forestry, range-land management, nonrenewable and renewable energy, extraction (mining), conservation, fisheries and analysis of the regional impacts of climate change.

• The agricultural sector includes private farmers, agribusiness, government agencies and commodities forecasting, analysis, and speculation.
• The forestry sector includes global timber and paper businesses, government agencies and forests around the world.
• Range-land management includes land use assessments, planning and monitoring the health of large ranches, and Federal lands.
• Nonrenewable energy applications include the exploration and development of oil, coal, and uranium. Renewable resource applications include analysis of solar and wind energy potential.
• Extraction includes the mining of minerals on all scales.
• Fisheries include industrial, commercial, and sport fishing, as well as fisheries management and conservation. Fish are defined broadly to include all living animals harvested from the ocean or inland water bodies.

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E4.04 Advanced Educational Processes and Tools
Lead Center: GSFC
Participating Center(s): ARC, JPL, LaRC, MSFC, SSC

This subtopic focuses on innovation in effective applications related to classroom or museum ready software tools for display and/or analysis of Earth science information for learners in both formal and informal settings, and tools for organization and dissemination of NASA's Earth Science educational materials to a wide array of educational audiences. The Earth Science educational program covers a wide range of audiences from students to adults in both classroom settings such as public schools or continuing education venues to all matter of informal learning settings such as radio, television, museums, parks, scouts, and the internet. In these venues the learning focuses on the scientific discoveries by the Earth Science enterprise, the technology innovations and the applied use of these discoveries and technologies for improved decision making by all.

The areas of interest (described below) cross-cut the 3 programmatic areas within the Earth Science Education program (formal, informal and professional development) and hence are anticipated to have utility in at least 2 of these areas and most likely in all three areas.

The first area of interest focuses on innovation in the application of digital library technologies to educational materials and audiences. The successful proposal must be able to interface with or be integrated into existing educational digital library efforts within NASA's Earth Science Education program. These proposals will advance the use and usability of globally distributed, networked information resources, and encourage existing and new communities to focus on innovative applications areas. Collaboration between Earth scientists, formal or informal education community professionals, and computer scientists is required for these proposals to demonstrate useful results. Areas of interest include:

• Extend the current Joined Digital Library (JOIN) effort by developing additional Jini applications. JOIN is a collection of tools based on Sun's Jini technology used to implement efficient, decentralized, and distributed computing systems and follows "the network is the computer" philosophy.
• Development of formal and informal education audience-specific interfaces (for example but not limited to: specific interfaces for students, Park interpreters, TV producers, curriculum developers, etc.).
• Development of interfaces to promote diversity within educational audiences (such as but not limited to age, ethnicity, cultural, urban/rural, etc.).
• Development of accessibility tools for disabled users to interact and search digital libraries.
• Development and access to educational materials including new resources for science, mathematics and engineering education at all levels.
• Development of interoperability tools to integrate dissimilar library archives.
• Develop applications that enhance the general functionality of existing digital libraries by providing new general purpose tools for archive management, metadata ingestion, intelligent search and retrieval.
• Tools to support online community interaction, which could include new means for gathering, interacting, and communicating with other library users.

The second area of interest focuses on innovation in effective software and related development techniques, and in highly practical methods for maintaining and disseminating software for use by educational audiences engaged in teaching or learning about Earth science. The specific areas of greatest interest are highly-portable, classroom-ready software for analysis, visualization and processing of Earth science satellite data, and methods to provide long-term support and viability for educational software. Collaboration between Earth scientists, educators, computer scientists and "business" model experts is required for these proposals to demonstrate useful results. Areas of interest include:

• Extend the current Image2000 effort by developing additional plug-in applications and modifying core software if necessary. Image2000 is a Java/JAI-based image processing package being developed at GSFC.
• User-friendly, extensible, Earth science satellite image processing software for multiple operating systems, for educational use in K - 12, undergraduate and continuing education venues.
• Techniques and software for integrating vector and raster data for the visualization and analysis of geo-spatial Earth science data.
• Tutorials geared toward the use of image processing software for visualization and analysis of Earth science related satellite imagery.

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