SPoRT Undertakes New Collaboration with the United Nations (U.N.) Satellite Centre

Patrick Duran and Anita LeRoy (ST11) met with Samir Belabbes from the United Nations Institute for Training and Research to investigate ways for SPoRT to provide NASA remote sensing products to the UN Satellite Centre. The new collaboration springs from a presentation given by Belabbes at last year’s Joint Applications Workshop of NASA’s CYGNSS and TROPICS missions, which was organized by Duran and Jason Dunion from the University of Miami. The UN Satellite Centre maintains a 24/7 operational forecasting and disaster response center that serves UN member states. The Centre has a need for remote sensing datasets that enhance their ability to anticipate and respond to disasters, and data from new NASA missions such as TROPICS could be particularly beneficial for monitoring high-impact events. A key takeaway from the discussion is that the UN and its member states will be much better able to use NASA data if it is provided in GeoTIFF format. SPoRT will investigate ways to provide data products from current and upcoming NASA missions in this format for dissemination to UN member states and use at the UN operational forecasting and response centers.