Citation:

Maraldo, D. AND D. Williams. EPA Remote Sensing Overview with applications to SAR urban flood mapping. Civil Applications Committee (CAC) monthly meeting, Reston, VA, February 01, 2023.

Impact/Purpose:

This presentation is for the interagency Civil Applications Committee (CAC) inform senior US Government leadeership on EPA's research using remote sensing data and products. The CAC facilitates the appropriate civil uses of overhead remote sensing technologies and data collected by military and intelligence capabilities, including from commercial sources. The CAC is operated and staffed by the U.S. Geological Survey on behalf of the U.S. Department of the Interior and its interagency partners. The director of the U.S. Geological Survey is the chair of the committee, and the vice-chair is a non-Department of the Interior senior official. The CAC ensures certain Federal civil agencies have access to these remotely sensed assets to meet their statutory missions in ways that do not threaten the civil rights, civil liberties, and personal privacy of U.S. citizens. To meets its mandate, the CAC hosts various working groups and communities of interest including those focused on thermal issues (wildland fires and volcanoes), environmental security, and historical satellite imagery. The CAC is a strong advocate for all the federal departments and agencies that utilize civil, national, and commercial remote sensing imagery. Demonstrating EPA’s use of remote sensing data to this community, including but not limited to commercial high resolution imagery, provides greater access to future data products and services.   Examples of work could be historical air photo analysis, CAFO mapping, emergency response, etc. David will be briefing a SAR use case where they mapped floods in East St. Louis. 

Description:

The EPA has a long history of using remote sensing imagery, data products, and services. Beginning with the production of Superfund site assessments by Environmental Photographic Interpretation Center in the 1970s to current agencywide use of commercial high resolution satellite imagery, the EPA has utilized geospatial data for assist in the Agency mission of protecting human health and the environment. This presentation describes several use cases that apply remote sensing data and geospatial analysis to provide information for air, land and water research programs. The use of a remote sensing imagery to assist mapping of urban flooding is highlighted in this presentation. 

Record Details: