Sensorweb Systems for Global High-Resolution Monitoring of Environmental Phenomena

Many science phenomena are difficult to observe because they occur infrequently and without warning. Over the course of the last twenty years, the concept of a "sensorweb", or a network of interdependent instruments that autonomously coordinate to observe phenomena of interest, has been developed and implemented. In one use case, sensorwebs use in-situ and low to moderate resolution sensors for event detection and pointable sensors with high spatial resolution for subsequent observation of targets, thus accomplishing efficient high-resolution monitoring. Previous sensorwebs have demonstrated this concept for monitoring floods and volcanoes. To improve these sensorwebs, we integrate commercial satellite constellations for high-resolution observations, resulting in higher spatial and temporal resolutions than the individual assets used in previous work. We also spatially extend sensorwebs to the global scale, produce a high volume of alerts, and automatically generate useful high-resolution data products. Our sensorwebs represent the state of the art in automatic acquisition and processing of data for environmental phenomena monitoring. We demonstrate the capabilities of these improved sensorwebs in our new flood sensorweb and volcano sensorweb systems and describe ongoing efforts to use more in-situ and spaced-based sensors and generate additional data products.