These Satellites See Through the Clouds to Track Flooding

It was hard to send aid to the town of Impfondo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo because of its remote location. Cloud to Street has provided information about where to safely relocate refugees and shortened the time it takes to detect floods.

Cloud to Street helped governments, their disaster arms, and organizations like the World Bank figure out who needed to be relocated and where and give them evidence to lobby for more relief funds. Cloud to Street helps insurance companies with their risk and payouts. They will need to use SAR. She says that radar has one advantage that is hard to overcome, that is when it's flooding, and that's when it's cloudy and rainy. The huge advantage of it.

It's more difficult to develop a program that can read SAR data than it is to make one that can read pictures.

That is part of the limitations of the human brain. Our brains are modeled on how we process data. We don't see anything like that. The director of the Vision Lab at the University of Dayton says that it is more difficult to deal with optical data than it is with radar. We don't use microwaves.

Another environmental application for this data is being worked on by the group, which works with the Air Force Research Lab. Glaciers are usually on the dark side of the planet. In addition to being able to see through the gloom, SAR can also reveal the flow dynamics of the glaciers as they melt. As an academic group, the lab will need to collect data from competitors and public satellites.

Umbra's COO had a hard time getting used to it. Master says that his first exposure to it was with regards to US classified capabilities. I came into it with an attitude that it probably wouldn't tell you anything. He believes that our brain is connected to our sensors. He's referring to eyeballs. He says that you can think of SAR as a light that illuminates what your eyes can't see on their own.

Radar satellites are cheap and easy to make, which makes them an advantage over high-definition satellites. They don't need a clean room. The sharper an optical image is, the more useful it is according to master. He says that resolution is driven by large glass. Big glass costs a lot.

Umbra sells data to groups like Cloud to Street and doesn't analyze it. Morrison doesn't think it's a good idea to leave that to the experts. Morrison said to take Schwarz. He says that when she wakes up in the morning, she's thinking about the floods. He doesn't dream of rising water. He says he has a satellite to use.

He hopes that once the data is cheap and readily available, more people will wonder if it will help their own research or business. Morrison claims there are a million niches. Some niches could keep people out of the water.