SAR Images for Radargrammetry Tests

The two SAR remote sensing groups at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) and the University of Miami (UMiami) reported in today’s PI meeeting that their industry partners, Capella Space and Airbus Defence and Space, have acquired several SAR images that will be used for algorithm development and testing.

Capella Space was able to acquire three SAR images of a part of the Mississippi River south of New Orleans during the recent landfall of Hurricane Ida on August 29, 30, and 31, 2021. The images are centered on a Conoco-Phillips oil refinery. They show significant signatures of rain in the atmosphere during the storm and, apparently, flooding of some land areas on the day after the storm. The UMass group will purchase these images from Capella Space for further analysis. A second slide prepared by UMass shows the coverage of planned image acquisitions in the region in northern Florida where Hurricane Michael made landfall in 2018. Hurricane Michael has been selected as a test case for joint modeling and data exchange exercises for the NHCI project.

The UMiami group presented eight slides with SAR images acquired in the Hurricane Michael landfall area by Airbus. The images are from five overpasses of the satellites TerraSAR-X and Paz between August 26 and September 1, 2021. They will be used for tests of radargrammetry algorithms, which derive topographic information based on the principles of photogrammetry / stereo imaging with optical imagery.