Wednesday, October 21, 2009
2008 R&D 100 Winner
In 2007, a team from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center tasked an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to fly over one of the damaging wildfires racing through Southern California. The data collected for its sensors—which included crucial thermal-infrared imagery at much higher detail than was available from satellites—was instantly visualized using a software platform called Sensor Web 2.0, developed by scientists and engineers at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., and 10 other companies, laboratories and institutions to gather potentially life-saving information during disaster response situations. The user-friendly system is a significant improvement on existing sensor web technologies, using a workflow management system to integrate and mask the details of an ad hoc set of heterogeneous sensors, which can include UAVs, satellites, in situ sensors, and robotic surface vessels. In addition, Sensor Web 2.0 analyzes and disseminates this information quickly by leveraging new Web 2.0 and sensor web standards. The software platform, already field tested, will contribute to the Global Earth Observing System of Systems initiative that will form a global network of sensors.
Technology
Web 2.0 software platform
Developer
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
George Mason Univ.
Vightel Corp.
Nobilis
Northrop Grumman Corp.
West Virginia Hi-Tech Consortium
Univ. of Maryland
Draper Laboratory
Innovative Solutions
