CDI-Type I: International Collaboration to Study Oceanic Currents Phenomena and Climate Changes Through Cross-Mining and Retrieving Multispectral Satellite Image and Sensor Network

Many are concerned about climate change and one of the most important climate research problems is understanding the relationship between oceans and the global climate. A significant challenge facing climatologists and meteorologists today is making sense of the vast and continually increasing amount of data generated by earth observation satellites, radars, and sensor networks. These data are increasingly available in high-resolution image formats and must be incorporated correctly into climate change models. Timely and proper interpretation of these data can provide advanced warnings for severe weather, enabling action that minimizes the resulting damage and saving lives. Computerized systems for cross-modality image query, mining, and recovery by content are becoming essential. This project will form an international multi-disciplinary virtual organization to develop an efficient data modeling cross mining and retrieval system for satellite images and other sensor data applied to mesoscale ocean structures. The team will take a novel data-driven approach, designing an image retrieval system using advanced knowledge management and statistical learning techniques and developing advanced technologies for large-scale image and sensor network data management.

These developments will advance the fields of computer and information sciences, meteorology, and climatology and the open-source platform will benefit the researchers and developers of remote sensing systems. This project will enable real-time monitoring of severe weather and climate change and the discovery and analysis of the evolution of various ocean phenomena. It will increase our knowledge of atmospheric and oceanic circulations and interactions, improving our understanding of the mechanism of climate change and clarifying the potential for environmental catastrophes and economic boondoggles. Through active collaboration with international researchers and institutions across the Atlantic and the Pacific, the virtual organization will coordinate and streamline research efforts while increasing the value of available resources and developing an international graduate student exchange program.