AIPR 2011: Imaging for decision making

Many decisions of national and international importance require critical information from imaging. These range from measuring the impact of deforestation, to assessing the severity of chemical spills and natural disasters, to identifying threats based on surveillance, to screening large populations for disease. Many of the problems are hard; for example, recent oil spill issues included an extremely large search area, low concentrations and submerged bodies of oil, low signal-to-noise ratios, and the need for repeated monitoring. Decision-making can depend on obtaining reliable imagery observations under these kinds of conditions, often with urgency. A second challenging aspect arises from the need to communicate results to the public in highly politicized environments: making clear the effect of uncertainties on the overall conclusions, and dealing with public perceptions of the role and biases of science and engineering, may be as important as the actual work being carried out.