NOAA National Ocean Service Remote Sensing Applications and Concept of Operations

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is the primary civilian ocean agency in the United States. To meet its mission, the agency addresses coastal and ocean challenges on a daily basis focusing on issues ranging from genomics to coastal inundation. Comprised of 11 programmatic lines, NOAA´s National Ocean Service (NOS) has a wide-range set of inter-related challenges extending from management of estuaries and marine protected areas to operational oceanography and forecasting. To meet these challenges, remote sensing technologies play a critical role in the NOS´ ability to assess, monitor, and predict changes in environmental and biogeochemical parameters which support specific applications. In this presentation, we identify NOS ocean and coastal remote sensing requirements and describe progress towards the unified concept of operations initiated in 2004. The processes used in key remote sensing applications areas are illustrated in terms of their end-to-end processing systems. Finally, we show how NOS partners with other agencies, academia, and industry to achieve its remote sensing mission most effectively.