Leveraging NASA’s Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program to Support Damage Surveys

Satellite remote sensing platforms have long been an asset used by the meteorological and climate communities when looking at impacts from natural hazards. This includes utilizing Earth Observations, especially high spatial resolution ones, to assist with ground surveys conducted by the National Weather Service after suspected tornadoes. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) has a long and successful history of working with the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Offices to utilize remote sensing imagery and derived products to supplement ground damage surveys. Over the past several years, the number of sensors available to supplement these surveys has increased. In addition to the growing amount of data available, the spatial resolution of data has improved, more and different portions of the electromagnetic spectrum are being utilized, and the latency between data acquisition and analysis has decreased. One big reason for these improvements has been the growing commercial sector of satellite imagery.

This presentation will highlight the increased availability and access to commercial remote sensing datasets available through NASA’s Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program and how these datasets are supplementing damage surveys. The CSDA Program was established by NASA's Earth Science Division (ESD) to increase access to commercial small-satellite (smallsat) data that support NASA's Earth Science research and application goals. An ongoing pilot between MSFC and NWS Southern Region in working together to utilize imagery and derived products provided by the CSDA to assist with ground surveys after severe weather events will be presented. Examples from 2024 severe weather events from across Southern Region that utilized imagery and derived products from data provided by the CSDA program will be shown as well.