Last week Robert and I met to discuss the project. While we are funded under the overall grant, our category is more freely categorized as "suggest your own".
The primary team has a general focus on hurricanes; however, we are all keenly aware of the limitations that local and potentially long-term weather that a hurricane will impose on imagery. Much of the primary team is looking at other spectrums to try to peer through clouds in order to make observations of the ground, structures, and infrastructure.
Given our less constrained task, Robert and I have been considering other extreme events that avoid the problem of weather. The two best candidates are tornadoes and tsunamis. For tornadoes, the fronts are fast moving and do not typically linger for days. For tsunamis, the triggering event is generally an earthquake and is not subject to weather events. These classes of disasters suggest that we can deliver a product that focuses on the heart of the problem and is not subject to the broad number of ancillary problems associated with hurricanes.
We met this Nick at Dzyne and posed this alternative. We will be searching for imagery in these areas using the available databases.
The onboarding process is proceeding. I have been given access to a number of imaging databases and we have scheduled a number of training sessions with the different services. We will have a large training meeting next Thursday.
As far as future schedule, the next government tag-up is scheduled for Monday (2/25) at 2:30p and Phase 2 Kickoff is scheduled for March 12-13.