US: NASA has awarded Cambridge-based Charles River Analytics (CRA) a contract to build a system that analyses satellite imagery to detect major changes, including volcanic eruptions, so scientists can respond more quickly to environmental events. “The $750,000 contract, which follows on an initial $125,000 award in 2012, will be used to develop the system known as DIPSARS for Discovery of Interesting Patterns and Semantic Analysis in Remote Space. It will use CRA’s Object Detection Framework (ODF), which sifts through the mountains of satellite pictures and detects changes in real-time. As we learn more about our world and the physical and social processes in it, it’s important to be able to perceive and understand events and phenomena from a global perspective,” said Daniel Stouch, head, CRA.
The system will let NASA process and analyze which data is relevant, important and interesting enough to prompt follow-on action. The ODF is best suited to quickly detect events such as volcanic eruptions, forest fires and algae blooms.
Source: Boston Herald
