Streamlining Spacecraft Observation Response to Volcanic Activity Detection with a Ground and Space-based Sensor Web System.

Volcanoes affect the lives of millions of people, and so streamlining the process by which data of active volcanism are obtained and processed is an important part of volcano monitoring and hazard assessment. The Volcano Sensor Web is an application of networked sensor technology that is being applied to volcano monitoring. The Sensor Web team will utilize the University of Hawaii automated system for processing data of volcanic thermal emission obtained by GOES (in geostationary orbits) and MODIS (on the Terra and Aqua spacecraft). This yields alerts on timescales of 15 minutes for GOES and less than 24 hours for MODIS data. Additionally, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory has a network of sensors that can detect not only volcanic activity but also precursors of an eruption, and which can autonomously generate an alert. On notification, JPL automatically generates a spacecraft command sequence that is then transmitted to Goddard Space Flight Center for uplink to the Earth Observing 1 (EO-1) spacecraft. This enables rapid-response, high-resolution multispectral (ALI) and hyperspectral (Hyperion) observations to be obtained of the target volcano as quickly as possible. Extending the use of autonomy, Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment (Chien et al., 2003, LPSC34 abstract 1458) software onboard EO-1 can then process the data and report the results (e.g., number and location of thermally active pixels).