The SAR-CBC Project: Experiences and Lessons Learned from Recent SAR Capacity Building Activities
Abstract
Radar remote sensing is a rapidly growing technology capable of observing the Earth under all weather and illumination conditions. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors can consistently map the Earth surface, identify change, and track surface deformation over large scales and long time spans. Due to recent advances in data access and sensor technologies, SAR has become an attractive resource for many monitoring and decision-making communities.
To support these communities in the use of SAR, we have been working on the development of a SAR Capacity Building Center (SAR-CBC), a training resource aimed at the generation of educational material, webinars, and on-site trainings for the use of SAR in decision-making situations. Funded by NASA and associated with AmeriGEOSS, SAR-CBC focuses on Central and South America, and all training materials are tailored to the needs of this region. The SAR-CBC project is led by the University of Alaska Fairbanks and includes partners from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the University of Alabama in Huntsville / NASA SERVIR program. To ensure the relevance of developed material, we are also partnering with in-region organizations in Ecuador (IIGE; Central University of Ecuador), Colombia (IDEAM), and El Salvador (MARN). In this paper, we will describe recent capacity building activities of the SAR-CBC team. We will summarize the outcomes of a user needs assessment that was completed with partners in Colombia, Ecuador, and El Salvador in fall 2018 and helped shape the focus of our center. We will also present information on a webinar-style Q&A session that was held in collaboration with the NASA ARSET program, both in English and Spanish. The webinar revealed interesting differences between the training needs of the respective audiences. We will summarize findings and lessons-learned from two in-person trainings to be held in Bogota, Colombia and Quito, Ecuador. The Colombia training will be hosted by IDEAM in August 2019 and will focus on "Ecosystems Applications of SAR". The Ecuador training is scheduled for October and focuses on "SAR in Disaster Monitoring". We will end the paper with our calendar of upcoming events and with a showcase of the SAR-CBC web portal, which holds developed training materials and other information related to SAR capacity building.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMGC41C..04M
- Keywords:
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- 1632 Land cover change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1640 Remote sensing;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1880 Water management;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 4323 Human impact;
- NATURAL HAZARDS