Space-based technologies and high performance computing in support of environmental sustainability in developing countries

Inspired by recent service on the User Working Group for NASA’s Socio-Economic Data Applications Center (SEDAC), the Science Review Panel for the Arctic Region Supercomputer Center, the Technology Advisory Committee for South Africa’s Center for High Performance Computing and participation in the NATO Pilot Study on Clean Products and Processes over the past four years, our distributed interdisciplinary research collaborators intensified our efforts to address some of the fundamental issues with respect to societal sustainability. We particularly focused on highly vulnerable communities, at risk for an array of immediate and long-term biogenic and anthropogenic disasters. Specifically, we sought to address the question: ‘‘How should state-of-the-science computational capabilities and earth observing satellites be optimally placed in the service of environmental sustainability and sustainable development?’’ In the on-going process of examining this issue, it has been encouraging to observe the technological progress that has recently occurred within Latin America, Asia and Africa. CONAE http://www.conae.gov.ar/eng/aplicaciones/ salud_new.html, the Argentine Space Agency’s SAC-C satellite has been operational since 2000 and its successor, Aquarius (SAC-D) will be launched in 2010; while SABIA (SAC-E), the Argentine-Brazilian Satellite for Information on Food, Water and the Environment, ALSAT-2 (SAC-F) and SAOCOM 1-A, with microwave radar and a thermal infrared camera, are each currently under production. Brazil’s other collaboration with China, the ChineseBrazilian Earth Resources Satellite (CBERS) has been generously offered without licensure fees to developing countries. China, as well, freely offers its Fung Yun 1D MVISR globally to receiving stations. Robust earth observing satellite launch schedules are apparent in China, India, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. African engagement in satellite remote sensing has been actively promoted by the African Association for Remote Sensing of Environment (AARSE) and by the 2009 IEEE International Geo-science & Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) held in Cape Town, South Africa. As a follow-on to the NATO Committee on the Challenges to Modern Society’s Pilot Study on Clean Products & Processes, the NATO Science for Peace Program has awarded funding to establish the Kamal Ewida Earth Observatory http://www.itap.purdue.edu/pto/NATO_KEEO/ index_en.html, which will include real-time satellite ground stations in Egypt at Cairo University and Al Azhar University, primarily for early warning and mitigation of disasters, including storms, flooding and epidemics, through identifying and monitoring infectious disease vector habitat, as well as for facilitating natural resource management. This initiative is in collaboration with the Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute at Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey and with the Purdue Terrestrial Observatory at Purdue University’s Rosen Center for Advanced Computing in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. Analysis of the real-time satellite data will benefit from a recently installed IBM Blue Gene L Supercomputer at Egypt’s National Authority for Remote Sensing & Space Sciences (NARSS), which has the capability to produce data products in near-real-time, as input to decision support for time-critical events. The other civilian supercomputer facility on the African continent is at South G. L. Rochon (&) Purdue Terrestrial Observatory (PTO), Information Technology at Purdue (ITaP), Rosen Center for Advanced Computing (RCAC), Purdue University, 203 Martin Jischke Drive, Mann Hall 160, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA e-mail: rochon@purdue.edu