NASA’s NextGen Remote Sensing Instruments Have Arrived: Data Products For Studying Disease Vectors

Abstract:

Remote sensing can be used to measure, evaluate or estimate both the environment (state functions) and interfaces (process functions) defining vector habitats. The products of remote sensing can be integrated directly into the epidemiological equations to significantly enhance our understanding of disease vector’s life cycles and habitats. The next generation of NASA’s remote sensing instruments which have become recently operational will provide a significant enhancement in our ability to study disease vector’s life cycles and habitats. These instruments are on the International Space Station (ISS) and include ECOSTRESS, DESIS, and GEDI. ECOSTRESS is a 5 channel, thermal IR instrument with 70 m resolution and approximately 1-5 day repeat cycle of day/night pairs. DESIS jointly developed by German Aerospace Center and Teledyne Brown Engineering is a hyperspectral sensor system of 235 channels and 30 m resolution. DESIS data is only being acquired on demand. GEDI is a high-resolution laser ranger used for observing Earth’s forests and topography.

NASA’s current ISS instrument configuration provides measurements of the critical environmental measures of environmental state functions important to vector & disease life cycles. Remote sensing data provide a spatial context and time series of landscape scale process functions represented by land use mapping and measurements of ecological functions. Global public health is entering a new information age through the use of spatial models of disease vector/host ecologies driven by the use of remotely sensed data to measure environmental and structural factors critical in determining disease vector habitats.

In 2018, NASA initiated a new study for the Surface Biology and Geology (SBG) Designated Observable, identified in the 2018 National Academies’ Decadal Survey entitled, “Thriving on Our Changing Planet: A Decadal Strategy for Earth Observation from Space.” . The SBG is planned to collect global remote sensing measurements using a hyperspectral spectrometer and multispectral thermal data. These data sets will provide a significant enhancement in our ability to study disease vector’s life cycles and habitats globally. The 3 sensors on the ISS provide precursor data to prepare the community for the application of future SBG data toward disease studies.