NEODAAS

NEODAAS (NERC Earth Observation Data Analysis and Artificial-Intelligence Service) is a national research facility hosted at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, overseen by the National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO) and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). It gives environmental researchers processed and analysis-ready satellite data, so individual projects do not have to build and run their own processing.

Data from the latest satellite passes are downloaded each day and run through custom processing chains, in near real time and again when refined files are released. Routine products include ocean colour (chlorophyll-a, turbidity and visibility) from Sentinel-3 OLCI, Aqua MODIS and VIIRS; sea surface temperature and thermal fronts from AVHRR and Sentinel-3 SLSTR; and Sentinel-1 radar backscatter. Routine products for key areas, including the UK, are normally available within 12 hours of acquisition. On request, NEODAAS produces custom products, including high-resolution optical data from Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8 and a satellite indicators suite (time series, anomalies and trends), and gives near-real-time support to research cruises and rapid response to events such as blooms, fires and oil spills. Users view and extract data through a web portal and a Syntool-based cruise portal.

The service also runs the MAGEO GPU cluster for AI work on Earth observation data, a code optimisation service, airborne data processing and training courses. Data processing is free at point of delivery to researchers eligible for NERC funding via peer-reviewed application; NERC-grant projects include NEODAAS support in the grant, and for commercial work and some commissioned research NEODAAS may pass on specific costs to users. Between 2013 and 2019 it supported 33 research cruises and provided custom satellite processing for 89 projects.