About OPERA

In 2016, the White House Office of Management and Budget and Office of Science and Technology Policy created the Satellite Needs Working Group (SNWG) with the remit to survey data-providing federal agencies and identify their highest-priority needs for satellite data. The SNWG 2018 survey placed surface water extent, surface disturbance, and surface displacement among the top ten inter-agency needs. In 2020, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was selected to oversee and implement three data products in support of SNWG:

• SNWG 2018-2: Global Surface Water Extent
• SNWG 18-4: Global Land Surface Disturbance and Change Detection
• SNWG 18-5: Land Surface Deformation for North America and U.S. Territories

JPL, along with project partners from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the University of Maryland College Park, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Southern Methodist University, are developing and implementing a near-global Surface Water Extent product derived from Optical and SAR data; a near-global Disturbance product from Optical data; and a North America* Displacement product from SAR data. Near-global corresponds to all land-masses excluding Antarctica. North America* corresponds to the United States (USA) and U.S. Territories, parts of Canada within 200 km of the U.S. border, and all mainland countries from the southern US border up to and including Panama.

The OPERA team is led by project manager Dr. David Bekaert, project scientist Dr. Steven Chan, deputy project scientist Dr. Alexander Handwerger, project system engineer Dr. Steven Lewis, JPL algorithm development team lead Dr. Heresh Fattahi, JPL science data system lead Dr. Luca Cinquini, all at JPL. The surface disturbance product algorithm and production system are led by Dr. Matt Hansen at the University of Maryland. Dr. Bekaert manages the project, and is in charge of producing, calibrating, and validating the data. The OPERA project is managed under the Integrated Earth Mission Systems Office at JPL.

A significant portion of the team experience comes from their leadership of the ARIA project started in 2010. A joint effort between NASA/JPL and the California Institute of Technology, ARIA provides end-to-end geodetic imaging data processing, modeling, and visualization for solid earth science and urgent response. The ARIA team has experience with implementing SAR processing algorithms including automated triggers for earthquakes and produces prototype science and disaster response products. ARIA generates SAR-derived Level 2 data products from the European Space Agency Sentinel-1 mission.

SNWG program management is provided by the NASA Inter-agency Implementation and Advanced Concepts Team (IMPACT). IMPACT is a part of the NASA Earth Science Data System (ESDS) Program under the purview of the NASA Earth Science Division under NASA Flight Projects Directorate.