The Alliance For Earth Observations awarded the Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing (CSTARS) at the University of Miami with its inaugural Innovation Award for action taken during the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The award honors an individual, group, or organization for groundbreaking technological research or applications innovation in Earth observations. It was presented to Hans Graber, executive director of CSTARS and a professor of applied marine physics, at the Forum On Earth Observations V, held June 14 in Washington, D.C.
CSTARS provided unprecedented daily coverage of the Gulf area from Texas to Florida, giving federal, state, and local responders rapid access to data. More than 1,200 images were made available between April 21 and August 18, 2010.
To provide this breadth of data, the professional and scientific team at CSTARS had to quickly expand its existing licensing agreements to allow sharing of the information with a greater number of agencies. Today CSTARS offers access to remotely sensed images from 18 providers around the world in near-real time.
“We are proud to have contributed so greatly to our nation’s ability to monitor and better respond to a disaster of such magnitude. There will be plenty more opportunities in the future, and not just disasters, where we need faster and better data over large areas from a multitude of sensors,” Graber said. “Our entire professional team deserves this honor for their tireless efforts during this disaster.”