Distributed Observation Allocation for a Large-Scale Constellation

Abstract

Increased space and ground sensing is enabling dramatic new measurements of a wide range of Earth Science and Applied Earth Science phenomena, including: volcanism, flooding, wildfires, and weather. Large scale observations constellations of hundreds of assets already exist (e.g. Planet) with several constellations with 10,000’s of assets planned. New challenges exist to rapidly assimilate available data and to optimize measurements (e.g. direct assets) to best observe these complex and dynamic spatiotemporal phenomena. We describe automated centralized and distributed Artificial Intelligence methods for allocating observations within a constellation.