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At least 73 records · Page 4

U.S. IMERG Status

The U.S. Science Team’s Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission (IMERG) product provides estimates of surface precipitation rate and related information on a global 0.1° half-hour grid. It is run three times at increasingly longer latency and higher information input to serve different communities. This presentation will briefly summarize the major upgrades included in Version 07. The Goddard Profiling (GPROF) algorithm (applied to passive microwave sensor data from the GPM virtual constellation) and the Combined Radar-Radiometer Algorithm (CORRA) that provide input to IMERG V07 are both improved, and the new Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information Using Artificial Neural Networks–Dynamic Infrared Rain Rate (PDIR) algorithm is being applied to infrared data, which employs an additional, warmer infrared temperature threshold than the previous infrared scheme and a deep neural network. V07 has improved bias performance as a result of calibrations that now employ the entire swath widths of CORRA and GPROF GPM Microwave Imager precipitation estimates. As well, time continuity in precipitation features is improved as a result of changes to the Kalman filter that approximately preserve the local histogram of precipitation rates (Scheme for Histogram Adjustment with Ranked Precipitation Estimates in the Neighborhood, or SHARPEN), and that better account for differences in sensor performance. A long-standing bug in the geolocation that shifted grid values 0.1° to the east in the latitude band 70°N-S has been corrected. Other changes in V07 include a hierarchical selection among motion vector sources to address deficiencies in the precipitation propagation near orography, an update to the precipitation phase specification for improved consistency with current inputs, and a renewed effort to implement climatological gauge adjustment to the near-real-time Runs. Early evaluations of V07 IMERG show interesting behavior across the TRMM orbit boost that is highly relevant to the planned orbit boost for the GPM Core observatory.

GPM↗

Classification of Wildfires from MODIS Data Using Neural Networks

Wildfires are destructive to both life and property, which necessitates an approach to quickly and autonomously detect these events from orbital observatories. This talk will introduce a neural network based approach for classifying wildfires in MODIS multispectral data, and will show how it could be applied to a constellation of low-cost CubeSats. The approach combines training a deep neural network on the ground using high performance consumer GPUs, with a highly optimized inference system running on a flight-proven embedded processor. Normally neural networks execute on hardware orders of magnitude more powerful than anything found in a space-based computer, therefore the inference system is designed to be performance even on the most modest of platforms. This implementation is able to be significantly more accurate than previous neural network implementations, while also approaching the accuracy of the state-of-the-art MODFIRE data products.

Artificial Intelligence↗

Toward The Development of Hailstorm Climatologies Derived From Reanalyses and Infared/Passive Microwave Satellite Imagers

Geostationary satellite imagers, such as those of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) and Meteosat series, provide both historical and near-real-time observations of cloud top patterns that are commonly associated with severe convection. Environmental conditions favorable for severe weather are thought to be represented well by reanalyses. Predicting exactly where convection and costly storm hazards like hail will occur using models or satellite imagery alone, however, is extremely challenging. The multivariate combination of satellite-observed cloud patterns with reanalysis environmental parameters, linked to United States Next Generation Weather Radar- (NEXRAD-) estimated Maximum Expected Size of Hail (MESH) using a deep neural network (DNN), enables estimation of potentially severe hail likelihood for any observed storm cell. These estimates are specifically designed to make hail likelihood distinctions based on satellite-indicated points of deep convection within environments favorable for storm development. We seek an approach that can be used to estimate climatological hailstorm frequency and risk throughout the historical satellite data record. This presentation demonstrates that statistical distributions of convective parameters from satellite and reanalysis show separation between non-severe/severe hailstorm classes for predictors including overshooting cloud top temperature and area characteristics, convective available potential energy, vertical wind shear, 500 hPa temperature, mid-level lapse rate, precipitable water, and convective inhibition. These complex, multivariate predictor relationships are exploited within a DNN to produce a hail likelihood metric with a critical success index of 0.504 and Heidke skill score of 0.403, which is exceptional among recent analogous hail studies. Furthermore, applications of the DNN to select case studies demonstrate good qualitative agreement between hail likelihood and MESH. These hail classifications are aggregated across an 11-year GOES-12/13 image database to derive a hail frequency and severity climatology, which denotes the Central Plains, the Midwest, and northwestern Mexico as being the most hail-prone regions within the domain studied. Opportunities for training and applying DNN-based hailstorm predictions to recently developed GOES-8/10/12/13/16 and Meteosat Second Generation convective storm detection and characterization climatologies over South America and South Africa, respectively, will also be presented.

Kristopher Bedka↗

Neurosymbolic Hybrid Approach to Driver Collision Warning

There are two main algorithmic approaches to autonomous driving systems: (1) An end-to-end system in which a single deep neural network learns to map sensory input directly into appropriate warning and driving responses. (2) A mediated hybrid recognition system in which a system is created by combining independent modules that detect each semantic feature. While some researchers believe that deep learning can solve any problem, others believe that a more engineered and symbolic approach is needed to cope with complex environments with less data. Deep learning alone has achieved state-of-the-art results in many areas, from complex gameplay to predicting protein structures. In particular, in image classification and recognition, deep learning models have achieved accuracies as high as humans. But sometimes it can be very difficult to debug if the deep learning model doesn't work. Deep learning models can be vulnerable and are very sensitive to changes in data distribution. Generalization can be problematic. It's usually hard to prove why it works or doesn't. Deep learning models can also be vulnerable to adversarial attacks. Here, we combine deep learning-based object recognition and tracking with an adaptive neurosymbolic network agent, called the Non-Axiomatic Reasoning System (NARS), that can adapt to its environment by building concepts based on perceptual sequences. We achieved an improved intersection-over-union (IOU) object recognition performance of 0.65 in the adaptive retraining model compared to IOU 0.31 in the COCO data pre-trained model. We improved the object detection limits using RADAR sensors in a simulated environment, and demonstrated the weaving car detection capability by combining deep learning-based object detection and tracking with a neurosymbolic model.

Wang, Pei↗

Onboard Hyperspectral Image Classification via Transfer Learning for Communication-Limited Spacecraft

Employing deep-learning and artificial-intelligence (AI) techniques onboard spacecraft can dramatically improve priority data selection to ensure more effective use of the available downlink. However, deployment of effective deep-learning models requires significant training on the ground, which may not be feasible, due to limited data available in an unexplored environment. Therefore, this research explores building robust classification models for onboard data processing where training data is highly limited using transfer-learning techniques. In this paper, we focus on the use case of hyperspectral imaging for remote sensing, a domain where the high dimensionality of the data from the sensor can rapidly saturate the downlink bandwidth. With this bottleneck, there is an impending need to autonomously and robustly classify data onboard to optimize downlink of high-impact measurements, thus maximizing the scientific utility per bit transmitted to the ground. This paper examines the use of deep neural networks onboard for hyperspectral image classification in a communication-limited scenario to analyze how the models perform with limited training data. The use of transfer learning can ameliorate the issue of poor generalization by transferring features learned from training on a large source dataset for one classification task to the target classification task with limited training data. For two deep-learning models from literature, we compare the accuracy of the models trained using transfer learning to models trained from scratch using a random weight initialization with varying amounts of training data. We demonstrate the feasibility and performance of running inference of the deep-learning models on representative flight-like hardware.

Advanced Avionics, Machine Learning, Data Processi↗

Automated Data Accountability for Missions in Mars Rover Data

As the Mars Curiosity Rover transmits data to the JPL Ground Data System (GDS), it frequently observes data loss and corruption, requiring re-transmits from the rover and Ground Data System Analysts (GDSA) to monitor the downlink process. As new missions are launched, the GDSA team redistributes analysts to these new missions, causing shortages in previous missions. The GDSA team can significantly benefit from the automation and optimization of the downlink process of telemetry data. In fact, there is a need for a better understanding of why the data is corrupted, so that the GDSA team can best determine the root cause of the issues in the GDS. This paper presents machine learning and deep learning based approaches to automate and optimize the detection of data loss. We first created a pipeline to automatically accumulate data from the telemetry databases (MAROS, Telemetry Data Storage, and GDS Elastic Search Database) in the downlink process. With our newly created datasets, we perform feature selection to supplement the GDSA understanding of the downlink process and provide supplemental analysis on the importance of different features. We implement various machine learning and deep learning based models, including support vector machines, ensemble methods, and deep neural networks and evaluate their accuracies in identifying whether a downlink process is complete or incomplete. We utilize fast hyperparameter optimization methods that allow our models to quickly be re-trained, allowing them to quickly be tuned and optimized on daily incoming data in real time. This hyperparameter optimization also allows our methods to be quickly integrated into other JPL missions. Our results show that our best-performing machine learning and deep learning based models outperform the existing GDSA detection software by 6 accuracy points and can aid analysts by providing insights into the data accountability problem. Since these various machine learning and deep learning approaches vary significantly in interpretability, we provide a discussion on the tradeoffs between their performance and trustworthiness in helping detect issues in data transmission.

Divsalar, Dariush↗

Dynamic fire and smoke detection and classification for flashover prediction

Flashover is a dangerous phenomenon caused by near-simultaneous ignition of exposed materials. It is one of the major causes of firefighter fatalities. Research has been done using CMOS vision cameras combined with thermal sensors to perform remote detection and dynamic classification of fire and smoke patterns. Tests and experiments have been done to detect fire and smoke remotely. The inexpensive visible and infrared sensors used in the tests corroborate and closely follow the detailed trends recorded by the more expensive (and less mobile) radiometers and thermocouples. Deep neural networks (DNN) have been used to detect, classify and track fire and smoke areas. Real-time segmentation is utilized to measure the fire and smoke boundaries. The segmentations are used to dynamically monitor fluctuations in temperature, fire size and smoke progression in the monitored areas. A fire and smoke progression curve has been drawn to predict the flashover point. In the paper, data analysis and preliminary results will be shown. Keywords: Flashover, fire, smoke, deep learning, visible and infrared vision

Chow, Edward↗

Deep Learning Method for Detecting Precursors to Adverse Events

With the recent advancements in Deep Learning methods, the ability to model large complex heterogeneous data sets are fundamentally changing industry and research. Coupled with hardware improvements, and ease of implementation, a wide variety of deep neural network architectures can quickly be developed to solve a sweeping range of problems such as: object detection in images, automatic healthcare diagnosis using heterogenous data sources, real time language translating and sentence prediction, upscaling low resolution images, and forecasting of multivariate timeseries. Generally, many of these architectures outperform classical machine learning approaches in their respective tasks, however, this typically comes at a cost of interpretability. These black box algorithms generally suffer from lack of transparency in both model complexity as well as the rationale behind the prediction. This lack of comprehension, is driving an emerging area of interest in “Explainable AI”. An algorithm called: “Deep Temporal Multiple Instance Learning”1 was a recently developed to identify precursors to adverse events and has been applied in the aviation domain. The deep learning architecture is designed to capture the evolution of the probability of the outcome over the time preceding the adverse event using a multiple instance learning approach as illustrated in Figure 1. Precursors are defined when the probability of the event has exceeded a threshold at some point in the timeseries, at which point, a sensitivity analysis is performed to determine contributing factors. The contributing factors are used to explain and define the precursor during the periods where the probability score is high. The identified contributing factors are then presented to subject matter experts to provide objective insights into the leading factors associated with the particular adverse event. The algorithm has been tested on flight data from a commercial airline and has the ability to discover precursors to known adverse events that take the form of safety critical operations, such as unstable approach events on final approach. Apart from detecting precursors to adverse events, the converse can also be leveraged to discover corrective actions. These positive actions manifest themselves as periods in the timeseries when the precursor score has been lowered from an elevated state; meaning that if the system had been left uncorrected, it would have eventually reached the adverse event state. Characterizing these state changes can help identify successful interventions that may not have been known before. Policy makers and procedure designers can use this additional knowledge to craft more safety and efficient resilient procedures for future operations and therefore improve the overall performance of the National Airspace.

Matthews, Bryan L.↗

Future of Big Earth Data Analytics

The state of the art of Big Earth Data Analytics can be expected to evolve rapidly in the coming years. The forces driving evolution come from both growth in the data and advancement in the field of data analytics. In the data area, advances in sensor instrumentation and platform miniaturization are increasing both data resolution and coverage, resulting in enormous growth in data Volume. Increases in temporal resolution in particular also generate demands for higher data Velocity. At the same time, the proliferation of instruments and the platforms on which they reside is increasing the Variety of datasets. The Variety increase in turn leads to questions about the Veracity of the data. In the algorithm area, powerful machine learning methods are coming to the fore, particularly Deep Neural Networks. These are powerful at detecting interesting features in the data, integrating many different measurements (i.e., data fusion), and classification problems. However, they are still challenging when seeking explanations of how natural or socio-economic phenomena work using Earth Observations. Thus, classical analysis techniques will remain relevant when the emphasis is on forming or testing explanations, as well as to support interactive data exploration.

Lynnes, Christopher↗

Automatically Finding Ship-Tracks to Enable Large-Scale Analysis of Aerosol-Cloud Interactions

Ship tracks appear as long winding linear features in satellite images and are produced by aerosols from ship exhausts changing low cloud properties. They are one of the best examples of aerosol‐cloud interaction experiments. However, manually finding ship tracks from satellite data on a large scale is prohibitively costly while a large number of samples are required to improve our understanding. Here we train a deep neural network to automate finding ship tracks. The neural network model generalizes well as it not only finds ship tracks labeled by human experts but also detects those that are occasionally missed by humans. It finds more ship tracks than all previous studies combined and produces a map of ship track distributions off the California coast that matches well with known shipping traffic. Our technique will enable studying aerosol effects on low clouds using ship tracks on a large scale, which will potentially narrow the uncertainty of the aerosol‐cloud interactions.

aerosol cloud interactions↗

Are we ready for the first EASA guidance on the use of ML in Aviation?

NASA has been working for the past 12 years on software tools for the assurance of software in Aviation critical systems. For now two years, NASA has focused more on the use of AI-based techniques in Aviation than the traditional software systems used in the past. The primary focus has been on machine learning (ML), and more specifically, on supervised off-line learning ML systems. NSA’s research has been driven by case studies such as a vision-based centerline tracking system (implemented using deep neural networks) and the new generation of collision avoidance systems developed under the FAA guidance, i.e., the family of ACAS-X products. Since EASA has recently released its first usable guidance for Level 1 machine learning applications, it is opportunity to see how the research done at NASA is mapping to this first guidance for ML. In this talk I will use the EASA guidance document as a guide to present the past, present, and future tools and techniques being developed at NASA. The intent is to not only provide an overview of the research effort at NASA but also to see how this effort is addressing the concerns listed in the EASA first usable guidance for ML.

Guillaume Brat↗

Statistical learning framework for safety and failure analysis of a DNN-based autonomous aircraft system

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) and Machine Learning technology is increasingly used for safety-critical applications in the Aerospace domain. To ensure safe operations, the DNN and the system must undergo rigorous verification and validation, including advanced statistical analyses. Performance and safety of the DNN and system behavior must not only be analyzed for the nominal case, but under numerous off-nominal and failure cases. In this paper we will describe how our statistical learning framework SYSAI can efficiently perform such analyses using the tool’s unique combination of advanced learning modeling and statistical analysis techniques. SYSAI can effectively explore the high-dimensional state and failure space of the system under test; geometrical shape detection of safety regions and boundaries support explainability of the results to the designer. In this paper, we report experiments and results obtained with a vision-based DNN control system (ACT) that is capable of autonomously steering an aircraft down a runway.

Yuning He↗

Toward Design Assurance of Machine-Learning Airborne Systems

In recent years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, enabled by Machine Learning (ML)technology, have demonstrated impressive progress and provides historic opportunities for the aviation industry. However, several key aspects of ML technology are not compatible with existing design assurance standards and make certification problematic. In this paper, we present a case study of a visual system with a Deep Neural Network (DNN) intended to detect and identify airport runway signs. Different use cases and variants of this system exhibit different levels of criticality ranging from design assurance level (DAL) D to B. We use the case study to illustrate the challenges of certification according to the current standards, such asDO-178C. We present the system design, data generation, training, and verification in detail and describe how the design assurance objectives can be met for a DAL D variant of the system. We also discuss gaps and potential approaches for the higher design assurance levels.

Avionics↗

Machine-Learning for Safety Critical Airborne Applications Part II: Case Study

The exceptional progress in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, enabled by Machine Learning (ML) technology in recent years provides historic opportunities for the aviation industry. Current certification standards for avionics were developed prior to the ML renaissance and have several fundamental incompatibilities with the ML technology. WG-114 is working hard to release a new standard as soon as possible but for now there is no recognized means of compliance for ML based systems even of low criticality. In this talk, we present the custom ML workflow that can be used comply with all objectives of the current certification standards for a low-criticality (DAL D and C) ML-based system. To illustrate the practical application of the custom ML workflow we present a case study of a system based on a Deep Neural Network (DNN) intended to detect and identify airport runway signs. We present the system design, data generation, training, and verification in detail and describe how the design assurance objectives can be met for a DAL D and DAL C systems.

Johann Schumann↗

Super-Resolution from Space: Using MERRA-2 and MAIAC Satellite Imagery to Produce Daily Continuous 1 km PM2.5 Estimates

PM2.5 measurements from ground stations are the gold standard when available, but the expense and coverage of such stations limits widespread monitoring. Having accurate PM2.5 estimates outside the range of these stations is important for monitoring this crucial aspect of air quality. The goal of this project is to produce daily 1 km continuous PM2.5 estimates for the contiguous US relying primarily on satellite-derived data sources. This is important because models based on such data can be more easily expanded outside the study area and produce global estimates as well. The temporal availability of such data products is often weekly/daily, unlike land-use products with are often available at a yearly or worse temporal resolution. To achieve our goal, we use a couple of different deep neural network architectures to produce PM2.5 measurements at 10 km and 1 km resolution. We use two model architectures, a UNET-like model and a GAN-based model. We train both models using MERRA-2 data and MAIAC AOD data scaled to 10 km and 1 km for the two different prediction resolutions. MERRA-2 imagery is data rich with a wide range of geospatial variables at 50 km and has long historical availability (beginning in 1980). We’re also using higher spatial resolution MAIAC data at 1 km to provide finer resolution spatial context. This essentially leverages the spatial resolution of MAIAC data and the “wider” information of MERRA-2 data to predict PM2.5. For the target data we’re using a modeled 1 km PM2.5 dataset produced by Harvard to pre-train our models and then fine-tune our models using ground station measurements. Not only are our results comparable with the performance of the Harvard dataset, but can be generalized to any area or time where MERRA-2 and MAIAC data is available.

satellite imagery↗

Radiation Tolerance and Mitigation for Neuromorphic Processors

Neuromorphic processors are designed to execute Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) at very high speed using only a fraction of the electrical power needed to run a DNN on a traditional CPU or GPU. This unique capability makes Neuromorphic processors a prime candidate for space systems, where advanced computational tasks like image analysis, depth map reconstruction, or rover control need to be executed in a power-starved environment. In contrast to the growing number of applications of Neuromorphic processors in smart phones, the automotive and robotics domain, the space environment is unforgiving because of extreme temperatures and high levels of radiation. Any space system, operating beyond LEO requires computing hardware that is resilient against radiation effects. However, Neuromorphic processors have not yet been designed or tested for their radiation tolerance. In this report, we consider traditional methods of detection of radiation events and mitigation via redundancy and gauge their effectiveness on DNNs. In contrast to traditional flight software, however, neural networks represent a statistical algorithm, which might affect its resilience against radiation events. We will focus on the analysis of the tolerance of DNNs with respect to radiation events and discuss techniques to detect radiation hits using on-chip triple modular redundancy (TMR) on an Intel Loihi neuromorphic processor and to mitigate radiation damage. We describe an architecture for on-chip TMR for the Intel Loihi and present results of initial experiments.

Neural Networks↗

Machine-Learned Committor Functions for Reactive Molecular Dynamics

Reactive molecular dynamics (MD) is a powerful tool for atomistic-scale modeling of a diverse range of chemical processes. However, scaling these simulations to large systems and long times scales remains a challenge because of the complexity of the potential energy function required. The authors previously developed a heuristic approach, called REACTER, that incorporates reactivity in MD simulations in a less general but much more computationally efficient manner. REACTER uses standard, fixed valence force fields as the underlying potentialenergy surface for describing all interatomic interactions but adds a procedure for enforcing user-defined reactions that occur when certain geometric constraints on relative atomic positions are satisfied. Further, these bonding changes can be accepted or rejected with a probability related tothe local thermal energy. This work seeks to generalize this approach by replacing the set of user defined geometric constraints and energetic criteria with a committor function that specifies the probability of a reaction occurring on the basis of the local atomic configuration. The committor function is a useful mathematical tool for modeling rare events but, unfortunately, is very difficult to compute for realistic systems in a general way. This work describes a method for approximating the committor function using a machine learning approach, specifically a deep neural network trained with data from reactive MD and DFT-based dynamics simulations. This network is coupled to the existing REACTER protocol, as implemented in the LAMMPS MD package, and used to make on-the-fly predictions of reaction probabilities without the more extensive user input previously required. The new method is demonstrated using the polymerization of polystyrene as a case study. Although very dependent on the quality and quantity of training data, machine-learned committor functions show promise as a method for incorporating reaction probability from higher level calculations into highly scalable MD simulations.

polymer simulations↗

Flux Improvement based on Machine Learning for the CERES FluxByCldTyp Data Product

The NASA Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) product provides over 20 years of accurately observed top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) and surface flux data record for climate monitoring and diagnostic studies. The interaction between clouds and radiation interaction is a key factor that dominate climate feedbacks but is not well understood. To further advance our understanding of the cloud-radiation interaction, a new CERES FluxByCldTyp (FBCT) product has been developed that contains radiative fluxes by cloud-type, which can provide more stringent constraints when validating models and reveal more insight into the interactions between clouds and climate. For CERES partly cloudy and multiple cloud-type footprints, the FBCT product utilizes Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) narrow-band (NB) imager channel radiances partitioned by cloud-type within a CERES footprint to estimate the cloud-type broadband fluxes. The MODIS multi-channel derived broadband fluxes were compared with the CERES observed footprint fluxes and were found to be within 1% and 2.5% for LW and SW, respectively, as well as being mostly free of cloud property dependencies. The FBCT all-sky and clear-sky monthly averaged fluxes were found to be consistent with the CERES SSF1deg product. This study takes advantage of recent progress in machine learning (ML) field by applying deep neural network algorithm to improve fluxes based on MODIS NB radiances. The preliminary study shows ML produce are an improvement over the current FBCT Edition 4 NB2BB algorithm. Furthermore, unlike Ed4 NB2BB, the new ML method convert NB radiances directly to broadband fluxes. For future Ed5, new NB radiances are proposed and used by ML to improve fluxes calculation. Prelimary results show significant LW improvement.

Moguo Sun↗