About the Purdue Terrestrial Observatory

The PTO deploys two Real-Time Multi-Satellite Receiving Stations, a geostationary groundstation for NOAA's GOES and a tracking groundstation for polar orbiting satellites, currently, NOAA's AVHRR, NASA's Terra MODIS and Aqua MODIS and the Chinese Space Agency's Feng Yun. PTO researchers focus on temporal and spatial analysis, data fusion and data mining of remotely sensed imagery in a high performance, high bandwidth environment.

The PTO works closely with other research centers at Purdue, including Purdue's Laboratory for Applications of Remote Sensing (LARS), which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2006, the Center for Advanced Applications of GIS (CAAGIS), the Center for the Environment (C4E), the Purdue Climate Change Research Center (PCCRC), the Purdue Interdisciplinary Center for Ecological Sustainability (PICES), the Site Specific Management Center (SSMC), the Geomatics Research Laboratory in the Dept. of Civil Engineering, the Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulation (SEAS) Laboratory, the SoftLab Research Group, the Computer Research Institute (CRI), the Center for Wireless Research, the Center for Sensing Technology, the eEnterprise Center, the Purdue Cyber Center, the NASA supported Indiana Space Grant Consortium (INSGC), the Envision Center for Visualization and Data Perceptualization, the IndianaView Consortium and the IUPUI Polis Center.

The PTO is building upon these relationships to develop cooperative agreements with NASA, DOD, NIMA, NIST, NSF, NOAA, DOT, DOE, USGS, EPA, USDA, CDC and the Office of Homeland Security, as well as with selected international entities, such as the European Association of Remote Sensing Laboratories (EARSeL), NASDA, ESA, CNES, CSA, CONAE and Tubitak. Currently, the PTO serves as the lead agency for the IndianaView consortium, a member of the USGS-supported AmericaView, Inc. and is in its first year of funding from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to establish the Kamal Ewida Earth Observatory (KEEO) in Egypt, at Cairo University and Al Azhar University, in collaboration with the Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute in Istanbul, Turkey. The primary mission of the NATO KEEO project is to facilitate early warning and mitigation of anthropogenic and biogenic disasters, including epidemics, through identification and monitoring infectious disease vector habitat.

Alliances are being sought with the relatively small number of university-based real-time remote sensing facilities, including those based at minority-serving institutions, so as to facilitate research collaboration and to assure critical redundancy. The PTO, in cooperation with the INSGC and the Purdue Graduate Schools, sponsors the Purdue Research Opportunities Program (PROP), which offers intensive summer research experiences, primarily for groups that are under-represented in the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics. Moreover, the PTO publishes the peer-reviewed Journal of Terrestrial Observation (JTO), in collaboration with Purdue University Press and Berkeley ePress