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, including NOAA's AVHRR and NASA's Terra & Aqua MODIS sensors. 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 45th anniversary in 2011, the Center for the Environment (C4E), the Purdue Climate Change Research Center (PCCRC), the Purdue Interdisciplinary Center for Ecological Sustainability (PICES), 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.

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.

PTO is a part of the Scientific Solutions group within ITaP's Rosen Center for Advanced Computing (RCAC).