Earth Data School
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Full catalog/ERI
ERI·dataset

Rapid aerial photos after disasters (NOAA)

NOAA Emergency Response Imagery
atmosphere NOAA NOAA active
In plain English

What it measures. High-resolution aerial imagery and related remote-sensing data captured quickly after emergencies to show conditions on the ground.

How it's made. Acquired by NOAA's National Geodetic Survey using aircraft-mounted digital cameras, lidar, and other sensors, then shared rapidly.

How & where you'd use it. Helps government agencies and the public assess damage and coordinate response after hurricanes, floods, and other disasters.

What's measured

aws-pdsaerial imageryclimatecogdisaster responseweather

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span— → ongoing

What you can do with it

  • Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
  • Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
  • Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description

In order to support NOAA's homeland security and emergency response requirements, the National Geodetic Survey Remote Sensing Division (NGS/RSD) has the capability to acquire and rapidly disseminate a variety of spatially-referenced datasets to federal, state, and local government agencies, as well as the general public. Remote sensing technologies used for these projects have included lidar, high-resolution digital cameras, a film-based RC-30 aerial camera system, and hyperspectral imagers. Examples of rapid response initiatives include acquiring high resolution images with the Emerge/Applanix Digital Sensor System (DSS).

Get the data

noaa_access.py
# NOAA Open Data on AWS — public S3, no login
import s3fs

fs = s3fs.S3FileSystem(anon=True)
# find this dataset's bucket in the docs link in the sidebar, then:
# files = fs.ls("noaa-<bucket>/...")
# open NetCDF/GRIB with xarray, COGs with rioxarray
NOAA Open Data is on public AWS S3 — no login at all (anonymous access).