Up North

Officials at the Defense Department and NASA are planning a new collaboration aimed at disseminating environmental data about the Arctic region. The proposed "Arctic Cooperative Environment" joint capability technology demonstration comes embedded in a project called "Partnering Earth Observations for People Living Environmentally," or PEOPLE. Broadly speaking, that effort aims to improve the international sharing of earth observation data, thus enabling partner nations to react to anticipate environmental change, natural disaster and associated humanitarian crises.

As for the Arctic-specific thrust, the goal is to provide the kind of situational awareness up north that is called for in a series of high-level policy documents, like the Quadrennial Defense Review or the Navy's roadmap for operations in the Arctic, according to a briefing from last June that was presented at a U.S. European and African commands science conference. The two commands are co-sponsors of the JCTD, which has yet to be formally blessed by senior Defense Department leaders.

What complicates the PEOPLE/ACE project and other proposed fiscal year 2011 JCTDs is the fact that Congress has yet to pass a defense spending bill. Until that happens, no project is formally approved, a defense official stressed last week.

But ACE passed a key hurdle in July, when Pentagon officials approved it at a so-called JCTD candidate review board, according to Marty Kress, whose Von Braun Center for Science and Innovation in Huntsville, AL, helped put the project together.

The comprehensive June briefing envisions an "open-source web-based Arctic region [and] national decision-support system with integrated data from existing remote sensing, buoy, and in-situ data (e.g. sea ice flow, permafrost melt)."

The document characterizes the project as a "true multi-agency, multi-national, building partnership" effort, with collaboration from Arctic stakeholders Russia and Canada. Beside the goal of tracking environmental conditions, the PEOPLE effort also would enable "expeditionary deployment planning," the briefing states.